Got Your Games: B is for Boo-lay - or something like that

So I’m at B. Already some of these things are irritating me; why were some of these creatures statted out as monsters?
Seriously ....... Badger,Baluchitherium, Barracuda, Beaver ..... just no need. Also the writing is completely random, I quote from the Bear listing

“The grizzly bear is a brown bear of very aggressive disposition. Black bears are usually not aggressive, brown bears are, and cave bears are quite aggressive. “. What? The description really should have been “its a bear, you know, a bear”.

And why do Beavers have treasure- By the book they could actually have magical items!!

Boar and Buffalo - see Bear above.

Blink dogs are a classic, lawful good and a great companion for the ranger in your life. (Again, where does it keep its treasure?)

Black pudding - now I like black pudding on general principles but I’ve just never been a fan of slimes and oozes - looking at the stats though a couple of these could quite easily devastate a party / drop off the ceiling and there you go 3d8 damage a round and destroying your armour in short order. A DM could really go to town with one of these if he rules that a PC is envelopes and could take damage from his allies as they try and destroy the thing.

Brownie - dull faerie-kin, and I always thought they were evil because of the artwork.

Brain Mole -psionics, need I say more. Just a creature for that particular arms race between players and DM when they discover psionics are a thing.

Bugbear - essentially a big old goblin but the 50% chance of surprise was new to me.

Bull - yep it’s a big cow.

And so to the real meat and drink here, the Bulette and the Beholder. I will save the wonderful Beholder for another time but the Bulette needs comment.

It’s pronounced Boo-lay I hear in many places but it doesn’t say that here. I’ll go to google and try and find out why, perhaps you could do it for me and leave a comment because I really might not get round to it. The 3 separate AC listings - AFAIK AD&D didn’t really go for variables like this on a big scale, perhaps I just missed that in the rules, but looking at it I’m sure my players would have gone for the eyes!! ( oh and beware the eight foot leap which can give it 4 3-18 attacks- bloody hell I would have him bouncing around like he was on a pogo stick if I was running him🙂. )

So that was B - some dead wood but some great fun as well