OgreBattle wrote: ↑Thu Feb 13, 2014 2:46 pm
FrankTrollman wrote:2nd edition Call Woodland Creatures came with a percentage chance for the creatures to be in the area. If you cast it a couple of times, you'd get a Treant companion. And then any number of Fighters in the party were pretty much worthless.
Was a treant companion better than an 18/00 Dart fighter or an Archery kit Fighter though? I thought that was the edition where a Fighter could kill an adult red dragon in a single hail of ranged attacks.
You know, I think it's a shame that nobody ever tried to answer this question. I have a copy of
The Monstrous Manual TSR 2140, so in case there are other versions of the Treant, that's what I'm looking at.
The standard Treant is a 7HD creature with AC 0, movement 12 and 2 attacks THAC0 of 13 dealing 2-16 damage per hit. But each Treant can animate 2 trees that fight as a 12 HD Treant with movement 3; THAC0 of 9 dealing 4-24 damage per hit. Other than a weakness to fire and never being surprised, that's what we have...
Now actually getting a Treant requires that you be in a Moderate Woodland (not available in Light Woods) and only has a 5% chance of appearing; that increases to 25% in Dense/Virgin. The spell description says it doesn't only work in woodland, but the table implies that it does. So this being AD&D, the spell is a little baroque. It appears that caster can specify up to 3 creature types to try to call. For Moderate Woods/Sylvan the creatures are brownies (20%), centaurs (30%), dryads (25%), pixies (20%), satyrs (30%), Sprites (5%), unicorn (15%). You'll note that those don't add up to 100% so it's not easy like 'roll a percentile and that creature shows up'. Instead my reading indicates you say you want a Treant, the DM rolls d% and if you roll a 01-05 it shows up; if you roll a 06-100 it doesn't. Each level you have in druid adds +1% (so a Treant is actually a 12% chance for a 7th level Druid). Failing to get your Treant, you then ask for centaurs and if your DM rolls 01-30 it shows up; finally you ask for Satyrs with the same deal. For what it's worth, I failed to summon any of my requested creatures in 3 die rolls. Assuming you get anything you make a loyalty reaction check to convince them to fight for you. Since it took 20 minutes to summon these creatures, you had to plan well in advance, and you have to convince the GM that they should follow you for long enough to actually get in a fight. So there's a whole lot of 'ifs' about getting them in the first place.
But if you get a Treant and it animates a couple of trees, how does that compare to the Fighter?
A 7th level Fighter has a THAC0 of 14 (not as good as the Treant). But an 18/00 gives you a +3 Hit Probability and +6 Damage. At 7th level a Fighter with Weapon Specialization can throw 5 darts per round (5/1). It appears that specializing in darts gives you more attacks but no bonus to attack or damage (unlike melee weapon specialization or how it is handled in 3rd edition). So a dart fighter gets 5 dart attacks with an effective THAC0 of 11; the dart does 1d3 damage to S-M creatures or 1d2 to larger creatures. So our Fighter has 5 attacks per round, each dealing 1d2+6. Against the Treant with an AC of 0 the Fighter should hit 1/2 the time, dealing 18.75 damage per round. The Treant with 7 HD has 31.5 hit points on average. If the Treant is killed, any animated trees cease to function. The Fighter probably doesn't know this, but since animating the trees takes 1 round before they can jump in the fight, it makes sense that the Fighter will probably focus on the Treant first.
If the Fighter has a 15 Con, he gets +1 hit point per level, so on average we might expect him to have 45.5 hit points. Those 12-HD animated trees are going to do 14 damage average per hit, and will probably hit about half the time. But they're really slow, so the Fighter can kite them without actually being smart. The regular Treant won't hit as easily (maybe 25% of the time) and the average damage (~9 per hit) isn't going to slow the fighter down.
So, if the druid lets his called Treant and the animated trees fight the Fighter and doesn't do anything else, the Fighter will probably win pretty handily and feel big in the pants. There are some things that the druid might do like summon an insect swarm to deal some extra damage and give the Fighter some minor penalties to attack/damage, but by itself probably not enough to change the result.
Of course, a Fighter with an 18/00 STR never actually exists. A character with an 18 would have only +2 damage; a Fighter that was able to put an 18 in STR would qualify for an exceptional STR roll but would typically have a +3 damage (01-75). The last 25% chance is divided between +4 (15%), +5 (9%) or +6 (1%). So basically if your GM is giving you the equivalent of an artifact sword
at character creation you'll feel alright. Without that relatively large static bonus for high STR even a dart-specialist isn't going to do well. You have to have at least a 16 STR to get a +1 damage, so having two fighters that varied by +5 to damage at 1st level is totally a thing.
There is a magic item
gauntlets of ogre power that gives a character STR 18/00, so that's the only non-cheating way to actually get that STR. You can also get a
Girdle of Giant Strength that could potentially give you a +12 damage.
So there are definitely a few ways to make Fighters feel like they're contributing with Hit Point Damage, and pity items can certainly help. Since the monsters have highly variable damage, a couple of lucky hits for near max damage could swing the fight. Though common house rules like always getting Max Hit Points would shift things further into the Fighter's favor. I'm not sure if Attacks of Opportunity were standardized in AD&D, but I know that DMs would allow a 'free swing' if people tried to run past you, for instance. If the treant gets in your face and dart throwing in melee caused problems and/or trying to move out of melee was an issue and the animated trees closed, it could get ugly quickly, but things are laid out so poorly I'm not feeling like trying to work that part out.