Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Monty Haul Greyhawk

Here's a fun topic from my dusty Greyhawk shelf. Old gamers and DMs such as me are most likely familiar with the term "Monty Haul" campaign (where a DM gives out way too much treasure and magic items) or the more modern player term "munchkin" (a player who power games his PCs). Either way when D&D was still new to us and we were young and easily inspired (go watch the recent show Stranger Things), we tended to create the most over-powered, excessively rich, over the top characters, and yeah it made sense back then. For my part, I had a certain munchkin NPC/PC in my first "monty haul" Greyhawk campaign that by all rights shouldn't have been as cool as he thought he was. Let's examine Knight Stalker!

Knight Stalker is from the humble backwater nation of Blackmoor, but you wouldn't realize it from his super-heroic profile. K.S. is a human multi-classed, 36th level fighter/ 5th level thief with the improbable stat line of:

STR 18(100%) 16 without his Gauntlets of Ogre Power
INT 18 cause apparently he got a good education in Dantredun.
WIS 15 dump stat!
DEX 18 heroes gotta be quick on their toes
CON 16 i see some erasure on the sheet which means he was probably resurrected a couple times
CHA 18 who wouldn't want to hang with him?
COMELINESS 16 because not even a missing eye can harm those good looks

K.S. had 263 hit points which I'm not sure is even mathematically possible and I don't have time to fact-check it.
By virtue of his part-time thievery he can do thieving skills but most are useless while he wears Plate +5 and carries a Shield +5 but hey he can still back stab that's what's important.
Stalker was notable for having ran through the adventure The City Beyond the Gate in Dragon Magazine #100 where adventurers go to modern day London to retrieve the Mace of St. Cuthbert. Well instead of bringing a mace back he brought back an arsenal including a .357, and an AK-47 and counter to Greyhawk physics his blackpowder weapons could work much like the hero-deity Murlynd's 6-shooters cause why not?
Boomsticks aside, Knight Stalker at one time possessed Excalibur as well, but lost it, which was fine because his main sword was a Tri-bladed Sword +5 whose blades could be launched at enemies. Sound familiar? Yup, it's from the movie The Sword and the Sorcerer. I'm actually proud of that one.

Knight Stalker at the end of his career was 54, but somehow retained the appearance of a spry 32 year old (thanks potions of longevity!). He got his name because he hates knights, cavaliers and clerics. I will assume he dislikes paladins as well. At the end of his career he only had 2182 g.p. left though, which might make life in his castle in the Adri Forest difficult. And lastly, if you think he will die poor and have his body looted of gear I will point out the Will (yeah 1st edition had Wills, it's a lost art) at the bottom of his AD&D character sheet :

I, K.S. (cause with an 18 INT he was too smart to sign his actual name) do hereby swear to come back from the dead and slay my foe.

Yes folks, that means everyone. But especially people who look like knights. AD&D had fun rules for the era, but our ridiculous monty haul game characters were certainly more memorable.



4 comments:

Zudrak (Michael G.) said...

Haha! I am laughing because I found a bunch of old characters written on looseleaf. The one that elicited the most laughter from me was my brother's Gamma World Pure Strain Human, "Clint Westwood." One of the AD&D ones made me gasp, "Oh no," because he, too, was a munchkin. Your "WIS 15 dump stat!" made me laugh out loud -- with shared shame. :D

Mike Bridges said...

Clint Westwood. Clever :)
Yeah I could do several munchkin character posts, these are so much fun to read back on cause back then we didn't think these PCs were broken necessarily. Now having played many different games I'm much too self aware of what rules work or are broken and it kind of detracts from the innocent fun.

Valkaun_Dain said...

Damn, Mikey. We'll have to dig around my folio tonight. Nightshadow (1) post godhood... Yikes.

Sean said...

Knight Stalker.. that is an epic character! Mine was Konami, the silver-haired elf.