Robot Claw

This is Out Of The Pit, the Fighting Fantasy monster manual:

It was first published in 1985, and contained the statistics and information on every monster that had appeared in any (non science fiction) Fighting Fantasy book at that time. I loved this book when it came out, and read it avidly cover to cover many times. I would stage mock battles between monsters, in an effort to see who was most powerful.

Back then I had the deluxe large format edition with colour pictures. Alas I no longer have this treasure, but I have two later printings, and still find the book a wonderful and nostalgic read.

Over the weekend I wrote this piece of code:

What does it do? Well, it fights 271 of the monsters in Out Of The Pit against each other and saves results. Monster data is input via a data file, which I typed up myself (it took about 2 hours). The code uses the full rules systems including special attacks (examine the code; you can see a large amount of special attacks, defenses and other conditions are included) and saves win-loss results per creature. Every monster fights every other monster once. I ran the code three times and collected the results to find who was strongest in a 3 match free-for-all.

But before I get to results, some caveats:
– Monsters don’t have luck scores. This means I never tested luck, or applied any conditions that required luck tests. Had I done so (and say, used Skill as starting luck), this would have made a small selection of monsters with luck-based attacks more powerful. However were I to implement luck tests, every monster would have likely been more powerful since they could have used luck in combat. I feel the results would have averaged out.
– The following nine monsters were omitted on the basis of their attacks being too unusual or difficult to model: Devlin, Ganjee, Hydra, Living Corpse, Giant Pitcher Plant, Mist Vampire, Poltergeist, Suma and Giant Venus Flytrap

In order, here are the five most powerful creatures in Out Of The Pit:

1) Earth Elemental
It’s not the 18 skill and 22 stamina that gave the Earth Elemental first place; it’s the fact it takes half damage and inflicts double damage. This guy would be virtually impossible for an average player character to defeat!

2) Adult Silver Dragon
Every 3 combat rounds, an Adult Silver Dragon inflicts an additional 4 damage from a breath weapon unless the opponent makes a skill check. Realistically, this results in average per-hit damage of 3.33 from a Silver Dragon, which is murder for most opponents.

3) Adult Gold Dragon
Skill 18, Stamina 40 and half damage from attacks? I expected this guy to take the top spot, and if I had implemented it’s luck-based breath attack it likely would have!

4) Night Demon
The relatively low Skill and Stamina (14,18) of this guy compared to the other top five was not a penalty since he has a once-per-combat special attack that does 2d6 damage and he does 3 points of stamina on a hit!

5) Young Silver Dragon
Like his dad at number 2, his breath weapon was the decider. Even though it isn’t as powerful (2 damage), it’s like a free hit every third round.

Interested in the full rankings? Well here they are:

Two positions beg elucidation: the Tarator at #52 and Spider Man at 81. Both are unusually highly placed for their skill and stamina scores.

The Tarator, much like the Earth Elemental, does additional damage on a hit (3 total) and takes only 1 per hit received. So it fights like a much more robust creature.

The Spider Man is a terrible foe, for despite having dismal statistics, kills with no saving throw on any successful hit! It’s win ratio therefore is a measure of how often it won an attack roll 🙂

So now, 27 years later, I have finally answered to my satisfaction the ultimate question of what the strongest monster in Out Of The Pit is. Except for that pesky issue of luck…