Clone Project: Wandering Monster Levels

In the post on stocking the dungeon, I mentioned that I believe wandering monster tables should be tailored for individual use, usually even on an area-by-area basis. I only plan on adding guidelines for creating such tables, plus a sample table or two.

So what are those guidelines?

Looking over the tables, I have pretty much the same conclusion that Daniel at Delta's Hot Spot had when he looked at the tables: monsters of a given level usually have the same number of hit dice, with higher monster levels having a range up to 1 to 4 hit dice above and beyond monster level, and with Level 6 as a catch-all for more powerful monsters. Here are the guidelines I came up with:

• base hit dice for a given monster level equals the monster level;
• lowest number of hit dice equals the base hit dice minus (monster level/5, drop fractions);
• highest number of hit dice equals base hit dice times a multiplier based on monster level:
  • 1 to 2: x 1
  • 3 to 4: x 1.5
  • 5 to 6: x 2

Also, I would personally adjust the number appearing based on hit dice compared to monster level; halve the number of monsters typically appearing if their hit dice is higher than the monster level.