Hacking the rules: Monster lore, part 2

What ever happened to Frequency?

Way back in days of yore, the first edition of the Monster Manual for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons had an entry in each monster listing called Frequency.  The definition as per the MM: “FREQUENCY refers to the likelihood of a particular creature being encountered in a region or area where it might be an inhabitant. Very rare indicates a 4% chance of occurrence, rare indicates an 11 % chance, uncommon indicates a 20% chance, and common indicates a 65% chance. These probabilities are considered in the encounter matrices found in ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, DUNGEON MASTER'S GUIDE.”

So, four different types of frequency: Common, uncommon, rare and very rare, each with its own percentage chance of encountering the respective creature.  Frequency told us how ubiquitous each creature was in the game world and allowed a GM to create random encounter tables based on the listed frequency.

Along came second edition a few years later, and the Monstrous Compendium added a new entry: Climate and Terrain.

 Now, the GM can tailor his encounter tables to specific terrains to consider the climate and the terrain, as well as the frequency of the monster.  The GM can create encounter lists for deserts, cold mountains, temperate swamps, or any terrain and climate that the PCs happened to adventure in.  No more yetis and flood trolls in the desert!

But a curious thing happened with the publication of the third edition of Dungeons and Dragons.  The Frequency entry for monsters disappeared. 

Now as far as I can tell, this was a purposeful design decision.  I guess the thinking was “This is the GM’s world, let’s allow the GM to decide how frequently a griffon is encountered.  Let’s unchain the GM from the shackles of Gygaxian dictatorship!”  Which is fine, I guess.  But this design choice also eliminated any kind of reference point a GM had to inform them of potential frequency.  Red dragons could now be just as common as goblins, if you wanted them to be.  A possibly unintended side-effect of the removal of Frequency was that it also left a void for the Knowledge skill checks for monster lore.  A GM no longer had Frequency to determine how common a monster was, and consequentially how much a PC might know about said monster.  Along comes Challenge Rating to the rescue!  With this design choice, the relative strength of a monster now determines how much is known about it.  The designers of third edition may have been aware of the potential problems with this solution but found that the simplicity of the monster lore system outweighed the problems it created with logical consistency.  And so, Frequency became a relic of the past, a quaint reminder of a time when game books told you how you should be playing the game.

 Where do we go from here?
 

Moving on to Pathfinder, what do I do if I reject the use of Challenge Rating as a reference for monster lore? What other reference points are provided that can inform me of the frequency of each monster?  Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any.  I guess that I’ll just need to crack open all my bestiaries and assign a frequency to each and every monster based on, well, my whims, I guess.

Except I’m not going to do that.  Who in their right mind would?  Or would have the time for such a herculean undertaking?  Not me.  I have kids, and I must pay attention to them sometimes.  Is there a way to cull the enormous herd of possibilities to make it more manageable?  And if so, how can I re-introduce Frequency as a statistic that makes knowledge of monsters more logical and realistic?  And more importantly, how would adding logic and realism improve the experience for the players?  I will present a solution for you in the next article, because I’m playing Pathfinder tonight and the house is a mess.  Because, kids.