In AD&D 1e height and weight are important characteristics due to the fact that grappling and overbearing use height and weight as part of determining how effective such an attack might be. After all, the sport of wrestling has weight classes for a reason. But, the Monster Manual was written prior to the Dungeon Masters Guide being completed. So, all the Monster Manual has is the size classifications (S/M/L) used to determine weapon damage. This makes it difficult to employ grappling and overbearing attacks to monsters. What to do?

Reviewing the rules, it becomes clear that once a creature’s height or weight is near double of an opponent, well, that opponent has little to no chance of winning. The wrestling rules as applied to Player Characters really are mostly necessary for other medium-sized creatures. And, the Dungeon Masters Guide does have a pretty decent breakdown for determining the height and weight of medium-sized creatures (i.e. the various player character races).

My general method then is to compare a medium-sized monster to one o f the character races and either use that table or to use it as a starting point. For example, an orc. Well, we have a half-orc table, and we can see that the half-orc is a bit shorter than a human, which would imply that full-orcs are even shorter still. So, for orcs, pick a height near the low end of the half-orc range. Similarly, for weight, half-orcs are huskier than half-elves (despite having the same average height) so, I would choose an average weight of about 140. This approach, while not rigorous, will work for most encounters where grappling occurs.

However, there might be times when you want small or large creatures to grapple and overbear among themselves. What do you do then? To address this, I’ve come up with some refined generalized height and weight tables. They aren’t perfect, but likely are good enough for the rare times such encounters might occur. Enjoy!