In praise of the single page monster manual

In my ongoing quest to lighten my load, Monster Manuals have been a bane of my life with open table games - players can go anywhere, encounter all sorts of things - or at the same time run into nothing unusual and thus I hauled it around unnecessarily. Our place spaces often have patchy wifi and relying on that for calling up anything when most of the players are also running off D&D Beyond has proven foolhardy in the past.

So - the single page monster manual from Blog of Holding was a god-send - I have long been a fan of the single-page approach and 'Just Use Bears' - and this was right up my alley. Since it went in my DM-binder it has proven itself again and again, top marks - for the standard things.

To make sure I have all bases covered, I wanted to capture the 'specials' - the various effects that make things more than just a scaled up version of a goblin with a blade. I grabbed Dice Goblins "Just Use Bears or Wolves, or Spiders or Tigers." and found while it is good it does not quite fit what I need since it is written for Block, Dodge, Parry. The core concept is exactly what I want, I just need that refined for what I use at table - typically 5e.

I decided I needed two things
1. A single page reference version of "Just Use Bears or Wolves, etc."
2. A quick converter for 0e/1e content to 5e

For the first, single page reference, what I actually need is the table from the original Dice Goblin article with the special rules that distinguish each of the archetypes, with the special effects/attacks that distinguishes each archetype to become an 'overlay' to whatever CR of base monster I use from the single page monster manual.

Going through the archetypes from Dice Goblin and trying to find the minimum amount of work I want to do, I trim that down to just 12
* Snake and Spider get combined - constrict and trap are close enough to be an 'immobilise'
* Tiger and Bull are combined as the same just with/without stealth.

So finally I get just a table like this (fluffed out with the actual rules) that is my single page reference.

Animal	Key trait
Bear	Multi attack - claw/claw/bite
Wolf	Pack tactics - advantage if ally near + Trip on successful attack]
Tiger	Pounce/charge - as trip but bonus attack if target fails save + maybe adv. on stealth
Dragon	Multi attack, fly, terror, area attacks
Rat	swarm - resistance to physical damage, can occupy same location as target
Snake	Venom - con save vs damage + Immobilisation + adv. To hiding
Hawk	flyby attack
Crocodile	grapple + persistent damange (digest, drown), adv on stealth
Elephant	Multi-attack+trample
Deer	disengage/hide as bonus action
Boar	charge, relentless (does not die)
Horse	Trample, fast

This is going to table to see how it plays and perhaps get refined further.

For the second quick converter for 0e/1e content to 5e I am mostly drawing on the WotC converter because good enough for all except hp - for that I am taking Methods & Madness approach from "converting TSR-D&D monsters to 5e-D&D".

Bodge these together to get:
19 - AC(old) = AC(5e)
HD/2+2 = Attack roll
HD/2+8 = Saving throw
HD * size factor = hit points

With size factors taken from Methods & Madness - 6 for small, 8 for medium, 10 for large, 12 for huge, 20 for gargantuan.

Compare what comes out of that math to locate the closest match on the single page monster manual and then just take the 5e-tuned numbers from that Special abilities, if any, are typically useable edition to edition.

I know some advocate just using the named monster as it appears in that editions rules but I want something I can apply to the stat line I find in the adventure on the fly, not carry around a monster manual.

I am hoping that together these three pieces will let me cover most eventualities of hex-crawling players in two pages and some formulae. All this standing on the foundation of Blog of Holdings sterling work.