According to the Ecology paragraph of each monster’s entry
This article, and the Free to download pdf I have made available on DrivethruRpg, is about the magical items that can be obtained by monsters from the main compendium of AD&D 2edition.
All Old School players now that some, but not all, of the monster’s entry present suggestions on how to obtain magical items and spell components from a monster.
This description appears in the Ecology paragraph. Sometimes the monsters provides material to craft potions, scrolls or material components to cast spells.
Because the information are scattered and fragmentary, I decided that a pdf could solve this issue. So I took the Monstrous Manual and the four Monster Compendim Annual, and started compiling the list.
First, I read through each ecology paragraph and collected the information on excel. I took note of the Source, the part of the monster that provides the component, and what can be obtained from that component.
This is what I got:
- Monstrous Manual. 25 entries
- Monster Compendium Annual Vol. I. 22 entries.
- Monster Compendium Annual Vol. II. 10 entries.
- Monster Compendium Annual Vol. III. 6 entries.
- Monster Compendium Annual Vol. IV. 6 entries.
I had never done this list before, and honestly I thought more entries existed. This leaves a good margin to add things and homebrew plenty of by-products. Especially for those players who like to collect stuff.
I also checked on DrivethruRpg which among the monster manuals are on sale, and I found out that not all them are available.
Anyway, as you can see the list itself is very short compared to the hundreds of creature you can find inside each of the five compendium.
It would be interesting to expand this list to include much more stuff like armors, weapons, rings, etcetera.
What calls my attention more is answering to the question
What armor can I obtain from monsters?
…but this is another story.