Rust Monster Lovin'

Glyfair · Jul 14, 2006

This seems to be the month of the rust monster:

Mike Mearls tackles a theoretical redesign of the rust monster in a Design & Development column.

Dragon Magazine contains "The Ecology of the Rust Monster."

Now all we need is a D&D miniature of one (should it be common? uncommon? rare?)

MarkB · Jul 14, 2006

Glyfair said:
This seems to be the month of the rust monster:

Mike Mearls tackles a theoretical redesign of the rust monster in a Design & Development column.

I rather liked the final version he came up with. The only thing I'd change would be to tone down its Climb speed and give it Improved Disarm as a bonus feat, so it can try and snatch things to take away and snack on. That would keep just enough of the original's "It's eating my precious equipment!" vibe.

Dragon Magazine contains "The Ecology of the Rust Monster."

Now all we need is a D&D miniature of one (should it be common? uncommon? rare?)

As a player: Rare. Very rare.

Some DMs I've known would prefer them as a Common, though.

el-remmen · Jul 14, 2006

This is how I responded on his blog:

I take issue with your assertion that an encounter where your equipment is destroyed is "no fun". It might be the way my group tends to play, but that risk and fear is what makes it fun, and the chance for clever thinking to work around the loss of equipment mid-adventure is great. I think a more apt description might have been, encounters where your equipment is destroyed are no fun if overused, just like most specific kinds of encounters that cause a long-term disadvantages for the PCs.
Anyway, I did like some of the changes to the monster, the climbing and hiding and the increase bite damage. It seems like you were emphasizing their insectoid qualities. In the last campaign I played in we faced a bunch of these (dwarves had bred them for the tactic you ascribed to the orcs in your example). As usual, always role-playing our ignorance and never having heard of rust monsters in-character, we named them "caustic cockroaches" - the DM had run them with insect-like behaviors.

I don't like the changed rust ability because I can't wrap my head about metal weapons and armor recovering over time. Also, that kind of piece-meal ability that slowly deteriorates stuff is a pain in the ass to keep track of with all the usual crap you have to keep track of mid-combat. I prefer an all-or-nothing approach for such things if just for simplicity's sake.

Ilium · Jul 14, 2006

I had a couple of problems with Mike Mearls' re-design, actually. I like the idea of removing the "all-or-nothing" nature of ol' Rusty, but I don't like the idea of the rust's effects fading after 10 minutes. I understand the rationale of letting the characters get on with the adventure, but the idea of corrosion "healing" on its own bugs me. I would have preferred a quick repair rule and maybe a low-level spell to restore damaged equipment. Maybe even a magical "oil rag of spiffy cleaning."

As to a D&D mini...yeesh. I have no idea how they'd do that one.

You'd need special consideration for whether or not the opponent uses metal equipment, etc. What a pain.

Megatron · Jul 14, 2006

I don't dig the whole 10 minute auto-repair thing either, no sir.

My solution: Simple Craft check to repair.

MarkB · Jul 14, 2006

Megatron said:
I don't dig the whole 10 minute auto-repair thing either, no sir.

Yes, that part does feel rather wonky. If something of that nature is going to be used, it needs to be backed up by a decent reason for it.

Glyfair · Jul 14, 2006

el-remmen said:
I take issue with your assertion that an encounter where your equipment is destroyed is "no fun".

IMO, I think he's addressing a point I bring up from time to time in internet RPG discussions. A lot of the discussions tend to bring out points like "a really good DM can handle this." Most DMs, in the real world, are average or worse. They aren't necessarily "really good DMs." In design, WotC has to take that into account.

In this case, rust monsters tend to be no fun for the players because most DMs don't take the side effects into account when they design the encounter (which often is a random encounter).

BTW, the link to the discussion on Mike's blog is here.

Regarding a point brought out in this discussion, apparently he subtlety isn't as good as he thinks since he trumpets his acts in his About the Author blurb

Ilium said:
like the idea of removing the "all-or-nothing" nature of ol' Rusty, but I don't like the idea of the rust's effects fading after 10 minutes.

I'd tie the recovery to the mending oriented spells, or the weaponsmithing rules (given time to repair it). No permanent damage, but it must be fixed (even magical items).

As to a D&D mini...yeesh. I have no idea how they'd do that one. You'd need special consideration for whether or not the opponent uses metal equipment, etc. What a pain.

Not necessarily. IIRC, they already have a unit with a Rusting Grasp spell.

As for rarity, I'd make it uncommon. Common means far too many will be floating around. Rare means the price will be through the roof for them (probably just below beholder level).

Ilium · Jul 14, 2006

Glyfair said:
Not necessarily. IIRC, they already have a unit with a Rusting Grasp spell.

Well if that's the case then I'm all for it. I'd love to have one or two of those little things for my regular D&D game.

Belen · Jul 14, 2006

Yet another "design" where you have to keep track of modifiers on the fly. I detest this type of attitude, especially combined with the "take the DM out of the equation" attitude.

And it only affects the weapon for 10 minutes? I do not see how these changes increase the fun factor and it certainly turns an interesting encounter into a numbers game.

Welcome to WOTC where nothing really "bad" is allowed to happen to the characters for fear that they may alienate 2 people and a chipmunk.

mearls · Jul 14, 2006

One of the interesting things about design and development is that it's very hard to predict what people might find disagreeable.

The 10 minute thing is there to contain what I call the creature's "blast radius." A monster's blast radius is a measure of how much it affects an adventure beyond the encounter it appears in.

For instance, in a campaign I ran the PCs fought a demon that could dominate its victims and give them telepathic suggestions at a distance. That creature had a very large blast radius. While the party drove it off when they first fought it, it had secretly dominated the party's fighter during the encounter. For the rest of the campaign, the party had to cope with the fighter occasionally dumping out his potions instead of drinking them, refusing to attack a monster, and so on.

For the rust monster, I wanted to contain its blast radius to the encounter in which it appeared and a few encounters after it.

The question I have is this: if the 10 minute limit had a satisfactory explanation, would that be OK? Or is it just the idea that the rust monster has a very hard time destroying items?

I originally thought of the rust effect as a sort of curse, a temporary, magical transformation that the rust monster slowly makes real/permanent when it really starts gnawing on something. Note that the rust ability went from Ex to Su in the article, though I didn't call that out.

MarkB's idea is awesome. I really like the idea of giving a rust monster disarm.