Black Pudding... not splitting?

[geezerjoe]

Actually it doesn't sound like the DM just pulled it out of his rear simply because he said that they had met with a pudding before and it did not split either.

We only knew because of the book (we had met another ooze before, and it acted the same way).

Frankly for an encounter that was 3 levels higher than the party was, one character death is not that unusual. Especially if the monster uses a tactic that the party isn't equiped to match (and here I'm considering the +35 grapple, not the lack of the splitting to arrows weakness).

As a player I don't mind it if my party runs into some frustrating circumstances along the way, as long as there is the reward to match.

As a DM seeing my villians constantly NERFed by the party because the players know a secret around the monsters but the characters shouldn't makes it no fun for me. (Totally ignoring the fact that DM's metagame far more than the average individual player mind you).

J2O

 

[The Souljourner]

I don't mind fighting against high challenge ratings, in fact I prefer it. However, in this case, only the wizard could do anything to harm the opponent. I had to go and use the wizard's wand of magic missile in order to not be completely useless, and the cleric was totally hosed. +35 grapple was just impossible for him to win against, regardless of rolls.

The fighter was usless, relegated to shooting one crossbow bolt per round (shoot, reload), which we weren't even sure was hurting it.

The druid used his one decent damage spell (flamestrike), and then did his best to get the heck out of the way.

Sucky fight.

And yeah, more XP won't help, but it'll make us feel like the DM recognizes that it was an exceptionally hard fight.

Here's the kicker - this fight was from a 3.0 module, and it had the challenge rating down as 9! After the fight I had opened the MM to look at black puddings, and the exact one we were fighting was 12 in 3.5. Can you imagine this thing that could have decimated the party being the same CR as our APL?

Crazyness.

Anyway, sorry to sound whiny and stuff, it was just a very frustrating session.

-The Souljourner

 

[geezerjoe]

OK ... yeah that sucks then.

My anti-player mode kicked in for some reason. Sorry.

J2O