Gelatinous cube tpk
lottrbacchus
First Post
slightly longer version of the story
First: How does a 10' cube fit in a 5' wide corridor?
It is an ooze and:
"An ooze is an amorphous or mutable creature"
so I said it was twice as long and half as wide.
Second:
"Although it moves slowly, a gelatinous cube can simply mow down Large or smaller creatures as a standard action. It cannot make a slam attack during a round in which it engulfs. The gelatinous cube merely has to move over the opponents, affecting as many as it can cover."
I read that as the GC having its own version of overrun- it can move 15' and 'affecting as many as it can cover'.
At any rate: The lead character first notices that there seems to be some stone and metal items floating in the tunnel and then notices that the air ahead actually seems solid somehow. He ducks and holds his action. The second character in line shoots two arrows which I say stick in the solid whatever it is.
I ask if the first character wants to take his action and he still waits. The cube moves up and I ask if he wants AoO or a ST. He chooses ST and fails, gets engulfed, and fails his save against paralyze.
I don't recall what the 3rd character does, but the 4th starts splashing oil all over the place.
Next round, the new front character, after seeing his comrade engulfed, moves 5' back and shoots two arrows. Now, even if i was wrong in the engulf multiple opponents in the same round, the cube still can move 15' (its movement rate) and engulf whatever is in the final 5' that it moved over. Also, character 2 saw the thing move 10' and engulf character 1. That he chose to move 5' back and shoot two arrows, thus only being 5' away from the creature, this is me being a bad DM?
So, character 2 fails both saving throws and is engulfed. Meanwhile character 3 is basically doing nothing and character 4 is still throwing oil all over the place.
Next round: So, whether or not the rules were interpreted correctly, the next two characters have seen the cube move a total of 30' forward, engulfing their friends. Character 3 attacks the cube and character 4 continues with his oil obsession. The cube moves 15' and both characters fail their engulf STs. One isn't paralyzed.
Next many rounds: Though it seems logical to make the only non-paralyzed character save every round he is engulfed, I don't. He fishes out a dagger and goes to town damaging the cube from inside. As the other 2 characters (3 and 4) become unparalyzed, they join in. I let them know that it seems to be effective.
When the second character finally becomes unparalyzed, he decides to use his wand of fireballs. He is a sorcerer/ranger and doesn't know fireball. He'd either never used it before or used it just once. I told him that fireballs explode when they hit something. He said he was going to do it anyway. What should I do, not allow him his action? So I tell him to make a spellcraft check- that represents what you know of magic, right? He utterly fails the check and launches the fireball.
Regarding the fireball and the effects on other characters- I probably should have divided the cube's hit points, perhaps adding its con in or some other way accounted for its mass, evenly among all the squares it occupied and subtracted that from the fireball's burn through as it reached the other characters. But I didn't. That didn't occur to me until I got home. And the players didn't argue for that either.
Regardless- Was I wrong with their saving throws? Yes. Would it have mattered? Not so much. The character with the most remaining hit points still would have failed, and the rest all were under 17 HPs at that time.
Had they continued with their dagger work, the thing would have been dead in 2 rounds, since they could only miss on a natural 1.
So there you go.
First: How does a 10' cube fit in a 5' wide corridor?
It is an ooze and:
"An ooze is an amorphous or mutable creature"
so I said it was twice as long and half as wide.
Second:
"Although it moves slowly, a gelatinous cube can simply mow down Large or smaller creatures as a standard action. It cannot make a slam attack during a round in which it engulfs. The gelatinous cube merely has to move over the opponents, affecting as many as it can cover."
I read that as the GC having its own version of overrun- it can move 15' and 'affecting as many as it can cover'.
At any rate: The lead character first notices that there seems to be some stone and metal items floating in the tunnel and then notices that the air ahead actually seems solid somehow. He ducks and holds his action. The second character in line shoots two arrows which I say stick in the solid whatever it is.
I ask if the first character wants to take his action and he still waits. The cube moves up and I ask if he wants AoO or a ST. He chooses ST and fails, gets engulfed, and fails his save against paralyze.
I don't recall what the 3rd character does, but the 4th starts splashing oil all over the place.
Next round, the new front character, after seeing his comrade engulfed, moves 5' back and shoots two arrows. Now, even if i was wrong in the engulf multiple opponents in the same round, the cube still can move 15' (its movement rate) and engulf whatever is in the final 5' that it moved over. Also, character 2 saw the thing move 10' and engulf character 1. That he chose to move 5' back and shoot two arrows, thus only being 5' away from the creature, this is me being a bad DM?
So, character 2 fails both saving throws and is engulfed. Meanwhile character 3 is basically doing nothing and character 4 is still throwing oil all over the place.
Next round: So, whether or not the rules were interpreted correctly, the next two characters have seen the cube move a total of 30' forward, engulfing their friends. Character 3 attacks the cube and character 4 continues with his oil obsession. The cube moves 15' and both characters fail their engulf STs. One isn't paralyzed.
Next many rounds: Though it seems logical to make the only non-paralyzed character save every round he is engulfed, I don't. He fishes out a dagger and goes to town damaging the cube from inside. As the other 2 characters (3 and 4) become unparalyzed, they join in. I let them know that it seems to be effective.
When the second character finally becomes unparalyzed, he decides to use his wand of fireballs. He is a sorcerer/ranger and doesn't know fireball. He'd either never used it before or used it just once. I told him that fireballs explode when they hit something. He said he was going to do it anyway. What should I do, not allow him his action? So I tell him to make a spellcraft check- that represents what you know of magic, right? He utterly fails the check and launches the fireball.
Regarding the fireball and the effects on other characters- I probably should have divided the cube's hit points, perhaps adding its con in or some other way accounted for its mass, evenly among all the squares it occupied and subtracted that from the fireball's burn through as it reached the other characters. But I didn't. That didn't occur to me until I got home. And the players didn't argue for that either.
Regardless- Was I wrong with their saving throws? Yes. Would it have mattered? Not so much. The character with the most remaining hit points still would have failed, and the rest all were under 17 HPs at that time.
Had they continued with their dagger work, the thing would have been dead in 2 rounds, since they could only miss on a natural 1.
So there you go.
Keith Robinson
Explorer
lottrbacchus said:
Heh
You just gotta love players sometimes 
I wouldn't worry about it personally. It looks like you made some mistakes along the way, but this doesn't make you a bad DM. A bad day at the office, maybe - but then we all have them. The main thing is to reflect, see what errors you made, learn from it and move on. Which sounds exacltly like what you're doing.
