How to kill a black pudding

[Zephalon]

I am quite uncertain about how to handle the black pudding's split ability. It says, that weapons deal no damage to a black pudding, but instead split it into two with half it's original hps, until you only have 1 hp puddings left...

Does a splitted pudding still have the same size, attack bonus and slam/acid damage? Seems to me that it would become smaller. How can a pudding be defeated with weapons if they deal no damage? What with the 1hp puddings?

Point is, i'm running the Forgotten Realms Silver Marshes Campaign, and they put a fiendish black pudding in a dungeon of evil monks/priest. The fiendish template renders this beast nearly invulnerable to magic (SR 20) attack forms, and many elemental attacks (resistance 15). This adventure is recommended for a 5th group. They don't stand a chance!

 

[bret]

Run away.

There is nothing that says they have to kill the pudding, is there? If not, then they can just avoid the thing. Later, they tell someone else of the monstrosity and see if an NPC can handle it.

That is what I would try and do as a character.

 

[Destil]

Slice 'em down a bit, then burning hands the whole lot.

 

[shilsen]

Slice 'em down a bit, then burning hands the whole lot.

Good idea, as long as you do it with ranged attacks. Black puddings are brutal on weapons (make a DC 19 Reflex save or lose it) & have a reach attack, but they're not too fast, so staying at a distance is the smart thing to do.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

I am having the same trouble. I plan to run lvl 6 characters through this adventure, but the fiendish black pudding seems nearly impossible to kill.

The only way I can conceive of them killing it is to hack it to pieces, and then use an area of effect spell such as a Lightning Bolt or Fireball. If it fails its save and the mage can roll decent damage, it should die. They will certainly have to hack into many small pieces though, and they can't use their magic weapons or they will be destroyed.

Personally, I can't believe someone thinks this is a reasonable challenge for level 5 characters. The thing is nigh on unstoppable.

 

[Berk]

It should be a well known fact that characters CAN run away from creatures that out class them. =o)

Sure it might cost the characters some damage or a weapon or armor or whatever but they should get the point pretty quickly. =o)

 

[AGGEMAM]

Re: Re

Personally, I can't believe someone thinks this is a reasonable challenge for level 5 characters. The thing is nigh on unstoppable.

The thing is CR 9, you should probably just run as Berk suggest, however if the contains armored small sized characters or dwarves, that may be possible.

 

[Zephalon]

Running away is always an option. But i like playing games where characters stand a chance against challenges which are not obviously deadly (we're not playing Cthullhu here). A group which never met a black pudding doesn't know of its abilities and has to learn it the hard way. They will certainly try to fight it and at least one of them will die trying it.

But to my other question, how does splitting work in your opinion? Does it reduce the monsters size, attack & damage?

 

[Dash Dannigan]

Personally, the whole splitting until there's 64 llittle 1 HP black puddings sounds like a tedious job for combat, and boring. In all honesty, I'd allow the pudding to split as many times as it has whole number Hit Dice. 8HD to start, 4HD (2), 2HD (4), 1HD (8).

No more spliting, after that it just gets silly. The end result I'd handle this way:

AC 3; HP 115; +8 melee (2d6+4 and 2d6 acid, slam); 1 (huge) creature

AC 4; HP 57; +4 melee (1d6+2 and 2d6 acid, slam); 2 (large) creatures

AC 5; HP 28; +2 melee (1d3+1 and 1d6 acid, slam); 4 (med) creatures

AC 6; HP 14; +2 melee (1d2 and 1d6 acid, slam); 8 (small) creatures

The AC adjusted to sz modifier, HP split as normal (roudn down), melee reduce acorrding to HD split so creatures base +10 (-2 huge sz mod), split in half for a +5 base (-1 lrg sz mod) for a total of +4 and so on.

I split the creatures base damage as normal leaving the acid, slam damage as the acid will still hurt alot regardless of size, but eventually reduces as the size reduces because there's just less of it. Anywhow, just how I'd do it as an example for ya. It's alot of work to have to do as a DM to run the creature but it's definately interesting and I'd like to see the look on my player's faces when it "splits" doing no recongnizable damage, hehe.

 

[Celtavian]

Re

The problem is that the main antagonist in the adventure uses the Black Pudding against the PC's. The Black Pudding is a major part of the adventure.

The party could run from it, but it will hunt them down and kill them throughout the small dungeon.