SQUEE! The rust monster revealed!

[Asmor]

In Ampersand, they show the Rust Monster mini partially obscuring its stat card, but it's easy enough to read the salient parts.

The gist of it is any time a metal weapon hits the monster, the weapon gets a -1 penalty cumulative to -5 which lasts until the end of the encounter. Yawn, kiddy gloves... but wait! There's more!

It also has an attack which renders a weapon or armor useless, completely dissolving it.

The catch is, the rust monster consumes the item, and if it was magic then when the characters kill it they can harvest the item's full value in residuum from the corpse.

They've succeeded in making the rust monster as fearsome as ever, but without permanently screwing a character over. It's not trivial to replace the item, still requires a ritual caster, an item to be enchanted, and the time to perform the ritual, but that means the players are without the item(s) until at least they have enough time to take an extended rest...

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Asmor if you click on the image you will get the complete card. I like that the dissolve doesn't work on level 11 up items. Earlier items aren't as big to have without, but a powerful weapon is much more so.

 

[darjr]

Click on the picture and the full stat card will pop up as if it was a picture.

edit: oops was beaten to the punch.

And I agree, I like the rust monster.

 

[malraux]

The catch is, the rust monster consumes the item, and if it was magic then when the characters kill it they can harvest the item's full value in residuum from the corpse.

That's brilliant. Of course, now rust monsters are great creatures for bandits. Bring a few into a city, let them rampage in the magic item shopping district while you go after a bank or other wealth, then grab whatever ones you can get ahold of on your way out of town.

 

[Rechan]

My favorite idea is using the rust monster's corpse as actual treasure. It might have residuum left over from another meal, so the players can get some raw GP in residuum right there.

 

[Derren]

So every adventurer should have some pet rust monsters stowed somewhere for the case he finds a weapon with an enchantment he doesn't like (Yes, I know, bad DM) he just feeds it to a rustmonster and can now make whatever he wants with minimal gold loss.
Why sell for 20% when you have a rust monsters?

 

[Abisashi]

So every adventurer should have some pet rust monsters stowed somewhere for the case he finds a weapon with an enchantment he doesn't like (Yes, I know, bad DM) he just feeds it to a rustmonster and can now make whatever he wants with minimal gold loss.
Why sell for 20% when you have a rust monsters?

It's like Thanksgiving; you fatten up the turkey/rust monster, and then you kill it and party!

A better solution would be the option to either recover 20%, or to perform a new ritual to recreate the item.

 

[Derren]

It's like Thanksgiving; you fatten up the turkey/rust monster, and then you kill it and party!

Still, its strange that now adventurers actively seek out rustomonsters which were among the most feared monsters existing.
With enough rustmonsters around PCs can completely bypass the wealth by level system as they can reuse 100% of their old magical items instead of selling them for 20%. (Not that I care overly much for wealth by level, but some do)

And then there is the theoretical infinite residium loop by having lots of rust monsters and a Ritual ring (the one which halves ritual costs). Now you create magic items for half the residium cost but get the full value from rustmonsters.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

They've succeeded in making the rust monster as fearsome as ever, but without permanently screwing a character over.

Then no, it's not as fearsome as ever.

Seriously, why even bother having the rust monster if it's just a momentary inconvenience? This is especially warped after 4e went out of it's way to make diseases so fearsome.

 

[Nymrohd]

Because obviously the rust monster cannot be reused and has to be killed immediately otherwise it probably consumes the residuum overtime