An Unusual Use for Rust Monsters

[Scott DeWar]

Iron ore is actually Iron Oxide, heated to remove the "oxide" condition.

a rust monster reverts the Iron back to oxide, so reheating the monster made Iron ore is technically no different then the ore from the ground.

 

[steeldragons]

To save the potential damage to flinging rust monsters over the walls...two suggestions"

1) Cross the rust monsters with some kinda armadillo, hard crusted creature, so they can "ball up" and suffer no (or very little) damage from their landing.

2) Charm an umber hulk (and ankheg or any number of other fast-burrowing creatures) to make a tunnel, under the walls and bring the rust monsters straight up, directly if the armory in possible. OR cross them with a burrowing creature...the bulette/rustmonster cross strikes me as a particularly deadly (i.e. good for your purposes) in this regard.

--SD

 

[falcarrion]

I would shrink them down to rat size and send them in swarm style.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I would shrink them down to rat size and send them in swarm style.

"And that, children, is how metal became rare on the world of Athas."

 

[Diamond Cross]

Rust monsters can sniff out metal, and thus dwarves have a better use for them than simple missile weapons. By feeding them cheap metals, the dwarves use them to sniff out veins of gold and mithral....rather like pigs are used to hunt truffles.

If you have an overpopulation, you can still launch them at your foes ala Monty Python, but don't forget that they will take damage when they land....How many will survive the trip?


RC

Hence spells like fly and feather fall.

 

[Scott DeWar]

re featherfall: I do not think that feather fall would work. It would be like catapulting a feather from it.

 

[steeldragons]

re featherfall: I do not think that feather fall would work. It would be like catapulting a feather from it.

hmmm...I dunno. Depends on how you play it.

My understanding of featherfall was that you fell normally and just did the gently floaty bit before you got to/very near the ground. So they could catapult normally and then just waft the last couple of feet before landing.

But yeah, that's just a "how you define it in your game" sorta thing.

--SD

 

[Diamond Cross]

re featherfall: I do not think that feather fall would work. It would be like catapulting a feather from it.

The way it's always worked is that it only slows you down when falling, not rising.

And that is also the way it works in DDO as well.

 

[TarionzCousin]

re featherfall: I do not think that feather fall would work. It would be like catapulting a feather from it.

The featherfall spell would need to be contingency-spelled to ensure that it doesn't start until the rust monster is falling at a certain rate toward the ground. So the monster would travel at a normal speed until then.

It would be like a parachute of sorts. Heck, maybe a gnome tinkerer could give them real automatic-opening parachutes instead.

 

[Scott DeWar]

we always played it that it worked on arrows even when starting its flight.