[EDITION WARZ] Selling Out D&D's Soul?

[Geron Raveneye]

Do you honestly remember your first encounter with a rust monster? To me, a memorable encounter isn't one that is just "poof" oh ha ha, naked fighter.

Actually, that is a memorable encounter. Very memorable, even, seeing as many "first encounters" with rust monsters will happen when most or all players at the table are in the 13-15 years range. In that kind of group, it indeed is memorable when the "almighty" fighter, who attacked this pathetic, relatively peaceful monster, suddenly stands around in his underdrawers and tries to hide behind the magic-user or the thief to keep that monster from eating his precious sword, too. It usually led to rounds of laughter. Remember, maybe, that at that age one friend's embarassment still served as entertainment for all others. And yes, in those times, every character got his share of embarassment, so everybody had something to laugh about.

What always surprises me is how many people actually find the rust monster bland, "unfun" (what an unword ) or plain silly. Even more surprising is that folks prefer to talk about them critters in metagame terms like threat categories or "dungeon decoration". It's a rust monster, the wizard's pet and revenge monster. And if you check how it used to be, and compare it to how it is now, you might see that it didn't use to be the ultimate threat to heirloom, precious magical weapons or armor, or all the other stuff it's made out to be. It was the semi-cute, very fighter-annoying pet a wizard unleashed a small group of when those pesky adventurers (with fighters in the majority, usually) came to loot his tower. That's it. And it's a shame it seems to have grown into some trauma-inducing creature by today.

Sorry for the rant, people bashing Rusty always make me overprotective.

 

[Raven Crowking]

As much as I agree with Geron Raveneye, Hussar, I would be interested to see how you would write up the rust monster as a hazard.

 

[Hussar]

I actually suck pretty hard at making new mechanics, but, here goes: Using the Forest Fire as a source.

Rust Monster (CR 1)

A relatively innocuous creature, the rust monster has the ability to devour metals. Frequently hungry, they move towards the largest source of metals as fast as they can.

A rust monster can be spotted as far away as 2d6X10 feet by a character who makes a spot check against a medium sized creature. It moves towards them at a rate of 50 feet per round.

Treat the rust monster as a medium sized creature for size and space rules. If it moves into contact with a character, it destroys up to a 10 foot cube of metal every round. Magical metal items make a Reflex save at DC 17 or be destroyed.

A rust monster will feed up to 5 times before becoming satiated and moving away. Treat the rust monster as an object with a hardness of 5 and 30 hit points.

How's that?

 

[Geron Raveneye]

I actually suck pretty hard at making new mechanics, but, here goes: Using the Forest Fire as a source.

Rust Monster (CR 1)

A relatively innocuous creature, the rust monster has the ability to devour metals. Frequently hungry, they move towards the largest source of metals as fast as they can.

A rust monster can be spotted as far away as 2d6X10 feet by a character who makes a spot check against a medium sized creature. It moves towards them at a rate of 50 feet per round.

Treat the rust monster as a medium sized creature for size and space rules. If it moves into contact with a character, it destroys up to a 10 foot cube of metal every round. Magical metal items make a Reflex save at DC 17 or be destroyed.

A rust monster will feed up to 5 times before becoming satiated and moving away. Treat the rust monster as an object with a hardness of 5 and 30 hit points.

How's that?

To be honest...and please don't get this wrong, this is not meant as a personal attack or anything...it's patently boring. Not from the execution, that looks as good as any I've seen in a WotC sourcebook. It's the concept of a creature as an object or a hazard that makes it boring in my eyes. Creatures are creatures, objects are objects, and hazards are hazards. Creatures have quirks, backstories (often invented by the individual DM), and sometimes even personalities. Neither a trap nor a hazard comes with those traits...usually, that is. Classifying a rust monster, a piercer, a trapper or a mimic as anything but a monster simply takes a lot out of them, for me. Maybe that's personal perception and preference..it most likely is...but hey, this is a game about imagination, and a quirky monster fires mine up more than a weirdly-shaped hazard or a trap looking like a monster.

Maybe I'm simply against the over-simplification that comes with trying to stuff as much game material as possible under the same mechanical umbrella. I mean, with this approach, what keeps us from reducing everything, monsters, traps, hazards etc. to simple "Events" that can be described with an easily modified set of parameters, and be done with it? There's so many creatures that have a modus operandi comparable to a trap or a hazard that we probably could cut 1/3rd from the various MM and put them into the DMG III or whatever.

But basically, I feel that creatures should stay creatures, and not be treated as traps or hazards. Otherwise, and this is a little piece of hyperbole I'm sure, a rogue could easily argue that an aimed blow with a two-handed sword is not so different from a guillotine blade swinging from the ceiling, so why can't he get his Reflex save and Evasion against it? After all, he's always trying to dodge a falling blade...

 

[RFisher]

Do you honestly remember your first encounter with a rust monster?

I wasn't talking about my first encounter with a rust monster. I'd already read the MM before I even could have encountered one. I was talking about the first encounter with a rust monster.

I do remember encounters with similar unique monster created by the DM.

 

[Raven Crowking]

I actually suck pretty hard at making new mechanics, but, here goes: Using the Forest Fire as a source.

Rust Monster (CR 1)

A relatively innocuous creature, the rust monster has the ability to devour metals. Frequently hungry, they move towards the largest source of metals as fast as they can.

A rust monster can be spotted as far away as 2d6X10 feet by a character who makes a spot check against a medium sized creature. It moves towards them at a rate of 50 feet per round.

Treat the rust monster as a medium sized creature for size and space rules. If it moves into contact with a character, it destroys up to a 10 foot cube of metal every round. Magical metal items make a Reflex save at DC 17 or be destroyed.

A rust monster will feed up to 5 times before becoming satiated and moving away. Treat the rust monster as an object with a hardness of 5 and 30 hit points.

How's that?

I note that in the MM description, when you begin wailing on it with your club, it bites back, doing hit point damage. Your hazard does not. I note also that in the MM description, the damage (rusting) is not automatic (it requires an attack roll). In your hazard it is. What about using metal weapons to attack it?

 

[Hussar]

As I said RC, I suck at making mechanics. However, it's not a bad start and with a bit of spit and polish it works.

SR - yup, it's boring. Because I find rust monsters insipid and boring. I believe that's the point I've beaten about several times. They can't talk, they don't really threaten to do enough damage to worry about, all they do is scare fighters. Snore. I'd much rather see these kinds of monsters - and I include oozes in here as well - either massively redone or done away with.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Take a look at the Ecology of the Ogre Mage from Dragon 150. A CR 15 Ogre Mage (with levels of fighter and Samurai (IIRC)) with a 130 hit points. A 15th level party is doing a 150 points of damage in a round. Heck, the fighter by himself is likely doing that much damage at that level. This isn't a challenge, it's a joke. It steps up and is immedietely blatted by the party. I would much rather see the lower CR'd Ogre Mage brought into play and then used. At least then it would actually survive more than a single round.

Why would you give an Ogre Mage Fighter and Samurai levels?

They make excellent assassins with their invisibility and gaseous form abilities...getting out is a problem, though.
In a straight up fight can significantly aid allies vs. PCs with infinite invisibility and darkness spells, especially if another ally is a bard with Sculpt Sound spells to remove those pesky stomping sounds (and don't forget cone of cold. ).

 

[Hussar]

Why would you give an Ogre Mage Fighter and Samurai levels?

They make excellent assassins with their invisibility and gaseous form abilities...getting out is a problem, though.
In a straight up fight can significantly aid allies vs. PCs with infinite invisibility and darkness spells, especially if another ally is a bard with Sculpt Sound spells to remove those pesky stomping sounds (and don't forget cone of cold. ).

Appoligies, Fighter and Kensai.

Nevertheless, it was still a CR 17 creature with 131 hit points. That's not a challenge, that's a joke.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

SR - yup, it's boring. Because I find rust monsters insipid and boring. I believe that's the point I've beaten about several times. They can't talk, they don't really threaten to do enough damage to worry about, all they do is scare fighters. Snore. I'd much rather see these kinds of monsters - and I include oozes in here as well - either massively redone or done away with.

That's luckily a matter of taste, and as much as I hate the rest of the D&D bloat, I always liked the fact they were trying to cater to every kind of taste from every edition on with their monsters, from the whimsical to the decidedly deadly. I guess I'm more of a silly kind of person where my preferred monsters come in. Maybe that's why I also like rust monsters and their kind...they always showed that D&D disn't take itself so seriously that you couldn't get a laugh out of a naked fighter, a thief eaten by the treasure chest, or walking psychedelic mushrooms. I think that is a not so small part of the "soul of D&D"...the different kinds of humor. If you ever had an iron statue run like hell from a flock of baby rusties, climbing up an oak tree to get away from them, or a mimic with a Charm Monster laid on it playing Luggage to your wizard, complete with eating careless handlers, you really appreciate them being in there. Sure, humor is something highly individual, but that's no reason why they should try to cut out every humorous bit of game material out of D&D just because some people might not appreciate it (that explanation from the Game Designers still sits badly with me ) I've seen adventurer parties throw the best-looking character to a succubus for her pleasure without him agreeing just for a piece of information, and everybody laughing about it (and the DM being generous enough NOT to drain said character dry in more than one way). I've seen gnomes glue thieves to the wall they were climbing desperately to get away from hellhounds, and wizards trying to freeze dragons to the floor with a Rock to Mud/Mud to Rock spell combo to the ceiling, and everybody laughed about the ensuing chaos when the group tried to divide the hoard up immediately...until the dragon broke out and fried them all. And the last time I used an ooze, the group nearly killed the elf in trying to get it off of his face...which was hilarious, except for the elf, of course, but didn't keep the following battle with a tribe of pain-loving humanoids from being a pretty gritty and deadly affair.

Maybe it's simply not your kind of humor, or the kind of game you'd like to be playing, but that's personal taste, right? Should every piece of the game be evaluated for their threat value only, and for how they can be optimized for a 4-round combat? I sure hope not. It would make D&D an even more boring game than it already threatens to be by now with people more busy crunching the numbers than playing their character (yeah, I know, hyperbole...I call it personal anecdotes, sadly :\ )