Greasing a Black Pudding - Will this Work?

[Goldmoon]

Percieve food
Approach food
circumvent obstacles to food
Eat food, compressing and secreting enzymes on struggling food.
Flee damaging energy if no food percieved
Wander untill food percieved

Youve obviously met my son.

 

[Machiavelli]

Ants don't actually have a hive mind. They just secrete and detect pheremones as a form of communication much like traffic lights and frantic hand gestures. It's very complex in it's usage, because literaly hundreds upon thousands of individuals are communicating, but the actual information passed is very simple and entirely subject to distance and degradation over time.

 

[Magesmiley]

Well, per the RAW, the typical dungeon wall has a climb DC of 20. If the surface is slippery, the DC is +5, so a total of DC 25. Your ooze that can take 10 with a +16 climb bonus can still make this. No issues on the climb check.

This leaves the save and the balance check(s) caused by the grease spell. Not a lot of help here from the RAW. If a creature isn't entirely within the area, I'd probably look at what proportion is not within the area and give it a save bonus along the lines of:

1/4 or less +2
up to 1/2 +4
up to 3/4 +6
up to 9/10 +8

I'd probably also grant the same bonus to the balance check.

 

[Kisanji Arael]

God, this is so off-topic.

At any point where an ant is presented with a path, his tiny little brain checks the angles. He automatically chooses the lesser of two angles. However, since he continues to do this an infinite amount of times, the search patterns are incredibly efficient. However, if presented with the same two angles again and again, he will always choose the lesser angle, despite any negative repercussions which came out of choosing the lesser angle.

 

[The Forsaken One]

Oh, and speaking of greasing a black pudding, has anyone seen hong lately?

lol you made my day

Now where did I leave that stick...

 

[Herremann the Wise]

First of all, let me say that it's a good idea to get a handle on a ruling you know will come up beforehand. But, it's far from a horrendous encounter. It would be great for the players and thus great for the game if it went the way you fear. It's not a bad thing when an a players makes excellent use of even a low level spell.

What I fear is the "brainless" fighter (the best roleplayer in my group) jumping in to attack the Pudding because that's what his slightly rash character would do. I fear the dissolving of a lot of the group's equipment. I fear grappled characters dying very quickly. I'm not too worried about them beating a CR 9 with a grease spell. I'm just wondering whether it's going to work quite as well as I first thought.

To give a further picture, imagine a large circular sewer junction (60 ft. diameter). There is a thin ledge 30ft. high up a vertical wall that the PCs will need to skirt around. Underneath the ledge 30 ft. below is the floor. The floor is a series of slightly downward sloping circular stone steps with the centre of the floor the lowest point where the Black Pudding is, sucking up the nutritious sewerage dripping in from several openings.

To my mind, the mindless Ooze does not learn and would merely be focused on food. Going around the greased area is out of the question for sure. The way I'm thinking of ruling is that the creature's weight would be too great and initially it would lose traction on the wall, and eventually fall if the grease was directly under it. It would then look at the grease as food and consume it as it moved. It would then be thinking food once more (the PCs). So realistically a steady diet will distract the creature anyway.

My player's are pretty cluey, I know they'll come up with something to get around it. I just don't want to see them die or lose most of their MIs to the thing.

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

PS: On the recipe front, Black Pudding is an Irish delicacy. Boiled pig's blood that looks like 5 month old mudcake I believe.

 

[Goldmoon]

As long as their battle cry is not: "Experience Points...Charge!" They should be ok. Just remind players from time to time, its ok to Retreat.

 

[Nail]

@ Herremann the Wise: I'm afraid I *really* disagree with your assessment that "Going around the greased area is out of the question for sure."

Name any "mindless" creature (insect, amoeba, krill....) and give it an area it has difficulty crossing, and on the opposite side it perceives food.....

It will go around such an area.

 

[Infiniti2000]

What I fear is the "brainless" fighter (the best roleplayer in my group) jumping in to attack the Pudding because that's what his slightly rash character would do.

Let him. I see no problem in allowing a stupid tactic to fail miserably and often. Roleplaying-wise, I don't see even a "brainless" fighter jumping in to battle a huge pile of goo with a weapon. In fact, IMO it's very anti-RP to do that.

 

[Question]

Btw how does a black pudding perceive food? It has no sensory organs?

Well if we want to talk stupid.....lets see.......

"Holy crap its a zombie i must stand here, shoot at its chest and limbs, then get torn to bits instead of running and aiming for the head with all the time in the world, as they move so slow!" (We see this in nearly every damn zombie film.....the latest one had a group of zombies storming a fortified military compound and taking nearly no losses even with electrified fences and dozens of guys with assault rifles and machine gun emplacements.)