Green slime rules are clear for wood, metal and stone... but...

[magnusmalkus]

What about leather and cloth armor?

From the SRD:
A single 5-foot square of green slime deals 1d6 points of Constitution damage per round while it devours flesh. On the first round of contact, the slime can be scraped off a creature (most likely destroying the scraping device), but after that it must be frozen, burned, or cut away (dealing damage to the victim as well). Anything that deals cold or fire damage, sunlight, or a remove disease spell destroys a patch of green slime. Against wood or metal, green slime deals 2d6 points of damage per round, ignoring metal’s hardness but not that of wood. It does not harm stone.

Are Leather and cloth are un-affected? These items and others (glass for example) are listed on the Table: Substance Hardness and Hit Points. I like to imagine glass could contain such hazardous material (like stone apparently will). But if that were true, you'd think it would be mentioned somewhere.Any ideas? Thoughts?

Edit: Well, duh... glass IS stone.

 

[the Jester]

What about leather and cloth armor?

Given longstanding precedent and the fact that leather is basically animal-stuff and cloth is basically plant-stuff, I've always just ruled that the green slime dissolves the crap out of it.

As a side note, a pc in my game way back in 2e started packaging green slime in glass globes as grenade-like missiles.

 

[Ahnehnois]

It's not 100% clear what they were going for with green slime. On some level, I think you have to make up whatever isn't covered here in terms of what it affects.

I do not think that glass is stone in the technical sense, though both are mineral in nature (ask a materials scientist). I would suggest that the mineral kingdom has precedent in D&D, and I would treat minerals in general as being like stone, and metal (the narrower category) as the exception that gets damaged.

Given that wood gets damaged, I think it's reasonable to apply the same damage and apply hardness for other organic materials such as leather and cloth (D&D cloth is going to be organic anyway).

This is just my supposition; it's not like green slime corresponds to anything real, nor is there a clear intent here.

 

[delericho]

Yep, I'd treat leather and cloth as per wood, and glass as per stone.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Leather is treated and shaped skin.
Whatever effect it has on skin, it will have on leather.
Cloth is more fragile than any of the other examples.

Essentially think "what would acid damage?"

 

[Ahnehnois]

Leather is treated and shaped skin.
Whatever effect it has on skin, it will have on leather.
Cloth is more fragile than any of the other examples.

Essentially think "what would acid damage?"

None of that is scientifically accurate, however. There are things that affect skin but not leather (indeed, that's kind of the point of treating it). And acid does destroy certain types of stones. Green slime is its own thing.

 

[ephemeron]

I knew I'd seen a rule that green slime dissolves cloth and leather instantly, but it took a little while to track it down. Turns out it's from Basic D&D.

Nothing in the AD&D lineage ever explicitly addressed the point, but the 1e/2e description says that green slime takes 3 rounds to eat through plate armor. Which could be taken to imply that lighter armor affords no protection at all, and my guess is that Basic is accepting that implication and spelling it out.

 

[Greenfield]

Green Slime has had an interesting evolution in the various D&D revisions.

It's supposed to be a living thing, not an acid or corrosive. With that thought in mind, figure that it eats organics, corrodes inorganics that can be corroded, and leaves natural inorganics alone.

As for "What were they going for?", it's hard to say. Originally it was a monster found in the monster manual. It had hit points, and made attacks. Now it's an "environmental hazard" found in dungeons.

Originally (probably through poor planning) it was a death sentence. Once it got on someone it consumed them, turning them into Green Slime in 1 D4 rounds. Cure Disease was the only way to kill it, other than scraping it off or amputating body parts, and the spell took 10 rounds to cast (1 turn per the early rules, when rounds were a minute each and a turn was 10 rounds.) Anyone killed by Green Slime couldn't be brought back, period. (They weren't really dead, just turned to slime, so no variation of Raise Dead was applicable.)

2nd Ed reduced the casting time for Cure Disease, eliminating the automatic death penalty.

Now it's unclear how it can affect anyone, since nobody will step in it, and it can neither move nor make attacks.

I think they were trying to maintain the presence of an old standard, while getting away from the "Zap! You're dead!" aspect.

 

[magnusmalkus]

Interesting

Thank you. This is all very insightful. Knowing the snauf Green Slime has become, I've decided to let go of all previous conceptions and DM House Rule it: "As is - don't ask." with the alteration that it will try to do 2d6 to anything on the Substance Hardness and Hit Point Tables with the exception of stone and glass. Magical items would probably get a bonus to hardness = to the enhancement bonus.

 

[absolution]

Given longstanding precedent and the fact that leather is basically animal-stuff and cloth is basically plant-stuff, I've always just ruled that the green slime dissolves the crap out of it.

As a side note, a pc in my game way back in 2e started packaging green slime in glass globes as grenade-like missiles.

This is what I do in my games.