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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jawsh" data-source="post: 5792309" data-attributes="member: 17061">Well, I'd say the proper way to run a rust monster encounter is with a little bit of warning ahead of time, and a chance for the players to outsmart it. Maybe treat it as a skill challenge instead of a combat encounter. It's pretty much become accepted nowadays in a dungeon encounter, when asked "where did this creature come from" to reply "a mad wizard created it." But if you give that a bit of thought too, maybe you can actually use that as a bit of a story. Maybe a wizard created the rust monster by enchanting one of his pet lizards to eat metal. Maybe he made it specifically for the purpose of disenchanting items. The upside with this though, is that the wizard obviously had a purpose, and that purpose was probably the making of other items. Those items should be available if the PCs know where to look. Alternatively, a rust monster could live in its own lair where dozens of adventurers and wandering kobolds have passed. There won't be any metal items in the lair, but there really ought to be plenty of nonferrous treasures. So it's a trade-off, if the players lose their metal stuff, they gain some non-metallic treasure.</blockquote>