Mimic attacks

[JacktheRabbit]

Threw a mimic at the party last night and I think I did this wrong. The description is vague though so I am not sure.

The mimic stats say it gets one slam attack per round. The description says that it gets an automatic slam attack on any creature stuck to it.

The way I was running it was the mimic would form a pseudopod and lash out at a party member. Upon impact I gave the party member a chance to avoid the grapple.

If the grapple was sucessful (which wasnt that hard for the mimic) it would form another pseudopod and lash out at another party member.

The result was a single 4HD mimic almost took down a party of five 3rd level characters. Now I admit the wizard was almost out of spells and moat of the characters kept trying to pull free instead of accepting the grapple and continuing to attack in some manner.

I am wondering though if I did this wrong. It doesnt seem right that the mimic nearly slew the entire party.

Anyone want to clear this up for me?

 

[JacktheRabbit]

BTW, I did rule that on any round that the mimic formed a new pseudopod to attack a character that was not grappled it was too distracted to do the automatic slam on every attached character.

This definately kept it from being a TPK.

 

[mmu1]

Since it (presumably) only gets one attack per turn, it shouldn't be able to keep any characters grappled and still attack - once it "forms another pseudopod" the character it grabbed before is automatically released from the grapple, and is free to try to attack or get himself somehow un-stuck from the Mimic's adhesive. Effectively, you gave it unlimited attacks. (since grappling uses up an attack)

 

[JacktheRabbit]

The description did specifically say though that it gets automatic slam attacks against all foes stuck to it.

If it can only stick to one person at a time then this part of the description makes no sense.

 

[Rel]

Doc, I'll be the first to admit that my method may not be precisely correct rules-wise. It seemed to yield a result that was approximately correct for the Mimic's CR:

The Mimic would attack with a pseudopod. If it hit, it would do slam damage and automatically initiate a grapple. If successful, it would automatically slam that opponent again the next round (assuming that they didn't get away on their turn). Furthermore, it would make another grapple check to attempt to "Pin" that opponent.

Once it had someone Pinned, it would stop attacking them and attack a new opponent repeating the above proceedure. If the Pinned opponent escaped the Pin and went back into Grapple mode, the Mimic would slam them again and try to Pin them.

The result of this was that the Mimic didn't just grab the first character and slam them until dead but it did eventually get to attack other party members who were (hopefully) doing something to hurt it while it beat up their companion.

I hope some of that was helpful.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Since it (presumably) only gets one attack per turn, it shouldn't be able to keep any characters grappled and still attack - once it "forms another pseudopod" the character it grabbed before is automatically released from the grapple, and is free to try to attack or get himself somehow un-stuck from the Mimic's adhesive. Effectively, you gave it unlimited attacks. (since grappling uses up an attack)

I know of no rule that says that maintaining a grapple uses an attack.

Doing damage to someone you're grappling, or trying to pin, or trying to escape, these are all attacks. But it's not like you "spend" an attack to keep someone grappled.