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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9099088" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Nah, "trip" as enacted in the D&D rules has never, to the best of my knowledge, included directionality.  It's been used as a single word name for a maneuver to knock an enemy prone. So yes, it's "knock over" in function and intent.  Just not in name.This objection was already raised with regard to Str 10 5E characters being able to grapple and hold immobile a rhino with one hand.  D&D abstracts size and mass differences to a LARGE degree to facilitate heroic action against large and giant enemies and always has.  Since the gelatinous cube does not exist in reality, I suggest that the game is better served by interpreting its physical characteristics in ways which are consonant with the game rules, rather than inventing characteristics (like its weight) that the game doesn't specify in ways which create a conflict within the rules and world.The game doesn't say it weighs 30 tons. <img class="smilie smilie--emoji" alt="🤷‍♂️" src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f937-2642.png" title="Man shrugging    :man_shrugging:" data-shortname=":man_shrugging:" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" /> If a 10' ogre were real and conformed to human proportions and weight it would be around 875lbs (figures taken from How Heavy is my Giant? Dragon issue #13).  If D&D used "realistic" weights any human would be killed or incapacitated by almost any solid hit from an ogre or giant (of course, most giants would need very different proportions just to stand up- square/cube law).  In the D&D rules we use hit points to simulate defense PREVENTING any such solid hit, though I think a lot of players picture their heroic characters actually being hit solidly but somehow shrugging it off, because they're not thinking about the size/mass difference and the forces involved in the course of regular play. Absolutely.  And I think probably making gelatinous cubes immune to being tripped, knocked prone, or any other form of forced movement almost certainly suits most people's imagination/ invisible rulebooks better than making them subject to such conditions or abilities.  If you're playing under a version of the rules which allows it, you've got two real options for optimizing the experience.  1) House rule it to disallow that. 2) Conceptualize the fiction in a way which supports the rule rather than the opposite.  Maybe cubes do indeed have a "foot"/membrane for locomotion and are subject to being knocked off balance and discombobulated in a way which matches "close enough" to the mechanics for being knocked prone.  Maybe they are comprised of a gelatinous mass much lighter than water, which also allows the DM and players to better rationalize the existence of cubes in dungeons where the floor isn't sturdy enough to support a 30 ton monster in a 10' space. That's all down to your taste for abstraction and how simple or complex you want to make the game, I think.  Hit points are a bigger abstraction, IMO.  We don't need to get hung up on the word "trip" unless we choose to.  What's the general fictional thing happening here?  The enemy is knocked off balance and "prone".  What's the mechanical effect? The enemy is momentarily at disadvantage to attack and advantage to be attacked until it stands up or rights itself using part of its movement.  I can voluntarily choose to visualize an absurdity (a human person leg-sweeping a 30 ton cube of water) or something fantastic but plausible (a human person knocking a weird supernatural monster off balance and it taking a few seconds to re-establish its orientation/bearings).</blockquote>

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