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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Snarf Zagyg" data-source="post: 9099123" data-attributes="member: 7023840">This points to a fundamental difference in understanding. For example, there is a vast difference between an Ogre weighing 875 pounds, and a Gelatinous Cube that would weigh somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 pounds. Moreover, there is a difference between "tripping" something which has two legs and is tall and humanoid, as opposed to "tripping" something which is completely grounded on a 10' by 10' base.When you go to hit points, then, you understand the nature of why they were invented and what the abstraction means. This was stated by Gygax in the 1e DMG thusly:As has been detailed, hit points are not actually a measure of physical damage, by and large, as far as characters (and some other creatures aswell) are concerned. Therefore, the location of hits and the type of aomage caused are not germane to them. While this is not true withrespect to most monsters, it is neither necessary nor particularly useful. Lest some purist immediately object, consider the many charts and tables necessary to handle this sort of detail, and then think about how area effect spells would work. In like manner, consider all of the nasty things which face adventurers as the rules stand. Are crippling disabilities and yet more ways to meet instant death desirable in an open-ended, episodic game where participants seek to identify with lovingly detailed and developed player-character personae? Not likely! Certain death is as undesirable as a give-away campaign. Combat is a common pursuit in the vast majority of adventures, and the participants in the campaign deserve a chance to exercise intelligent choice during such confrontations. As hit points dwindle they can opt to break off the encounter and attempt to flee. With complex combat systems which stress so-called realism and feature hit location, special damage, and so on, either this option is severely limited or the rules are highly slanted towards favoring the player characters at the expense of their opponents. (Such rules as double damage and critical hits must cut both ways - in which case the life expectancy of player characters will be shortened considerably - or the monsters are being grossly misrepresented and unfairly treated by the system. I am certain you can think of many other such rules.)One-minute rounds are devised to offer the maximum of choice with a minimum of complication. This allows the DM and the players the best of both worlds. The system assumes much activity during the course of each round. Envision, if you will, a fencing, boxing, or karate match. During the course of one minute of such competition there are numerous attacks which are unsuccessful, feints, maneuvering, and so forth. During a one minute melee round many attacks are made, but some ore mere feints, while some are blocked or parried. One, or possibly several, have the chance to actually score damage. For such chances, the dice are rolled, and if the "to hit" number is equalled or exceeded, the attack was successful, but otherwise it too was avoided, blocked, parried, or whatever. Damage scored to characters or certain monsters is actually not substantially physical - a mere nick or scratch until the lost handful of hit points are considered - it is a matter of wearing away the endurance, the luck, the magical protections.In other words, it is a mere abstraction; to the extent that a person describes every hit as doing substantial damage, that is not a problem with hit points, but a problem with the understanding of the abstraction. As character ability increases, the character is more able to turn a hit into a glancing blow. Turning this to the instant example, however, there is no similar way to abstract away concrete abilities like "tripping" to the extent that they apply to a gelatinous cube. That's what breaks the fiction for many people. If you want to say that the rules trump the fiction, that's fine. If you want to say that the fiction must be changed to honor the rule (so that tripping isn't tripping, but any thing that allows the desired effect to take effect) that's also your prerogative. But to tell people that "Guys in my high school used to trip 50,000 pound boulders, no big deal," is not likely to be a winning argument for those who don't feel the same way.Finally, moving to the subject of the OP-Ed Greenwood had an excellent article on the ecology of the Gelatinous Cube (the "athcoid") in Dragon #124. While it is not canon, obviously, it is worth considering. To answer the questions:Does anyone have any thoughts on the physiology of a gelatinous cube and whether it's immune to certain conditions, whether it has a primary foot / face, whether it can climb walls...or be tripped.The cube is made of gelatinous material and has no thoughts, instead behaving almost automatically, They normally travel in their "cube" shape, but can "flow" through spaces as small as 1' across. They are immune to all conditions that would effect the "mind" of any creature, which would arguably include any stunning or the like. They would not have a primary "foot" (given their flowing ability) other than the side that is currently facing down due to gravity. They have no special ability to climb, other than to "probe" or "flow" subject to gravity. And no, IMO a gelatinous cube cannot be tripped. Although I would certainly enjoy watching someone try. Repeatedly. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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