Rust Monster Lovin'

[NilesB]

Okay, if I'm wearing +1 plate, see rust monsters, and know what they are, I run!

Man, I'm gettin' nitpicked to death today.

-The Gneech

It chases you down and eats your armor. You are move 20' and run at x3, it is move 40' and runs at x4. I see people advocating flight from dangerous encounters all the time without considering the monsters ability or likelyhood of chasing down the party. There is no point in fleeing if all it means is that the monster gets free whacks at you.

Quite often even at high level the rust monster wins initiative and gets your equipment before you can do anything at all.

The rust monster targets fighter types who are more than any other characters dependent on their equipment to contribute to the party.

To say nothing of what happens when a poor to mediocre DM thinks they have a good idea for an encounter with a rust monster...

 

[BluSponge]

Re-read my post. Green slime doesn't force a Save-Or-Die ( or save-or-destroy) nor do gelatinous cubes, mimics, lurkers above, piercers, rot grubs, ear seekers, gas spores, shierkers, or a while variety of other critters. These are sneaky, but they are still a challenge. You take damage, you see the threat, you have a chance to thwart it. When fighting a core Rust Monster, it eats your stuff and that's it.

Rust monsters don't force a save or die either. And if you handle the encounter right, you'll come out without a scratch. Rust monsters don't distinguish between a +2 sword and a metal spike.

(Oh, and coincidentally you are right, green slime doesn't force a saving throw. In fact, it doesn't offer a save at all. You either get it off (in 1 round sometimes) or hand over your character. No save, no ressurection possible.)

The usefulness of D&D to teach a lesson instead of be a game would have to be in a different thread...

WHOA THERE! Hold on. Before you go off half cocked, I never said this was to "teach the players a lesson." Only that in any dangerous environment (like your average dungeon), the player that barges in without thinking is going to get smacked. Don't turn this into a Dm vs. player issue when it isn't.

but you're right, these monsters force the party to adopt special tactics. Where the rust monster is divergent is that the damage it causes is total, absolute, and not easily repairable. If a cleric could cast a 2nd level spell and make a new +1 sword, not big deal (like they can cure wounds and ability score damage). But the rust monster, unique out of all those you mentioned, brings the game to a screeching halt, because there's no way to recover from it's damage other than running away to the town (assuming you can even replace them in town, which is hardly a guarantee). After 1 attack. One attack and the adventure's over.

But isn't that what makes the rust monster what it is? Take that away, and you pretty much neuter the thing, which is what I've been saying all along. Like green slime, where originally you had 1d4 rounds after contact to get it off or resign yourself to puddledom, rust monsters are impactful and "dangerous" because of what they can do. If a cleric could whip up a +1 sword at a moment's notice, then the result remains the same as the redesign. But you have to remember that magical weapons get a save (10% per plus) and that the creature doesn't distinguish between magical and mundane metal items. So it is as likely to go after the fighter in full plate as a handful of nails. A player can easily distract the creature for a round by tossing a regular dagger on the ground between him and it.

If there is no risk of loss in the game, where does the challenge lie? Or is the only challenge DnD presents result in the loss of hit point or attribute scores? With the redesign, the rust monster has gone from an "Oh crap! Circle the wagons!" encounter to barely an annoyance. And that may have been Mike's goal. But I wouldn't hail it as the ten commandments of game design.

That's just it. To be aware of their presence is often meta-game knowledge. And if it isn't, then the encounter is really far, far too easy (if a handful of iron spikes can get me XP, where can I find the mine?).

Not really. It's an uncommon creature, which means players may well have heard rumors of them. I mean, I've never encountered a brown recluse spider, but I know what they can do and have a vague idea what they look like and where they live. Characters in a fantasy game should have access to the same base of knowledge of their natural (and supernatural) world. And regardless, they will only be unprepared once. Magic item have always gotten a save and the monster has never specifically targeted them, so I don't see what any of the fuss was about to begin with. Hence, superfluous and unnecessary change.

Tom

 

[BluSponge]

It chases you down and eats your armor. You are move 20' and run at x3, it is move 40' and runs at x4. I see people advocating flight from dangerous encounters all the time without considering the monsters ability or likelyhood of chasing down the party. There is no point in fleeing if all it means is that the monster gets free whacks at you.

And yet, if you drop a handful of nails, a dagger, or a crowbar in its path, it stops for a round to eat it. That immediately buys you three rounds of running before it can catch up.

Quite often even at high level the rust monster wins initiative and gets your equipment before you can do anything at all.

It's got a +3 initiative bonus. At high level, the rogue is going to be all over that.

Also remember that rust monsters only smell metal when it comes within 9" (something the revised description omits, I've noticed). They have no notice skill, and a fairly low Wis score.

The rust monster targets fighter types who are more than any other characters dependent on their equipment to contribute to the party.

Target is a loaded term. They don't "target" any one person over another, no more than a roach goes after your plate of food because you have a burrito and your friend has a salad. They work their way down the line. If that line has a few tastey morsels between it and the party, it's not smart enough to ignore those for the big armored guy.

To say nothing of what happens when a poor to mediocre DM thinks they have a good idea for an encounter with a rust monster...

Who is this imaginary group of mediocre DMs you are referring to? :\ I think you are just advocating your own game style over everyone elses.

Tom

 

[Knight Otu]

Rust monsters don't force a save or die either. And if you handle the encounter right, you'll come out without a scratch. Rust monsters don't distinguish between a +2 sword and a metal spike.

Depends on the size of the spike. They always go for the biggest metal object.

(Oh, and coincidentally you are right, green slime doesn't force a saving throw. In fact, it doesn't offer a save at all. You either get it off (in 1 round sometimes) or hand over your character. No save, no ressurection possible.)

Where does it say that resurrection is impossible? Raise Dead, sure, but resurrection?

Green Slime (CR 4): This dungeon peril is a dangerous variety of normal slime. Green slime devours flesh and organic materials on contact and is even capable of dissolving metal. Bright green, wet, and sticky, it clings to walls, floors, and ceilings in patches, reproducing as it consumes organic matter. It drops from walls and ceilings when it detects movement (and possible food) below.

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.

Also remember that rust monsters only smell metal when it comes within 9" (something the revised description omits, I've noticed). They have no notice skill, and a fairly low Wis score.

90 feet, slightly above-human Wisdom, scent ability.

A rust monster can scent a metal object from up to 90 feet away. When it detects one, it dashes toward the source and attempts to strike it with its antennae. The creature is relentless, chasing characters over long distances if they still possess intact metal objects but usually ceasing its attacks to devour a freshly rusted meal.

The creature targets the largest metal object available, striking first at armor, then at shields and smaller items. It prefers ferrous metals (steel or iron) over precious metals (such as gold or silver) but will devour the latter if given the opportunity.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Rust monsters don't force a save or die either. And if you handle the encounter right, you'll come out without a scratch. Rust monsters don't distinguish between a +2 sword and a metal spike.

It's not save-or-die, but it's roughtly the 3rd level equivalent and it brings the adventure to a halt just as effectively.

(Oh, and coincidentally you are right, green slime doesn't force a saving throw. In fact, it doesn't offer a save at all. You either get it off (in 1 round sometimes) or hand over your character. No save, no ressurection possible.)

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.

No, green slime does not instantly kill you, it deals Con damage. Which looks like you'll last at least the first round most of the time (I guess your odds aren't good if your CON is 3, but a CON of 3 is definately an exceptionally abberant score). And it's CR 4.

Only that in any dangerous environment (like your average dungeon), the player that barges in without thinking is going to get smacked. Don't turn this into a Dm vs. player issue when it isn't.

Maybe I'm mis-reading things, but this sounds like "Do things smart or I will punish you." Which isn't nessecarily DM-vs.-player (some players like being punished), but it's definately in the realm of "teaching them a lesson" about not being so reckless.

But isn't that what makes the rust monster what it is?

A game-stopper? No, to me, it's a chance for the non-heavily-armored, blunt-weapon-trauma characters to shine. The barbarian, the monk, even a clever enough rogue. And the new version preserves that. If one of the nessecary components for a rust monster is that it draw the game to a screeching halt, I submit that it's a fundamentally bad monster because there should be things that facilitate the enjoyment of D&D (one of the most basic of which is overcoming challenges to get phloot), not things that STOP the enjoyment of D&D.

The rust monster should be an interesting encounter because it forces new tactics. And this one still forces new tactics. It just doesn't stop the game in it's tracks.

If there is no risk of loss in the game, where does the challenge lie? Or is the only challenge DnD presents result in the loss of hit point or attribute scores? With the redesign, the rust monster has gone from an "Oh crap! Circle the wagons!" encounter to barely an annoyance. And that may have been Mike's goal. But I wouldn't hail it as the ten commandments of game design.

You don't see anyone else hailing it, either. It still has some flaws (the 10 minute heal, the descision not to use existing weapon damage rules, and, as you point out, the impermenance). But the rust monster, as written, isn't the risk of loss, it's virtually the guarantee of loss. That's not a challenge, it's just a huge headache.

Not really. It's an uncommon creature, which means players may well have heard rumors of them. I mean, I've never encountered a brown recluse spider, but I know what they can do and have a vague idea what they look like and where they live. Characters in a fantasy game should have access to the same base of knowledge of their natural (and supernatural) world. And regardless, they will only be unprepared once. Magic item have always gotten a save and the monster has never specifically targeted them, so I don't see what any of the fuss was about to begin with. Hence, superfluous and unnecessary change.

But this is a descision that varies depending on the campaign. A standard D&D campaign may know of adventurers, but what if we're cleaving more closely to history and having the horrible monsters be rare and special and unknown? That's using flavor to balance mechanics, and it doesn't work because the flavor depends on the campaign and DM.

Being unprepared once is enough to leave a bad taste in your mouth forever, and, depending on what is fun about D&D for you, enough to ruin your fun for that night and for a long time to come ("Yeah, I'd be able to afford this passage accross the styx at level 60.....IF YOU HADN'T MADE ME PAY FOR A REPLACEMENT +1 GREATSWORD AT LEVEL 3!"). And when, in the future, they ARE prepared, they barely earn their XP award for overcoming that challenge (toss some nails at it and then poke it's face in).

So there's the problem of universality. You can't say what the monster will behave like and what the adventurers will know in every campaign. There's the problem of all-or-nothing, where either the creature draws everything to a sudden stop because of the devestation it wroughts, or the creature is almost not worth the effort to consider an encounter. Solving the all-or-nothing solves also the problem of universality, because when it's less of a binary mosnter, it's easier for it to fit a variety of roles.

 

[The_Gneech]

But it is often the end of an adventurer's career.

Only if you let it be. See also my player's gray-ooze-eaten dwarven waraxe mentioned earlier.

To use a literary example, did Frodo and Sam say "Screw Mt. Doom, I'm going home!" when Sting was wrapped up in Shelob's webs? How heroic is somebody who just gives up the moment they encounter a temporary setback?

I've been really distressed, as a player, at how 97% of the time I am unable to do anything less than maximum effectiveness and hope for victory. I can't do something cool but ineffective, or intentionally take a penalty because my character doesn't yet consider it a worthy challenge, because doing so will result in character death within one round. There have been a number of fights where I had to apply metagame knowledge about monster abilities because not using this entirely out of character knowledge would have resulted in a total party kill.

In that case, your DM is not running baseline D&D and you might want to discuss this with them.

The "normal" encounter should be a bit of a challenge but winnable; that's what CR is intended to measure. Thus, a party of four 3rd-level characters encountering a single rust monster will probably beat it, but expend about 25% of their resources in doing so -- which may very well be the fighter's sword. Or a pile of silver dumped out across the floor. Or a bag of caltrops.

-The Gneech

 

[I'm A Banana]

Only if you let it be. See also my player's gray-ooze-eaten dwarven waraxe mentioned earlier.

To use a literary example, did Frodo and Sam say "Screw Mt. Doom, I'm going home!" when Sting was wrapped up in Shelob's webs? How heroic is somebody who just gives up the moment they encounter a temporary setback?

The analogy doesn't really fly for a few reasons. One of the major ones is that Sting is just out of reach, not destroyed. Steal a mage's spellbook and it can be a challenge. Burn a mage's spellbook and now you're just using WHAM-O tactics.

The other one is that Sting was not the main hinge of the adventure or of the characters, but merely a useful tool. If there were things that Sting could do that nothing else could, it would be a lot more cruel for it to be dangled just out of reach. Sting was valuable, but disposable. Much of the time, in D&D, adventurer's equipment is NOT disposable. Because your enjoyment of reading Lord of the Rings doesn't depend on Sting, it's a challenge, not a cruelty. A large portion of the enjoyment of D&D depends on the awesome stuff you get. Once you have a critter that just exists to deprive you of that stuff, you're working at cross-purposes to the enjoyment of the game.

Now, if the critter just had a CHANCE to deprive you of that stuff, or could deprive you of that stuff eventually, it becomes more of a challenge, less of a simple cruelty.

 

[The_Gneech]

It chases you down and eats your armor. You are move 20' and run at x3, it is move 40' and runs at x4. I see people advocating flight from dangerous encounters all the time without considering the monsters ability or likelyhood of chasing down the party. There is no point in fleeing if all it means is that the monster gets free whacks at you.

Not if the wizard, monk, or druid jump in the way to cover me. This is a team effort, after all.

(Actually, when I'm a player, I'm usually the one in leather and armed with a bow who jumps in front of the rust monster so the fighter can get away. The only times we've had equipment go up in smoke is when the fighter knew the risk and decided to go hammer on the beastie anyway -- in which case I say they're bringing it on themselves.)

Quite often even at high level the rust monster wins initiative and gets your equipment before you can do anything at all.

I have never seen this happen, nor to be honest have I heard of it happening either. What leads you to make this statement? And again, at high level, the average encounter nets you a big pile of treasure anyway; a little bit of extra-careful play while your equipment is sub-par will quickly solve the problem.

Honestly, I'd never in a million years have thought of myself as "hard core" ... but after this thread I feel like I could take on the Tomb of Horrors with confidence, if my baseline of what you suck up and go on is so much higher than normal.

-The Gneech

 

[Geron Raveneye]

But the rust monster, unique out of all those you mentioned, brings the game to a screeching halt, because there's no way to recover from it's damage other than running away to the town (assuming you can even replace them in town, which is hardly a guarantee). After 1 attack. One attack and the adventure's over.

Hyperbole much?

Sorry, KM, but by now I really wonder what kind of rust monster encounters you had in your past to make such statements. Care to elucidate a little on that statement? Since when is there no other way to recover from a lost sword than to run back to town? And since when does a lost sword mean the adventure is over? What kind of player stands up after he loses his weapon, armor or shield and drops out of the adventure? What fighter/cleric/ranger/paladin is so totally useless that he quits the adventure because he lost his sword/mace/shield/armor because he cannot do anything without it?

 

[The_Gneech]

The analogy doesn't really fly for a few reasons. One of the major ones is that Sting is just out of reach, not destroyed. Steal a mage's spellbook and it can be a challenge. Burn a mage's spellbook and now you're just using WHAM-O tactics.

Okay: Mithril shirt, taken away in Cirith Ungol and never returned.

"Sorry, Sam, I quit. Without my shiny armor, I'm pointless now. Let's go home."

-The Gneech