Special Conversion Thread: Finishing off the oozes

[Cleon]

Your mind is blank? That clearly explains some of the odder design choices you've made over the years....

Nah, mind blank only makes my mind seem blank while concealing the unbelievable richness beneath the spell.

You just haven't been rolling high enough on Craft (D&D monsters) to appreciate the finer points of my genius.

Doesn't need Hide or Move Silently much since it's got the camo (plus the Dex would really pull those down). Just split the ranks between Spot and Listen, I guess, so it can find prey.

Let's slap an Ability Focus on Engulf, since the DC is a tad low for that. Maybe Weapon Focus (slam) would be a little better than any of the save boosters, too.

That'd be alright by me. I did wonder about Improved Initiative, since they seem to attack pretty quickly ("lashing out" with two pseudopods).

Although, come to think of it, Gray Oozes attack with snake-like strikes, but WotC gave them the same pathetic -5 initiative as most Oozes.

 

[Shade]

The suggested skills and feats sound great.

 

[Cleon]

The suggested skills and feats sound great.

Updated.

 

[Shade]

So we just need descriptive and flavor text?

 

[freyar]

Looks that way.

For weight, I guess these are about the same volume as a cube, but the metal might raise the density a bit. 100,000 lb? Or not quite so much?

 

[Cleon]

Looks that way.

For weight, I guess these are about the same volume as a cube, but the metal might raise the density a bit. 100,000 lb? Or not quite so much?

Isn't that awfully heavy? That's 85,000 pounds more than the weight of an ordinary Gelatinous Cube, or 6 and 2/3rds times more.

Let's see, the sides and top of the Cube are each 10 foot square, or 500 square feet in total. 500 square feet of 1-inch thick solid steel would weigh just under 20,000 pounds.

Contrariwise, a Large-sized suit of full plate is only 100 pounds.

So, I'm thinking the metal casing armoring a Slithering Hoard should weigh somewhere in between. Maybe 5,000 to 10,000 pounds, for a total weight of 20,000 to 25,000 pounds?

I'm liking the 20,000 more than the 25,000.

 

[freyar]

The SRD says a typical gelatinous cube is 50,000 lb (and is 15 ft on a side). Where'd you get the 15,000 lb from? The slithering hoard is 20 ft across but presumably not as tall (same volume but more spread out).

Based on your scaling, it seems like you'd want something like 70,000 lb. Sound ok?

 

[Cleon]

The SRD says a typical gelatinous cube is 50,000 lb (and is 15 ft on a side). Where'd you get the 15,000 lb from? The slithering hoard is 20 ft across but presumably not as tall (same volume but more spread out).

I tend to use d20SRD.org as my handy SRD website. That iteration of the Gelatinous Cube is Large and 10 foot square. (If I remember correctly, the Cubes were 10-foot in some early versions of 3E and switched to 15-foot in revised 3.5).

Besides, I prefer 10-foot cubes. The classic AD&D Gelatinous Cube was a 10 footer so it fitted neatly down standard dungeon corridors...

Based on your scaling, it seems like you'd want something like 70,000 lb. Sound ok?

If you want to make it a Huge monster based on the 25 ton Cube, its average weight would be 75,000 pounds.

(Range is +1/3 to +2/3; giving an average of +1/2, or an extra 25,000 pounds).

 

[Cleon]

So, am I making it Huge?

 

[freyar]

Interesting. I generally use the Sovelior & Sage SRD for faster navigation, their cube is listed as Large but 15 ft per side and 50,000 lb. Meanwhile, the 3.5 MM has the 15 ft cube as Huge (which makes more sense), but still only 4HD. What's happened here? Huh.

Ummm, anyway, let's just base it on the 10 ft cube. 4HD for Huge is almost ridiculously low, and 5HD isn't much better. So 20 ft across and 20,000 lb? That's ok by me.