fr0ggE's page

This is my favorite monster this round (maybe a hair before the hulk). There were several very good submissions, but something about this just appeals to me. The flavor is great, and as other commenters have already said, the bloodroot vine fits in very well with the existing vrock even while remaining a unique and interesting monster in its own right. I love it!

I think most of the comments so far are spot on. I'll probably vote for it because I like the concept so much, but I agree that this doesn't seem much like an ooze with its claws and bite attack. Then again, the PCs who actually fight the thing won't know what it's called or classified as. They'll just watch in horror as it steals their weapons, takes on their appearance slowly and starts gibbering :-D

In terms of an actual encounter, this is really really cool.

The "addiction" idea is really fun! My first reaction on reading that was to ask myself "what, you're addicted one round after getting hit? That works even faster than heroine!" But then again, these are powerful alien oils at work here, so all bets are off!

On my first reading of the Egelsee Cocktail I thought a lot the comments were spot on...but having now re-read it more closely, I think the entry itself actually answers many of these nitpicks.

You could just use the blood drain UMR instead of making an "all fluids" version of it.

I think this may miss the point that the ooze really does drain/absorb/incorporate ANY fluid, which is half the fun of this monster! (or maybe I'm missing the point...what's a UMR?) Take this sentence from the description: "The cocktails can feed on any fluid, and there are reports of specimens that have assimilated alchemical substances and deadly toxins. Egelsee cocktails of all varieties..." Assimilating all kinds of fluids (alchemical substances, baby! deadly toxins!) is open-ended gold for a GM. You can easily take this creature as a base and spice it the way you like for a little extra weird, or CR bump. Straight-forward "blood drain" would remove some of this flexibility. As it is, every encounter with one of these creatures can (and should!) be unique based on what poisons or other goos it has gobbled up lately. As the quote from the entry says, this ooze comes in "all varieties."

My only nitpick is also the name thing, Cocktail doesn't do it for me at all, though the explanation in the description is well-reasoned and makes perfect sense. And an editor/developer can change that with a few keystrokes.

I think "cocktail" was chosen for the reasons I mentioned above: that these things go around gobbling up all sorts of different liquids, and iterations of the creature can be very different depending...but I still agree that the initial reaction to the word cocktail is more important than coming to understand why it was chosen 10 minutes after you've read the monster description.

Maybe "Egelsee Amalgam" but that also is a bit off...seems more solid and less fluid than cocktail. "Effluent" as suggested by Markus was also good, but misses some of the mixing aspect maybe? I don't know.

The ecology of it creating a new ooze EVERY TIME IT FEEDS is a bit of a setting problem (these things would be everywhere), but easy enough to fix.

I don't think it's supposed to create a new ooze every time it feeds. The description simply says "Once it has gorged sufficiently..." although this does beg the question... Still, "sufficiently" allows the GM to decide exactly how rare or numerous these things are in their world. Open ended :-)

Overall I like the flexibility of this entry. The addiction aspect is already quirky and fun, but what I love the most is potential for unique "varieties" of this alien ooze.