The Huge Black pudding in Here there be monsters has the following ability:
Split (Ex): Slashing and piercing weapons deal no damage to a black pudding. Instead the creature splits into two identical puddings, each with half of the original’s current hit points (round down). A pudding with 10 hit points or less cannot be further split and dies if reduced to 0 hit points.
The room in the mountian passage where the pudding lurks is only 25' x 15'.
My 1st question is this: What happens when this 15'x15' pudding splits? The two huge puddings will not fit in the room... what happens to the poor PC's that are half way into the room... are they now coverd (grappled) by Black pudding #2? maybe a reflex saves to avoid having the 2nd pudding "plop" into exisistance on them?
What a weird ability... LoL
2nd question: What happened during this encounter for those of you DM's that have ran it??? Death? retreat??? None of the warrior types in my group have bludgeoning weapons... not that they'd survive the acid saves anyway... The Druid, wizard and cleric can dish out some spell damage...hope its enough...and I hope its quick enough while the warriors are being acid-grappled LoL
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In the game I ran, the party was having trouble until the druid wildshaped into a horse, and then the bard summoned a porpoise into the pool in the room. Between horse and porpoise, they put out a SHOCKING amount of damage and ruined the black puddings super fast. And with very little collateral damage, since a horse and a porpoise don't have any items for the puddings to eat.
But yeah. The split ability is one of the weirder ones...
In the game I ran, the party was having trouble until the druid wildshaped into a horse, and then the bard summoned a porpoise into the pool in the room. Between horse and porpoise, they put out a SHOCKING amount of damage and ruined the black puddings super fast. And with very little collateral damage, since a horse and a porpoise don't have any items for the puddings to eat.
Interesting combo... a horse and a dolphin... LOL Didn't the dolphins bite keep making the pudding split... a bite does piercing damage.?
...But where did you put the multiple puddings? They wont fit in the room. Did ya make the room bigger or the newly formed puddings smaller than HUGE... LoL
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Creative Director
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In the game I ran, the party was having trouble until the druid wildshaped into a horse, and then the bard summoned a porpoise into the pool in the room. Between horse and porpoise, they put out a SHOCKING amount of damage and ruined the black puddings super fast. And with very little collateral damage, since a horse and a porpoise don't have any items for the puddings to eat.Interesting combo... a horse and a dolphin... LOL Didn't the dolphins bite keep making the pudding split... a bite does piercing damage.?
...But where did you put the multiple puddings? They wont fit in the room. Did ya make the room bigger or the newly formed puddings smaller than HUGE... LoL
Porpoises don't bite; they have a ram attack that deals bludgeoning damage. No splitting involved?
As for where they went, I just kinda played a little loose with the space rules and had the puddings overlap a little here and there, or pile up on walls or in the water. It all worked out in the end.
I've always halved the size when splitting the puddings - never thought about the fact that it might not be right!
2x2 Huge pudding 115 hp
1x2 Large pudding 57 hp
1x1 Medium pudding 28 hp (splits no more, just dies)
This is how I have done it, though it is easy to kill. Shoot in three arrows- result = split it into 4 medium puddings with 28 hp. Then fireball.
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After some research it does seem that they should stay big. They need to stay big for the grapple bonuses and keeping them small does indeed make a massive difference with area effect spells. I'm not sure how they overlap or squeeze though.
In this thread on enworld, frankthedm has a nice picture attached which illustrates this.
Puddings have a climb speed so I'd just put the extras clinging to the walls and ceiling. If the party ended up creating more than 4 of them though...I guess you might have to make them squeeze?
I had them split into two equal parts as well, reducing their size by one category and dividing their HPs by two. I remember seeing somewhere that it continues to split until it gets down to 10 HPs. Once you get to this point you do damage with piercing and slashing weapons until its reduced to zero HPs. I think I read this in the Monster Manual.
Now running it as I did above my party had a tough time with the creature. One of the group lost 2 or 3 magic items and was reduced to kicking it with his foot (monk PC). They decided if they see another black pudding they are going to run away. Easily the toughest encounter for them in HBTM so far (we just had it last session).
I remember seeing somewhere that it continues to split until it gets down to 10 HPs. Once you get to this point you do damage with piercing and slashing weapons until its reduced to zero HPs.
Being less than 10 hit points only stops a pudding from splitting. It is still immune to piercing/slashing.
There are a few things the rules don't cover on splitting,
-Does the ooze appear adjacent?
-When does the ooze act?
-Does it go on the original’s turn?
-Or does it use the rules governing new combatants?
-If split on its turn, like from an AoO or a ready, do the new oozes have their own turns?
Awesome find on ENworld! FranktheDm's post addresses the size question...they should remain huge to benefit from grappling... But he brings up numerous other questions that are totallty unaddressed in the "split" ability description... I like the above "they cling to the walls" suggestion... that could make for an interesting encounter... but I'm afraid that many of the above questions will come to my players minds as most of them are also DM's
help?
I think this is just a poorly worded way of saying that the two resulting puddings are equal sized compared to each other, not to the original pudding.Split (Ex): Slashing and piercing weapons deal no damage to a black pudding. Instead the creature splits into two identical puddings, each with half of the original’s current hit points (round down). A pudding with 10 hit points or less cannot be further split and dies if reduced to 0 hit points.
I agree with this line of thinking. If the puddings were to remain huge the ability should be called "multiply" or something like that. The creature is tough enough with it's grappling ability and "item destroying" acid touch.
It was a fun encounter to run for sure.
I agree with this line of thinking. If the puddings were to remain huge the ability should be called "multiply" or something like that. The creature is tough enough with it's grappling ability and "item destroying" acid touch.
I agree, it should have been called "multiply". But I disagree that they should loose their huge size when they split. Otherwise, whats to stop an archer from firing 4-6 arrows at the thing...making it split into numerous smaller puddings with less hp's then the mage drops a Area of Effect spell (fireball) on them, and they die without ever touching the PC's... Good tactics? yes. But too easy for a CR 7 creature if you ask me...
What happens when this 15'x15' pudding splits?
But a pudding doesn't fill the whole 15' x 15' cube like Gelatinous Cube; that's the rough area it undulates over in combat. Huge is 2 - 16 tons, MM1 gives typical pudding as about 9 tons, so when it splits into two 4.5 ton chunks these are both still huge. The issue is how to describe it to the players so that they understand that there isn't a spontaneous increase in the amount of ooze.
How I plan on running it (a long time from now, still in TINH):
As your sword slices into the pudding it begins to tear along your cut, peeling apart as though magnetically repulsed, rapidly splitting roughly in half
Now there are two huge oozes that are squeezing to each occupy half of the original 15' x 15' space. On the oozes next turn (I'd assume they would act on the same initiative) they move away from each other.
The two halves of the ooze begin to slide away from each other, each one rapidly spreading out to cover almost as much of the floor as the whole did before, although noticeably thinner. One of them slides partly up the wall and begins to dip down towards your head from above...
I figure that the ooze will attempt to spread over the whole room, trying to grapple any characters that are standing in the way. If they are foolish enough to keep slashing at it, it will wind up covering the whole room, floor, walls, and ceiling.
Nice... I'm thinking that this is how'll I run the encounter as well. Black pudding on the walls and ceilling = bad day for the PC's. LoL Hopefully they'll get the idea quickly... DO NOT HIT THAT THING WITH A WEAPON!!!
LoL Hopefully...
Someone please refresh my memory, what are the rules for "squeezing?"
Someone please refresh my memory, what are the rules for "squeezing?"
-4 to attacks, -4 to AC.
I don't think it needs to split though. There's plenty of instances in the game where a creature gets free movement to the nearest open square (escape a grapple, failed bull rush, exiting after swallowed whole).
Your arrow strikes the ooze but rather than hurting it, the beast splits in half violently along the arrow's flight. Pieces slide to the wall forming a second creature as big as the first but noticeably thinner!
When puddings split in my game they are free to overlap, as they have no set form. If you keep splitting a pudding into incrementaly smaller puddings, then you get a SWARM of black puddings, which is bad news. PCs die in this swarm, and I almost feel they deserve it from dint of effectively creating more and more foes.
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And that encounter was insane. If I understand it correctly, the Ref save for weapons were so high that practically every weapon used on it disintegrated.
Did anyone rule that magic weapon and armor got additional saves, or merely a bonus to their plus?
Item saving throws, even for magical items, are really, REALLY bad. A Magic Item has a Base save of 2+ 1/2 the caster level of the item. For Weapons and Armor/Shields this is 3 x the enhancement bonus, so a +1 sword has a Caster level of 3 and a save of 3 (2 + 1.5 rounded down). If the item has multiple abilities you use the Highest Caster level. In most cases items are just toast!
In a recent adventure my DM's designed a sewer filled with Gelatinous Cubes, Black Puddings, Rust Monsters, and a Destrachan. I lost my armor, my weapon, and all of my jewelry! It was a bad day for my Psychic Warrior.
I destroyed the weapons and armour for my party's knight, the ooze got hit by the sorcerer's last spells, killing (I think) three of them) and they were all about to get engulfed by the last (10hp Huge) black pudding before our ninja bravely charged forwards and punched it to death.
However, he also got sucked in (I gave the Knight a chance to grab him out before he died, but as I described the screaming head emerging from the ooze, the skin sizzling away, the knight went white, shook his head, and said "I'm not touching him!")... so out ninja bravely died punching his pudding.
Did your PC's have any meat before hand? I mean -- how can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat?
PS -I skipped this encounter - so I could take more time with big O.
Playing with automatic levelups at story points in the AP takes the XP hassle out of it and allows me free editing.
PSS - I would house rule that puddings dont suffer from "squeezing"
Puddings <3 squeezing !
PSSS - the next pudding post from me will contain a bill cosby joke. DONT make me!
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A Magic Item has a Base save of 2+ 1/2 the caster level of the item. For Weapons and Armor/Shields this is 3 x the enhancement bonus, so a +1 sword has a Caster level of 3 and a save of 3 (2 + 1.5 rounded down).
I remember reading someting in the rules that said to use the items saving throw only if it's an unattended item. When the items is in a character's hand, you're supposed to use the character's saving throw.
-Skeld
EDIT:
Magic items always get saving throws. A magic item’s Fortitude, Reflex, and Will save bonuses are equal to 2 + one-half its caster level. An attended magic item either makes saving throws as its owner or uses its own saving throw bonus, whichever is better.
Emphasis mine.
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You know... I should reference the SRD more often. I don't remember seeing that in the DMG when I had to figure out my saves... not that it mattered I rolled a 4 against a DC 17, even with my Ref +11 I blew it.
It was a total Debbie Downer moment... Wah-waaaaahhhhhh.
yeah, the "dissolve stuff " ability has made oozes etc. extremly umpopular hereabouts - the groups either flat out refuse to enter such rooms, or "cleanse" them with heavy magical overkill... usally a wall-type spell (magma is the declared favourite) followed by something with a solid blast effect.
Nothing freaks out players like Item loss... well except for Stat-drain and level drain...but it certainly is in the top-3
In the STAP the first black pudding was basically circumvented (nobody cared to deal with it - two players had recently lost characters to one of those in another campaign ) , the second one in Lightless depths.... well, Wall of Magma and Channelled Pyroclasm (x2) made short work of it.
I am currently contemplating a "summon black pudding" spell to freak them out, after stumbling over the Drow spell "Engulfing Terror"