Having grappled his fill (3 PCs and one NPC), my floatsam ooze has swum away from the Sea Wyvern. While the NPC is dead, the 3 PCs still live. Unable to hurt the beast, they feign death in hopes that the creature doesn't finish them off. Since oozes aren't intelligent, I let this tactic work.
So now what? I've got an ooze swimming away, the un-grappled PCs not able to follow. Do the PCs remain stuck there until they starve to death? Does an ooze eventually transfer someone to it's "innards" to "digest" them and which point the PC starts to suffocate? How long before it would do that? One PC at a time?
Other thoughts?
I foresee two big problems (besides being digested)
For one being stuck onto a flotsam ooze - which means one could easily end up underwater for a prolonged time (= drowing) if it undulates the wrong way. Of course nibbling seabird and fish, or even larger predators like barracuda and sharks might feel attracted to wounded prey helpless stuck oonto the ooze.
Second, the I do not really see the ooze digesting things "inside" it, but simply through a process of osmosis - dissolving those organic parts of its victims in immediate contact. Which means - the stuck PCs are probably being digested already ? At least partially ? Icky !
But, WHY does a mindless ooze, obviously impervious to attacks, disengange from the ship it has grabbed to swim off ? This thing is mindless, as much so as they come ( OOZE !)... Actually I would simply have it return to the "Sea Wyvern" shortly, to offer the remeianing PC (and possible onboard NPCs played by the other players )to overcome it and free their comrades.
As an afterthought, I consider the ooze as a rather spectacularly misbegotten "advanced creature" - the only ooze I have ever seen which substantially increased its resilience (natural armour) by getting bigger, also the only ooze that even had "natural armour" - I assume the designer thought of the flotsam offering some prtoection, but does that really apply when this thing gets larger ? Same goes for the unexplained but suddenly applicable "improved grab" power the ooze has developed and the automatic free attack (no roll, no nothing ) it gets when someone has been grabbed by it. Two major powerss (Improved grab + constric) gained simply through size advancement ? It also eliminates the one signficant weaknesss oozes normally have, their abyssmal AC by increasing it even, into the 20ies, which is not all that easy to beat for a group around level 5-6
The whole setup caused major complaints from our group
My players had trouble with it as well, and probably would've fallen if the NPCs hadn't helped. (Skald can dish out a surprising amount of damage.)
I agree that the ooze would just continue to "digest" the bodies. Not knowing your group I can't really comment on how to recover from this.
I had posted a few months back about how difficult this encounter was. I have two aquatic PCs in my group so that helped a bit, but mainly the tides were turned by an effective use of a Wand of Grease and the Shadowcasters Umbral hand.
My PC's took a strange turn with the ooze. The Druid dropped universal solvent on it. She had picked up some vials of the stuff in response to the tanglefoot bag trap earlier in the AP. My take on the ooze was that it's secretions are what would enable it to grab, climb, hold onto anything. The universal solvent rendered the ooze unable to grab ahold of anyone, however it could still hit them with a slam attack. It smacked the warblade a couple times but the rest of the party just kept nailing it with lightening bolts and magic missle's from a distance. I allowed the universal solvent attack because the Sorcerer did ask the druid before attacking if she knew what kind of creature that was, she made a great Knowledge check roll and so knew a few things about the ooze. I had forgotten that she had that solvent though and next round she was dumping it on the ooze.