Brown Mold (CR 2): Brown mold feeds on warmth, drawing heat from anything around it. It normally comes in patches 5 feet in diameter, and the temperature is always cold in a 30-foot radius around it. Living creatures within 5 feet of it take 3d6 points of nonlethal cold damage. Fire brought within 5 feet of brown mold causes the mold to instantly double in size. Cold damage, such as from a cone of cold, instantly destroys it.
If you put Brown Mold in a box of some kind would its effects go through the box? Does its cold effect penetrate everything out to 30' for the cool feeling and 5' for the damage? Or is it blocked by a certain thickness?
This is for making traps where a creature opens the chest incorrectly and when the lid is lifted the metal box containing the brown mold opens doing 3d6 cold damage to the creature opening the box.
Maybe use the blocking of detect spells or even less?
...can penetrate barriers, but 1 foot of stone, 1 inch of common metal, a thin sheet of lead, or 3 feet of wood or dirt blocks it.
Undead do not take damage from Brown Mold.
If you had zombies covered in brown mold and a PC is surrounded by the Brown Moldy Zombies do they take 3d6 damage, or 3d6 damage per patch?
It reads like only on the persons turn if they are withing 5' of brown mold they take only 3d6 even if there are completely surronded.
What happens if a living creature moves withing 5' then away then back within 5' in a single round, dose it take 3d6 or 3d6 twice?
What if a skeleton covered in brown mold does the cha-cha within 5' of a creature stepping away and back. With a 30' movement a creature can step away and back 6 times doing a double move. Provoking an attack of opportunity since it is all the same move action. Would the poor creature standing next to the Brown Mold Skeleton Dancer take 18d6 cold damage?
I do not know what the RAW on this might be, or if it even addresses it:
1) I would work it like the blocking of other spell effects as you have noted with the detect spells.
2) I would *not* have damage from a single source affect a creature more than once during a turn, no matter how many times that source comes within range during that turn.
3) Not sure on multiple sources affecting a single target. Since the description specifically says "It normally comes in patches 5 feet in diameter..." one could argue that each 5' patch has the described affect on each target within its area of effect. Then again, if I put an L-shaped patch of the stuff 10'x15' in a dungeon I'd consider the whole thing a single source, not four individual sources. Paint it on a bunch of zombies...I'm not sure how I'd handle that.
M
Note: My L-shaped patch of brown mold shown below.
xxx
x
Brown Mold (CR 2): Brown mold feeds on warmth, drawing heat from anything around it. It normally comes in patches 5 feet in diameter, and the temperature is always cold in a 30-foot radius around it. Living creatures within 5 feet of it take 3d6 points of nonlethal cold damage. Fire brought within 5 feet of brown mold causes the mold to instantly double in size. Cold damage, such as from a cone of cold, instantly destroys it.
And why is a 5th level spell listed as the example of instantly destroying the CR2 mold? Does it really take 9d6 of cold damage-in a single blow-to get rid of the stuff?
I hate this stuff; the dungeon my group is currently traipsing about in is filled with it.
Each 5' patch can be easily destroyed by a 0 level spell: ray of frost. The mage can cast it all day and be the hero.
Sounds as if any cold damage will destroy it. Ray of Frost, a cantrip, for instance. Unless I'm misreading the entry...
M
Edit: ninja'd
That's the way I'd like to read it as well, but something says if that were the case (any cold damage destroys a 5' section), the listing would not have referenced a 5th level spell.
When you read a sentence and you see something set off by commas, such as this clause, you can generally disregard it without losing the meaning of the sentence. So, then, "Cold damage instantly destroys it." Ray of Frost deals cold damage, so it will destroy it.
Cone of Cold would, of course, destroy all patches that fell within its area of effect, making it a quicker way of dealing with large patches. Of course, if you have the time, you could just blast away at patch after patch with Ray of Frost until you got it all.
M
When you read a sentence and you see something set off by commas, such as this clause, you can generally disregard it without losing the meaning of the sentence. So, then, "Cold damage instantly destroys it." Ray of Frost deals cold damage, so it will destroy it.
Cone of Cold would, of course, destroy all patches that fell within its area of effect, making it a quicker way of dealing with large patches. Of course, if you have the time, you could just blast away at patch after patch with Ray of Frost until you got it all.
M
It's not me that needs convincing. Our GM sees a reference to a 5th level spell, and rules that it takes equivalent damage to destroy it. Given Cone of Cold as the only reference in the listing, I can't fault his decision no matter how much I disagree with it. My only logical argument is the CR2.
At any rate, I didn't mean to derail the topic at hand: I think a brown mold trap would be quite the nasty surprise, while potentially remaining non-lethal. It's always nice to capture the thief.
Give him a dictionary...and point to this listing. :) Then hit him with the corner of it. Make it a heavy one.
M
O'Reilly fears the Brown Mold.
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Not sure about the non-lethality of brown mold, actually... once you get to 0 hit points from non-lethal damage, all further non-lethal damage counts as lethal. But I have a question about how this is applied...
Say I have a first-level wizard with 6 hit points, who takes 16 points of non-lethal damage from brown mold. How is this applied? The first 6 points drop him to zero, and the next ten become lethal damage? Or the 16 points drop him to zero (or -10?) and any further damage is lethal? If it's the first way, conceivably you could kill my example wizard outright if he had a Con of 10 or less?
Assuming your wizard has 6 maximum hps (as in when fully healed), a 6 hp wizard who took 16 points of non-lethal would end up at -4 real hps and be dying. Once nonlethal damage = current (real) hps, the character goes unconscious. Once nonlethal damage = total "fully healed" hp, additional damage becomes real, i.e. starts subtracting from actual hps.
In your example, the first 6 pts of NL damage renders the character unconscious. Then the additional (10 pts) NL becomes real and is subtracted from the real hps.
See p191-2 for a better and more detailed explanation.
Hope this helps.
One has to wonder what happens if brown mold gets dropped into a volcano.
There has to be some state at which brown mold goes dormant or otherwise stops growing. Otherwise you have entire deserts blanketed with brown mold in an afternoon and active volcanoes clogged with the stuff like very large magma-filled zits.
It should also be determined what level of mundane cold will kill it. Alchemists with alcohol and mercury thermometers in cold climes would have samples exposed and see at what temperature it dies.
Probably the best solution for the "brown mold covers the planet" scenario is to make it so that brown mold is not immune to its own cold, so once a colony reaches a certain size, it freezes itself to death.
One has to wonder what happens if brown mold gets dropped into a volcano.
There has to be some state at which brown mold goes dormant or otherwise stops growing. Otherwise you have entire deserts blanketed with brown mold in an afternoon and active volcanoes clogged with the stuff like very large magma-filled zits.
It should also be determined what level of mundane cold will kill it. Alchemists with alcohol and mercury thermometers in cold climes would have samples exposed and see at what temperature it dies.
Probably the best solution for the "brown mold covers the planet" scenario is to make it so that brown mold is not immune to its own cold, so once a colony reaches a certain size, it freezes itself to death.
That's probably why it's stated as coming in patches of 5' diameter, because if it gets too large it starves/freezes itself to death.
Also, Deserts get pretty cold at night, so that would kill it or at least slow its spread.
| 1 person marked this as FAQ candidate. |
The entry for Brown Mold does not say it is immune to fire damage, just that it doubles in size.
Therefore I wonder if fire damage destroys a 5' patch but since I brought the fire within 5' it doubled to two 5' patches. I burns the first 5' patch and now the second 5' patch doubles giving me two 5' patches with the first one destroyed.
Sort fo like the following the X is the brown mold, F for fire, B for burnt patch of brown mold.
F X
FXX
FBXX
If you used a fire spell that could completly engulf the brown mold so when it tries to spread that batch is burnt as well, maybe that could get rid of it?
I think the developers should let us know is brown mold immune to fire. Besides cold is there anything that can destroy it?
I think you could use a sphere of anhilation to kill brown mold. Also I thought of putting skelton archers on a path of brown mold. I alsways thought ray of frost would destroy brown mold.
Brown mold growing near a hot spring would work.
Large patches of brown mold will likely turn into doughnuts as the center part will die out while the outside could feed.