So, I was perusing the ooze entries in the SRD for unrelated reasons when I remembered a question that had arisen in a game a while back.
As a rule, oozes have crap dexterity. No big deal for them, they're oozes, but what happens when I decide to exploit that? I can't find any entry that says oozes are immune to grappling, ability damage, or the entangled condition.
What happens if I hit a 1 dex ooze with a net and it ends up with (effectively) a -3 dexterity? And even if you rule it is immune to the net because it's a freaking net, what if you hit it with an ooey-gooey tanglefoot bag?
Since ray of clumsiness does not appear to have ported over with other 3.5 spells, what other methods are there of cheaply dealing a small amount of dex damage/penalty to an ooze? Or did I miss something and I'm completely wrong about their immunities?
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First rule of oozes: You do not grapple oozes. Second rule of oozes: You do NOT grapple oozes.
PRD: wrote: Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage, but they cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence, penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1. So, a penalty to dexterity won't do anything. You'll need dexterity damage or drain.
Last I read, you can grapple an ooze: you just don't want to. Oozes do Acid damage, and they instantly do acid damage every round you are grappling them. So you can throw a net over a black pudding, but unless your net is made out of glass, it will dissolve in one round. Most DMs would rule that most oozes could squeeze through the holes of a net, even if the rules don't specifically say so.
If your character were a good grappler, you could theoretically successfully grapple a black pudding. Each successfull grapple check will inflict 2d6 points of damage on the grappler, 21 Reflex Save negates. Unless your character is incorporeal, your character is an object and therefore take an additional 21 points of damage/round after the first round. The pudding could continue to make Slam attacks against you, 2d6 +2d6 acid + grab and constrict. The pudding itself gets a +17 on its Grapple check. A Pinned Black Pudding can still make Grapple checks to free itself, inflicting 21 points of acid damage/round if it fails in its Grapple attempt.
The Tie Up Grapple action would theoretically work on a Black Pudding, except that its acid would eat through any rope in 1 round, even Iron Rope turned into iron, assuming the DM does not rule that the pudding can squeeze through the gaps in the rope/chain. I guess you might Move your Black Pudding into a clay pot or substitute a clay pot for rope as part of a Tie Up action. Ask your DM. In PFS, clay pots, last I checked, are not actually standard items on the item lists, so PFS characters are not allowed to own objects that might contain Black Puddings. You might create an appropriate pot with Marvelous Pigments. Meanwhile, while a clay pot is immune to acid damage, it wouldn't be immune to the slam attacks, and it could batter out of the pot pretty fast.
Remember that by the end of the PFS adventure, you won't be able to keep the Ooze unless it's on the treasure list, and I bet it won't be. For all that, you should expect table variation. And if the operation were as successful as possible, your grappler would take a significant amount of damage.
You have the soul of a gamer.
Good luck!
These all deal dexterity damage and probably aren't poison:
Icy Tomb (magus arcana),
Cockatrice Grit (wondrous item from the Rival's Guide),
Rod of Nettles (Ultimate Equipment, may not work since it's described as "venomous"),
Zul (magical trident from Pathfinder #56, Raiders of the Fever Sea),
Venomsweat Salve (wondrous item, Monster Codex),
Calcific Touch (4th level arcane spell, APG),
Snowfall Ord (wondrous item, Blood of the Elementals),
Excruciating Deformation (3rd level arcane spell, Ultimate Magic),
Fleshworm Infestation (4th level spell, Ultimate Magic),
Polar Midnight (9th level spell, Ultimate Magic),
kadance wrote: PRD: wrote: Some spells and abilities cause you to take an ability penalty for a limited amount of time. While in effect, these penalties function just like ability damage, but they cannot cause you to fall unconscious or die. In essence, penalties cannot decrease your ability score to less than 1. So, a penalty to dexterity won't do anything. You'll need dexterity damage or drain. THERE we go. I figured there was going to be something. As much as I like the idea of throwing glue at the living blob and watching it slow down and harden into a lumpy callous, it didn't really seem like a trick that would work.
Also, thanks for the list. Looks like most good tricks don't work (polymorph-school magic, poison) though it is amusing to me that Fleshworm infestation does.
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