Have someone/an organization come rescue them? Another group could be interested in the ruins and see the party in danger.
Otherwise they're all dead.
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Mind that the jelly has no vision and no other precise sense. At best it can only pinpoint the location of any combatants (rendering them Hidden) but never see them precisely. Not that this would save a character that is already Grabbed.
... Also taking a peak at your link, it appears you've grabbed a thread from PF1 which is not applicable to this situation. The Ochre Jelly should not be dealing more than 2d8+6 Bludgeoning and 2d4 Acid (still about 20 each) assuming it maintains the Grab with its third action (dealing no damage at all), and each of those actions will be resisted with a basic Fort save. The Champion should be able to further reduce the damage on one of these allies if they are standing close enough with their reaction (I believe the consensus was the apply the resistance to *both* the bludgeoning and acid separately).
Finally, going for broke the party all have options for bludgeoning in the form of their fists. Then of course, there's always running if they can extract the grappled allies using Aid actions. The jellies are not nearly fast enough to catch them, and encountering a monster whose weakness you didn't bring to the dungeon is an excellent time to make a tactical retreat and return all the wiser for their experience.
Mind that the jelly has no vision and no other precise sense. At best it can only pinpoint the location of any combatants (rendering them Hidden) but never see them precisely. Not that this would save a character that is already Grabbed.
...
That makes me wonder, the jelly does have "Motion Sense" but it is neither designated precise nor imprecise as other entries are.
So what is it? Is there a note in the Bestiary?Links for comparison
No descriptor:
Ochre Jelly
Bulette with imprecise sense:
Bulette
Giant bat with precise sense:
Giant Bat
Unless the party can do a lot of bludgeoning damage or the right kind(s) of magic damage an ochre jelly can be a really tough encounter. A slashing / piercing rogue and a glaive specialist are going to be in serious trouble. You ended up designing an encounter that your specific party is particularly ill-equipped to deal with. Making it a considerably harder than +1 level above encounter. It's not that the jelly is under-rated, but rather it's exposed a vulnerability in your party. A bit like when a party without AoE meets a swarm for the first time (especially in 1e).
It also looks like you're using a bunch of 1st edition stats in some places, btw. Your dice numbers don't mesh with the 2nd edition ochre jelly statblock.
If you don't want any deaths then let the PCs run away. Jellies are really slow and easy to retreat from. Just have to deal with that grab... a hero point to achieve that might be reasonable. Or just fudge the Escape attempts. Or the party loses two characters and escapes with the other three.
I'd avoid a deus ex machina 'rescue', that almost always feels cheap and unsatisfying in my experience.
Ooze AC is very low. I agree with the above poster that punching their way out is the way to go. If they focus one of the oozes the damage ought to add up. 3 actions to punch from the champion and rogue ought to reduce one of the oozes down pretty low. Then the sorcerer can nuke it hopefully.
Retreat seems to be consigning some of these PCs to death.... but it may be the best option. Death sucks, but it is part of the game and while it carries problematic consequences, it also serves to ratchet up the stakes which is a good thing.
All of this is a great learning opportunity for this party. Being an adventurer means being prepared, and they aren’t. Hopefully they survive, or at least most of them do. They are likely to go to the shop and be sure everybody has a bludgeoning option. That's a good thing. And if they pick up emergency consumables, like alchemist's fire, acid flasks, elixirs of life... all the better. These are adventuring standards for a reason, and if they were so equipped they would not be in such dire straights right now.
“Experience is a hard teacher because it gives the test first and the lesson second,” (I forget who to attribute that to, but it's an excellent quote)
Mind that the jelly has no vision and no other precise sense. At best it can only pinpoint the location of any combatants (rendering them Hidden) but never see them precisely. Not that this would save a character that is already Grabbed.
RAW motionsense is most likely a precise sense. This is because all imprecise senses are listed as:
Tremoresense (imprecise)
Scent (imprecise)
etc.
Meanwhile other senses sometimes list 'precise' but sometimes don't:
Darkvision
Echolocation (precise)
But it's up to the GM it seems. I think i'd probably run it as a precise sense if the PCs are moving, but if they properly limit their movement i'd run it as imprecise. And they'd be undetectable if they're completely still or find a way to mask their movement completely.
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This wasn't an accident, it was a trap. The Jelly is the Kobolds' pet. It was bred so that its acid is a general anesthetic. Once the Jelly knocks them all unconscious, the Kobolds come and capture them, setting up an epic escape arc.
Sounds a little bit of suboptimal tactics coupled with incomplete equipment and / or missing ingame experience.
1) Most heavy armors and even some medium armors come with gauntlets and can easily be used for punching and delivering bludgeoning (simple weapon, d4). Else you need to rely on your fists.
1.1) Even unmodified shields can be used for bashing and will delivery bludgeoning damage too (martial weapon, d4). If somebody has a shield boss (d6), all the better.
1.2) A torch does not need to be lit to act like an improvised bludgeoning weapon (-2 to hit, d4).
1.3) A glaive in principle is still a staff with a tip, so allowing the fighter to use the blunt end of the glaive as an improvised club or staff (d6 or d8, -2 to hit) seems not too far off.
1.4) Spells like Hydraulic Push (everything apart from fire really, so water, air or earth) deal bludgeoning damage and push the target, effectively ending any grapple.
2) Don't know your party set-up, but my cleric would not have gone for a 2-action Harm after the party just ate 2 crits and 2 grabs. A 2-action heal would have netted somebody 20 points of healing even with a result of only 4 on 2d8. Also, why didn't the group heal up by mundane means (medicine or champion focus power) after the fall?
3) Perhaps offer the group a means of defeating one of the monsters that does not look like extreme "deus ex machina". For example as the party already fell into the crypt the ceiling might not be as stable as it seems to look, so after a successful perception or knowledge architecture (or similar) check, the heroes may notice that another collapse is imminent and can be forced. Oddly enough one of the oozes is directly below the potential cave-in zone and who knows if that kind of solution was forseen in the adventure?
4) As @Aratorin said, as a benevolent GM always look for a way out in cases the party is simply out of luck, however do not pardon them if they simply act stupid. Death always needs to be a real possibility.
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The problem is the players have repelled into a cave via ropes, so escape is going to be very difficult, thus the fear of a TPK.
Then you made the encounter even more deadly! Since one of the two primary weaknesses of ochre jellies is their lack of mobility, and you negated that weakness. Leaving only one weakness: melee bludgeoning attacks from PCs with decent attack bonuses.
Thus my point about maybe the jelly needs to have a weakness to something.
They already have two major weaknesses:
12AC meaning easy to hit (edit: not crit, thank you Ubertron_X) with bludgeoning weapons.
15 ft speed.
That and the minor weakness of not being able to detect anything at all beyond 60ft.
Their reflex save is only +4 too.
I wouldn't do transference of your encounter design error into a 'paizo designed the monster wrong' conclusion, or you won't learn the lesson here. That lesson being: the level of a creature is only a general guide to its danger; how it matches to your specific party and the setting in which the fight happens has a huge bearing on that.
I don't mean to beat up on you. I've screwed up encounter designs too! We all do it sometimes. But don't blame your tools, blame yourself and learn from it.
In the mean time your way out probably comes down to your players. Are they the sort of group that's ok with a few sudden deaths that they couldn't do much about? Or are they the kind of group that won't mind if their GM rather obviously deus ex machina's a battle that they miscalculated?
You might also be able to do something with their motion detection: if the PCs can create the sense of something moving a lot nearby (that isn't a PC) then perhaps the jellies could become distracted and head in that direction? Throwing rocks maybe, or a summoned monster thrashing about, or an illusion that can create vibration, etc. They are mindless so this should be relatively simple for the party to pull off. You might even let the grabbed PCs be let go by the ochres via staying very still and another PC moving a lot. The jellies have very low perception so the check shouldn't be too hard to succeed at.
They have two major weaknesses:
12AC meaning easy to crit with bludgeoning weapons.
15 ft speed.
That and the minor weakness of not being able to detect anything at all beyond 60ft.
*cough cough*
Immunities: acid, critical hits,...
They have two major weaknesses:
12AC meaning easy to crit with bludgeoning weapons.
15 ft speed.
That and the minor weakness of not being able to detect anything at all beyond 60ft.*cough cough*
Immunities: acid, critical hits,...
Ok good spot :) But at least you can guarantee you'll hit it with bludgeoning :)
It just occurred to me that 'summon construct' would be very effective against an ochre jelly, since 'An ochre jelly's acid damages only flesh—not bone, stone, wood, or other materials.' So an ochre jelly is not going to be able to damage most summoned constructs at all.
It just occurred to me that 'summon construct' would be very effective against an ochre jelly, since 'An ochre jelly's acid damages only flesh—not bone, stone, wood, or other materials.' So an orche jelly is not going to be able to damage most summoned constructs at all.
Damage 1d8+7 bludgeoning plus 2d4 acid and Grab
Afaik the bludgeoning damage will always go through, even if your construct is immune to this type of acid.
It just occurred to me that 'summon construct' would be very effective against an ochre jelly, since 'An ochre jelly's acid damages only flesh—not bone, stone, wood, or other materials.' So an orche jelly is not going to be able to damage most summoned constructs at all.Damage 1d8+7 bludgeoning plus 2d4 acid and GrabAfaik the bludgeoning damage will always go through, even if your construct is immune to this type of acid.
Yes. But that's going to be very low: Animated armour (level 2 creature) has 9 hardness, for example. The skeletons would be in trouble though, you are right.
Yes. But that's going to be very low: Animated armour (level 2 creature) has 9 hardness, for example. The skeletons would be in trouble though, you are right.
If we ignore the fact that a level 2 creature requires a level 3 spell (so party level 5) a Animated Armor has AC17 and 20HP vs a to-hit roll of +15, which means regular crits on 12+, respectively 8+ after it has received 10 or more damage or has been critted and the AC goes down to 13.
Worst case the Animated Armor will be taken out in just one crit dealing 29 to 30 damage (2d8+14). It can probably still be taken out by moderate rolls in one round using up 2 attacks (12+ , 13+). If the ooze never crits it would endure up to 8 average hits, but I find this very improbable.
You can always GM-magic the HP to be lower..
Matthew Colville has a great perspective on when you design an encounter that you think ought to work and end up with a situation where you're likely to kill PCs without meaning to. As a game designer he enjoys the ability to test encounters until it's juuuust at the right difficulty, then he ships the game. As a GM, we don't have that luxury - we put an encounter together, at best we do a bit of math to figure out if the party can reasonably hit the enemy, then it's play time, and real people's PCs are there facing whatever it is we put in front of them - good, bad, or otherwise.
So, Colville's perspective is, why make the players suffer for the lack of playtesting? if it was supposed to be a low stakes encounter and it's shaping up to be a high stakes encounter, do something about it.
In this case you've already attacked them so they have a rough idea of how dangerous the attacks are. They've hit the thing and know how the split works. What they DON'T know is how many HP the jellies have. So... change the HP. I'm too lazy to scroll up, I think you said the jellies have around 40-50 HP left - cut that in half, at least. 20 HP ought not to be too hard to burn through even with punching. The champion is likely STR based, so a d4 punch is around 7 damage per hit. At 4th level the punch should have a + 10 or so to hit so hitting is practically guaranteed - even the 3rd punch is fairly likely to land. So in 3 punches a 20 HP jelly is dead or nearly dead.
Mind that the jelly has no vision and no other precise sense. At best it can only pinpoint the location of any combatants (rendering them Hidden) but never see them precisely. Not that this would save a character that is already Grabbed.
RAW motionsense is most likely a precise sense. This is because all imprecise senses are listed as:
Tremoresense (imprecise)
Scent (imprecise)etc.
Meanwhile other senses sometimes list 'precise' but sometimes don't:
Darkvision
Echolocation (precise)But it's up to the GM it seems. I think i'd probably run it as a precise sense if the PCs are moving, but if they properly limit their movement i'd run it as imprecise. And they'd be undetectable if they're completely still or find a way to mask their movement completely.
Ah, yes indeed. I'm afraid I have to agree. This time it was my own PF1 senses tingling when I took 'sense' to mean 'akin to Blindsense' but the sense/sight distinction is no longer strictly true. In fact, I would say that the reason why Echolocation is called out as precise is to specify that it is different from the norm for hearing--changing the category of an existing sense, rather than granting a new one.
My mistake begins because I took 'no vision' being called out specifically to point out a lack of precise senses, but in hindsight its existence is more likely indicative of its immunity to visual effects. Then on facing a rather challenging encounter where a sewer ooze roughed up a few characters from a low-level party I came to the (now obviously erroneous) conclusion that its damage must be intended to make up for its miss chance... which taking a moment with the creature builder has cleared up that misconception.
TPK
There's many factors here that should've been considered well before this got to as bad as it got. First up, the encounter. Oozes are very durable, even if easy to hit, cannot be critically hit, are usually only affected by a subset of attacks, and may even possess resistances to normally usable attacks. Considering only Bludgeoning, Fire, and Cold damage are the only relatively usable options here, and you have party members not properly equipped to deal with this encounter, this ramps up the difficulty significantly. Next, the positioning and battlefield. The fact that the oozes were able to get right into the weak (and valuable) party members puts the PCs at a devastating disadvantage, and with the PCs not utilizing proper tactics to rearrange the battlefield to their advantage instead of doing what they did, results in a very bad case for the PCs. And with no distance between the oozes and the PCs (oozes are also usually very slow), the oozes being able to inflict their devastating attacks before PCs can act is very, very bad.
Rogue going up and stabbing stuff because it doesn't know better might be fine in this case; splitting the oozes for area attacks like bombs or spells may be a decent tactic if you can handle the potential incoming damage, but the Champion could've been able to use their Reaction to help his party members reduce some damage or even negate the grabbing part of the attack if the Champion Cause was a Liberator or so. Even despite that, being able to reduce damage on a weaker party member being affected (like the Party Sorcerer) could've saved the Sorcerer from being splatted so hard and being in a dire situation.
Sorcerer being in the position they were in should've better considered their spell choice. A Burning Hands wouldn't work too well in getting them out considering these are fresh and with the Champion's Occult roll, should know that they are very durable and it takes a lot to defeat oozes, and even while grabbed, a Flat 5 check would be needed since Somatic components are part of the spell. That means 1 in 5 instances of this happening, his attempt would do nothing.
The Sorcerer might have been smarter in utilizing True Strike before attempting to escape. True Strike works on Attack Rolls, yes, but the Escape action has the Attack trait. This means that True Strike would work on Escape attempts (and also that further attempts to escape after the first incurs Multiple Attack Penalties), meaning being able to roll twice and take the better result will yield more chances in successfully escaping to safer ground and following up with more effective spells. Also, since True Strike is Verbal only, no flat 5 check to cast it. With 2 actions to escape effectively twice at full bonus, you'll still have an action left over to run away. While this can provoke Attacks of Opportunity, oozes almost never have them, so they should be safe to escape to the back lines.
The Party Cleric attempting to defeat enemies like Oozes with precious spell slots like Harm spells when he could be using his slots to heal his heavily wounded party members was not a very smart tactic; it was probably the worst thing he could've done compared to using a 2 action heal on the Sorcerer or even Fighter, who can swing with a very high bonus, hit the Ooze 3 times with an appropriate weapon, and significantly beat or destroy said ooze if they had good enough damage rolls.
That being said, an ooze might have a PC grappled to Dying, but then will probably move on to PCs attempting to strike it, since while it's mindless, it's not suicidal. In those cases, the PCs do have a chance to stabilize after the fact, or the PCs can attempt to bring them back. (Champion with Lay On Hands would be great at this, as would the Cleric with heal spells.) Is this impossible for this group of PCs to win? No. With the right tactics and priorities they can still make it out. But it won't be easy, and it still might not happen.
Ultimately, this is just a GM oversight of throwing an ill-equipped party against a specialized foe. I've had this happen to our group when us having a lack of bludgeoning weapons were dealing with elite skeletal champions beating our faces in and heavily resisting our attacks. We've also had open encounters meant to be nasty be a walk in the park due to bad rolls or being able to position and control the battlefield, whereas minor encounters with enclosed spaces became much more deadly. (Which we had with an Ochre Jelly, nonetheless!) With reduced space, less ability and capability to control the battlefield means enemies who can run amok (like oozes with their ridiculous physical offense) most likely will, and trash the PCs. Just chalk it up for later and move on.
I go back and forth on whether I want to be critical of the cleric. Without knowing how the character was made, it's hard to say what they could have done. Maybe they had Harm Font and aren't built to heal? That's possible. A Cleric of Nethys can be built as a blaster, after all. Or maybe it was late in the day, they had already used up their Font, and simply didn't have a better option.
It's not like PF1 when you can simply convert your prepared spells (in this case harm) into heal spells.
Though I maintain my stance that if the whole party is doing slashing damage, and NObody has a solid bludgeoning (or piercing for that matter) option... IMO at minimum each and every martial character must have a dagger on their belt and must cover at LEAST two of the 3 physical damage types with good options.
After all, whatever your preferred attack routine is, it's hardly overwhelming to tuck a dagger into your boot and have a morning star hanging on your belt, and those two weapons together with the Versatile trait cover all 3.
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I am going to say something heretical here. I just killed one party member and the rest barely escaped from the ochre jelly in my encounter. I ran it by the book. Reviewing the fight afterwards, I have a hard time believing a jelly that split twice and is reduced to 4 HP after sustaining other damage can still inflict full damage.
The logic is just not there. I followed the rules even though it felt wrong, and logically doesn’t make sense. I then had an epiphany.
This is MY game for MY friends. I am in control. I need to do what I perceive is right, even if it is in conflict with the rules. I did not step in and there is a party death. I am okay with that. If people don’t die, there is no tension nor drama. But when the rules feel wrong, don’t be afraid to bend them to what you feel is right. Trust your instincts. This is a game. It’s supposed to be fun.
Of course don’t do this in sanctioned play, but for home fun, don’t be a slave to the rules if the rules don’t make sense. Do what feels right to you and your party.