OOZE GALORE

Oozes and slimes. I have been going back to these creatures for my swamp area. Some players may have found them during chapter 1, if they snuck through Dor'Gallon's fort, but even then they were completely avoidable. The 3 oozes that made it into chapter 1 will be in the game plus a number of other oozes, jellies, slimes and cubes.

In chapter 2 they will be 1 of the three factions that wander the swamps, the other two are undead and lizardfolks. When wandering the swamps, in the southern portion, oozes will pop up up as wandering monsters.

Oozes have acids that can destroy both armor and weapons. Whenever an ooze is attacked there is a reflex save to destroy the attacker's weapon, main hand first then off hand. When oozes attack there is a reflex save to prevent armor from being destroyed, shield first then armor. If the reflex save fails the individual item also has a save before getting destroyed. I figured magical items should be more resilient then mundane items. For the items save it rolls a d20 plus a bonus. The bonus is figured by first counting all the item properties, then using the price of an item to assign a multiplier, (<18,000 x1, 18,000 - 42,000 x2, 4,2000 - 130,000 x3, etc). The DC is taken from the ooze, the bigger and nastier the ooze the higher the DC, the DC is then increased by the number of times the weapon has been exposed to ooze acid.  Roll = d20 +(# properties * cost multiplier) vs Ooze DC + times exposed. At some point I will need to set up a script for a blacksmith to restore your weapons and armors or an item to restore them. There will be an Ooze resistant ointment that can be used on armor and weapons and will provide a immunity to the ooze for 6 rounds. during that time the exposure numbers will not go up. The oozes will not dissolve plot items or other items marked immune with a local variable.

On damage the oozes will also split if attacked with a slashing weapon. This is for weapons only and will not split if slashing damage is done with a spell. The oozes will decrease in size by 50% with each split and their hitpoints will decrease by 1/2. The ooze will go no smaller than 25% it's default appearance size. When fighting oozes if the wrong weapons are used the player will quickly be surrounded by a swarm. Even low level oozes can be difficult with bad tactics.

Recently, I discovered an error in my scripting. Weapons were being destroyed when oozes where damaged by spells or eldritch blast. The Fred solved the issue and everything is working fine. I need to get that updated script into chapter 1, so far no one has reported it. So either they are close enough to the oozes that they think it is suppose to happen or their weapons are either ranged or just good at making the ooze saves.

I have also created a script system for oozes to be on the ceiling. I originally started using the acid blob traps in my swamp ooze area, but didn't like how it worked. A player shouldn't be able disarm an ooze over their head and traps are immune to damage. So I made a few blueprints and a number of scripts. In the toolset an ipoint is place where the acid blobs will hang out, they are immobile on the ceiling. At the first heartbeat they spawn in the actual ooze placeable and destroy themselves. I do this because the ooze placeable uses the citymblock appearance and it is invisible in the toolset. The ipoint makes it easy to the place the oozes but I was unable to mouse over and target it during testing. Initially the item is unusable and just hangs out hidden. There is a search radius around the ooze that the player may discover it and there is an attack radius. If the ooze is not found and the player is within the attack radius, it will "drop" down onto the character doing 2 d4 of acid damage and spawn in an acid blob. If the ooze is discovered the placeable changes to usable and has a green glowing ball floating in the area marking the ooze location. The ooze may then be safely targeted from a distance. If the ooze is killed the player gets xp on a scale based on their level, if it isn't killed the placeable item is destroyed and an acid blob is spawned. What is nice about this as well is, if the player has the feeling that some evil designer decided to pepper a corridor with ceiling oozes they can launch several aoe spells and try to wipe out a bunch. Those that are not killed outright will drop down and attack.

I am still working out a few things with this system, but I feel at this point it is nearly complete. The only thing I really need to do is modify the newly spawned acid blob to reflect any damage it received on the ceiling before dropping.

Another ooze related addition for this area is slime zombies. Base on the olive slime zombies from the Tome of Horror source book. While there are no olive slimes, I thought having the zombies would be a nice touch for this dungeon crawl area.

Here is a list of the oozes: (no screen shots, even though I've been testing like mad)

Simple oozes. Will split and destroy non magical items (item has no properties)
Acid Blob CR2
Grey Ooze CR4

Dangerous Oozes, will destroy magical items.
Black Pudding CR7
Living Muck CR9

With the oozes I have been setting up most encounters to have small number of the difficult oozes with a large number of the simple oozes. That way some items will be left after the fight. Certain points will have much more of the dangerous oozes and the party will either need to rely on spell and ranged damage or have the immunity ointment.

Jellies: Will not destroy items but will still split.
Ochre Jelly CR 5
Mustard jelly CR7 -Has a slow aura surrounding it.

Gelatinous Cubes: Do not split and do not dissolve items. Have damage resistance /magic
Normal cube CR3
Large Cube CR9
Huge Cube CR19

For the slime zombies their CR is between 1-3, depending on their source creature. Right now I have humans and lizardfolks, but some other swamp creatures may become slime zombies. I have been using Derek H's zombie skins, zombie_egg for these creatures.

For a large slime area I figured that there needed to be some kind of slime cult or worshipers. So there will be pockets of slime clerics and wizards that will attack from behind the hoards of oozes and slimes. I still need to go through and customize their spells to reflect their love of oozes and acids. I still haven't descided what the end boss will be for this area. I have the spot figured out and a little puzzle to get into that spot. I will need to come up with something that is mostly ooze like but has some form of intelligence, and be of monsterous size.