-0 to both for sure.
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-0 to both for sure.
-0 for the little one.
-0 for the big one because making a creature 10+ HD below yourself every dozen encounters that will probably just bugger off and terrorize some thorp is far less power creep than controlling a single wight.
If that often.
I mean, it takes a fair bit of blasting magic being stopped by your SR to trigger ... and blasting magic is generally considered weak. Plus, it's gotta be targeted blasting magic.
Then, of course, there's the question of is it 50 points of damage before or after its energy resistance is taken into account.
And I really can't see this thing being dangerous enough that a high level caster is going to waste spell slots and actions on throwing targeted blasting magic at it in combat. If it's annoying, it'll get slapped by a Save or ... spell, or targeted by minions. Or, if blasting magic is used, it'll probably be an AoE spell hitting more of the party, not a targeted spell.
And that's without the fact that most high level casters are likely to have a decent shot at making the knowledge check.
Besides, like you said, even if it does trigger, a droplet isn't exactly useful, even if you could control it ... which you probably can't.
They might be moderately interesting if Aoas had some way to draw aggro or whatever, but as-is, not even worth a second look. I kinda like the concept though.
It could also work if they had some baller defenses against weapon damage. If the raging orc barbarian only manages to deal 4 damage with a power attack, most parties will likely switch to magic immediately, expecting that it wouldn't be defensive against both.
Alternatively, if there was a standardized design concept that gave almost all amorphous, blobby creatures near perfect physical defenses with no particular magic defense, then a single creature that defied that and did the opposite could also work. "Oh, it's a floating ball of goo, better put away the swords." Oftentimes, the inconsistent design philosophy of D&D ruins such ideas.
OTOH, those "surprise mechanics" monsters only work once. Starting how I did, I've never even played in a party that would trust a 10x10 corridor with a "skeleton" in it. It's obviously a gelatinous cube. In this case, you would get the one amourphous blob that ignores both weapon and magic damage, news of which would almost certainly get around, and you make every other ooze, slime, and shlorping pile of chaos way less varied.
-0/-0 for the intelligent anti-magic spheres
Run it after a bunch of oozes with splitting?
Ie, mind trick the players into thinking it's just a new variant of something they've just seen a lot of? And nobody enjoys splitting opponents.
Or something like a nuclear toxyderm (blows up from slashing damage) - ran into one of those one time but our knowledge checks failed, boom instant accidental TPK on the first encounter.
But still, that only works if the players don't roll knowledge checks on everything they see, and even if they don't, or if they do and fail the knowledge checks the first time, it'll still only work the once.
As is -0 for both as written. I don't think the splitting is a real issue at 13th level. You still need to take 50 points of damage at once, and win your spell resistance. That's likely finite resources, which could be summon monster/summon nature's ally. And droplets don't look controllable. Even if you could tell them what you want them to do, which you can't. (how are these guardians if you can't even say "attack anyone but me that enters."?)
Interesting point is that droplets gain large size at 4 RHD, which makes it have decent physical stats. Without weapon or tool use, I'm not sure it matches up well to an Ogre. Quite hard to kill, but as stated earlier no way to draw aggro.
Also the no speech or even language use is worth noting. We sidestep non-speaking issues with assumed Int 3+ and DM allows it somehow, but before that with no language telepathy doesn't even work.
Good Move Silently, listen and spot, and tanky. But even at RHD 4 and Large +6 str isn't really amazing. Add weapon use and I might look harder at a +0 argument.
I like the idea of combining the two. "It has really good defenses, absorbs the spells you cast at it, and you have to deal with it in order to attack the goblin shaman its guarding. You still need a way for it to stop the PCs from just ignoring the blob entirely and going around.
See, I don’t like that. That’s either a recipe for a long and boring slogfest (you can barely hurt it, it can barely hurt you, and you can’t ignore it because Reasons) or for something that, if you give it meaningful offense, is probably going to be under-CR’d.
Now, as a part of an ensemble encounter, some of which are hard to affect with magic and some of which are hard to affect with non-magic? That might be interesting. Not quite there as written, of course.
They're oozes, and they're aquatic. Not much to say here.
Bloodbloater Ooze
Probably the most confusing Fiend Folio monster in terms of mechanics, and that's saying something.
The bloodbloater is a 2 HD swarm of diminutive oozes. Every other fiend folio swarm got updated to properly work with 3.5's rules, but this one for some reason was skipped over, causing it to have a size of 'medium'. It doesn't break too much because of the way swarm traits are worded, but it's weird. Stats are okay, with a very notable constitution score of 22. Land speed is a pitiful 5 ft., swim speed a reasonable 30 ft.
Special abilities are fire vulnerability (ouch), Distraction, and blood drain. Unlike virtually every other blood drain in the game, this one drains strength rather than constitution. Is that how the ability worked in 3.0, or is this just another crazy trait?
All things considered, the bloodbloater offers potent defensive abilities and good bulk for a mere two HD, but suffers from the lack of limbs, speed, and advancement options (maybe consider dragonfire adept?). The spider swarm, another 2 HD diminutive creature, managed to get +0, but the bloodbloater seems like a downgrade compared to it. For now, I'll assign -0, with the caveat that in an aquatic campaign this is probably worth playing.
Flotsam Ooze
Have your players wizened up to the 'treasure floating down the corridor' trick? Do they poke the air in front of them with a 10-foot-pole, fearing the day they see its end corrode away? Surprise them with an invisible ooze where they'd least suspect it: in the middle of the ocean!
Flotsam oozes are 2 HD, and medium-sized. Physical stats are decent (most notably constitution), special stats are horrid. The flotsam's sole attack is a weak slam (1d6) that does have the neat rider of auto-grappling its target.
Additionally, any creature grappled by the ooze's slam becomes the target of a free extra slam on its next turn. I remember submitting a War Mind flotsam ooze for the VC once, who'd grapple thousands of tiny animals, get a ton of free attacks-that-target-two-squares, and use those to deal ridiculous damage versus most opponents.
Other traits include the ability to hold on to weapons that hit you (decent at low levels), and partial invisibility in water.
Also of note is that with just one HD of advancement, the ooze becomes Large, which boosts its reach and damage output by a considerable margin.
At the end of the day, the flotzam ooze is still an ooze, though. Horrid movement outside of water, low mental stats, a lack of limbs or slots, and no clear advancement options (grapple fighter? dragonfire adept? totemist?) all contribute towards my final rating of -0 LA. Again, not bad, and arguably good enough to warrant playing in an aquatic campaign.
Reekmurk
Surprisingly interesting for a 5 HD ooze. It's huge-sized, with +10 or better to all physical stats, a 2d6 tentacle attack with bonus acid damage, cold immunity, surprisingly fast land and swim speeds (40 and 60 ft., respectively), and a great no-action mass-nauseate in Stench, which is even friendly!
It's got a poison ability that activates 'whenever it deals acid damage to a target'. The mental image of a reekmurk caster delivering poison through acid spells is certainly amusing (if hard to realize mechanically). Additionally, the reekmurk deals passive acid damage to all creatures in its reach, allowing for even more poison opportunities.
Of course, there's downsides. No limbs, low mental stats, incredibly punishing sunlight vulnerability, and 5 HD don't make for a great character, the passive acid tendrils are decidedly unfriendly, and advancement is once more unclear (acid-breathing dragonfire adept?). That said, the numbers on this are certainly big, and a 5th-level martial would have a hard time matching this.
In the end, I think I'll go for -0 anyway, with the now-familiar disclaimer that this could be completely viable in the right game.
A bunch of -0. The last one is interesting because it has a bunch of potential goodies, but its non friendly and lacking limbs communication etc. Might be an interesting form for some kind of ooze based shapeshifting something because it does not have a ton of HD so it would be potent for when you get it, assuming most of that is ex.
I think the bloodbloater got missed because it's under the "aquatic ooze" entry, not the "swarm" entry.
And, no, every other blood drain ability I can think of is Con, be it from 3.0 or 3.5.
The Reekmurk Tendrils ability is super unfriendly.
Though ... doesn't either dragonfire adept or dragon shaman have the ability to change the energy type on their breath weapon?
Hmmm. If you can get a Int or Cha or 10 or better, you can spam the acid splash cantrip with higher level spell slots, maybe even use the feat that lets you break up higher level spell slots into lower level spell slots, can't remember the name of it offhand.
Concur, LA -0 for all aquatic oozes.
Edit: All of their abilities are (Ex) ... on the other hand, how the heck would you get access to ooze type shapeshifting at that low a level?
Ooze creature alter self or polymorph. Or something like that. I am sure there is a way.
Oozemaster gains the ooze type at level 10, at which point alter self kind of works. Or yeah, just polymorph like a sane person.
Anyway, I think these are more interesting as monsters than most oozes are, but they don’t quite get over the “no limbs, no mouth, garbage mental scores” hurdle that most oozes have to contend with. -0 for all three.
I have a vague memory of using the bloodbloater ooze swarm in my very first campaign I GM’d. I don’t recall the outcome except that I did basically everything wrong in that campaign (I didn’t have a DMPC, but I made just about every other rookie mistake you can think of), so it probably wasn’t good.
Didn't we decide recently that, by RAW, all monsters get all magic item slots?
Anyway, I'm voting LA +0 for bloodbloater and flotsam ooze, mostly because it feels too depressing to give out all these -0s all the time, but also because I think they're plenty competent for low-level play with a barbarian or monk dip. Plus, I feel like it really takes only a few minor DM mercies to eliminate nearly all of the seriou handicaps, and the kind of DM who allows an ooze PC is most likely going to also be the kind that is willing to give out such mercies. So, I'm voting conservatively.
Reekmurk is a different story: the racial HD are an impediment here, so I'm voting enough everyone else: LA -0 for reekmurk. Though, a 1-level dip in Dragon Shaman gets you the aura that gives energy resistance 5, which would protect allies from your tendrils, so that's not too terrible an investment if you really want to be a reekmurk.
-0 to all three I think. They're interesting designs, and the idea of coming up with a build to take advantage of their gimmicks is fun, but actually playing with them as-is doesn't sound appealing.
No, we voted they get what slots that are similar enough. Like a wolf should have all of the slots since its anatomy is very similar to a humanoid, however, a snack will be missing a decent number of slots since it has no arms, legs, hands, and so on.
Bloodbloater Ooze seems like just passible as a +0
Flotsam Ooze a -0
Reekmurk I am on the fens, I think with century or awaken it would be a +0 but just barely.
-0 to all since their land speeds are pitiful. Bloodbloater's and reekmurks may be +0 in an aquatic campaign.
Reekmurk Warlock with the acid eldritch essence and chain shape and all the poison feats would be an interesting t3 character.
Reekmurk Psion with energy powers could be fun. I want to argue +0, but haven't had the time to actually look the creature up and see it's poison
Except the Vitriolic Blast Essence is a Greater invocation, and so the earliest it could be acquired is Warlock 11, or ECL 16.
That's a long time to be pretty terrible.
And you're giving up 5 class levels, and 3 invocations (a full quarter of the invocations you get), including all access to Dark invocations.
The poison is a Fort DC 15 ... which when updated to 3.5 is probably a scaling Con Based 10+1/2HD DC, so the baseline example should be Fort DC 17.
Initial and secondary damage are both 1d4 Dex. So not outstanding, but not terrible.
I would say that with significant optimization, it could be a nifty gimmick character.
However, I'd also say that it's even worse as a PC since its version of Sunlight Vulnerability is 3d6 damage per round of exposure to natural sunlight, and spells that create affect them as if they were Vampires.