gray ooze a fair monster?

[Otodetu]

a character (level 7 actually) managed to stumble into a gray ooze in a cavern and got affected by this:

Acid (Ex)
A gray ooze secretes a digestive acid that quickly dissolves organic material and metal, but not stone. Any melee hit or constrict attack deals acid damage. Armor or clothing dissolves and becomes useless immediately unless it succeeds on a DC 16 Reflex save. A metal or wooden weapon that strikes a gray ooze also dissolves immediately unless it succeeds on a DC 16 Reflex save. The save DCs are Constitution-based.

The ooze’s acidic touch deals 16 points of damage per round to wooden or metal objects, but the ooze must remain in contact with the object for 1 full round to deal this damage.

Is this ability just badly written or what?
The masterwork heavy armour the player used was dissolved after a failed reflex save and the creature promptly died, but still by the wording it can dissolve just about anything, magical or not... (even a adamantine mountain plate)

The player just felt a bit sad at the loss and moved on to get his spare clothes out of his bag, but i still feel this ability is a bit badly written, what does the forum say about this?

[Evard]

No worse than a rust monster...

[Johel]

Pretty much that, yes.

Oozes are just moving acid pools.
They are useful if players start to look like walking magic shops.
Otherwise, no other use than garbage bin or janitor.

[Keshay]

Most oozes, slimes and molds are "be careful or die" monsters.

They're a very good reason xp is also given for avoiding an encounter.

Best way to deal with them is to suck up the loss of whatever is melted the first round, run away, and throw stones at it from range.

As for its ability to melt magic items, they get extra bonuses to resist the acid effects (2+Cl needed to create) so they have a better chance of surviving an encounter. For the sake of fairness and sanity, however, my group has always played with the houserule that on a failed save, the item takes the acid damage as normal, modified by hardness and is only rendered useless and destroyed if its HP are dropped to zero.

It makes no sense that metal is instantaneously destroyed, but flesh takes only 1d6 damage a round. That would be some crazy acid, to be more corrosive to metal by several orders of magnitude. Even if such an acid did exist, whatever salts were created by the decomposition would also be highly toxic, and likely cause immediate death upon skin contact.

[Eldariel]

Oozes are slow and melee-range monsters. A party with casters or range-capable characters can quite easily deal with them through range, spells and Knowledge-checks (very key to not having your equipment broken). But yeah, they're pretty deadly, especially to melee characters who are already behind and are hurt worse by losing their weapon or armor. Eh, hope you have a Druid along, I guess.

And yeah, automatically dissolving items is just a poorly written part. It's supposed to deal the 16-point Acid-damage on a failed Ref-save. Armors can take that for quite a while, as can most magic weapons.

[Otodetu]

And yeah, automatically dissolving items is just a poorly written part. It's supposed to deal the 16-point Acid-damage on a failed Ref-save. Armors can take that for quite a while, as can most magic weapons.

For the sake of fairness and sanity, however, my group has always played with the houserule that on a failed save, the item takes the acid damage as normal, modified by hardness and is only rendered useless and destroyed if its HP are dropped to zero.

Yea something along these lines is what i was thinking too, i am not running your classic dungeon-crawl btw, it is more a "persistent world of believability" with the players sand-boxing it out as they please.

And i find creatures like this to be rather broken in such a context, same with rust-monsters really, don't like using such monsters as they can have such a large impact on the world.

But then again it is not good to always go silk-gloves on the players if you know what i mean.

[Shpadoinkle]

Grey oozes, rust monsters, human or humanoid enemies who focus on sundering, etc. is basically the DMs "subtle" way of telling the players that they have too much/too powerful loot.

[jmbrown]

I loved the old school slimes. Which slime was it from AD&D that automatically seeks out spell casters and eats their memorized spells?

[Zaydos]

If you think those are bad don't look at ooze paraelemental monoliths. Destroying gear with DCs in the 40s I think... now if only I could remember which Dragon Magazine that was. Ooze paraelementals in general are pretty bad (there's a reason I didn't put ooze paraelemental monoliths in my Lv 21 elemental dungeon [no Epic Spellcasting])

[Otodetu]

On a second note: how legal is dragon magazine stuff considered to be?
I have always looked at dragon magazine stuff as sort of non-official.

[jmbrown]

On a second note: how legal is dragon magazine stuff considered to be?
I have always looked at dragon magazine stuff as sort of non-official.

It's as "official" as any splat material outside core IE it's officially endorsed by Wizards but not RAW.

[Gnorman]

On a second note: how legal is dragon magazine stuff considered to be?
I have always looked at dragon magazine stuff as sort of non-official.

Less legal than WotC-published stuff, more legal than third party sources. Even though it's a third party source itself, it's quote-unquote sanctioned by Wizards. Like Nintendo Power for Nintendo, since that one's no longer produced in-house.

[Xenogears]

Pretty much that, yes.

Oozes are just moving acid pools.
They are useful if players start to look like walking magic shops.
Otherwise, no other use than garbage bin or janitor.

What about the ethereal ooze. From either Fiend Folio or MM3. While fully ethereal it can pull anyone in a square it occupies fully into the ethereal realm. Even killing it wont send them back. Ultimate railroading tool there. Bonus points if only the party fighter gets pulled into the Ethereal Realm (Will save after all).

[Optimystik]

On a second note: how legal is dragon magazine stuff considered to be?
I have always looked at dragon magazine stuff as sort of non-official.

It's/They've always been in between 3rd-party splat books and WotC splatbooks.

[sofawall]

It's as "official" as any splat material outside core IE it's officially endorsed by Wizards but not RAW.

What the heck does that mean?

[Draz74]

What the heck does that mean?

Duh, that Dragon Magazine is not written, but is rather passed down from generation to generation by oral/poetic tradition.

[bosssmiley]

I loved the old school slimes. Which slime was it from AD&D that automatically seeks out spell casters and eats their memorized spells?

Wasn't that Obliviax (memory moss)?