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Theolotus
2009-06-23, 07:09 PM
After reading this thread-http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114691
I felt the need to throw some of the "retarded" monsters at my players. In the middle of laughing about how much fun this is going to be, I realized i have no clue how to work the encounters into a game session.

For example, how does a fight with a gelatinous cube work?

DM:As the door creaks open to the 15' by 15' room, you notice a ten foot cube quivering hungrily in you direction.
Player: We close the door and walk away.


I would like someone else's opnion on the best way to handle these "under-used" encounters.

Thanks in advance!

Thajocoth
2009-06-23, 07:14 PM
After reading this thread-http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=114691
I felt the need to throw some of the "retarded" monsters at my players. In the middle of laughing about how much fun this is going to be, I realized i have no clue how to work the encounters into a game session.

For example, how does a fight with a gelatinous cube work?

DM:As the door creaks open to the 15' by 15' room, you notice a ten foot cube quivering hungrily in you direction.
Player: We close the door and walk away.


I would like someone else's opnion on the best way to handle these "under-used" encounters.

Thanks in advance!

Cubes are stealthy. Have it hiding. I don't know what edition you're running, but I know in 4th ed they have the ability to stand in the middle of a room and not be seen (unless the players roll a good enough perception vs their stealth). This allows a player to walk right into one, getting grabbed in the process.

Babale
2009-06-23, 07:17 PM
have them step into a 15X15 corridor and see a cube in front of them. When they turn to leave, another is just closing the gap at the other end.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-06-23, 07:20 PM
The cube is pretty much a trap, found at the bottom of trash pits. If the PCs want to get out, they have to climb. (Alternatively, put it in water and they'd have to swim away.)

Keld Denar
2009-06-23, 07:21 PM
Another thing you could do is just to have a creepy floating sword advance at them down a hall way. The sword is suspended in the cube, part of the undigestable leftovers from 3 days ago dinner. Its dark, and the cube is hard to differentiate, so there is a very good chance the players will only see the sword. Thinking its some kind of animated weapon or invisible warrior, they may confidently advance upon it, only to discover that the sword is in on of the "back" squares of the cube, and that the PC just walked/charged headfirst into a very hungry cube. Hillarity ensues as the other players start to realize what happened, and try to free their engulfed and probably paralyzed companion!

kopout
2009-06-23, 07:24 PM
I disagree. People always try to make the Cube a predator when its not. It's a scavenger, the only reason to fight it is if it has something you want.For example a previous party after the same thing you are had lets say a key that you need to get through a locked door. they had taken the key from it's hiding spot (the players should have encountered a hall that should have been trapped but wasn't) but they didn't male it to the door before something killed them. Along comes the Cube and eats the bodes, key and all. So now the key is stuck inside the Cube, you can see it but you cant get it with out killing the Cube.

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 07:33 PM
So now the key is stuck inside the Cube, you can see it but you cant get it with out killing the Cube.

Unless you tied a rope round one of your companions, threw him into the cube then yanked him back out again once he'd grabbed the key...

There are obvious flaws in this plan.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-06-23, 07:58 PM
Unless you tied a rope round one of your companions, threw him into the cube then yanked him back out again once he'd grabbed the key...

There are obvious flaws in this plan.
I'm pretty sure that Cubes eat rope... and getting out of a Cube isn't as easy as getting in.

Still, I have yet to find a problem that cannot be solved by throwing party members around :smallbiggrin:

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 08:02 PM
I'm pretty sure that Cubes eat rope... and getting out of a Cube isn't as easy as getting in.

Still, I have yet to find a problem that cannot be solved by throwing party members around :smallbiggrin:

It would obviously be a specially coated rope. If the party member was wearing fully-covering metal armour, would the cube be unable to eat him, do you think?

Oracle_Hunter
2009-06-23, 08:05 PM
It would obviously be a specially coated rope. If the party member was wearing fully-covering metal armour, would the cube be unable to eat him, do you think?
Oh, probably not - but then again he'd have suffocated while inside the tin can... which he can't move around in (no joints!).

But unless you're electroplating the rope, I don't know of any "special coating" that defeats The Cube :smalltongue:

Keld Denar
2009-06-23, 08:08 PM
It would obviously be a specially coated rope. If the party member was wearing fully-covering metal armour, would the cube be unable to eat him, do you think?

Ever eat one of those hard candies that has a soft candy jelly in the middle of it? Ever suck all the gooy inner jelly out of the candy while most of the hard outer shell is still intact because you found a small crack in the outer shell?

Yea...kinda like that, except YOU are the gooy inner jelly.

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 08:10 PM
Ever eat one of those hard candies that has a soft candy jelly in the middle of it? Ever suck all the gooy inner jelly out of the candy while most of the hard outer shell is still intact because you found a small crack in the outer shell?

DIVING SUIT. I win.

Oracle_Hunter
2009-06-23, 08:15 PM
DIVING SUIT. I win.
A metal diving suit? Because if it is cloth, it is eaten :smallamused:

Oh, the Cube is one of the most entertaining monsters in AD&D - second only to the Rust Monster, IMHO :smallbiggrin:

HamsterOfTheGod
2009-06-23, 08:29 PM
I would like someone else's opnion on the best way to handle these "under-used" encounters.

Under-used? Some of these are great.

The cube. Rolling down the dungeon hall, at the bottom of a pit, the pet some BBEG sets on the PCs, how can you go wrong?

Brain.In.A.Jar. You gotta be kidding me. This thing is great. After surviving a deadly dungeon of a golems, constructs, bound demons, and ingeneous traps, the PC's come to see their nemesis, the evil wizard has been reduced to fighting them with spells as a brain floating in a jar! Total awesome!

Demilich. OK so get this...after surviving a deadly dungeon of a golems, constructs, bound demons, and ingeneous traps, the PC's come to see their nemesis, the evil wizard has been reduced to fighting them withs spells as the floating skull of a Demilich! Total awesome!

The digester. Meh. It's not bad. Put it together with the yrthak, maybe a girallon and some stirges and you have your proto-typical weird swamp with weird creatures.

The Grell? The Grell? THE GRELL? Oh come on. This thing is great. It has tentacles, a beak, a floating brain. Floating brains rock. We know that already. You can use it anywhere.

Atropal. Epic, godlike, undead baby. Even the guy has to call it metal as f.... Setting: Astral plane. Story: Jerry Springer with demigods and godesses.

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 08:30 PM
A metal diving suit? Because if it is cloth, it is eaten :smallamused:

Oh, the Cube is one of the most entertaining monsters in AD&D - second only to the Rust Monster, IMHO :smallbiggrin:

Electroplated, of course...

A Cube AND a Rust Monster, and the diving suit plan is screwed...

Magicus
2009-06-23, 08:30 PM
I second the notion that the best way to tempt parties into getting eaten by a Gelatinous Cube is to put some loot inside. It happened in one AD&D game I was in: "Oh, look, magical Full Plate! I bet it'll come alive and attack. I charge it!"
Good times.

Blackjackg
2009-06-23, 08:42 PM
I disagree. People always try to make the Cube a predator when its not. It's a scavenger, the only reason to fight it is if it has something you want.

Scavenger, yes. But have you thought about why it's a cube? (Besides the quirkiness of the original creators of the game, that is.) It's so that it can scrape molds and lichens off the walls and ceilings of corridors simultaneously. A gelatinous cube is perfectly shaped to take up an entire 10' wide, 10' high corridor, leaving no room to squeeze past. If your corridors are bigger (say 15' x 15', or 20' x 20'), the MM has advancement for the GC up to gargantuan size. Like a goldfish, it grows to the size of the environment.

In that sense, it's as much an environmental hazard as a monster... kind of like Green Slime is in this edition, actually. Imagine your group is fighting a band of kobolds (maybe Tucker's Kobolds) in a real meat-grinder, where you're paying for every 5' square. Because you're distracted, you don't make the DC 20 spot check to notice the gelatinous cube coming up behind you until it's practically on top of you! Gaaah! Or maybe there's a gelatinous cube between you and the Only Door Back to Civilization. Horror of horrors! Cubes have two big things going for them: one, they're hard to see; and two, they take up the whole hallway. Basically, if players walk into a room and see a gelatinous cube, the DM is doing it all wrong.

And yeah, there's always the old "there's a skeleton with a sword floating down the hall toward you" routine is a classic.

Curmudgeon
2009-06-23, 09:03 PM
A cube can easily fill a pit, with random debris (leaves and whatnot) covering the top of it. The cube will eventually eat that debris, but more keeps getting blown about so it's pretty much always concealed. Fail that DC 13 Reflex save when you're walking along, and you're suddenly inside the cube.

druid91
2009-06-23, 09:16 PM
there is an item in one of the forgotten realms books, I think, that neutralizes cubes as a threat and turns them into a mount.

Teln
2009-06-23, 09:46 PM
I had a thought: Gelatinous cubes are mainly liquid, so if you're feeling mean, you could stuff one inside a flask or a treasure chest or something as a trap. Since the cube's bigger than the container, it's under a lot of pressure. Whoever opens the container takes 3d6 bludgeoning damage as the pressure is released and the cube comes flying out right in their face!

EDIT: spelling

Curmudgeon
2009-06-23, 09:51 PM
I had a thought: Gelatinous cubes are mainly liquid, so if you're feeling mean, you could stuff one inside a flask or a treasure chest or something as a trap. Since the cube's bigger than the container, it's under a lot of pressure. No, that doesn't work. Gasses are compressible, but liquids essentially aren't. (OK, you get a little reduction in size with pressures you find in a neutron star.)

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 09:54 PM
No, that doesn't work. Gasses are compressible, but liquids essentially aren't. (OK, you get a little reduction in size with pressures you find in a neutron star.)

You could put a baby cube in a treasure chest though, with all the treasure resting in it. That'd be nicely sadistic.

Blackjackg
2009-06-23, 09:56 PM
You could put a baby cube in a treasure chest though, with all the treasure resting in it. That'd be nicely sadistic.

If your players are anything like mine, they'd adopt the baby cube and try to train it into a Warcube of some kind.

Another_Poet
2009-06-23, 09:58 PM
No, that doesn't work. Gasses are compressible, but liquids essentially aren't. (OK, you get a little reduction in size with pressures you find in a neutron star.)

But if it's a Bottle of Holding the cube can still be inside. And if the cube can be inside it can end up in someone's mouth.

Generic Archer
2009-06-23, 09:59 PM
No, that doesn't work. Gasses are compressible, but liquids essentially aren't. (OK, you get a little reduction in size with pressures you find in a neutron star.)

And solids supposedly aren't at all, and yet black holes have large mass and no volume... real world physics doesn't apply to itself, let alone dnd

I do like that idea though... or maybe put one inside an extradimensional space... when they try to use it the first time...

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 10:02 PM
If your players are anything like mine, they'd adopt the baby cube and try to train it into a Warcube of some kind.

See? Double the awesome.

Curmudgeon
2009-06-23, 10:13 PM
And solids supposedly aren't at all, and yet black holes have large mass and no volume... Huh? No, that's not right. Black holes have volume, it's just the volume defined by the Schwarzschild radius. The mass itself doesn't have volume, but the black hole created by the mass does.

Anyway, all this lovely hair-splitting aside, D&D doesn't have black holes, so let's just move along. Nothing to see here.

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-06-23, 10:20 PM
See? Double the awesome.

I believe you mean octuple the awesome. It's awesome cubed.

DamnedIrishman
2009-06-23, 10:20 PM
I believe you mean octuple the awesome. It's awesome cubed.

That one hurt.

:smallbiggrin:

Leon
2009-06-23, 10:53 PM
If your players are anything like mine, they'd adopt the baby cube and try to train it into a Warcube of some kind.

Something in a FR book i recall about Drow using Cubes in combat and i think it is the Arms and Equipment guide that has a item for "mounting" a Cube


I like to use Cubes for garbage disposal units at the bottom of pits

PairO'Dice Lost
2009-06-23, 11:01 PM
That one hurt.

:smallbiggrin:

Quite an acerbic pun, eh? A caustic remark on your mistake? Made you dissolve into laughter, didn't it?
I'm sorry. I'll stop now.

Something in a FR book i recall about Drow using Cubes in combat and i think it is the Arms and Equipment guide that has a item for "mounting" a Cube

I believe it's called the Amulet of Ooze Riding or something to that effect. There's also a 3.0 PrC in Masters of the Wild, the Oozemaster, that might have a similar ability, but I don't recall precisely.

Zain
2009-06-23, 11:55 PM
In my campain, the cube had the drop on the players as the villans pet.... it sat in a hole in the roof and drop on people when it felt them

Me: and you hear a sloop sillimar a can of cat food
Player: ....