encounter level help

[Thac0 Redeye]

I am going to have my chara encounter a gelatin cube in a 30' x 25' room without a way to escape the room. the CR for the cube is 3. My players will be level 7 (4 characters). Do you think I need to advance the cube to make it harder? Wouldn't the smallness of the room add to the EL?

[Saintheart]

This really depends on the makeup of your party.

Let's see what a locked room does to the encounter. The cube is a 10x10 block (see what I did there) and has a 5 foot reach, in a 30 x 25 room. So there's barely enough room to charge and it's all within sneak attack range ... not that the latter matters since Ooze traits mean it can't be flanked and I'm guessing you're not exactly planning on a surprise round where the players get the drop on it while it's flatfooted. It can't be charmed, it can't suffer a critical hit, and it's immune to electricity. Can't fireball in that room since you'll burn the party up. It can move 15 feet, so it can cover pretty well the whole width of the room and almost the length in one move, and that's before we try to figure out whether its Engulf power means it can move again. So it won't have any problems closing with people ... but actually harming them is something else. We'll get to that.

The Cube's main mechanic is to paralyze and then acid people to death. Fort DC 20, and if someone fails it, in that room, then they're dead absent anyone finishing the cube off given the paralysis lasts 3d6 rounds.

The most likely guy to make the Fort DC 20 is going to be one of the Big Beefy Boys out of martial who has a full Fort progression. Standard Fighter 7 base Fort save is a +5. If we assume his CON is around the 18 mark, that means his total save modifier is +9 - which is to say, slightly less than 50/50 odds that he'll make a save. And as said, once he's paralysed, that's it, it's all over for him, because the Fighter can't do anything to add any more damage to the fight once paralysed. Monk has the same +5, but it won't allow him to make any substantial contribution since oozes can't be stunned.

The Cube's got an AC of 4, which means pretty much anyone with a pulse can hit it, it comes down to asking what's the expected damage your party puts out per round. If you're looking at melee damage this should be easy to calculate since no critical hits can work and sneak attack will never apply since it can't be flanked: assume the midline of any damage dice you've got as expected damage, e.g. assume 3 for a d6, 4 for a d8, and so on. Then add their modifiers to it. No need to really calculate probability here, at level 7 even the weedy mage's BAB should be enough to get over AC 4. (If you wanted to get more accurate you'd factor in natural 1s, but we'll skip that for this exercise. Also, don't forget to double your full-BAB types' expected damage; they're level 7, they get two hits per round if in a full attack situation ... which they should be, charging makes no sense in here given the AC is so low.)

Anyway: that damage-per-round tells you how long it's going to take to kill the cube if they do nothing more complicated than just swing wood and steel at it, if everyone makes their saves a because at that range at least 1 person is going to have to make a save each round, whether against Engulf or against its melee attack. As one PC after another gets paralysed, that damage-per-round drops and therefore lengthens out the combat. This also increases the likelihood of a TPK since you're relying on more and more successive high rolls from people's Fort saves.

Balanced against that, the Cube likely won't hit anyone since it has a +2 to its melee strike. It's a DC 13 Reflex save to avoid getting engulfed, and even in a locked room the way the Engulf ability is worded, you can't really grind the character up against a wall and engulf them that way; they somehow get to slip around the cube if they make the save, full stop. In a 30x25 room there's going to be room to shuffle, though you might upset some people's positioning. And just as the Big Beefy Boy's got the best Fort save, he's also got the worst godawful Reflex save: +2 at Fighter 7, at least as a base, which is around the fifty-fifty mark for to save against it. And if he does make that save, he then has to save against paralysis but is trapped in the cube and considered grappled, which has its own problems.

What makes it less predictable is magic. In particular, any spell that does ability damage to DEX, WIS, or CHA immediately renders the Cube helpless since its stats are all 1 in those categories, and even a 1d4 will still give you a 1, even on a save for half damage. Shivering Touch, some weapon effects - these will all end the encounter right quick; although the Cube is immune to criticals and can't be coup de grace'd, after getting hit with that spell it can't do anything. The mage beats it to death with his quarterstaff while the Fighter lies drooling off in the corner. Indeed the Cube positively helps most casters on this since it gets negatives to its saves (except for Fort, which most Evocation-y spells don't target).

Further analysis of your party makeup would assist, but basically, any seventh level Batman mage who's added Shivering Touch to the utility belt this morning can one-round the thing. Or at least assure victory in the one round that matters.

[Thac0 Redeye]

The party contains : dwarven barbarian focusing on charging. golaith barbarian focus on trip with spike chain. dwarven cleric 6/ftr 1. and a human wizard.

[Lilapop]

Cubes are large in the SRD, but huge in MM1.


The party contains : dwarven barbarian focusing on charging. golaith barbarian focus on trip with spike chain. dwarven cleric 6/ftr 1. and a human wizard.

The ubercharger will win initiative and deal serious damage. The tripper will win initiative and match the huge reach, finishing the charger's work. The cleric might win initiative, move in while the flat-footed cube can't use its reach, and clean up. The wizard probably won't even have to contribute, but he too will win initiative against bloody -5.

Does anybody (probably the wizard) have a good knowledge (dungeoneering) score? If yes, you can explain the rules of the run-from-engulf minigame, bump up its numbers by advancing, and run it as a puzzle encounter (take your time, stay out of reach, chip away at it from a distance... do you have anything else going on that adds time pressure?). If not, you should probably leave it as is and use it to fill your quota of easy encounters.

If you run it as huge as per MM1, I think your room is a little to small to play the minigame. On large size, it might just barely be big enough... but I'd still add a rosie to ring around or something.

[Saintheart]

Fun fact: oozes are not immune to tripping, either. The thing has 1 Dex and 10 Str. If he's built it right your tripper may well be able to flip said jelly cube on whatever passes for its back, just to add insult to injury.