D&D Homebrew Monster of the Week: Armored Ooze

“I’m telling you sir, we can’t go any deeper. I saw first hand what lives down there and it isn’t something we can handle. None of our equipment can break its hide, and even if we could, anything that touches its body sticks. You ever smelled someone’s flesh being burnt away? You ever hear the sound a man being crushed by something thrice his size like he was a piece of glass? You want that cave cleared? Do it yourself.”

–Excerpt from a former worker of a mining company.

Who says an Ooze can’t be armored? Who says that the only way they can kill something is through digestion? Not me, that’s for sure! Oozes are one of, if not the most, straightforward enemy types in D&D as typically their main form of battle “tactics” are to run (slowly) forward and absorb anything in their path. To offset the abysmal mental states and lower typically AC, they make up for it with much higher hit points and CON scores along side decent enough STR scores. Ooze’s scarcely are challenging enemies as they usually suffer in 4/6 stats (DEX, INT, WIS, and CHA) so most are below CR 5 and are really only useful as either traps or actual enemies in the lower levels. Because of this dwindling strength, Oozes function best in ambush encounters. That’s why the Gelatinous Cube, the literal posterchild of slime monsters every where, is best when you fall into it or it falls on to you. As a result of this… underwhelming performance, Oozes need some help and some innovation I feel as Gray Oozes, Black Puddings, and Ochre Jellies all follow the same game plan with minimal variance: Acidic by nature so it can melt through equipment, grapple focused to maximize contact damage and restrict movement, minimal intelligence compensated by being incredibly resilient.

Armored Ooze: The Overview

Residing in underground caverns and tunnels that are rich with mineral deposits, Armored Oozes drag their highly adhesive bodies against these metals and minerals to create shells to help protect their squishy and soft bodies. Pushing this even further, Armored Oozes will also congeal these mineral deposits in their forearms to create dense and solid clumps to better bludgeon prey and trespassers alike. An Armored Ooze is incredibly territorial and aggressive and will attack anything it can see without a second thought. Despite having a mainly adhesive and sticky body, Armored Oozes still are comprised of a highly acidic slime that spills out when they bludgeon something within their armored fists, causing severe burns to anything they strike. Despite their burly, clumsy, and ungraceful fighting style and even with their low DEX, Armored Oozes can be somewhat competent ambush fighters, blending seamlessly into the rock and appearing like an untapped mineral deposit. Due to their literal iron hide and dangerous temperament, the presence of an Armored Ooze is enough to shut down entire mines or tunnels for months at a time.

Stats and Abilities:

Armored Oozes lean as heavily as possible into the idea of being a tanky, slow moving, heavy hitting bruiser that was envisioned by their lesser kin. Leaning heavily into STR and CON, the Armored Ooze might not be able to close a gap quickly, but once something is in range then their in for a walloping. Despite being a CR 0, the Armored Ooze sports lower than average DEX and WIS with really low INT and CHA which kind of pigeonholes it into a bruiser class monster without much variety in tactics, but that’s ok! If you’re using an Ooze to fight a party, chances are you’re not looking for an unique or mechanically in-depth fight.

The Armored Ooze’s biggest strength aside from it’s high damage swings are obviously its defenses. Boasting an impressive 20 AC and a whopping 147 hit points, the Armored Ooze can take swing after swing and still keep going, which it will need to offset it’s glaring weaknesses. Moving at only 20ft./turn without dashing leaves the Armored Ooze lagging behind most player characters and could easily be outmaneuvered by a rogue or ranged character. This is where that slight bit of stealth could come into play with False Appearance allowing the Armored Ooze to blend into it’s terrain. Now with being an aggressive and territorial monster, the chances of it actually waiting and getting maximum output of it’s ambush is minimal. Likely, it would wait until any creature gets close and then swings on them, regardless of who or what they are.

• Stats and Skills: Lacking Skill Proficiencies across the board (I should probably give it a bonus to Stealth due to False Appearance), The Armored Ooze lacks subtlety or nuance in its fighting, opting to use the most straightforward plan of attack: Attack. Being proficient in only STR and CON Saving Throws means that this ooze excels in dealing and taking hits, but struggles in everything else. It can very easily shrug off being shoved or grappled/restrained as well as anything not poison related that could force a CON save, but the second you start pulling out Fireball and Dominate Monster spells, the Armored Ooze is quickly going to start struggling.
• Resistances, Immunities, and Senses: Most Oozes have a laundry list of features listed here as for a near non-sentient pile of sludge, there are a lot of features and effects that wouldn’t work on them. Due to their hardened “shells”, they resist all nonmagical weapon damage as even piercing weapons that could puncture stone fall flat with how densely packed the minerals are. Like most other Oozes, being comprised of acidic slime both makes it so the Armored Ooze is immune to Acid as well as the Poison damage type. My logic for why most if not all Oozes are immune to Poison damage is that these are creatures that eat anything organic they can grab, so naturally they can stave off any venom or poison secreted by possible prey. Finally, being immune to the Blinded, Charmed, Exhaustion, Frightened, Poisoned, and Prone conditions are fairly on brand for most typical oozes, even a little less than what the typical Ooze would be immune to. However, there are still tweaks to be made here. The Armored Ooze does need to its INT to be immune to effects or spells that could Charm it, likely lowering it to as little as 4 or 3 INT as most Oozes have around 1-4 INT as their score. Additionally, this is a much more humanoid Ooze and a lot more solid, so it should be able to be knocked prone as it’s not an amorphous blob like most other slime monsters. Finally, the Armored Ooze should be immune to the Petrification status as it’s got large rock and mineral deposits over it’s arms and body, so it should be resistant to being turned into stone in my opinion.

Passive Abilities and Actions:

Additionally, a Large or smaller creature adhered to the ooze is also grappled (escape DC 15). Ability checks made to escape this grapple have disadvantage.

This functions as an enhanced version of the Mimic’s Adhesive trait, grappling creatures that are hit by the Armored Ooze’s melee attacks, but it also carries the ability to rip weapons from the hands of attackers. In all honesty, I like the idea but I’m not going to sit here and argue that this isn’t a tad strong and unfair against melee dedicated characters, especially ones that rely on DEX over STR like Rogues. This requires some playtesting in all honesty as I feel lit could be interesting but could just as easily be obnoxious and unfun.

While not incredibly common for Oozes as a whole, it feels thematic for the rock themed ooze monster to be able to hide itself as a pile of rocks and minerals. Now with the wording of False Appearance, a good Stealth bonus isn’t technically needed as a “creature is “while [the creature] is motionless, it is indistinguishable from [terrain feature/object],” however I think the Armored Ooze should still have a passable Stealth bonus as a bare minimum so it at least makes more sense.

Most Oozes, by proxy of being piles of sticky acidic sludge, can slide across walls and ceilings with ease. Despite the fact the Armored Ooze is much more humanoid shaped than it’s kin, it still is comprised of mostly adhesive goo so I don’t think it would struggle to clime walls and ceilings, especially with the fact this monster lives in caves and tunnels where walls and ceilings are plentiful.

Unlike a lot of monsters, especially at this level of play, the Armored Ooze lacks Multiattack and that is by design. I wanted to make this really feel like a lumbering and dense oaf of a monster, so when it takes a swing at something, it’s putting everything it has into that swing and that one swing only. Additionally from a gameplay point, I didn’t want Adhesive to get out of control with grappling multiple creatures at once or almost guaranteeing a grappled target by giving the Armored Ooze multiple chances in a round.

In all honesty, this feature is likely going to get axed as I like the other Reaction more, and as such this would rarely ever get used. Between the two, why go for an extra bit of small damage and take a hit when you could just avoid the hit in the first place. I like what this feature brings to the table, but it belongs on a different monster.

This… This is disgustingly good. This is way too much for what it does, as there is no reason not to use this the second the Armored Ooze is successfully struck. Sure it’s speed drops to 15ft, making it super easy to outrun, but 25 AC is ridiculous and punishes martial classes even more. This feature needs to be overhauled from the ground up. Instead of a +5 to AC until the end of it’s next turn it’s a+3 for that one attack, similar to the Parry skill some knights get. Additionally, because it’s only for one attack, I don’t see why there would be a movement speed reduction on this feature as it’s not fully hunkering down, just blocking one attack.

Revisions:

So, as mentioned above the big revision would be with the Armored Ooze’s Withdraw feature, and again, lowering that to 3 for 1 attack akin to the Parry skill I think is a much better feature. It gives it the defensive utility a creature of this type wants, but doesn’t make it obscenely broken. My idea on how this would work in combat is instead of doing it the first attack of combat, the ooze would instead use it against the highest damaging attack it took last round, so if a barbarian hit it the hardest, it parries that and the next round it parries the fighter and so on. Next up, remove Acidic Counter. This does nothing the ooze can’t already do with an action and just isn’t worth it compared to Withdraw. Finally, give this proficiency in Stealth checks. Sure it can’t be differentiated while immobile, but I feel just giving it the skill proficiency and tying it all together would make it look much nicer.

This was one of the earliest statblocks I ever made and even with these hefty revisions, I’m quite happy with how it turned out. Tune in next time when we cover the aggressive flora of the region with the Plant Compendium!