The Black Pudding
Art
It's hard to illustrate a splodge of semi-sentient slime, and I don't envy the artist given that brief. They've gone for the option of showing it in action, devouring an Orc with pseudopods a-flailing.This doesn't quite manage to be menacing, somehow, whereas the Gelatinous Cube across the page has a spooky inevitability as it consumes an unlucky Dwarf. I feel a Black Pudding or any other Ooze is really best placed in an environment - lurking, about to fall, or creeping up some stairs. In all honesty, I don't think a single depiction of a Black Pudding in any WOTC book really gets me excited. Does anyone have a Black Pudding masterpiece to prove me wrong?
Purpose and Tactics
Somewhere in the No Man's Land between the nations of Monster and Trap sit the Oozes. They will essentially have no motivation or agency in your game-world so they're best thrown in as a disposable hazard, or as a threat being used by someone else. Luckily, they can fit into almost any dungeon or adventure locale: a wizard's tower, an abandoned ruin, sealed in a jar for millennia, hunting in a forest - wherever adventurers may go, an Ooze can creep after.
A cursory glance doesn't seem to make the Black Pudding look like much of a threat. With a paltry armour class of 7, your characters are not going to struggle to hit the Black Pudding, and with 85HP it should go down very quickly to concerted PC firepower. It also deals a paltry 1d6 + 3 damage, which is hardly going to dent a PC. What the Black Pudding does have in its grubby arsenal is its Corrosive Form ability and Pseudpod riders which will gradually obliterate a fighting party's equipment, slowly lowering their to-hit chance and AC. The intention being that an encounter with Black Pudding will force a party to replace their weapons and amour (a tedious result in most campaigns) or move through the adventure with a big dent in their effectiveness that doesn't come back after resting. This mechanic fits the design goals of the Black Pudding, but doesn't seem very '5e' to me. "Go home and buy more stuff." doesn't seem like the spur to a great adventure. My current campaign 'The Gloom' has a big emphasis on resource management with equipment, but I'd still find it a little onerous if characters lost their weapons - which are expensive - and either had to return to town or hope to come across replacement equipment, which you, the DM probably placed to hand, rather nixing the purpose of using the Black Pudding in the first place. Nothing about this seems to give the players much to utilise, and once they realise how this works they's simply retreat (good luck catching up with 20" movement) and obliterate the Black Pudding with ranged attacks. (Additionally, it hurts Fighters a hell of a lot more than say, Druids.)
Somewhere in the No Man's Land between the nations of Monster and Trap sit the Oozes. They will essentially have no motivation or agency in your game-world so they're best thrown in as a disposable hazard, or as a threat being used by someone else. Luckily, they can fit into almost any dungeon or adventure locale: a wizard's tower, an abandoned ruin, sealed in a jar for millennia, hunting in a forest - wherever adventurers may go, an Ooze can creep after.
A cursory glance doesn't seem to make the Black Pudding look like much of a threat. With a paltry armour class of 7, your characters are not going to struggle to hit the Black Pudding, and with 85HP it should go down very quickly to concerted PC firepower. It also deals a paltry 1d6 + 3 damage, which is hardly going to dent a PC. What the Black Pudding does have in its grubby arsenal is its Corrosive Form ability and Pseudpod riders which will gradually obliterate a fighting party's equipment, slowly lowering their to-hit chance and AC. The intention being that an encounter with Black Pudding will force a party to replace their weapons and amour (a tedious result in most campaigns) or move through the adventure with a big dent in their effectiveness that doesn't come back after resting. This mechanic fits the design goals of the Black Pudding, but doesn't seem very '5e' to me. "Go home and buy more stuff." doesn't seem like the spur to a great adventure. My current campaign 'The Gloom' has a big emphasis on resource management with equipment, but I'd still find it a little onerous if characters lost their weapons - which are expensive - and either had to return to town or hope to come across replacement equipment, which you, the DM probably placed to hand, rather nixing the purpose of using the Black Pudding in the first place. Nothing about this seems to give the players much to utilise, and once they realise how this works they's simply retreat (good luck catching up with 20" movement) and obliterate the Black Pudding with ranged attacks. (Additionally, it hurts Fighters a hell of a lot more than say, Druids.)
To avoid this response, you're going to need to set your Black Pudding up as an 'accidental ambush' predator. It should fall from the ceiling in cramped conditions, be at the base of a pit-trap, be thrown at the players in a bottle by intelligent enemies - whatever gets it into the midst of your player-characters and stops them being able to simply high-tail out of the area works. So the Black Pudding is best as a trap or ambush encounter early in a dungeon, or as an ancillary obstacle whilst fighting big-ticket foes. This also gives the players the chance of utilising the Black Pudding (throwing enemies into it, for example..) which players always love.
The 'split' ability is an interesting way to play with the Action Economy, and will almost certainly happen in your party's first encounter with the Black Pudding as slashing damage is so common. This is an interesting mechanic in that it increases the actions your Black Pudding can take and makes it considerably more threatening....but, again, the effectiveness is lessened by the fact that most of the Black Pudding's abilities are passive or defensive - who cares about an extra Pseudopod a turn?
Fluff
The Black Pudding fluff is merely a paragraph, but manages to be fairly evocative - describing it as a 'blot of shadow' which characters could stumble into. The more generic Ooze fluff describes them brilliantly, as almost every sentence clicks into a possible plot hook or encounter - describing Oozes' locations and hiding places as they slip out to consume the living. The 'unwitting servants' paragraph gives NPCs (and players) a range of uses for Oozes - this is all excellent gameable stuff.
The Black Pudding fluff is merely a paragraph, but manages to be fairly evocative - describing it as a 'blot of shadow' which characters could stumble into. The more generic Ooze fluff describes them brilliantly, as almost every sentence clicks into a possible plot hook or encounter - describing Oozes' locations and hiding places as they slip out to consume the living. The 'unwitting servants' paragraph gives NPCs (and players) a range of uses for Oozes - this is all excellent gameable stuff.
As every creature needs some patron or god - even the ones that are essentially snot given hit dice - the Oozes owe their measly existence to Juiblex, a Demon Lord who has the unenviable job of being in charge of oozes. I quite like the idea that they're all some part or aspect of the Demon Lord (begging the question of how he might be reassembled....) more than that they are simply his syrupy progeny. I'm not sure this origin works for me, and I prefer the idea they're simply magic experiments or byproducts that got away, or simply a form of life as natural as any bird or bee.
Plot Hooks
The depths of Kvaroduun are teeming with Oozes and slimes that slither and devour anything that tries to delve in those ancient depths. The King has offered a hefty purse to any who can find a way to capture, contain and bring back a selection of Oozes that His Majesty might employ against his foes.
The depths of Kvaroduun are teeming with Oozes and slimes that slither and devour anything that tries to delve in those ancient depths. The King has offered a hefty purse to any who can find a way to capture, contain and bring back a selection of Oozes that His Majesty might employ against his foes.
The great Alchemist Huolto passed away unmourned after his fractious and snide life in academia. In a final act of spite he loosed a horde of experimental oozes that now drip over his laboratory, devouring any who would recover his research....
The Hobgoblin war-machine is supplied with oozes from a single fortress where they are harnessed, split and contained in magical flasks to be hurled at enemies. A small team infiltrating that fortress could let loose a lot of chaos and a whole lot more Oozes....
Verdict
A useful and different trap-monster which could be as much a resource for the party as an obstacle, let down my mechanics that don't fit the spirit of 5e.
A useful and different trap-monster which could be as much a resource for the party as an obstacle, let down my mechanics that don't fit the spirit of 5e.
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