Monster Monday: Quicksilver Ooze, the Fastest Slime in the Dungeon

Today's Monster Monday is the quicksilver ooze, a fast-moving slime that eats treasure and poisons your blood.

Most oozes move so slowly that a canny adventurer can avoid combat with them entirely by simply walking away.  Good encounter design, or at least the element of surprise, is required to make many oozes a viable threat to a party.  The famous gelatinous cube, for example, is best employed as a surprise (its natural transparency and tendency to conform to the dimensions of a typical dungeon corridor means some adventurers literally walk right into it) or in conjunction with traps (personally, I'm a fan of the ol' gelatinous-cube-at-the-bottom-of-a-pit-trap goof).  Oozes are slow bags of acidic hit points - it's a niche they fill well.  But sometimes you want to use an ooze outside of their niche.  That was the idea behind the bombardier ooze, which can engage adventurers at range by shooting out gobs of acid.  The idea for the quicksilver ooze came from a similar place: what if there was an ooze that you couldn't outrun?

photo by bionerd, via Wikimedia

I called it the quicksilver ooze because mercury (aka quicksilver) is runny and already looks like some kind of sentient alien slime.  To make the monster more than just a fast ooze, I did some research (i.e. read the wikipedia article) on mercury and gave the quicksilver ooze some of the attributes of the element.  The ooze is temperature sensitive - slowed by cold damage and hastened by fire damage - because one of mercury's most famous attributes is its sensitivity to temperature (hence its use in thermometers).  Its slam attack, of course, gives its victims heavy metal poisoning.  And because mercury dissolves and amalgamates many other metals, including gold and silver, I decided this should be one of those mean monsters that eats your treasure.

The following text in gold is available as Open Game Content under the OGL. Open Game Content is ©2017 Jonah Bomgaars.

A slithering pool of silvery metallic ooze rushes across the floor with surprising speed

Quicksilver Ooze                CR 5

XP 1,600

N Small ooze

Init +5; Senses blindsight 60 ft.; Perception -5

DEFENSE

AC 16, touch 16, flat-footed 11 (+5 Dex, +1 size)

hp 66 (7d8+35)

Fort +7, Ref +7, Will -3

Immune acid, ooze traits

Resist fire 10

Weaknesses cold vulnerability, temperature sensitive

OFFENSE

Speed 50 ft., climb 20 ft.

Melee 2 slams +9 (1d6+3 plus poison)

Special Attacks dissolve treasure

STATISTICS

Str 15, Dex 20, Con 21, Int --, Wis 1, Cha 1

Base Atk +5; CMB +6; CMD 21 (can’t be tripped)

SQ temperature sensitive

SPECIAL ABILITIES

Dissolve Treasure (Ex)

A quicksilver ooze can dissolve gold, silver, copper, and most other metals with its body. By engulfing or maintaining contact with the metal, the quicksilver ooze can dissolve and absorb up to 1d4 pounds of metal per day.  Each pound of metal so consumed heals the ooze by 1d8 points of damage.  Iron, steel, platinum, and adamantine are not affected by the quicksilver ooze.  A dead quicksilver ooze may contain up to 1d4 pounds of dissolved metals in its body, requiring a DC 20 Craft (alchemy) check to extract. 

Poison (Ex)

Mercury – Slam – injury; save Fort DC 18, frequency 1/round for 6 rounds, effect 1d2 Dex, cure, 1 save

Temperature Sensitive (Ex)

Any time a quicksilver ooze takes cold damage, it is affected for one round as if by the slow spell.  Any time it takes fire damage (or would take fire damage but is prevented by its fire resistance), it is affected as if by the haste spell. 

ECOLOGY

Environment underground

Organization solitary, pair, or swarm (3-9)

Treasure dissolved treasure

A pool of living quicksilver, this metallic slime moves much faster than most other oozes.  It eats gold and other valuable metals, making it an enemy of dwarves and other mining races.  The many strange properties of its metallic body make it sought after by alchemists and wizards.  

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Hey, April 1st is fast approaching, and that means a special anniversary edition of d20 despot!  Tune in Saturday to see how d20 despot does its four year anniversary.

-your cinnabar d20 despot