Is Six Brown Puddings At Once Too Difficult?

[sjmdw45]

Let me say up front that I'm going to run this randomly-generated dungeon next week no matter what, so this isn't really an advice request. But I'm curious what other people think: right after entering the dungeon, the dice decreed that the players must go through a room filled with six brown puddings. Each pudding has ST 40 and effectively 400 HP. Is it my imagination or is this insanely difficult?

And the more I think about pudding tactics, the harder it gets. I'm still new to DFRPG, so the first practice fight I ran against puddings, I forgot about parrying unarmed attacks, so I thought maybe it wouldn't actually be that hard if the PCs just parry the thing to death. But then I read more about close combat and slams, and looked at the movement speeds of lightly/moderately encumbered PCs, and weapon breakage rules, and thought about the tradeoffs between Attack vs. All Out Attack for creatures with no vitals and tons of durability... and puddings are even tougher than I thought! PCs likely can't even run away because the puddings can just Move and Attack them to death!

On paper the dungeon generator says this is a 960 CER boss fight (with $30,000 in treasure hidden in the room).

Obviously this encounter is still potentially winnable via lateral thinking (illusionary decoys + defeating puddings in detail; or tunneling through to the next room and hoping the Brown Puddings stay quiescent while you loot the rest of the dungeon).

But are there obvious pudding-killing spells or tactics that most players would use to make this fight much easier than I'm expecting? (Death Vision might work, if you can buy enough time to cast it repeatedly. What else?) Room is normal mana/sanctity, -5 light, 10 yards x 10 yards, three slightly-ajar doors, 7' tall ceiling.

[sir_pudding]

In general oozes and puddings are vulnerable to standoff attacks and persistent area effects. Although puddings are pretty fast so they are less so than most.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

In general oozes and puddings are vulnerable to standoff attacks and persistent area effects. Although puddings are pretty fast so they are less so than most.

I don't see how you could pull off a standoff attack without relying on wild swings or magic to speed you up. The first time I ran the combat, sure, the swashbuckler retreated from range 1 to 2 while Dodging and then retreated again from range 2 to 3 after attacking, and the pudding lost every other turn moving back to range 1 so it could attack again. I thought the swashbuckler had good odds.

Then I reread the slam rules and realized that what the pudding should actually be doing from 3 yards away is just All Out Attacking (Double) into close combat to slam him for 4d+7 non-parryable crushing damage, likely knocking the swashbuckler prone if he fails to dodge, followed by another slam for 4d+7 more damage even if he dodged and retreated from the first one, leaving the swashbuckler badly wounded and almost certainly prone.

Even if the Swashbuckler does rely on wild swings and his move 7-8ish to keep away from the pudding slams, that still leaves anyone over DR 3ish behind to get eaten.

In the same way I don't see how you could pull off any useful persistent area effects. Create Fire? The pudding will just ignore it and slam you.

What am I missing? I guess one thing I'm missing is that you only have to do 54 effective damage (27 HP to bring it down to 1/3 health, times 2 for Injury Tolerance) of damage to knock each Pudding down to half move, after which you can indeed pull off standoff attacks. What else?

[Anthony]

Puddings don't have ranged attacks, nor do they have any ability that will let them fly or climb sheer surfaces. I would be highly doubtful of beating them in a straight up brawl, though.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Puddings don't have ranged attacks, nor do they have any ability that will let them fly or climb sheer surfaces. I would be highly doubtful of beating them in a straight up brawl, though.

Hmmm, interesting point. DX 12 gives them Climbing-7, but they have Climbing-35 on ST-related tasks like pullups. The ceiling in this dungeon is only 7' high, but there's a room nearby with a 3 yard wide by 10 yard deep trench (I am treating it as an old latrine). I suppose someone could either Walk on Air over the trench, or possibly dig out enough of the ceiling with Earth to Air to get out of pudding reach in a different room.

Also, the entrance to the dungeon involves descending a ladder in the first place, so if the PCs can make it all the way back, I suppose pudding No Fine Manipulators and lack of Spider Climb might save them. Thanks.

Edit: on the other hand, that might just lead to a stalemate as the brown puddings burrow into the earth to escape your attacks. Hmmm. Or even burrow into the earth above you and then drop on you.

Edit: another way that might work is to throw an Alchemist's Fire grenade on one or more, then retreat into a precast Sanctuary for at least thirty seconds. If the pudding isn't smart enough to roll on the ground (they normally move by humping along, and hopefully it would just spend 30 seconds trying futilely to run from the flames), each affected pudding will have taken an average of (3+2+2+1+1)/6*30 = 45 damage and will be at half speed, in danger of falling unconscious every round that it moves or attacks. If you can take 3 or 4 of them out that way, a running battle against the last two might actually be feasible!

Thanks guys! I actually feel okay about running this fight as generated now. There's more than a few ways to win.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Edit: another way that might work is to throw an Alchemist's Fire grenade on one or more, then retreat into a precast Sanctuary for at least thirty seconds. If the pudding isn't smart enough to roll on the ground (they normally move by humping along, and hopefully it would just spend 30 seconds trying futilely to run from the flames), each affected pudding will have taken an average of (3+2+2+1+1)/6*30 = 45 damage and will be at half speed, in danger of falling unconscious every round that it moves or attacks. If you can take 3 or 4 of them out that way, a running battle against the last two might actually be feasible.

Fill the room with Ceate Fire.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

I don't see how you could pull off a standoff attack without relying on wild swings or magic to speed you up.

Drop them in a pit or shoot them from 300 yards.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

On paper the dungeon generator says this is a 960 CER boss fight (with $30,000 in treasure hidden in the room).

One thing I want to point out here is that the CER system does not have a terribly sound mathematical footing. As best I can tell, to a large extent it's giving sort of an approximation of what a monster's point cost would be in a GURPS Supers game where everyone is relying on natural DR and Innate Attacks rather than equipment, but ignoring non combat traits, with 1 CER ~= 5 character points. But this only really works if your monsters are built like optimized GURPS Supers PCs, which they probably aren't. Really you want to look at HP and damage per round, which can be tricky to eyeball in GURPS due to complicated interactions between combat skill, active defenses, DR etc. but puddings are clearly very tough by that standard unless the PCs can fly or something like that.

One possible—but expensive—solution I haven't seen yet is arming your melee specialists with orichalcum weapons, which would let them parry slams without fear of weapon breakage.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

One thing I want to point out here is that the CER system does not have a terribly sound mathematical footing. As best I can tell, to a large extent it's giving sort of an approximation of what a monster's point cost would be in a GURPS Supers game where everyone is relying on natural DR and Innate Attacks rather than equipment, but ignoring non combat traits, with 1 CER ~= 5 character points. But this only really works if your monsters are built like optimized GURPS Supers PCs, which they probably aren't. Really you want to look at HP and damage per round, which can be tricky to eyeball in GURPS due to complicated interactions between combat skill, active defenses, DR etc. but puddings are clearly very tough by that standard unless the PCs can fly or something like that.

One possible—but expensive—solution I haven't seen yet is arming your melee specialists with orichalcum weapons, which would let them parry slams without fear of weapon breakage.

Fair enough and thanks for the analysis of CER's shortcomings.

Great idea about the orichalcum. Balanced fine orichalcum large knives are awesome: "only" $1480 and usable for close combat (fencing) parries, with swing damage! Arguably these should be a higher priority for a starting swashbuckler than an edged rapier. (It's worth noting also that you need ST 15+ to parry a pudding slam even with an orichalcum or heavy weapon, but that's not too hard to get.)

I started this thread mostly because I was curious what factors I was overlooking that might make puddings closer to the medium threat their CER estimates, and I think I found it in the fact that movement and Dodge drop to 50% when you're under 1/3 HP. This means that puddings aren't really effectively 400 HP unless you insist on fighting them to the death. They're really only 53 effective HP, plus a bunch of kiting. That means one half-ogre Swashbuckler with mage support (Great Haste, Walk On Air, Haste IIIish) has a good chance at being able to kill all six puddings, if the party has done proper recon.

Edit: oh, it also looks like the slam-then-follow-retreat-back-into-close-combat-and-slam-again trick doesn't work with All-Out Attack (Double), because All Out Attack says "If you turn or move forward, you must do so first and then attack – not vice versa." Move and Attack would work because it doesn't have that restriction, if puddings had Extra Attack, but they don't.

[Kromm]

Puddings – any color – are scary only if you're forced to fight them in confined quarters. With DR 5, Homogeneous and Injury Tolerance 2, HP 40, and effective HT 16 to avoid dropping out of the fight . . . and total immunity to gas and poison . . . and no eyes, neck, skull, or vitals to target . . . you'll be whittling. Magic isn't great, given Magic Resistance 5 and immunity to control. You can't get behind them or blind them. You're stuck trading blows and hoping you don't eat 4d+4 crushing, because even with stupid amounts of DR, that hurts. If that's the fight, it can be rough on those who have unexceptional defenses, DR, and HP.

Otherwise, they can be kited and picked off with ranged attacks. They can be put in holes where they'll need noncombat climbing to escape. They can just be outrun, if the group is swift and cunning.

Brown ones don't bring anything extra to the table unless you're walking in the desert. Heroes walking in the desert have a bit of a problem because they're going to be attacked from beneath and engaged while they have half Move and combat penalties due to bad footing. But the desert tends to be big and open, so clever escapes abound.

The only "straight-up GM murder" pudding is the gray one, because it can just appear by fiat wherever the GM likes and hit people for 4d+4, no defense. "Six grey puddings appear from the Astral Plane. Each of you is hit for 4d+4 crushing. Okay, now the fight starts." is pretty mean. I'm not very conversant in the various attempts to calculate challenge ratings, but "always attacks first from another dimension" is a massive game-changer, not just a cute minor ability.