Slime

[Dalin]

If a slime (Monsters, pp. 48-49) drops from the ceiling onto a PC and hits, what happens if people attack the slime? The monster description says that it is pretty easy to kill with only 1 HP per hex, but if it is on your body, I assume you'll take the same amount of damage that it does? If it manages to get under one's armor, would it only take damage that gets through the DR? If you do manage to kill it, does that halt any further toxic effects or are you in for five minutes of misery no matter what at that point? In which case, I guess there's no reason to attack the slime once it has gotten past DR.

[LokRobster]

Good question!

Now I’m really afraid of slime damage.

I’m interested to hear what others think, particularly a design intent point-of-view. Lacking that at the moment, I think I’d have to treat it as a blob with tendrils that are causing the damage... attack the blob to stop the ongoing effects. Area attacks that hit the blob would hit the PC as well. And for the non-area attacks, I’m thinking most of them can’t damage the slime anyway?

Ick. And ouch.

[Tom H.]

Yes, this is a good question Dalin.

I've had similar thoughts about swarm attacks in general.

The detailed nature of GURPS/DFRPG begs these questions sometimes.

Some games are so abstract that you would just compare attacks or strengths or whatever.

But as GURPS gets closer to reality, I want to know exactly what it means when a swarm gets into close combat in your hex.

Is it next to your feet, on your body, under your armor? How are the stamping rules affected by these permutations?

I almost got around to posting about this, but then thought it could just lead to more detailed rules, when there is already plenty of detail.

But the game definitely can make you conceive of these issues.

[Anthony]

It's actually fairly clear: once you are hit by the slime, further contact doesn't do more damage, it just resets the duration to 5 minutes. Given that, presumably without contact the duration is 5 minutes, and killing the slime doesn't do anything.

I would be inclined to treat ambulatory slime that has successfully attacked a PC as a cleaning problem, rather than a monster. Actually, I'd probably do the same for slime that isn't on a PC, stabbing it with a sword doesn't really make sense.

[Yssa]

The method that seems most fun/and "realistic" (whatever that means in DFRPG) would be that the slime absorbs whatever damage it takes to kill it and the rest is transferred onto the ally.

So:

Slime drops on the knight who rushes brazenly into secret-sewer-entrance of the evil alchemist's lair.

The druid, hot on her tail, wails away with her staff, aiming at the slime-drenched ally. She rolls a potential hit. Four options ensue:

1. The knight dodges: No damage to either slime or knight.
2. The Slime dodges, the knight does not: the knight takes the full damage (lets say 4, lessened by 2 for DR = 2 points injury)
3. Neither Dodges: The slime is destroyed, absorbing 1 point damage, 3 make it through to the knight, reduced by DR2 = 1 point injury
4. The slime doesn't dodge, the knight parries/blocks with a slime covered weapon: The slime takes 4 injury, more than enough to kill it, the knight is uninjured.

In terms of your second question I feel like if the slime has time to get fully with a character's armor (which is really a narrative question, not a rules based one) then yes, any damage that made it through the character's DR would kill the slime, but you'd still have to take off the armor for washing anyway, and you don't reroll after initial contact until a minute has passed, so if you have the time and means, you might as well skip the injury and just wash.

[Dalin]

Originally Posted by Yssa

1. The knight dodges: No damage to either slime or knight.
2. The Slime dodges, the knight does not: the knight takes the full damage (lets say 4, lessened by 2 for DR = 2 points injury)
3. Neither Dodges: The slime is destroyed, absorbing 1 point damage, 3 make it through to the knight, reduced by DR2 = 1 point injury
4. The slime doesn't dodge, the knight parries/blocks with a slime covered weapon: The slime takes 4 injury, more than enough to kill it, the knight is uninjured.

This sounds like a fun interpretation.

Since I was on-the-fly converting a D&D adventure (Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh) to DFRPG, I ended up using a slime that was a bit closer to the D&D version. It was a combination of the flesh-eating slime in Monsters and Rasputin's Green Slime on the GURPS Repository. I liked the idea of being able to frantically try to scrape it off as both your scrapers and your armor disintegrated.

As things actually played out, two characters were slimed from above. The wizard, one of the two victims, promptly cast create fire around him and his companion. Then I made them roll vs Will to stay in the flames for a full second. (I wonder if there should have been a penalty here?) The slime was destroyed and the characters were scorched, but not too badly. Good times.