Ya Ooze, Ya Lose

Let’s highlight some more bad guys as we wander for some more monsters. Maybe together, we can build a couple of cool tables that you can use in your own dungeons and outdoor adventures!

DM Ben likes to prepare wandering monster packs (miniatures, stats, etc) in advance, so today, we’re going to review some nifty Oozes by EC3D Designs from their marvelous Beasts and Baddies set. They print with ease and are supportless.

We instantly gravitated to this particular Ooze because of all those hilarious weapons sticking to ’em. We wanted a pack of these slimy bastards, so we asked resident painter Kimmy Utah to differentiate them by color and base. They turned out really well, don’t ya think?!

We’re pondering adding some flock to a few of these, but they seem to be holding their own without it.

While researching for this article, we came across this fantastic blog post by The Wandering Gamist entitled “Oozes and Other Bunker-Buster Monsters.” Be sure to give it a read and follow their excellent DnD blogger website.

They discuss what sort of monsters can disrupt a long rest inside a dungeon—aka “Bunker Busters,” which is such an awesome name and a great idea for a wandering monster dungeon table. And our Oozes certainly make the list.

Let’s briefly discuss wandering monster mechanics. Old school rules were to roll a d6 every 10 minutes and drop down a monster on a result of 1. We play DnD 5e, so the general rule is you roll a d20 every hour with 1-10 results coming up as no hostile monster, which DM Ben finds works rather well.

In terms of stats, we like the D&D Beyond Gray Ooze stat block (AC: 8, HP: 22). Since we have a six-member party at fourth level, DM Ben will probably nudge the hit points to 35-ish, and the attack bonus from +3 to like +5-ish.

The key, though, is to have all your wandering monster tables by environment type (dungeon, wilderness, etc.) ready ahead of time so that you won’t have to scramble to figure it all out during precious gameplay.

So, going forward, each Thursday, we’ll pick a new 3D-printed wandering monster mini to assign to either a Dungeon Delve or Wilderness Trek until we build out a complete d20 roll table for each environment.

Starting with “Bunker Busting” Ooze for the Dungeon Delve table seems like a great way to kick it off, don’t ya think?!

Here’s the fun part: for each upcoming blog entry, we’ll continue to build out our handy DnD Dungeon Delve table until we have 20 rich results. Taking some sound Reddit advice, we’re also going to sprinkle in alternate encounters to combat, including unexpected hazards, new NPC interactions, weather events, etc.

(and don’t forget to follow along with our Wilderness Trek Wandering Monster table, too!)