Oozes that Strike Back - The Spiked Slime
/In the world of Dungeons and Dragons, the numbers of each kind of monster are fun to think about. Some monster types are much more prevalent than others in the many core books released by Wizards. Monstrosity is a catch all for a lot of monster types, and classics like Dragons will always be well represented.
There is one creature type that has the fewest, and that's ooze. Oozes are the most niche to use in a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. As wandering monsters go, the ooze is classic. The image of the Gelatinous Cube, which featured in D&D themed hit Onward. It's for that reason that I find the huge absence of oozes quite surprising.
Spiked Slime
The slurping, squishy nature of a slime is a given. The living liquid that besieges dungeons, areas deep underground, and the particularly unclean. These thick goo entities glide and slide, engulfing and whipping at their enemies in their largely liquid forms. Whoever said they had to be completely fluid?
Slimes with spikes - Mitotic Slime by Raymond Swanland
Spiked Slime is a truly feared threat for those who encounter them deep underground. The yellow ichor has a somewhat translucent quality whilst being the colour of pus.
The majority of the time, Spiked Slimes are very similar to most other oozes. They slink around in an amorphous, liquid form. When threatened, they become able to attack in ways that most oozes otherwise do not. The Spiked Slime has an uncanny ability to control the surface tension of its liquid body. It can draw parts of itself up into sharp spikes or carpets of barbs. What can usually be considered soft or liquid, this slime can become spiky or sharp. This also allows the Spiked Slime to become tough and resistant to physical attacks.
Spiked Slime stats generated with homebrewery
Oozing Danger
The Spiked Slime is a particularly unique threat in the world of oozes. The lightly acidic spikes can be a thing that many rightly fear. As with many creatures here on the Apotheosis Studios blog, they make for an excellent wandering monster. I can see the adventurers being commissioned by an eccentric Druid or Wizard to extract samples to understand its aggressive tendencies or how it can solidify so quickly. There is little that can be said for sure about Spiked Slimes.
Now we want to hear from you. Where would the spiky goo strike your players? What other kind of oozes have you featured in your games? Let us know in our discord server or in the comments below.
Adam Ray contributes much for adventurers here on Apotheosis Studios. As co-founder of fantasticuniverses.com, they write about card gaming and PC gaming to a corner of the internet he carved out themselves. On Youtube, they can be found game mastering for No Ordinary Heroes, or editing the antics on The Hostile Atmosphere. Find where they dwell by climbing their Linktree.
