Welcome back to Frightful Fridays! for the second Friday monster in a row. I'm just as surprised as you are. This week's monster comes by request from Paizo friend, Orthos, who provided me with a cool image and asked me to create a monster with it. Since the monster comes from a game sold by a company that does not seem happy with unauthorized images, and I'd like to keep Theodric from receiving nastygrams, I will link to the artist's DeviantArt page where the image is located—and, lo, here it is.
The doppel ooze was a fun monster to work on, and I especially had fun with the notion that the ooze keeps spawning all these attacks and movement modes as it goes, making this an extremely difficult foe the longer it stays in a fight. I hope you can use this ooze to frighten your players. Thanks as always for stopping in at Mythopoeic Rambling, and I'll be back next week with a new monster.
What at first appears to be a gigantic violet ooze with several large skeletons suspended in its mass sprouts several mismatched heads and limbs from various megafauna.
Doppel Ooze CR 10
XP 9,600
N Gargantuan ooze
Init –2; Senses blindsight 60 ft.; Perception +11
Defense
AC 24, touch 4, flat-footed 24 (–2 Dex, +20 natural, –4 size)
hp 142 (15d8+75); regeneration 5 (cold)
Fort +10, Ref +3, Will +3
Immune acid, electricity, fire, ooze traits
Offense
Speed 40 ft., burrow 20 ft., climb 30 ft., fly 30 ft. (poor), swim 30 ft.; cumulative movement modes
Melee slam +16 (3d6+13)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 20 ft.
Special Attacks engulf (DC 26, 2d6 acid), extrusion, self-flanker
Statistics
Str 29, Dex 6, Con 21, Int —, Wis 7, Cha 16
Base Atk +11; CMB +24; CMD 32 (can't be tripped)
Skills Climb +17, Fly +4, Perception +11, Swim +17; Racial Modifiers +16 Fly, +16 Perception
Ecology
Environment any temperate or warm
Organization solitary
Treasure incidental (acid-resistant items only)
Special Abilities
Cumulative Movement Modes (Ex) A doppel ooze only starts with its 40 ft. base speed. As part of its extrusion ability (see below), it can add a movement mode (burrow, climb, fly, or swim), as listed in the stat block above.
Extrusion (Ex) Once per round as a free action, a doppel ooze can extrude a head or limb from its mass, adding another attack to its melee attacks. This extra attack has the same attack bonus and deals the same amount of damage as its slam attack.
Self-Flanker (Ex) If a doppel ooze makes two or more attacks on the same creature, it gains a flanking bonus for all those attacks. This applies to multiple creatures, provided the ooze has enough attacks to split up among the creatures.
Dark rumors purport that a powerful wizard created the first doppel ooze as a devastating weapon that would absorb all the capabilities and weapons of the victims its consumed. The ooze would grow bizarre copies of these absorbed creatures and attack with a mélange of teeth, claws, spikes, and tails. This ooze of course then turned on its creator and added him to its collection of dissolved bodies before escaping into the wild. The original doppel ooze then split off other oozes as it grew too large to effectively move due to all its kills.
A doppel ooze's normal state is similar to that of a gelatinous cube, and it returns to this state when it rests or digests a recent kill. Generally a straightforward hunter, the ooze possesses surprising cunning that belies its mindlessness. Sages speculate that the ooze gains rudimentary pack or otherwise beneficial hunting tactics from the creatures it consumes, and it can apply those tactics against later opponents. This allows the ooze to position its mimicked weapons to flank opponents or choose advantageous movement abilities to outmaneuver them. Doppel oozes do not work with others of their kind; a doppel ooze within blindsight distance of another attacks the other ooze in preference to any other creature. The only exception is when a doppel ooze newly splits, and the two oozes give each other a "grace period" during which they evidently cannot distinguish the other ooze as a separate entity.
While the array of weapons and movement make a doppel ooze a terrifying opponent, its lack of intelligence prevents it from truly realizing its potential. However, those same rumors that speak of the ooze's origins also caution that the original ooze eventually absorbed its creator's mind and now hunts other intelligent creatures to add to its truly formidable array of powers.
Posted with Blogsy
