I covered this before, I believe, but just in case:If you hit an unidentified creature once and it rusts your weapon,
back away. Only an idiot would keep hacking away at it. Decide whether you want to kill it or just escape it. To escape, throw something iron – iron spikes will do – as a distraction, the same way you would throw rations to distract other monsters. To kill, shoot it with missile weapons. Doesn’t matter if the arrowheads or bolts rust, the’ll still do damage; they just won’t be reusable. If you have no missile weapons and there are no rocks on the ground (really?) use your ten-foot pole(s) as a club. A staff will work, too, and so will a torch; turn your magic-users into frontline fighters for a change. Most versions of the rust monster do
no damage, only the rust effect, so again, not that hard a monster to deal with.
But you might want to consider charming or capturing/taming the rust monster instead. It’s a great thing to sic on goblins and orcs before you charge in.
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Get a bronze or brass warhammer fashioned or a big stick (a staff) and beat the rust monster to death with it.
ReplyDeleteOr just a stick. Seriously, why buy a bronze warhammer when presumably you already have a ten-foot pole? Unless you just don't like switching weapons...
DeleteI had a creative group of players who sicked their party druid on the rust monster. No metal armor or weapons. Poor rusty...
ReplyDeleteThis one doesn't seem as necessary as the How to... for ear seekers. Rust monsters seem much more obvious to me. The key detail with the former was the observation about the doors you mentioned in your reply to Jay Goodenbery, because both players and referees can forget about that aspect. Too often it's advised we use descriptions as a sort of dressing, painting a vivid picture for the players, when it's really the gameplay. Even once you've embraced the idea of old school play, you can still use some help reprogramming your brain to do it properly
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, a lot of the trick to monsters like that is rethinking how to present them, and only "punishing" players who deliberately do the wrong thing or ignore the "fluff".
DeleteThe rust monster is here because it is routinely still trotted out as an example of a horrible "screwjob" monster, as if a monster that is nearly defenseless, but that rusts one of your weapons before you change your tactics, is the worst, WORST thing that could possibly happen to you. I just saw such a comment within the last couple days, in fact.
I have heard complaints about the rust monster, but they always struck me as being more against long term consequences and assuming players are somehow entitled to magic weapons, rather than not knowing how to deal with the monster itself, hence why they kept it in 4E but only in a completely ruined form
DeleteMy mistake with ear seekers was not even thinking of using the door description as a clue. I was too focused on using the item list as a hint (there's gotta be a reason for those listening cones with the wire mesh). I should probably apply Justin Alexander's Rule of Three trick (or whatever it was called) for every situation like that so I can get into the right groove