A Pool

Let's consider our party.  For those who may be new, this series of posts have been thought experiments on what we can do as DM, given a theoretical action of the party.  As discussed in the linked post, our faux 1st/2nd level party has been attacked by a huge spider, has discovered a warm thermal side passage, and learned it contains at least one additional huge spider.

Let's say the party chooses against this path.  Instead, having come this far in the colder cavern, they decide the alternative is a pointless side quest, meant to draw them away from their primary goal.  That was to find the "demon" within the dungeon (not knowing precisely what it is) and clues to the disappearance of the local noble's father.  For those who have been following along, you can see how the campaign has become this enormously confusing, dense, yet suggestive series of clues and facets ... while you've been here all along as each has been introduced to the party.  As a DM, I know my players will call out things along the way, wanting to know how each thread fits into the whole.  Because I've been running games this way for decades, I'm able to answer in some manner, or explain how because they never did confront a certain threat, or go into a certain part of the dungeon, that mystery remains unsolved.

But I digress.  Obviously, I need to write another post that links all the threads on this series to date.

You may remember that one of the dangers of the dungeon that I mentioned in a post two weeks ago were miniature ochre jellies.  Having eschewed the thermal vent, the party is nonetheless moving adjacent to it and therefore the caves here are slightly warmer to those where the lake witch resides.  I trust you're all following along.  Questions in the comments, please.

I've set up this post to explain an encounter where the party has no warning of what's coming, which is quite different from the fight with the witch's minions.  Imagine a cavern-passage that slopes downwards at about ten degrees.  In shape, it varies between 20 and 30 feet wide, but only five of six feet high ... the floor is crumpled, but made smooth by the dampness.

As it levels out, the ceiling rises a few feet, but then the passage submerges itself into a pool.  This fills the passage from side to side; the water's far edge can't be seen properly with a torch, but a bullseye-lantern hints that the far edge might be 70 feet away.  A good light spell, if the party has one and casts it to illuminate the whole tunnel, confirms the far edge is 75 feet away.  From there, the passage slopes upwards and out of sight.

The water is perfectly still.  It's black in colour.  The players test it with a staff and find that it's but a few inches deep, as far as a staff can reach.  A longer pole shows that it gently deepens to a foot or so.  Actually entering the water reveals that it has a solid rock bottom and never gets more than four feet deep, before climbing out to the other side.  This last, of course, isn't told to the party unless they can somehow learn it by experimentation or with a spell of some kind — the sort of spell a 1st or 2nd level caster wouldn't have.

Throwing stones into the water turns up no visible monsters.  Nothing appears to be swimming around.  The surface reveals no fins nor movement of any kind, other than what the party makes.  But then, a jelly wouldn't, would they?  They don't "swim."  They don't move fast.  Their bodies are so watery, with the upper part soft and flat, that the top of one wouldn't break the surface tension.  As the water is disturbed, they merely float, their bodies matching the ripples.  As they don't produce their own light, they're as black as the water.  But again, we don't explain any of this, not until the party comes into contact, or detects them in some other than disturbing the water.

Is it fair?  The party can't see the monster.  And naturally, they don't trust the water.  Ten thousand cavers a season wade through pools like this without a care, but they don't do it in a D&D world.  It might just be a pool.  But naturally, the players are cautious.

Gygax was extremely fond of the surprise and slash encounter.  Player walks under a part of the ceiling, spider conveniently drops, surprise! and attacks.  This same motif appears everywhere in serial fiction beginning with the 19th century and going right up through Tarzan movies of the 30s and 40s, and into monster films of the 50s and 60s ... just the sort of fare that Gygax watched on creature feature afternoons when he was a little boy.

But constant encounters like this become tiresome, especially from the party's perspective.  All too often, some player is bound to say upon coming to the water, wearily, "I ready my bow for the moment the monster leaps out of the water by surprise."  Cinematically a jump scare might work; but in an imagination-based game structure, it lacks the shock factor.  I can rise slowly in my chair, glare momentously at a member of the party, holding the pose for ten or twelve seconds as the party waits for me to speak — and then SNAP! my hand out and grab a nearby player who I'm not staring at, with a shout, or suddenly slap my hands on the table.  Done right, it's effective.  It's an old carnival trick.

Sadly, this shit only works once with the same audience.

Myself, I like a slow build.  The players are at odds with themselves here.  On the one hand, the party could just refuse to enter or explore it, but it's a bit humiliating to be turned back by what might be an empty pool of water.  This I've also done.  It can be satisfying for the DM, with parties who do turn back, to remark, "Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about, and gallantly he chickened out ..."  Even if it doesn't convince the party to try the pool after all, things like that get in their heads and primes them for the next time they run away from "danger" that hasn't been proved to exist.

So, what's it to be?  These are little bitty ochre jellies, one-sixth the size of the traditional monster (p.75), so they're not going to "jump out" — and let's clear it up further by saying these things don't swim fast.  So the danger is ...?

There's a goodly number, though they're not all in the same spot, they're scattered all over.  If a character moves slowly and cautiously, the jellies will slowly congregate until he or she is surrounded by eight of the devils.  I would run it thusly:  for the first 3 rounds, the slow moving player encounters nothing.  Then, one attacks and if it hits, the player feels a sting for 1-2 damage.  No idea what caused it.  If the creature misses, the player merely feels something brush a leg or an arm.  The 2nd round, there are two jellies; the 3rd round, three; the 4th round there are five and in the 5th round, eight.  No surprise is rolled, nor initiative, because until he or she is touched, the player can't see to win initiative.  The jellies get it automatically.

This is what happens if the character, say the thief, moves slowly.  If he then rushes pell-mell back to the party, or through to the other side, the churning of the water protects him, and there are no more attacks.  But if he tries to hit back, slapping his sword at the water, the attacks increase as described above.

There isn't enough damage here to call the encounter "unfair."  It's really more of a puzzle than a monster.  But players get very stupid about monsters, and don't think of them as "puzzles."  To a player, the weapon is a hammer and every monster looks like a nail.  Even if one player does figure out that the secret is to rush through the water, it doesn't mean others in the party will agree.

There's a good chance someone will try to burn the top of the water with oil.  If so, they'll waste their oil but it won't kill the jellies.  It might be effective against a large ochre jelly in a dry hallway, but these will be insulated against the fire and will merely descend deeper into the water, rising again when the fire subsides.  Burning oil in water is only dangerous to creatures that are partly above the water, where the oil can cling to their bodies and oxygen can feed the flames.

As explained above, situations like these can be made very complicated by a party, who is bound to overthink everything, especially an apparently empty pool of water occurring in an underground cavern where water nearly always pools atop hard stone.  We could make the pool completely empty and the party would still waste a half-hour of game time on it ... and never be completely sure it really was empty.  Because this is what parties are like.

I hope it comes across that our goal is to give it the best description we can, and then let the party waste all the time they want on it.  It's a good time for the DM to get up for a bowl of ice cream.