The Cosmic Ooze
Welcome all to the conclusion of 20th-Level Week! It’s been a fun ride, and by now I know that all of you are dying to try out your character’s new high-level powers. But what to fight? A tarn linnorm? Boooooring! Why not test yourselves against this week’s newest Exotic Encounter, the cosmic ooze, which is more than able to challenge the likes of your characters! Don’t have level 20 characters with which to use this week’s content? Roll some up for an epic battle you won’t soon forget, and get to experimenting with just how much power you can squeeze out of the game!
Cosmic Ooze
The sky is filled with an enormous, writhing darkness, blacker even than the light-deprived vacuum of space. The mass twists and roils with acidic bubbles boiling about the surface of the gelatinous mass. Looking closely, the features of dozens of screaming humanoids can be observed trapped in perpetual suffering just below the caustic surface.
COSMIC OOZE CR 20
XP 307,200
CE Colossal ooze
Init +4; Senses blindsight 1,000 ft.; Perception +0
DEFENSE
AC 2, touch 2, flat-footed 2 (-8 size)
hp 527 (34d8+374)
Fort +23, Ref +13, Will +13
Defensive Abilities ooze traits; Immune mind-affecting effects, death effects
OFFENSE
Speed fly 200 ft. (perfect)
Melee slam +34 (4d8+24 plus 10d10 acid damage plus grab)
Special Attack absorb, combine, preserve, slime tornado (100 ft. high, 4d8+24 damage plus 10d10 acid, DC 53).
STATISTICS
Str 42, Dex 10, Con 30, Int 1, Wis 10, Cha 10
Base Atk +25; CMB +49 (+53 grapple); CMD 59
Feats Awesome Blow, Blind-Fight, Cleave, Critical Focus (slam), Great Cleave, Great Fortitude, Greater Vital Strike, Iron Will, Improved Critical (slam), Improved Initiative, Improved Vital Strike, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Skill Focus (fly), Toughness, Vital Strike, Weapon Focus (slam)
Skills Fly +40
SQ assimilate, ooze traits
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure standard
SPECIAL ABILITIES
Absorb (Ex): If a cosmic ooze begins its round grappling a creature, it can swallow that creature as a free action. Each round on its turn, a swallowed creature suffers 10d10 points of acid damage. A swallowed creature is considered to have the grappled condition; however, he can escape the grapple (and the ooze) by succeeding on a DC 20 Strength check.
Assimilate (Su): The cosmic ooze gains access to the abilities of all creatures it has absorbed, so long as they remain within its body. This grants the cosmic ooze all the skill ranks, feats, and languages each assimilated creature possesses, allows the cosmic ooze to treat its Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores as being equal to those of any assimilated creature (if they are higher than its own), and allows the cosmic ooze to cast any spell an assimilated creature has prepared as a spell-like ability with a caster level of 20 (saving throws are Charisma-based). If it does, that spell is considered expended by the assimilated creature, who is not able to re-prepare spells as long as it is absorbed.
Blindsight (Ex): The cosmic ooze’s blindsight ability has been specially adapted to the emptiness of space, and is able to function even in a total vacuum.
Combine (Ex): Two cosmic oozes can combine, forming into a single more powerful whole. When this occurs, the two creatures combine their current and maximum hit points, and the resulting creature gains a +6 bonus to its Strength score. Once combined, the two cosmic oozes can never separate, and thus they rarely choose to do this unless it is critical to their survival.
Preserve (Ex): A creature engulfed by a cosmic ooze normally suffers 10d10 points of acid damage each round; however, a cosmic ooze can choose to protect any number of creatures inside its body from this damage as a free action each round, in order to continue benefitting from its assimilate ability.
Slime Tornado (Su): As a full-round action, the cosmic ooze can transform into a tornado 10 feet wide at the base, 100 feet tall, and 30 feet wide at the top. While in this form, it can move 1,000 feet as a full-round action, although it must move along the ground in a straight line. This ability otherwise functions as the whirlwind universal monster ability, except that any creature sharing a space with the cosmic ooze at the end of the cosmic ooze’s turn suffers 10d10 points of acid damage, in addition to the normal effects of a whirlwind. Any creature trapped in the whirlwind when the cosmic ooze ends the effect is automatically engulfed by it, and creatures that were engulfed by the cosmic ooze when it activates this ability automatically become trapped by the whirlwind (and subject to damage each round).
Ecology
These horrible creatures can trace their origins to the deepest reaches of space, on a lone planet now devoid of other life. In the dying days of the star which this planet orbited, the star spilled a strange and cosmic magic onto the planet, which imbued the native slime-like creatures there with incredible powers of growth and consumption. Driven by hunger, the massive beasts destroyed all life on their home world, absorbing its power into themselves. Throughout this process, they eventually learned the secrets to escape their doomed home world. Now the monsters travel in drifting colonies throughout space, laying waste to unsuspecting worlds in a search for ever greater power.
While normally unintelligent, some of the most powerful cosmic oozes have trapped highly intelligent but frail wizards and sorcerers inside of them, preserving these casters indefinitely in order to access their spell powers and great intellect. When in possession of an advanced intellect, cosmic oozes have cruel and often sadistic personalities that lead them on long campaigns of torment and slaughter. Such brief spells of violent intellect have been known to lead to the prolonged suffering of many worlds doomed to be consumed by the cosmic ooze’s unquenchable appetite for destruction and power.