Protiston Working Draft
Protiston
Colossal Ooze (Aquatic)
Hit Dice: 77d10+1001 (1424 hp)
Initiative: +3
Speed: 20 ft. (4 squares), climb 10 ft., swim 10 ft.
Armor Class: -3 (-8 size, -5 Dex), touch -3, flat-footed -3
Base Attack/Grapple: +57/+86
Attack: Slam +63 melee (6d6+13 plus 6d6 acid/19-20; 13d6+26 plus 12d6 acid and DC 61 Fort save to avoid instant death on critical hit)
Full Attack: Slam (6d6+13 plus 6d6 acid; 13d6+26 plus 12d6 acid and DC 61 Fort save to avoid instant death on critical hit)
Space/Reach: 50 ft./40 ft.
Special Attacks: Acid, create macrobes, engulf, engulfing grab, self-division, spells
Special Qualities: Amphibious, blind, blindsight 60 ft., half damage from slashing or piercing, ooze traits, swarmlike, vulnerability to fire
Saves: Fort +40, Ref +26, Will +33
Abilities: Str 36, Dex 1, Con 36, Int 22, Wis 18, Cha 21
Skills: Climb +21, Concentration +52, Hide +30, Knowledge (arcana) +42, Knowledge (dungeoneering) +42, Listen +42, Move Silently +35, Spellcraft +54, Spot +42, Survival +5 (+7 underground), Swim +21
Feats: Automatic Quicken Spell (×3), Cleave, Devastating Critical (slam), Enlarge Spell, Epic Reflexes, Epic Skill Focus (Spellcraft), Epic Spellcasting, Epic Will, Great Cleave, Great Fortitude, Improved Critical (slam), Improved Initiative, Lightning Reflexes, Maximize Spell, Multispell (×2), Overwhelming Critical (slam), Perfect Health, Power Attack, Quicken Spell, Silent Spell, Still Spell, Superior Initiative, Weapon Focus (slam)
Environment: Any aquatic, forest, swamp, and underground
Organization: Solitary
Challenge Rating: 27
Treasure: None
Alignment: Always chaotic neutral
Advancement: —
Level Adjustment: —
A roiling sea of vile slime, it flows apart and blends together so chaotically it's impossible to tell if it's one creature or a hundred.
Protiston is a vast slime mold of enormous age which has developed terrible spellcasting powers and a formidable, albeit highly alien, intelligence. The mage who discovered and named Protiston claims that it slowly evolved from a simple colony of mold floating in some ancient sea. Other sages speculate that the demon Juiblex, the Faceless Lord, had a hand (or pseudopod) in Protistion's elevation.
Protiston is unable to comprehend even the possibility that anything other than itself might possess sentience. Everything it encounters is either food to be devoured, or a hostile environmental phenomena to be destroyed or reshaped to Protiston's benefit. Protiston wishes to reshape the entire world to benefit itself. It has the ability to transform ordinary microbial life into giant "macrobes" under its control. It has no more regard for the lives of these macrobes than it does for the rest of existence — they are nothing more than tools to feed its hunger and guard its treasure.
Protiston can move on land but lives in water. It may be found in the sea or freshwater lakes, most often lairing in coral atolls or caverns along the shoreline. Whatever place Protiston chooses as its home is only temporary, the sapient slime mold always moves on sooner or later. Sometimes this is because Protiston's devoured everything in its habitat, or it may have finished "reshaping" an area to its tastes and moved on to other project, or perhaps the chaotic creature decides to relocate on a whim. In adverse conditions, Protiston can turn part or all of its body into a sporocarp and wait for better times. Even the smallest piece of Protiston is part of the whole, the slime mold can regrow to full power even if all of its body is destroyed apart from a single amoeboid cell.
Protiston can reshape the slime of its body in any shape it desires, it can even split itself into many parts and rejoin together again. Most commonly, it takes the form of a small island of slime up to 80 feet across and 20 or 30 feet thick. Protiston typically weighs between 1200 and 2000 tons.
Macrobe: A macrobe is a microbe that has been magically transformed from a microscopic organism into a giant single-celled creature. Many macrobes have been created by Protiston, but they can also be produced by arcane experiments or exotic supernatural phenomena. Normal macrobes breed true, and can quickly spread more of their kind. Protiston is a unique entity and any "offspring" it produces are ordinary giant slime molds.
Combat
Protiston does not usually interact with intruders in its domain, typically sending its macrobe servitors to investigate any disturbance. If they do not suffice, however, Protiston will attack with a devastating combination of physical force and spells. Protiston's triple Automatic Quicken Spell feats allow it to cast any of its spells as quickened spells, while its twin Multispell feats mean it can cast up to 4 quickened spells in a round while simultaneously making a full attack.
Protiston can use its self-division ability to surround or outflank opponents. It always sequesters at least 1 small portion of its body in a safe place, so it can regrow if the rest of its body is destroyed.
Acid (Ex): Protiston's acid does not harm metal or stone.
Control Ooze (Su): Protiston can telepathically command mindless oozes within 400 ft. This ability effectively programs the oozes as if they were mindless undead or constructs. Protiston can control up to 38 HD of oozes.
Create Macrobes (Su): Once per day, Protiston can permanently transform ordinary microbes into giant microorganisms. Protiston can create up to 38 HD of macrobes, of any size or type it chooses. For example, it might create a 16 HD Huge slime mold slug, a giant gonyaulax swarm (13 HD), and three 3 HD giant elphidium.
Engulf (Ex): Protiston can simply mow down smaller creatures as a standard action. It can make a slam attack and an engulf attack in the same round as a full round action. Protiston merely has to move over the opponents, affecting as many as it can cover. Opponents can make opportunity attacks against Protiston, but if they do so they are not entitled to a saving throw. Those who do not attempt attacks of opportunity must succeed on a DC 61 Reflex save or be engulfed; on a success, they are pushed back or aside (opponent's choice) as Protiston moves forward. Engulfed creatures take 6d6+13 bludgeoning damage plus 6d6 acid damage, and are considered to be grappled and trapped within Protiston's body. The save DC is Strength-based.
Engulfing Grab (Ex): To use this ability, Protiston must hit with its slam attack. It can then attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it establishes a hold and can attempt to engulf its opponent (see below) as a free action. Protiston can choose not to engulf an opponent if it wishes to, and can release a creature it has already engulfed (as a free action) if it needs to make room to engulf a new opponent. Protiston has a +4 racial bonus on grapple checks (already figured into the Base Attack/Grapple entry above).
Self-Division (Ex): Protiston can divide its body into multiple pieces, or recombine pieces of itself into one, as part of any move action it takes. Protiston's body occupies one hundred 5 ft. squares. When it splits into pieces it must divide these 5 ft. squares and hit points between its pieces. Protiston cannot split off a piece of itself smaller than Large size (four 5 ft. squares), and each piece must have at least 14 hit points per 5 ft. square, but apart from that Protiston can divide itself however it chooses. If pieces of Protiston recombine, add up their current hit points and number of 5 ft. squares to determine the combined piece's size and hit points.
All pieces of Protiston need to stay within 1000 ft. of each other. If any piece strays outside that distance, it becomes mindless and must succeed at a Will saves every round (DC 20 +1 per round of isolation) or transform into a giant slime mold slug of the same size and hit points. Until that happens, an isolated piece will instinctively seek to rejoin the rest of Protiston, attacking anything that gets in its way.
Protiston acts as a single entity even if it is divided into dozens of pieces, for the separate parts are in constant communication. Thus, if Protiston makes a move action all of its pieces can move, if it makes a standard attack all of its pieces can attack. If Protiston casts a spell, only one of its pieces casts the spell, but if Protiston cast the spell on itself it can affect either the target piece or all of its pieces. Attacks that affect a piece of Protiston are only able to harm that piece - e.g. petrifying a separate piece of the creature will not turn the other pieces into stone.
Protiston's mind is evenly divided amongst its body, so the smaller a piece of Protiston is the less intelligence it has, which means the smaller a piece of Protiston is the less potent its spell casting ability is (see spells, below, for details).
The following table gives attributes for pieces of Protiston, depending on their number of 5 ft. squares.
Number
of 5 ft. . . . . . . . Grapple . .. Damage. . . . Mental . . Spell
Squares .. Size . . AC . Mod . . . (Engulf DC). . Penalty*. Penalty**
4-8 . . . Large . .. 4 . +72 . 2d6+5 & 2d6 acid (43) . -15 . . -4
9-15 . . . Huge . .. 3 . +76 . 3d6+7 & 3d6 acid (45) . -10 . . -3
16-35 . Gargantuan . 1 . +80 . 4d6+9 & 4d6 acid (47) .. -5 . . -2
36-49 .. Colossal . -3 . +84 . 5d6+11 & 5d6 acid (49) . -2 . . -1
50+ . .. Colossal+. -3 . +86 . 6d6+13 & 6d6 acid (51) . +0 . . +0
*Apply this penalty to any Int-, Wis- or Cha-based skill check taken by the piece of Protiston.
**Apply this penalty to the DC and caster level of any spell cast by the piece of Protiston.
Spells: Protiston casts spells as an 18th-level sorcerer. It never casts spells with the Fire descriptor.
Typical Spells Known (6/8/7/7/7/7/6/6/5/3; save DC 15 + spell level)
0th - acid splash, dancing lights, detect magic, ghost sound, light, mage hand, open/close, read magic, resistance;
1st - expeditious retreat, grease, ray of enfeeblement, protection from law, shield;
2nd - eagle's splendor, levitate, resist energy, protection from arrows, web;
3rd - blacklight, hold person, slow, stinking cloud;
4th - black tentacles, contagion, hallucinatory terrain, solid fog;
5th - cloudkill, hold monster, telekinesis, transmute rock to mud;
6th - freezing sphere, antimagic field, disintegrate;
7th - control weather, finger of death, grasping hand;
8th - horrid wilting, polymorph any object;
9th - wail of the banshee.
Epic Spells: Protiston is capable of casting epic spells. It has 3 epic spell slots per day. Its immensely long life gives Protiston plenty of time to develop epic spells. It prefers epic spells of Transformation or Conjuration, and never develops an epic spell that does fire damage. Typical epic spells for Protiston are create living vault, raise island, mass blob (as the epic spell mass frog, except it turns targets into Tiny-sized amoeboid slime molds) and slime tsunami (as the epic spell verdigris, except it overgrows the area with slimy bacterial mats instead of plants).
Sporocarp (Ex): As a full round action, Protiston can form its body into sporocarps — objects that resemble mushrooms. It can use its Self-Division ability to form a part or parts of its body into sporocarps while the rest of its body remains in its normal slime form.
A sporocarp has AC 1, hardness 10, and the same hit points and spellcasting ability as a normal piece of Protiston and it gains Automatic Silent Spell (x3) and Automatic Still Spell (x3) as bonus feats while in sporocarp form. It is incapable of moving (so has speed 0 ft. and cannot make physical attacks), but has full use of its senses and mental abilities. A sporocarp is twice as tall as the reach of the equivalently sized piece of Protiston.
Newly formed sporocarps are soggy and covered with damp mucus, giving them fire resistance 10. After 2d6 minutes the sporocarp will mature, drying out and gaining vulnerability to fire.
The "mushroom" head of a mature sporocarp is hollow and filled with spores about an inch long. Any weapon damage which does not destroy a mature sporocarp causes it to split open and release its spores. The spores scatter in a cloud covering a radius equal to 30 foot or the sporocarp's height, whichever is greater. The spores in this cloud attach themselves to any organic matter they touch (including living creatures), which they immediately start to digest, doing acid damage equal to an equivalently sized piece of Protiston (see Self-Division, above). This acid damage only harms organic materials such as flesh or wood. On the first round of contact, the spores can be scraped off a creature (exposing the scraping device to the spores' acid damage), but after that it must be frozen, burned, or cut away (dealing damage to the victim as well). Anything that deals cold or fire damage, sunlight, or a remove disease spell destroys a spore infestation.
The spores will form Protiston cells and eventually regrow Protiston's slime-body. How long it takes for the spores to grow varies greatly and depends on the size of regrowth, the food supply, and the degree of humidity and warmth. The process typically takes 1d4 hours to regrow a few 5-foot squares, but it may take up to 1d10+10 days to regrow Protiston's entire body from a single spore.
Swarmlike (Ex): Protiston, like all slime molds, is not truly a single creature but is a cooperative of myriads of amoeba-like creatures. As such, it has some of the traits of a swarm. Unlike other creatures whose space occupies more than one square, Protiston is shapeable. It can occupy any contiguous squares, and it can squeeze through any space large enough to contain Tiny creatures. It can occupy the same space as a creature of any size, since it crawls all over its prey.
Skills: Protiston has a +8 racial bonus on Climb checks and can always choose to take 10 on Climb checks, even if rushed or threatened. Protiston has a +8 racial bonus on any Swim check to perform some special action or avoid a hazard and can always take 10 on Swim checks, even if distracted or endangered.
Originally appeared in Dragon Magazine 111 (“Microscopic monsters - When they get bigger, they get a lot tougher” by Kent Colbath, July 1986).
