Quick story from my game last night where a planning mishap led to a very cool outcome with food for thought for future sessions.
The party is making their way through a slot canyon. They’ve sent the fighter ahead to scout. He notices strange slime on the walls and bits of debris seemingly floating in mid-air. It’s a Chaos Ooze. The bard/channeler blasts it with his thunder voice. He opens a hole big enough to run through but the Ooze is rapidly reconstituting itself. Party sprints through the hole blown in the Ooze and most of them roll success with cost.
This is where the mishap comes in. I think, ok, they’ll get caught by the dripping ooze, take some damage, but make it to the other side. Except, the problem is when copying the monster’s stat block onto my cheat sheet I forgot to include the damage dice. On the fly, I look to the monster moves, see “Cause a change in appearance or substance” and decide that each of them gets a portion of their body or gear transmogrified into a new material. Through their own ideas, they all end up sporting permanent metallic scars including the ranger who’s face is now half metal. It was awesome and they loved it.
TLDR: Forgot to include damage stat for the monster and had to think of creative ways for the monster to affect my PC’s. It was way better than rolling D10 and ticking off a few hitpoints.
Takeaway: I think I’m going to “forget” what a creature’s damage die is much more often in the future.
Anyone ever have a mishap like this turn into something cool at the table?