Deadly Pudding

These ravenous blobs, colonies of cells that both scavenge and hunt, lurk mostly in ruins and dungeons. From up to 90 feet away they sense heat and can analyze the structure of a material to judge whether it is edible, and they attack any animal (people included) or plant matter they find. They creep across walls and ceilings as fast as across floors, often dropping onto victims, and can squeeze through any crack at least an inch wide. They reproduce by fission and adapt to nearly any climate.

Acid, cold and poison do not harm them. Weapon blows and lightning bolts split a pudding into smaller ones, each fighting just like the original. Fire and magic missiles cause normal damage.

Size tracks hit points: at 11-30% of maximum it is 3 to 4 feet across, at 31-50% about 5 feet, 51-70% 6 feet, 71-90% 7 feet and 91-100% 8 feet. A pudding cut down below 3 feet stays 3 feet wide but becomes thinner. Since its mouths cover its whole surface and it never uses them all at once, a small pudding deals as much damage as a big one.

Black puddings carry the most corrosive acid, dealing 3-24 points each round to anything organic and eating through 2 inches of wood, over an area equal to their width, in a round. They also dissolve metal: chain mail in one round, plate in two, with each magical plus adding a round, so plate mail +3 lasts five.

White puddings love the cold. In polar or icy places they are 50% likely to be mistaken for snow or ice, which guarantees surprise. They eat any animal or plant matter and can survive on ice alone. Metal is safe from them, but they dissolve organic materials in one round and damage flesh terribly quickly.

Dun puddings are desert scavengers of barrens and wastes, living on sand when nothing organic is available. They dissolve leather in one round regardless of enchantment and eat metal half as fast as black puddings: chain in two rounds, plate in four, plus two rounds per magical plus.

Brown puddings live mostly in marshes. Their skin is tough but their attack is the weakest of the group. They cannot harm metal but destroy wood and leather in one round, whatever the magical bonus.

The GM may invent other varieties.