Aria cried "Rose!" as she saw -<em>through</em>the almost-transparent but energetically flashing body fo the ooze, she realized - Rose make a deep parting-the-waters strike through the body of the ooze but then, like a mouth, the great gash seemed to suck Rose in, the rest of the body flowing around her. A moment later she took great relief from observing that, somehow, the flashing and freezing energies inside (the creature was now powerfully endothermic, chilling the air all about them) seemed to harm Rose hardly at all, like the flames of the hellhound and death knight before. Aria's second burst of relief came as Rose used their ethereal phasing to pass out of it, as they had through doors and decks, and gash it again just as she was doing her own hop-back from the advancing ooze.<br/><br/>The creature, if she could even call it that, had displayed a shiftless ease for sliding one way for Rose then back to her, with no head or tail per se. It triggered something in her memory  - a beholder, floating down out of a shaft in its own vertically-oriented layer, into the midst of herself and and adventuring outfit, based out of Neverwinter, she'd been party to, so to speak, after leaving Luskan - the many eyes on stalks, panning all about, seeming to focus on all of them at once, and then the many-hued eyebeams flashed out - and nonetheless, somehow, she'd managed to twist between two baleful beams and into a blind spot, to sink a thin rapier deep into the bulbous body and find an ichor-spurting vein...<br/><br/>Something about the way this icy ooze seemed to vibrate back and forth from Rose's last strike, like a wobbling bowl of jelly, and then make splorting motions in both directions as if deciding who to 'eat' next, seemed like as good an opening as any. Aria had the sense that if she struck it just right, she might cause the thing's quivering to enter a feedback loop of self-rending vibrations.<br/><br/>She sliced when it wobbled each way, and the wobbling seemed to go up in pitch, like the thing were shaking up and threatening to burst through its own surface. The vibration widened the rend, which connected with one of Rose's gashes from tis other 'side'. Within moments, the thing seemed to burst apart in a sudden flurry of little icy motes; now it was no longer a translucent continuous medium, but a pile of crystalline snowy slush in the hallway.<br/><br/>"Are you okay, Rose!?" Aria asked in a concerned voice across the slush. "You did seem to take that ordeal in stride, both the being in and the getting out, but.."<br/><br/>A number of the treasure chests had moved out into the wall with it, carried inside the body like Rose had been for a moment. One of them even popped open, either unlocked or now damaged - its contents were no pile of gold or gems, though, but a store of<em>perishable</em>foods which looked to be in quite edible condition, save for being frozen: blueberries, bottles of milk, salmon, other unsalted meats, oranges, lemons, and limes.<br/><br/>"Well huh," Aria blinked, "I have worked up<em>some</em>appetite in all this, but I hope the other chests are more....up tot he snuff the pirate legends."<br/><br/>She glanced at them critically. "Most look locked, I might be able to pick some of them given a few minutes apiece, or they'd likely fit all in the death knights' big ol' bag for picking at leisure later."<br/><br/><br/><br/><br/>Cold dmg rounded down to 2 (is in your favor sometimes!)<br/>Ooze damage total at 87 (each of Rose's attacks did 29, as did Aria's FA combined, heh)<br/><br/>I wondered about tripping too! Indeed oozes don't seem to actually be immune to it (they'd probably qualify as 'quadrapeds' at least), even though it's hard to conceptualize it in-character. Maybe like 'shoveling' or overturning a pile of something, or pancake-smacking it flat so it has to rise up again.<br/><br/>I'd also been wondering about Craven and Penetrating Strike. AFAICT, RAW Craven won't apply, as the way Penetrating Strike was worded is as if it's not actually a 'sneak attack' (and thus for example won't trigger Staggering Strike or her kukri's 'subtlety' bonus), it's just extra damage that happens to have similar conditions (flanking) and damage (half the number of d6s). Almost like a favored enemy thing.<br/><br/>I did just recently realize, though, that Craven damage will multiply on a crit (against a crittable enemy of course), since it's a constant bonus and not dice. Which is nice with Aria's wide threat range (not that the feat needs more help!)<br/><br/>The ooze is indeed immune to flanking but (thanks to you) Aria knows Darkstalker (not that Rose would know that either) - it has nice synergy with Penetrating Strike since there's probably a correlation between enemies with those attributes. All oozes, at least. Great move, getting Rose into flanking position.<br/><br/>Aria: FA<br/>mods 26/21/16 (includes +4 from imp. flanking, another good piece of synergy between Darkstalker and Swashbuckler)<br/>Result: 2, 4, 2,<br/>terrible, but so is its AC...<br/>(mh1)<br/>hit, dmg 4 + 17<br/>KOed<br/><br/><br/>Oh, and the bag of holding is type IV. Weighs 60 lbs, which is a lot for Aria (Str 14 and highly dependent on maintaining a light load) but probably nothing for Rose. Holds 1500 lbs or 250 cubic feet - that's like a horse corpse or so - which I don't think will be an issue I'm not really keeping track of (hardly worth the bother).