Of Rot Grubs and Rust Monsters

Old school monsters from the Monster Manual are some of the toughest critters in RPG gaming. It's not that their hitpoints are so high or that their hits do so much damage, as much as what happens to you after they whack you or in some cases you whack them.

The Rot Grub

The rot grub is a dirty nasty bugger because you don't know they're there until it's too late. You're inspecting a pile of dung or roll over a dead body foraging for loot and one of these nasty little grubs lands on your flesh and starts to burrow. What happens next depends on the edition of the game you are playing. But lets just say you're going to die.

In Labyrinth Lord we find the following description of what happens:

Fire must be applied to the site of contact at once in order to prevent the rot grubs from burrowing further. This application of flame inflicts 1d6 hit points of damage per instance. If not stopped immediately, within 1d3x10 minutes the rot grubs will find the heart and kill their victim.

Now lets say you're first level and more then one of these grubs lands on you. No chance to burn them off, only one attack per round. The only other option, cure disease spell? And who is going to have a 3rd level cleric spell in a first level adventure to cure disease? My advice to adventurers, stay away from dung heaps and dead bodies. All this from a creature with only 1 hit point and doing no damage directly.

Rust Monsters

Rust Monsters are cute and in the old game they did no damage to your character if they hit. But if they so much as touch you or you it, you loose your gear or weapons.

A rust monster's prehensile antennae can rust metals on contact, as can their hide when struck with metal weapons. All ordinary metal armor and weapons either struck by antennae or contacting a rust monster's hide (when it is attacked with a sword, for instance) instantly becomes utterly and permanently useless from severe rusting.

Magic items lose 1 bonus per contact. So that +1 weapon is 90% likely to become ordinary after the first hit. Yet a rust monster does no damage to a character directly if it hits. This little critter will send a iron clad Fighter running to the hills.

Wouldn't a chemical reaction that rusted a piece of metal to dust in less then a round produce some modicrum of heat? I think rust monsters should do some damage. But the loss of your weapon or armor is probably enough for most.

These critters are nasty, so they've made it into my monster hall of fame. What's your favorite nasty little critter?