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Xenobiological Hazards

In addition to facing dangerous creatures and harsh environmental conditions, space explorers must occasionally contend with xenobiological hazards—nonsentient forms of life that are, by their verynature, menacing and dangerous without being openly adversarial.

Xenobiological hazards are treated more like traps than creatures. They have Challenge Ratings (CRs), and heroes earn experience points for surviving or overcoming them. A xenobiological hazard might be a pool of corrosive slime or a patch of mold that feeds on the warmth of nearby life forms. It’s not deliberately predatory, just dangerous by nature.

Two kinds of xenobiological hazards are described here.

ENDOTHERMIC MOLD (CR 2)​

Endothermic mold feeds on warmth, siphoning heat from anything around it. A patch of endothermic mold is red-brown in color and 5 feet in diameter, and the temperature is always cold in a 30- foot radius around it. Living creatures within 5 feet take 3d6 points of nonlethal cold damage. Fire brought within 5 feet of the mold causes it to instantly double in size.

A 5-foot patch of endothermic mold is destroyed if it takes 5 or more points of cold damage.

SPACE SLIME (CR 4)​

This sticky, translucent green slime devours flesh and organic materials on contact. Wet and sticky, it clings to walls, ceilings, and floors in patches, growing and spreading as it consumes organic matter. It drops from walls and ceilings when it detects movement (and possible food) below.

A single 5-foot square of space slime deals 1d6 points of Constitution damage per round while it devours flesh. On the first round of contact, the slime can be scraped off a creature (most likely destroying the scraping device), but after that it must be frozen, burned, or cut away (dealing damage to the victim as well). Against wood or metal, space slime deals 2d6 points of damage per round, ignoring metal’s hardness but not that of wood. It does not harm stone. An injection of sporekill or 10 or more points of cold or fire damage destroys a 5-foot patch of space slime.