Spawns of the demon lord Juiblex, oozes are mindless living blobs that want nothing more than to absorb and dissolve every morsel of food they can slide into. The species' voracious appetite has come in handy as a cleaning mechanism for lazy wizards, liches, and other dungeon designers in Dungeons & Dragons.
Not to mention, the creatures also pose a deadly threat to any would-be intruders. Furthermore, oozes are immune to all physical conditional effects due to the nature of their slippery form. But just how dangerous can oversized jello become? We take a look at the most powerful D&D oozes in the game.
Updated March 29, 2023 by Jerel Levy: Oozes are a fun enemy to throw at your party. D&D ooze monsters in 5e were once scarce, but now there are even more variations of ooze to choose from with the release of more adventure modules and D&D content. It's time to revisit this list and add a few more ooze options to the table when determining the most powerful oozes in fifth edition. We've updated and reorganized this list to ensure that the most powerful oozes are included.
9 Oblex Spawn
Oozes have needed some new cousins for a long while, and then we got the addition of the oblex. The oblex are a spawn of ooze that came about after experimentation done by mind flayers. Appropriately, they deal psychic damage when consuming their foes, feeding on the memories of their prey. As such, all forms of oblex prefer to feast on humanoids of a higher intelligence. Oblex spawns are the weakest of their kind and possess an aversion to fire that gives them disadvantage on attack rolls and ability checks after suffering fire damage. Ready the torches and firebolts!
8 Gray Ooze
Gray oozes are the bane of any metal-wielding low-level adventurer. The gelatin that makes up their bodies corrodes metal on contact, melting weapons, ammunition, and even armor. Any metal object that touches the gray ooze, whether in the case of attacking the ooze with it or the ooze attacking you, takes a permanent and cumulative -1 penalty to the damage it deals or AC it offers.
While they would normally be easy to avoid due to their ten feet of movement, gray oozes are indistinguishable from a wet rock or oily puddle. These oozes also have resistance to fire, cold, and acid damage, making many magical attacks ineffective against them. If there's anything to be learned from examining the gray ooze, it's to beware of wet-looking objects.
7 Gelatinous Cube
The gelatinous cube is undoubtedly the most famous of all oozes. Silently roaming deep dungeon passageways, the gelatinous cube slurps ever forward, searching for its next meal. Gelatinous cubes are transparent, requiring a DC 15 perception check to notice. What makes this feature especially deadly is their sheer size.
The gelatinous cube is capable of engulfing up to four medium humanoids, slowly digesting anyone unfortunate enough to walk into it. The only saving grace is that creatures inside the cube can be pulled out.
6 Ochre Jelly
The ochre jelly is a lesser-known large ooze identifiable by its yellow color. While most oozes patiently wait for their next meal to arrive, ochre jellies pursue any prey they sense nearby using their amorphous and spider climb features. They also have resistance to acid damage and immunity to lightning and slashing damage.
Worse yet, if exposed to slashing or lightning damage, an ochre jelly splits into two new jellies. Each jelly has hit points equal to half that of the "parent" jelly, which is really rather sad. After all, how can you live up to daddy dearest's expectations with only half his hit points?
5 Slithering Tracker
Unlike other oozes spawned from Juiblex himself, the slithering tracker is an abomination created from dark magic wielded by hags, liches, and similarly despicable characters. It's the result of suffusing all of the water in an individual who yearns for revenge with necrotic force.
This process kills that individual, but their consciousness transfers into the water that once kept them alive. They've become an ooze driven by revenge. Accordingly, slithering trackers are ambush predators well suited to sneak attacks. While in water, they have advantage on stealth checks and can even hide as a bonus action.
4 Black Pudding
Black puddings are the big brothers of all other oozes. They share both the corrosive form of gray oozes and the split ability of ochre jellies, making them particularly annoying to deal with. Puddings also have complete immunity to cold, acid, lightning, and slashing damage, so an attack that splits them never deals any damage.
Perhaps the most terrifying thing about black puddings, though, is entirely flavor based. While other oozes at least leave behind their victims' bones, puddings devour them whole.
3 Adult Oblex
Leave it to mind flayers to improve upon an already murderous creature. An adult oblex is what comes of an oblex spawn that feasts upon enough memories. Adult oblexes are capable of turning pieces of themselves into the spitting image of people whose memories they have stolen.
These impersonations remain tethered to the oblex by a strand of slime, smell of sulfur, and can't walk farther than 120 feet away from the adult oblex. Beyond that, these impersonations are perfect copies of the original, memories and all. The oblex uses these copies to lead more victims to itself, where it can then feed on their memories and obtain new lures.
2 Elder Oblex
An elder oblex is just an adult oblex that has gobbled up many more memories. In fact, going by challenge rating, the elder oblex has nibbled on twice as many. Besides statistics and spells, what makes the elder oblex so terrifying is the ability to create up to 2d6+1 sulfurous impersonations at the same time. If one person asks you to follow them down an alleyway, there's not a great chance you'll be inclined.
In addition to increased AC, HP, and proficiencies, the elder oblex can innately cast quite a few powerful spells: hold person, confusion, dominate person, fear, hypnotic patter, telekinesis, hallucinatory terrain, and, hilariously enough, dimension door. Although, the dimension door ability does explain how a malevolent ooze with 20 feet of movement speed that attempts to feed on entire towns managed to survive this long. Beware the teleporting ooze.
1 Jubilex
While technically classified as a fiend, the Jubilex has the title of the demon lord of slime and ooze, and is known as the Faceless Lord and the Ooozing Hunger. With a lair known as the Slime Pits, it's easy to see why the Jubilex deserves a spot on this list. This thing is a true boss, with a challenge rating of 23; you'll hopefully never see one of these in your adventures.
With every condition immunity you can imagine, and immunity to all physical damage, as well as resistance to some magic, the Jubilex can easily be seen as a total party kill monster. Add health regeneration, decent speed, multiattacks, and legendary actions, and it's easy to see why this ooze makes the top of the list. That's before mentioning its slime that can lower your armor class and damage dealt, making the penalty worse the more it happens. Just stay far away from the king of the oozes.