I play a Totem Warrior with a greataxe. Last night we encountered our first black ooze, and all I could do was throw javelins to contribute damage!
I'm not trying to deal glass-cannon levels of damage, but it would be nice to not feel completely useless in situations like these.
How can I contribute more damage than this in fights against slash-immune creatures?
Best Answer
Have a non-slash damage type weapon.
Well, that's an easy one. I would usually have at least a simple bludgeoning weapon as a replacement - it might be usefull to bash skeletons as well! A warhammer or maul suits this problem nicely.
If you don't, improvise it!
As other answer mentioned, you can use your actual weapon as an improvised weapon. Instead of slashing with your axe, rotate it and slam with it! - how much damage this action will do is up to your DM (Correction: actually PHB 147-148 defines it - 1d4). You could improvise your torch to try and do some bludgeoning + fire damage as well, use your surroundings and whatever you have available.
If your DM is nice enough to you, a magic weapon solves the problem as well.
But that depends on your DM giving you a magic weapon that deals elemental damage.
You can't and don't need to be useful every fight
I'm not sure if you were talking about Ochre Jelly or Black Pudding, as both are immune to slashing and are jellies. But if you are a melee fighter against a Black Pudding, you just run. It is clearly designed to wreck melee fighters and your rangeds should be doing the job.
Just to clarify this last paragraph, as it led to some argument in comments: I'm not saying you shouldn't be playing. I am saying you aren't going to shine every time, and it should be fine as it is. You are contributing as you can, you shouldn't feel bad (ok, I shouldn't tell you how you should feel, but I hope you get my point) for "just throwing javelins". Sometimes that will be the best you can do - that doesn't actually mean you are "useless".