I think part of the issue is that this entire mission was turned into a single check task. Have that druid turned ant keep, potentially even rolling with disadvantage on search checks because as an ant, they have new senses, this is a new location and they have no idea where the stone is. They might succeed on a perception check - but that only ends the search if the stone is within 5 feet of where they are (based on the suggested 5 feet of blind sense). That five foot square has to be less than a hundredth of the mansion and they may only get led in the right direction. If the theft is supposed to be bigger, make it a bigger event.
I'd also say, just so the rest of the party has something to do - if they are waiting outside for the druid to return from the house with the stone - call the guards on them! A bunch of grubby adventurers waiting outside the walls of a manor at night? They could be thieves and the rich people hate thieves!
Send in the guards after the rest of the party to make them fight or make the rest of them hide. If it causes a commotion, the Gralhunds will be on the guard making things worse for the druid ant, who again, has a limited amount of time in ant form. If they suddenly revert and the house comes after the druid, things get worse.
It also makes the players think more about using Wild Shape for infiltration that as a strategy in the future.
When my party ran it, half of them infiltrated while the other half ran lookout and... problems escalated which culiminated Lady Gralhund getting disintegrated by a beholder for complicated reasons while the City Guard stormed the manor. And when they escaped, they were happy, though the Stone ended up eluding them.
Isn't move speed calculated by rounds? a round is typically 6 seconds?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the fastest ant in the world can move at like speeds of 25-30 inches per second, giving this ant a more likely movement speed of 10-15 feet per round. Plenty of time to work with wild shape time limits. Still, people argue the sight limitation would be a mechanic...Personally, I think we are getting too technical cause DM'S typically don't apply actual anatomical animal draw backs to other CR wildshapes.
I'd throw all that out the window for more flavorful RolePlay experience. When players get creative, its your que as a DM to also hype up your game and run with it on their level. As an ant in a dungeon/guarded castle there are plenty of other much more problematical obstacles that could prove hilarious, adventurous and even horrific.. These off the cuff encounters would make for a great story of how that one time my PC turned into an ant and stole the mcguffin from a heavily guarded keep.
The "fastest ant in the world" is probably pretty rare and most likely not something the druid has seen. "Normal" (ie, most) ants are slower than that.
Players absolutely hate when they come up with a fun, creative solution that guarantees success, and you snatch it away from them because it was *too* good an idea. That's not fun for anyone and you shouldn't put a ceiling on how successful the players can be. It's just kind of a mean thing to do.
(a) it's not a 'fun, creative solution', it's a boring and obvious solution that every druid comes up with instantly.
(b) adventures that don't have challenges aren't actually what player want. You should get a chance to use wild shape to sneak around and do interesting things, but it shouldn't be automatic success.
Has anyone claimed that it should be an automatic success?
So I’m doing Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, there is a segment where the players are suppose to enter Gralhund Villa, and with the remix, go on a chase to get the stone of Galorr.
My player, a circle of moon Druid, turned into an ant, passed all stealth, and entered the villa, without the first check.
How do I combat this? It doesn’t make sense to do perception checks on the NPC’s, because it’s an ant, she turned into a human, took what she needed, and turned back to an ant and made it out.
It's unclear, but it doesn't seem like the OP did any Stealth or Perception checks.
So the only one claiming that it should be an auto-success is the OP and Panta? Gotcha.
In fairness, if we have to do Perception checks to try to spot suspicious ants, then everyone should be making constant perception checks non-stop at all possible moments of the day to notice flies, ants, and other small creatures. I actually support the "there is no reason to make a perception check to spot an ant" reasoning, even if it is what's causing the DM's issue. Neither do I think that an ant would necessitate Stealth checks, since it's effectively silent and too small for a human to notice.
That spider lurking in the hallway, however - now that's going to require a Perception check.
To solve all this, I have created the stat block for the ant:
Have you never spotted an ant? I can spot a single ant pretty easily on a clean, bare floor, even if I'm not looking for it. I won't spot it every time, but sometimes I will. Agreed, it should not be a Perception check, which is the case whether you are an ant or a human rogue. But passive Perception is a thing. You could grant them disadvantage on passive Perception (-5) because the ant is tiny, but I think being tiny is what even grants you the right to Hide and make a Stealth check at all in plain sight, which RAW you can't even do.
I would maybe call for an Insight check on top of a failed Stealth check against passive Perception, to see if the guards care if there's an ant.
Isn't move speed calculated by rounds? a round is typically 6 seconds?
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the fastest ant in the world can move at like speeds of 25-30 inches per second, giving this ant a more likely movement speed of 10-15 feet per round.
I think that would be its dash speed. Ants only move that fast when disturbed. So its base speed would be 5 feet per round.
And guess what, you move half your base speed when being Stealthy.
I can spot a single ant pretty easily on a clean, bare floor, even if I'm not looking for it
A villain's lair is nothing if not spotless. Cleanliness is next to blasphemy, as the saying goes.
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So unless you can make it all the way from the front door to the objective entirely behind furniture or something, you can't even attempt a Stealth check, much less automatically pass one.
Also, as someone mentioned, there is no Ant stat block in any 5e sourcebook. The rules for Wild Shape aren't clear as to whether you're limited to creatures in a sourcebook, but they do clearly depend on having a stat block. I'd rule that it's the DM's discretion whether they want to homebrew an Ant statblock.
As a DM, I'd allow the attempt under rule of cool. However, rule of cool does not mean automatic success. As I'm homebrewing and house ruling to allow this at all, it's perfectly reasonable that I homebrew and house rule some obstacles.
I like the spider idea. Maybe a small combat encounter. You could use Giant Wolf Spider statistics vs. the ant represented as a Giant Centipede for the purposes of this combat. That's a pretty even match. You might win, you might lose. Or use Giant Spider for something more realistic where the ant is outmatched and your best bet is to try and run. If you lose and drop to 0 hp, do you turn back into a humanoid druid, or does this feature of Giant Wolf Spider apply? "If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way." RAW, probably you just grow big again, but I apply rule of cool to my DM actions too, so I think the spider takes you back to its web.
Now as time passes up to an hour, I'd throw it back to the party. Your friend hasn't returned. What do you do? (This will work even better if you took 10 minutes privately with the druid player to play out her adventure.) Do you wait longer? Or do you go in and try to rescue the druid?
If they wait the full hour, the druid ant wakes up stuck in a web. Maybe you can attempt some checks to escape, but they're pretty high DC. Maybe in the end you give up and decide to come out of wild shape, automatically escaping the tiny web. Only the problem is, the web was in the dungeon.
Instead if an automatic success, this could have been a whole adventure in its own right. It might be a good idea, when players pull a unique solution like this, not to rule immediately, but to take a 15 minute break and see what's the craziest plot you can come up with.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the fastest ant in the world can move at like speeds of 25-30 inches per second, giving this ant a more likely movement speed of 10-15 feet per round.
"Despite its stubby legs, the Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) is the fastest ant in the world, speeding along at 855 millimeters per second"
That is the equivalent of 8.55 centimeters, the equivalent of 0.28 feet, so rounding up, in 6 seconds the ant has a movement speed of 2 feet. But that's the fastest ant in the world, and it's dashing. An average ant, or an ant not travelling at the absolute fastest it can in a straight line, is going to move more like 1 foot per turn.
Have you never spotted an ant? I can spot a single ant pretty easily on a clean, bare floor, even if I'm not looking for it. I won't spot it every time, but sometimes I will. Agreed, it should not be a Perception check, which is the case whether you are an ant or a human rogue. But passive Perception is a thing. You could grant them disadvantage on passive Perception (-5) because the ant is tiny, but I think being tiny is what even grants you the right to Hide and make a Stealth check at all in plain sight, which RAW you can't even do.
I would maybe call for an Insight check on top of a failed Stealth check against passive Perception, to see if the guards care if there's an ant.
The thing is, it's not whether or not the ant is seen. If we're aiming for some degree of realism in this "Druid has transformed with all its equipment into an ant" (note to self: find more things to do with my time) then we should probably assume that the houses in our fantasy worlds are constantly plagued by vermin. Cats and terriers are kept to deal with the rats and mice, but there are no glue traps (OR ARE THERE?) and those old fashioned mouse traps do absolutely nothing (fun story: I bought the most powerful one on the market. The rat that had come to live in my kitchen tripped one, and there were just a little bloody trail of rat footprints leading away from it. The peanut butter was gone. I later encountered the rat sitting in my kitchen, got out a sword but couldn't face the cleanup, so I managed to trap it in a box instead).
This mansion should be filled with spiders, ants, mice, bats, pigeons in the rafters and so on. Even if someone saw the ant, they would not think "Hmmm, could be a druid after our loot!" The ant is beyond the notice of anyone who is guarding the place, unless you crawl up onto the table they're eating at.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the fastest ant in the world can move at like speeds of 25-30 inches per second, giving this ant a more likely movement speed of 10-15 feet per round.
"Despite its stubby legs, the Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) is the fastest ant in the world, speeding along at 855 millimeters per second"
That is the equivalent of 8.55 centimeters, the equivalent of 0.28 feet, so rounding up, in 6 seconds the ant has a movement speed of 2 feet. But that's the fastest ant in the world, and it's dashing. An average ant, or an ant not travelling at the absolute fastest it can in a straight line, is going to move more like 1 foot per turn.
Have you never spotted an ant? I can spot a single ant pretty easily on a clean, bare floor, even if I'm not looking for it. I won't spot it every time, but sometimes I will. Agreed, it should not be a Perception check, which is the case whether you are an ant or a human rogue. But passive Perception is a thing. You could grant them disadvantage on passive Perception (-5) because the ant is tiny, but I think being tiny is what even grants you the right to Hide and make a Stealth check at all in plain sight, which RAW you can't even do.
I would maybe call for an Insight check on top of a failed Stealth check against passive Perception, to see if the guards care if there's an ant.
The thing is, it's not whether or not the ant is seen. If we're aiming for some degree of realism in this "Druid has transformed with all its equipment into an ant" (note to self: find more things to do with my time) then we should probably assume that the houses in our fantasy worlds are constantly plagued by vermin. Cats and terriers are kept to deal with the rats and mice, but there are no glue traps (OR ARE THERE?) and those old fashioned mouse traps do absolutely nothing (fun story: I bought the most powerful one on the market. The rat that had come to live in my kitchen tripped one, and there were just a little bloody trail of rat footprints leading away from it. The peanut butter was gone. I later encountered the rat sitting in my kitchen, got out a sword but couldn't face the cleanup, so I managed to trap it in a box instead).
This mansion should be filled with spiders, ants, mice, bats, pigeons in the rafters and so on. Even if someone saw the ant, they would not think "Hmmm, could be a druid after our loot!" The ant is beyond the notice of anyone who is guarding the place, unless you crawl up onto the table they're eating at.
It's a mansion. I would imagine there are servants to clean up after dinner. Food is kept in rat-proof pottery. It may be normal to find the occasional rat running around the larder at night, but vermin in the main halls will result in the staff getting a severe tongue lashing.
At least, that's how the DM could describe it. And describing it that way such that there's a chance of failure but still a chance of success will make for a more interesting session.
Every mansion in medieval times would most certainly have a small army of cats to keep vermin under control. Ants would also been on the menu, even as simply practice. I watched my sister's terrier try to chase down a fly last week. The player would be far better off trying to be a fly, though clearly, flies don't do well with spider webs.
Waterdeep isn't medieval. It's not really any historical model but it's closest to renaissance. Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
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Every mansion in medieval times would most certainly have a small army of cats to keep vermin under control. Ants would also been on the menu, even as simply practice. I watched my sister's terrier try to chase down a fly last week. The player would be far better off trying to be a fly, though clearly, flies don't do well with spider webs.
Waterdeep isn't medieval. It's not really any historical model but it's closest to renaissance. Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
They Gralhunds are rich. They probably have tiny little Roach Taverns where roaches and other bugs are effected by low level charm spells and wander into fly paper.
Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
Sure it's an 8th level, but it would work. (And the line about "intelligent" doesn't mean of a specific score - anything with Int of 1 or more is fine. The distinction is so it doesn't affect beings that have function but no int, like unseen servants, some constructs, etc. Plus ants are actually rather intelligent compared to most bugs, and rats and mice can solve basic puzzles. Pretty sure they qualify.
So, there kinda is a precedent for this.
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Honestly if you want to deal with pests, magic is overkill. Poisons exist. Leave a few pieces of candy coated in poison under the furniture and you won’t have much problem with ants. Not saying a wild shape ant has to fall for that (though they might), but it’s enough to ensure ants are uncommon enough sight that they are paid heed to when spotted.
Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
Sure it's an 8th level, but it would work. (And the line about "intelligent" doesn't mean of a specific score - anything with Int of 1 or more is fine. The distinction is so it doesn't affect beings that have function but no int, like unseen servants, some constructs, etc. Plus ants are actually rather intelligent compared to most bugs, and rats and mice can solve basic puzzles. Pretty sure they qualify.
So, there kinda is a precedent for this.
Is that SAC? I thought "Intelligent creature" referred to the dividing line between "beasts" (i.e. INT 3 or less, as per animal friendship and such) and anything smarter
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
Honestly if you want to deal with pests, magic is overkill. Poisons exist. Leave a few pieces of candy coated in poison under the furniture and you won’t have much problem with ants. Not saying a wild shape ant has to fall for that (though they might), but it’s enough to ensure ants are uncommon enough sight that they are paid heed to when spotted.
I mean sure if you want to be mean and kill innocent creatures. For those who don't: magic.
Plus, magic is more fun. ^.^ Wealthy people in real world have paid thousands for quite literally an empty space, as a concept of art, and some people even paid hundreds for literally a mouldy piece of toast - just for the lulz.
Peeps with power and privilege do wacky over-the-top shit all the time. In a fantasy world with magic at the ready? Oh boy you can bet they'll be playin that tune for EVERYTHING just coz they can.
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Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
Sure it's an 8th level, but it would work. (And the line about "intelligent" doesn't mean of a specific score - anything with Int of 1 or more is fine. The distinction is so it doesn't affect beings that have function but no int, like unseen servants, some constructs, etc. Plus ants are actually rather intelligent compared to most bugs, and rats and mice can solve basic puzzles. Pretty sure they qualify.
So, there kinda is a precedent for this.
Is that SAC? I thought "Intelligent creature" referred to the dividing line between "beasts" (i.e. INT 3 or less, as per animal friendship and such) and anything smarter
Didn't bother looking and if you're getting hung up on that you're missing the point.
Also the "dividing line" isn't one in rules. It's some common verbiage in some spells but not a rule.
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Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
Sure it's an 8th level, but it would work. (And the line about "intelligent" doesn't mean of a specific score - anything with Int of 1 or more is fine. The distinction is so it doesn't affect beings that have function but no int, like unseen servants, some constructs, etc. Plus ants are actually rather intelligent compared to most bugs, and rats and mice can solve basic puzzles. Pretty sure they qualify.
So, there kinda is a precedent for this.
Is that SAC? I thought "Intelligent creature" referred to the dividing line between "beasts" (i.e. INT 3 or less, as per animal friendship and such) and anything smarter
Didn't bother looking and if you're getting hung up on that you're missing the point.
Also the "dividing line" isn't one in rules. It's some common verbiage in some spells but not a rule.
If "intelligent creature" only refers to creatures with an Intelligence score, which is every creature, than the first word serves no purpose at all. I'm assuming it's there for a reason.
As for missing the point, if you need to mischaracterize an eighth-level spell to illustrate it, I suppose I am. Meanwhile I'm over here wondering if "vermin" would even be considered a problem that needed magic to solve in a world where they don't have a habit of causing devastating plagues.
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As for missing the point, if you need to mischaracterize an eighth-level spell to illustrate it, I suppose I am. Meanwhile I'm over here wondering if "vermin" would even be considered a problem that needed magic to solve in a world where they don't have a habit of causing devastating plagues.
Regardless of the realism of pest control, there are no RAW for mansion cleanliness. It's up to the DM to decide how pest-free the mansion is. If I was the DM, I would decide that pests are uncommon, so that if one is seen someone has a reaction.
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I think part of the issue is that this entire mission was turned into a single check task. Have that druid turned ant keep, potentially even rolling with disadvantage on search checks because as an ant, they have new senses, this is a new location and they have no idea where the stone is. They might succeed on a perception check - but that only ends the search if the stone is within 5 feet of where they are (based on the suggested 5 feet of blind sense). That five foot square has to be less than a hundredth of the mansion and they may only get led in the right direction. If the theft is supposed to be bigger, make it a bigger event.
I'd also say, just so the rest of the party has something to do - if they are waiting outside for the druid to return from the house with the stone - call the guards on them! A bunch of grubby adventurers waiting outside the walls of a manor at night? They could be thieves and the rich people hate thieves!
Send in the guards after the rest of the party to make them fight or make the rest of them hide. If it causes a commotion, the Gralhunds will be on the guard making things worse for the druid ant, who again, has a limited amount of time in ant form. If they suddenly revert and the house comes after the druid, things get worse.
It also makes the players think more about using Wild Shape for infiltration that as a strategy in the future.
When my party ran it, half of them infiltrated while the other half ran lookout and... problems escalated which culiminated Lady Gralhund getting disintegrated by a beholder for complicated reasons while the City Guard stormed the manor. And when they escaped, they were happy, though the Stone ended up eluding them.
The "fastest ant in the world" is probably pretty rare and most likely not something the druid has seen. "Normal" (ie, most) ants are slower than that.
Have you never spotted an ant? I can spot a single ant pretty easily on a clean, bare floor, even if I'm not looking for it. I won't spot it every time, but sometimes I will. Agreed, it should not be a Perception check, which is the case whether you are an ant or a human rogue. But passive Perception is a thing. You could grant them disadvantage on passive Perception (-5) because the ant is tiny, but I think being tiny is what even grants you the right to Hide and make a Stealth check at all in plain sight, which RAW you can't even do.
I would maybe call for an Insight check on top of a failed Stealth check against passive Perception, to see if the guards care if there's an ant.
I think that would be its dash speed. Ants only move that fast when disturbed. So its base speed would be 5 feet per round.
And guess what, you move half your base speed when being Stealthy.
A villain's lair is nothing if not spotless. Cleanliness is next to blasphemy, as the saying goes.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
And if the place isn't spotless, what is the point of all of the servants?
I want to emphasize something I don't think anyone has said: none of this is legal according to RAW.
"You can't hide from a creature that can see you clearly,"
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/using-ability-scores#AbilityChecks
So unless you can make it all the way from the front door to the objective entirely behind furniture or something, you can't even attempt a Stealth check, much less automatically pass one.
Also, as someone mentioned, there is no Ant stat block in any 5e sourcebook. The rules for Wild Shape aren't clear as to whether you're limited to creatures in a sourcebook, but they do clearly depend on having a stat block. I'd rule that it's the DM's discretion whether they want to homebrew an Ant statblock.
As a DM, I'd allow the attempt under rule of cool. However, rule of cool does not mean automatic success. As I'm homebrewing and house ruling to allow this at all, it's perfectly reasonable that I homebrew and house rule some obstacles.
I like the spider idea. Maybe a small combat encounter. You could use Giant Wolf Spider statistics vs. the ant represented as a Giant Centipede for the purposes of this combat. That's a pretty even match. You might win, you might lose. Or use Giant Spider for something more realistic where the ant is outmatched and your best bet is to try and run. If you lose and drop to 0 hp, do you turn back into a humanoid druid, or does this feature of Giant Wolf Spider apply? "If the poison damage reduces the target to 0 hit points, the target is stable but poisoned for 1 hour, even after regaining hit points, and is paralyzed while poisoned in this way." RAW, probably you just grow big again, but I apply rule of cool to my DM actions too, so I think the spider takes you back to its web.
Now as time passes up to an hour, I'd throw it back to the party. Your friend hasn't returned. What do you do? (This will work even better if you took 10 minutes privately with the druid player to play out her adventure.) Do you wait longer? Or do you go in and try to rescue the druid?
If they wait the full hour, the druid ant wakes up stuck in a web. Maybe you can attempt some checks to escape, but they're pretty high DC. Maybe in the end you give up and decide to come out of wild shape, automatically escaping the tiny web. Only the problem is, the web was in the dungeon.
Instead if an automatic success, this could have been a whole adventure in its own right. It might be a good idea, when players pull a unique solution like this, not to rule immediately, but to take a 15 minute break and see what's the craziest plot you can come up with.
10-15 feet per round? No ^_^
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/10/fastest-ant-world-could-hit-200-meters-second-if-it-were-big-human
"Despite its stubby legs, the Saharan silver ant (Cataglyphis bombycina) is the fastest ant in the world, speeding along at 855 millimeters per second"
That is the equivalent of 8.55 centimeters, the equivalent of 0.28 feet, so rounding up, in 6 seconds the ant has a movement speed of 2 feet. But that's the fastest ant in the world, and it's dashing. An average ant, or an ant not travelling at the absolute fastest it can in a straight line, is going to move more like 1 foot per turn.
The thing is, it's not whether or not the ant is seen. If we're aiming for some degree of realism in this "Druid has transformed with all its equipment into an ant" (note to self: find more things to do with my time) then we should probably assume that the houses in our fantasy worlds are constantly plagued by vermin. Cats and terriers are kept to deal with the rats and mice, but there are no glue traps (OR ARE THERE?) and those old fashioned mouse traps do absolutely nothing (fun story: I bought the most powerful one on the market. The rat that had come to live in my kitchen tripped one, and there were just a little bloody trail of rat footprints leading away from it. The peanut butter was gone. I later encountered the rat sitting in my kitchen, got out a sword but couldn't face the cleanup, so I managed to trap it in a box instead).
This mansion should be filled with spiders, ants, mice, bats, pigeons in the rafters and so on. Even if someone saw the ant, they would not think "Hmmm, could be a druid after our loot!" The ant is beyond the notice of anyone who is guarding the place, unless you crawl up onto the table they're eating at.
It's a mansion. I would imagine there are servants to clean up after dinner. Food is kept in rat-proof pottery. It may be normal to find the occasional rat running around the larder at night, but vermin in the main halls will result in the staff getting a severe tongue lashing.
At least, that's how the DM could describe it. And describing it that way such that there's a chance of failure but still a chance of success will make for a more interesting session.
Waterdeep isn't medieval. It's not really any historical model but it's closest to renaissance. Vermin control spells, while not mentioned in D&D because dealing with flea infestations isn't terribly adventurous, probably exist.
I'm not sure that's necessarily true, since there are known spells to handle the problems "vermin" can cause (disease and such), plus a bunch of druids who might frown upon something like a cloudkill variant (Orkin's Cloudkill?) that targets only rats or whatever.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
They Gralhunds are rich. They probably have tiny little Roach Taverns where roaches and other bugs are effected by low level charm spells and wander into fly paper.
Antipathy/Sympathy
Sure it's an 8th level, but it would work. (And the line about "intelligent" doesn't mean of a specific score - anything with Int of 1 or more is fine. The distinction is so it doesn't affect beings that have function but no int, like unseen servants, some constructs, etc. Plus ants are actually rather intelligent compared to most bugs, and rats and mice can solve basic puzzles. Pretty sure they qualify.
So, there kinda is a precedent for this.
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Honestly if you want to deal with pests, magic is overkill. Poisons exist. Leave a few pieces of candy coated in poison under the furniture and you won’t have much problem with ants. Not saying a wild shape ant has to fall for that (though they might), but it’s enough to ensure ants are uncommon enough sight that they are paid heed to when spotted.
Is that SAC? I thought "Intelligent creature" referred to the dividing line between "beasts" (i.e. INT 3 or less, as per animal friendship and such) and anything smarter
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
I mean sure if you want to be mean and kill innocent creatures. For those who don't: magic.
Plus, magic is more fun. ^.^ Wealthy people in real world have paid thousands for quite literally an empty space, as a concept of art, and some people even paid hundreds for literally a mouldy piece of toast - just for the lulz.
Peeps with power and privilege do wacky over-the-top shit all the time. In a fantasy world with magic at the ready? Oh boy you can bet they'll be playin that tune for EVERYTHING just coz they can.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Didn't bother looking and if you're getting hung up on that you're missing the point.
Also the "dividing line" isn't one in rules. It's some common verbiage in some spells but not a rule.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
If "intelligent creature" only refers to creatures with an Intelligence score, which is every creature, than the first word serves no purpose at all. I'm assuming it's there for a reason.
As for missing the point, if you need to mischaracterize an eighth-level spell to illustrate it, I suppose I am. Meanwhile I'm over here wondering if "vermin" would even be considered a problem that needed magic to solve in a world where they don't have a habit of causing devastating plagues.
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
They're destructive and messy
Regardless of the realism of pest control, there are no RAW for mansion cleanliness. It's up to the DM to decide how pest-free the mansion is. If I was the DM, I would decide that pests are uncommon, so that if one is seen someone has a reaction.