Have some unique problems with swarms that no one is talking about.
Q. Psychic dmg vs swarms? For spells like "Vicious Mockery", as the swarm is at most a hive mind but likely a large group of individuals. At the moment my ruling is to do the max damage a creature of that swarm would have i.e a swarm of bats could take up to 4 dmg but the Disadvantage effect does not take effect. similar effects for an insect swarm but the max of 1 point of psychic dmg would be dealt. My caveat is for creatures that may form a swarm like classic vampires.
RAW, it doesn't matter. swarms are treated as one creature for the purposes of damage and disadvantage and the like. All that matters is the Swarm trait, which gives them specific abilities due to being a swarm.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
DM's call. Swarms are treated as a single monster for most combat purposes but they're still a collection of individual creatures (which is why, for example, they're not valid Wild Shape forms.) That being the case, the DM has grounds to say a non-attack spell like Vicious Mockery only sticks to a single member of the swarm and thus has negligible effects on the whole.
The rules for swarms leave a lot to be desired in my opinion.
You could look at Swarms and think that they're just shorthand for "lots of creatures in one space." Or, you could look at Swarms and think that they're a fantasy concept of many small animals coming together to act with a single consciousness, like the cells of a body. You could think about it as psychic damage versus three individual rats in a pile of hundreds... but you could instead think about psychic damage versus the collective Rat King consciousness emerging in the swarm of rat bodies? I mean if we try to be realistic about attacks versus swarms, honestly they should have immunity to everything other than area effect spells, so lets not go down this route.
I think Swarms are already strong enough at their challenge ratings, and also fiddly rules about different damage types working in different ways are rarely fun for the DM to juggle at the table. Immunity/Resistance/Normal/Vulnerable is already as granular as the system needs to be, so if you want to give Swarms resistance to additional damage types, knock yourself out, but doing weird damage caps and stuff is just going to grind your game down.
I mean if we try to be realistic about attacks versus swarms, honestly they should have immunity to everything other than area effect spells, so lets not go down this route.
I disagree. If you swing a sword through a swarm of rats, you will kill rats. I don't have a problem with that, I just think the damage type-based approach breaks down really quickly. Ranged attacks and any source of damage that's not bludgeoning/piercing/damage just work too well. Paladins can cut through swarms like a hot knife through butter with smites, and so will spellcasters with their cantrips. You end up running into situations where the players can easily hack or shoot the swarm to death relatively often.
In my opinion, something like this would've worked better without being overly fiddly:
The swarm can only be targeted by attacks or by being included in an area of effect.
The swarm takes half damage from melee attacks and 1 damage from ranged attacks.
The swarm is immune to all non-damaging effects from attacks.
that's another another struggle with the spell. I've seen some good reviews in that it acts more like Power Word so it doesn't matter what is said. Language is also not a barrier. but slimes, plants, any creature that doesn't have auditory functions shouldn't be affected.
This all might just be my 2nd Ed AD&D background reaching out from the shadows.
If you're drilling down to this level, why would Vicious Mockery work at all? Most wasps don't have feelings that are easily hurt.
Vicious Mockery doesn't hurt their feelings; you don't need magic for that. The spell causes the words to become directly damaging regardless of whether they're understood.
but slimes, plants, any creature that doesn't have auditory functions shouldn't be affected.
Most slime and plant monsters aren't deaf though. In fact, I don't know of a single monster that mentions being deaf anywhere in its stat block or description.
For slimes, Blindsight does describe that if you are out of range 60' of the slime then they do not perceive you to the point that if you hit that 60 feet and 1 inch then they will stop chasing you. The only other sense they suggest is that they may be able to feel pray approach through the vibrations in the rock.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Have some unique problems with swarms that no one is talking about.
Q. Psychic dmg vs swarms? For spells like "Vicious Mockery", as the swarm is at most a hive mind but likely a large group of individuals. At the moment my ruling is to do the max damage a creature of that swarm would have i.e a swarm of bats could take up to 4 dmg but the Disadvantage effect does not take effect. similar effects for an insect swarm but the max of 1 point of psychic dmg would be dealt. My caveat is for creatures that may form a swarm like classic vampires.
Comments?
RAW, it doesn't matter. swarms are treated as one creature for the purposes of damage and disadvantage and the like. All that matters is the Swarm trait, which gives them specific abilities due to being a swarm.
Formerly Devan Avalon.
Trying to get your physical content on Beyond is like going to Microsoft and saying "I have a physical Playstation disk, give me a digital Xbox version!"
DM's call. Swarms are treated as a single monster for most combat purposes but they're still a collection of individual creatures (which is why, for example, they're not valid Wild Shape forms.) That being the case, the DM has grounds to say a non-attack spell like Vicious Mockery only sticks to a single member of the swarm and thus has negligible effects on the whole.
The rules for swarms leave a lot to be desired in my opinion.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
You could look at Swarms and think that they're just shorthand for "lots of creatures in one space." Or, you could look at Swarms and think that they're a fantasy concept of many small animals coming together to act with a single consciousness, like the cells of a body. You could think about it as psychic damage versus three individual rats in a pile of hundreds... but you could instead think about psychic damage versus the collective Rat King consciousness emerging in the swarm of rat bodies? I mean if we try to be realistic about attacks versus swarms, honestly they should have immunity to everything other than area effect spells, so lets not go down this route.
I think Swarms are already strong enough at their challenge ratings, and also fiddly rules about different damage types working in different ways are rarely fun for the DM to juggle at the table. Immunity/Resistance/Normal/Vulnerable is already as granular as the system needs to be, so if you want to give Swarms resistance to additional damage types, knock yourself out, but doing weird damage caps and stuff is just going to grind your game down.
dndbeyond.com forum tags
I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
I disagree. If you swing a sword through a swarm of rats, you will kill rats. I don't have a problem with that, I just think the damage type-based approach breaks down really quickly. Ranged attacks and any source of damage that's not bludgeoning/piercing/damage just work too well. Paladins can cut through swarms like a hot knife through butter with smites, and so will spellcasters with their cantrips. You end up running into situations where the players can easily hack or shoot the swarm to death relatively often.
In my opinion, something like this would've worked better without being overly fiddly:
The Forum Infestation (TM)
If you're drilling down to this level, why would Vicious Mockery work at all? Most wasps don't have feelings that are easily hurt.
that's another another struggle with the spell. I've seen some good reviews in that it acts more like Power Word so it doesn't matter what is said. Language is also not a barrier. but slimes, plants, any creature that doesn't have auditory functions shouldn't be affected.
This all might just be my 2nd Ed AD&D background reaching out from the shadows.
Vicious Mockery doesn't hurt their feelings; you don't need magic for that. The spell causes the words to become directly damaging regardless of whether they're understood.
Most slime and plant monsters aren't deaf though. In fact, I don't know of a single monster that mentions being deaf anywhere in its stat block or description.
The Forum Infestation (TM)
For slimes, Blindsight does describe that if you are out of range 60' of the slime then they do not perceive you to the point that if you hit that 60 feet and 1 inch then they will stop chasing you. The only other sense they suggest is that they may be able to feel pray approach through the vibrations in the rock.