Swarm of Crawling Claws

This thing one-shotted my Level 3 Wizard

Wouldn't it be easier and better to make half as many zombies? As far as I know, you would just us the same spell.

Condition immunities for swarms makes sense, but shouldn't an Undead swarm be vulnerable to a cleric's Turn Undead feature? They are not immune to the Frightened and Incapacitated effects of Turn Undead, which seems accidental. I can't imagine a cleric finding it impossible to censure a bunch of crawling hands.

I love this artwork. Its so spooky.

Statwise i am happy with the swarm. Will definetly use it in my horror campaign.

My level 20 friend will never forgive me for when I attacked him and the other 2 level 20 characters with fifty of these, in defence of a lich

Quote from DMShef >>

Condition immunities for swarms makes sense, but shouldn't an Undead swarm be vulnerable to a cleric's Turn Undead feature? They are not immune to the Frightened and Incapacitated effects of Turn Undead, which seems accidental. I can't imagine a cleric finding it impossible to censure a bunch of crawling hands.

They can't see or hear, technically needed for Turn Undead to work. I might flavor their Blindsight more like tremor sense to make sense of it all.

Quote from KralcTheCourageous >>

 

Quote from DMShef >>

Condition immunities for swarms makes sense, but shouldn't an Undead swarm be vulnerable to a cleric's Turn Undead feature? They are not immune to the Frightened and Incapacitated effects of Turn Undead, which seems accidental. I can't imagine a cleric finding it impossible to censure a bunch of crawling hands.

 

They can't see or hear, technically needed for Turn Undead to work. I might flavor their Blindsight more like tremor sense to make sense of it all.

 

They can hear if they can understand Common (they never specify "hear" a language but I'm pretty sure that's the implication). If it's some otherwise unknown "sensing," I think that would cover what's needed for Turning, too.

Overall, I think this could have been handled way better. If Turn Undead can work on a Vampire or force a LR use, it should be able to be used on a Medium swarm.

okay.... uhm.... these things are not immune to the unconscious condition but they are immune to being incapacitated...

...which created a problem when they failed a "sleep" from the bard and were below a "somnolence" from the warlock last session.

In that session i ruled that since they cannot be incapacitated, they are immune to being made unconscious by the sleep effects.

The two players argued that all the other monsters with immunity to incapacitation were also immune to being unconscious therefore these should be made unconscious.

I replied that it would make no sense for the creature to be both unconscious but also able to move around and take actions, but i would ask here for advice.

Is there an actual ruling on this, for future reference? I would say that if a condition has dependencies and you are immune to the dependency you are immune to the condition, but that's just my engineering talking for me. 😂

[EDIT: i just checked and the crawling claw (singular) https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/5194954-crawling-claw is actually immune to incapacitated too, but is also NOT immune to NEITHER unconscious NOR paralyzed, which, i never saw before. So... is this correct? Can they be put asleep OR paralyzed but also they keep crawling around and taking actions? it... does not make much sense.]

I'd say that their immunity to Incapacitated means that they automatically succeed on the first Sleep (2024) saving throw against becoming Incapacitated, automatically ending the spell and negating the second roll against becoming Unconscious. But even without that assumption, Sleep (2024) doesn't work against creatures immune to Exhaustion, and the 2014 version specifies it doesn't work against the undead. The idea that they might somehow be Unconscious while not Incapacitated is novel--maybe you shouldn't be able to knock them out when they drop to 0 HP, and they just keep flopping around with a Speed of 0 and the other penalties Unconscious confers, while not being Incapacitated!

How would you adjudicate this:

Swarm. The swarm can occupy another creature’s space and vice versa, and the swarm can move through any opening large enough for a Tiny creature. The swarm can’t regain Hit Points or gain Temporary Hit Points.

with this (from PHB 2024 Ch.1 Moving around Other Creatures):

You can’t willingly end a move in a space occupied by another creature. If you somehow end a turn in a space with another creature, you have the Prone condition (see the rules glossary) unless you are Tiny or are of a larger size than the other creature.

If a Medium swarm enters your Medium character's space, and ends its turn, are you automatically knocked prone? (The swarm isn't, because they are typically immune to Prone.)

i am guessing you are correct.

Both in your answer to me and your question right above here.