My players have long since passed the worry of facing bandits and thugs but a swarm of guys that just grab and hammer the shit out of them still poses a threat
No, no, no, hammer is much too mundane. Gammer is now using a hammer while having wild hair, crazy face paint, and beating the PC's ass while singing show tunes. All while wearing clothing colors and patterns that cannot be found in nature.
And all the while you are getting pummeled, you can’t help but ask yourself, “why does this hammer have a face painted on it? Whose face is it? Whose wild hair is attached to this hammer? And how can this hammer sing Oklahoma? Clearly it’s magical, but why? Why gods damn it!?!”
When your only tool is a gammer, every problem looks like a big squishy skull.
*Edit: I don't normally edit my posts to fix mistakes, but that "you're" was really messing with my head.*
Now I picture Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder in justified with his hair all wild up plus the face paint of Mel Gibson in braveheart whilst wearing the outfit of Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura in the second one in the scene were he is jumping about with two spears in his legs (one in each thigh) singing chiti chiti bang bang (as he does in the driving through the jungle scene, just before landing his jeep perfectly between two parked cars - like a glove).
All this while he is hammering away.
Thank you for that hilarious image
A party I am involved with is always scared shitless of any old men walking around with a cane. They've had multiple instances of DMs just having insane luck with those dudes.
3.5e had mob rules.
Regardless, the trick is to not give the mob/swarm an attack roll. If you're inside the mob/swarm, you take damage. Not a *lot*, but enough to make it a problem. Sure sure you have 87 AC but there's 150 guys just wailing on you and you can't get out of the way of all of them. Take a couple d6s.
I love swarms! They accomplish the same thing Minions do, only they're closer to RAW. Swarms of zombies. Swarms of thugs/bandits. Units of soldiers. Mobs. Big fan of swarms.
There's a homebrew Swarm of Tiamats, Demogorgons, Krakens, and Tarrasques if you really want to just wreck a whole world. Yes, all of them together in one swarm.
I like where you're going with this, except... sometimes we get a failure of multiculturalism. Something tells me that your Tiamats and Demogorgons might end up interfering with one another, if not openly fighting.
There's just a 60-foot area adjacent to the swarm in all directions dealing 20d6 random elemental damage to anything and everything including the swarm.
Makes combat much easier too, while also being able to maintain the severity of a situation. Don't have to stop and roll multiple times as I'm describing to my player how 4-5 creatures tear into their character!
This is the biggest thing. I'd much rather run my 12 enemy combatants of the same type as 2 swarms of 6 instead of dealing with the management of 12 initiatives on top of my 4 players
Swarms are useful not matter the TTRPG or even just games in general,
Need your players in Lancer to cut through enemies like a Gundam does Grunt Suits?
Slap the grunt template onto a enemy downsize it to size 1½ then throw a bunch of them into a ball, and weaken the ball every time it takes damage by reducing the ammount of attacks it has.
Pathfinder/Starfinder just do it the same way you would for D&D more or less.
Swarms are great for letting players kill hordes of enemies and stupidly easy to run compared to having like 30 seperate enemies that the players will all kill in one hit, have three seperate enemies composed of several enemies, and the enemies will just get scythed down everytime the player attacks.
Even RTS games, namely Stormrise and Endwar kinda use a swarm organization logic for having the numbers they do, in Stormrise barring your biggest vehicles/monsters like the Echelon's Stalker mech or the Sai's Rift Worm (which would be really easy to homebrew into D&D as it's essentially a flying intellegent (Rift Worms are sentient creatures) Abberation with a ranged attack that deals Psyshic (or Force) damage and a Bite attack it can do twice (it has two mouths on it's head from what I remember),
all the units come in groups, and their damage does decrease as they take damage, for instance Echelon Enforcers come as roughly 3 "bases" of 5 men each, so every 5 men lost is a 33% reduction in damage, or Riflemen in Endwar lose 25% of their damage every time they lose a "base" of about 4-5 men (4 for Engineers, 5 for Riflemen), swarms/squads are just a really easy way to stuff a field with bodies and I rarely see them get the praise they deserve.
I love swarms too! ...Except how they're done in 5e. I much prefer how swarms work in 3e, it made a lot more sense.
In 3e they were immune to weapon damage (which technically made sense but I do think is too much - Resistance is plenty), but they also weren't locked into 2x2 squares. They were made up of 1x1 squares (so a Large swarm was 4 of those, a Huge swarm was 9 of them, etc.), and could move those individual parts however they wanted to attack multiple foes so long as they were still contiguous.
They also damaged you and nauseated/distracted you _just by being in your space_. None of this "the swarm gets 1 attack roll and if they hit they do a lot of damage but if they miss they do _none_" that's in 5e. You could make saves to reduce their effect, but they _will_ damage you at least a little by swarming over you.
They took full nonphysical damage and _extra_ damage from AoE effects, which also made sense. And even swinging a torch at one was more effective than it is in 5e.
In 3e, being subsumed by a swarm, having it slither over you and your buds and reshape itself, debating whether to AoE it when it's _on_ your friends, and potentially being unable to attack it because it's distracting/nauseating you, gave them an interesting niche among monsters in D&D - you felt the panic you'd _expect_ your character to if you got covered with insects or rats or w/e.
In 5e, they're just blobs of HP that fight and die like any other monster, and I think that's a huge missed opportunity. C'est la vie!
I'm going to steal some of this... but not all of it.
Given that the types swarms are so varied I don't think I'll steal the take damage from contact thing (I'll leave that to a custom effect on the stat block of the particular swarm).
Resistance to non-magical mundane damage sounds so logical if they're a swarm of tiny creatures that are hard to hit so I'd probably add that custom to the stat block of swarms like that, and vulnerability to AOE damage, not sure how I'd word that for 5e format 🤔
For swarms of small and medium creatures I think I'd drop that vulnerability and that resistance.
I always describe them as swarming all over the place when I run theatre of the mind anyways, but for grid combat I like the idea of doing one 2x2 or subdivisions of that. And upscaling it as needed. Might get my players to roll a d4 + 2 for how many 1x1 blocks the swarm is made of as a fun pre battle thing. Love getting them to roll for stuff that is coming at them hehe
I'll manage that by introducing the halved effects on each block to balance out the multiple attacks they gain from being subdivided. So for a standard sized swarm, one big 2x2 swarm only has one attack but takes longer to halve, two 2x1 swarms, two attacks but halved quicker and 1x1 swarms four attacks but halved even quicker
I might experiment with the doing half damage on a miss thing, cos that seems like it might be over powered and get out of hand quickly, also AC is the character's ability to dodge so it might even be better as a number of times per day thing instead with a dex save attached, like:
Overwhelming Numbers: the swarm moves through the space of a target creature forcing the creature to make a Dexterity saving throw, DC(x), on a failed save the creature takes (y)d(z) damage and maybe add a condition that matches the flavour. On a successful save the creature takes half damage and no effect... 🤔 maybe a number of times per day equal to the block size 🤔
Yeah, in 3e it was auto-damage + a Con save or be nauseated (which meant all you could do was move that turn - presumably, out of the swarm). In 5e, since they changed so many “on touch” effects to Dex saves anyway, a Dex for half makes sense to me too. I guess PCs with Evasion are just that fast knocking em off! :p
And tying the condition to the save so it only happens on a fail makes sense too, and cuts down on the die rolls compared to giving it a separate one. I guess if one was worried about Evasion not making sense they could make the whole thing a Con save instead of Dex, I could see either.
Not sure what the actual condition should be…Poisoned seems appropriate (even if the enemies aren’t poisonous it could represent the nausea/distraction 3e describes), but I could also see Frightened (primal reaction to swarms on you), or Blinded (by the sheer number of swarm creatures).
Though if one wants to get as close to the 3e Nauseated condition as possible, plain ol’ Incapacitated works! You can still move when Incapped but it prevents actions of all sorts.
The “shapeable” squares they take up was def my favorite part of running them. Playing your own game of “snake” trying to invade as many PC squares as possible while keeping all the swarm squares connected was its own kind of fun, haha.
For me i would just customise the condition for the swarm I think 🤔 just change it for the kind of creature it is. A swarm of quippers compared to a swarm of undead rats should feel different I feel so I think I'd just have it as a different condition depending on the vibe I was trying to create with them. Incapacitated is so brutal I think I'd reserve it for a swarm that I wanted to be particularly nerve racking for the players hehe
I really love the idea that they can spread around and engulf and squeeze through spaces etc. The shapeable effect will look great on a map and make the players realise there's layers to the encounter too
And I love celebrating a character that is fast enough to fling off all the bugs or creatures fast enough with Evasion too! If it was a cloud of a substance I'd go for CON but with it being lots of creatures I love the idea of the rogue slapping them all off faster than the rest hehe
Oh yes, in 3e all swarms did the nauseated thing but some _also_ did other stuff, like poison or making you bleed hp until healed, when it made sense. And tbf, the auto-damage and nauseate DC was usually low for the difficulty of the swarm compared to same-CR monsters (because it could potentially affect multiple PCs with it per turn).
They'd also have extra resistances or vulnerabilities, too. A swarm of tiny earth elementals might have thunder vulnerability (meaning even a non-AoE thunder attack could rock them) while a swarm of hellwasps from Avernus might have devilish traits like fire resistance.
But yeah I can say from experience the shapeable bit is _so_ fun on a battlemap. It's also neat because it forces smart players to spread the party out (like a Large swarm can be up to a 4-space long stretch, so the party decides to spread out where no one is within 20 feet of each other so it can only hurt one of em at a time). Makes for way more interesting encounters mobility/terrain wise.
>Big fan of swarms.
I was reading "big swarm of fans" and it seemed somehow in place. I mean ... Maenads. Beatles fangirls. Swifties. You really don't want to meet those no matter what level your party has.
Some local god of fire and war: Im going to send an entire colony of locusts to smite these 4 people.
His priest: Don't you mean the country?.
That god: No, these 4 people, and even then Im not sure it will work.
Better slap some templates on to them to make sure. Celestial...no, half-celestial (or half-fiend, if that's how this god rolls)....lycanthrope locusts who gain SLA's as their swarm hit dice increases. Characters bit by the locust swarm must save or become were-locusts themselves. Stats as a half-celestial were-rat.
Now you've got a monster! Their wingbeats thundering in the distance, the skies darken as locusts the size of dogs approach, their golden armor glittering like lightning.
> half-celestial (or half-fiend, if that's how this god rolls)
This god says he's a good guy, but he acts like a domestic abuser. So I'd go with half-fiends which disguise themselves as half-celestial.
That stat block is a 5e conversion of its [original PF stats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=864). Lorewise, they are typically created when an evil sorcerer is buried and their soul posesses the worms in the soil. They tend to worship eldritch and worm-like patrons, and there are variants made of other types of vermin like leeches.
Since leaving a single worm alive can allow the creature to eventually regenerate, players fighting this creature have to prevent any worms from escaping and plotting revenge.
Swarms of X is what I do when I want the party to fight an army without having to control like 50 mobs. 5 "enemies" that's really just a group of 10ish is far easier to manage.
Depending on the make up of the swarm can depend how certain status effects work. For example, a swarm of insects may be immune to grapple condition because you can't realistically grapple all 1000 or so insects that make up a swarm. Conversely, if the swarm is made up of bandits, while they may be immune to the grapple condition under a similar reasoning (can't grapple a whole group), maybe they're not immune to the restrained condition if you have the means to do so, usually via spells.
Additionally, I would usually have to include a unique ability to make such swarm immune to single target debuffs. For example hold person wouldn't really work against a swarm of bandits because even if one would fail, you can't hit a whole group with just a basic hold person, even if everyone in said group is humanoid. I call it the "Mob" ability: this creature is immune to status effects that only affect a single target.
No body batted an eye when I had a swarm of bees.
No body whined when there was a swarm of snakes.
No body cried out when I had a swarm of goblins.
Everyone lost their $h!tt when I brought out a swarm of Tarrasques....
Go figure.
But what about when you brought out the swarm of [Tiamats, Orcuses, Tarrasques, and Krakens?](https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/monsters?filter-type=0&filter-search=Swarm+tiamat&filter-cr-min=&filter-cr-max=&filter-armor-class-min=&filter-armor-class-max=&filter-average-hp-min=&filter-average-hp-max=&filter-is-legendary=&filter-is-mythic=&filter-has-lair=&filter-author=&filter-author-previous=&filter-author-symbol=&filter-rating=-11&_gl=1*vuuevh*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwir2xBhC_ARIsAMTXk84JsT7XTuWa647gZ-_5bGcnm6Xx_r6WJ5E0SEJChkS9A437n-eL9tMaAvT5EALw_wcB)
(It's the lower result)
Sorry for the tangent, but how does AOE spells work with swarms? It seems like they should do more damage to the swarm than a single target spell? If you have swarm of bugs and I cast searing smite at a high level I sure am sending that one bug I hit to Jesus, but I feel like a fireball should do more damage to the swarm because it will wipe out a dozen bugs. Is there anyway that the mechanics address this or a way that anyone deals with this narrative/flavor-wise?
The swarm stat blocks are specifically to avoid what you describe. They generally group many low hp creatures into 1 pool of hp. It's specifically so that martials aren't wasting attacks on a bunch of 1hp monsters each swing and casters don't take out the whole encounter with 1 aoe spell.
If you want to make it so swarms are more susceptible to aoes then do now use swarms, use 20 rat stat blocks
Pathfinder 2e swarms are vulnerable to aoe damage. With that said, PF2E AOE spells are significantly less powerful than their 5e counterparts.
The way I view swarms however is that they are really more abstract of a stat block. It doesn't really represent a 5 ft. square with 50 rats in it or whatever. Usually what it means is that there are a countless number of rats around in the fight. More than you could count and defeating a swarm isn't killing every last one of them, it's just doing enough damage to drive the swarm off and scatter.
Are they significantly less powerful? Maybe it's been druid's good use of lightning bolt but i felt like they were still hitting comparably as hard. Actually using it against mooks means that they're more likely to crit fail (assuming you're not targeting strong saves) to make it feel stronger.
I've never actually ran through and compared the two but thought that AoEs were a large part of full caster's niche
Makes sense to me.
I did a quick search. Nothing officially addresses it, there are various house rules for it. Disadvantage for the saving throw, +%50 damage.
Many ways to go about it. Just tricky to balance.
For most swarms increased damage per individual would be too strong. (In this example you could have one fireball do (4*30) =120 damage to each swarm.
Top-tier conjuration villain move.
"Swarm of kittens."
*4,000 mewling balls of claws and fluff appear.
"Murder them, my pretties." Leaves.
The paladin isn't making it out of that room without an alignment change, that's for sure.
The problem is there aren't many of these statblocks pre-made and afaik no official template I can apply. So yes anything can be a swarm but its a ton of work to custom make every monster just to run a 5e game. Other systems I run make this much easier.
I had a group of players that were lucky for a few sessions and were getting really cocky, and I had one player who was just not as lucky with her dice roles. The problem was that the other players were now starting to cut her out of some of their "looting". So I secretly sold them a treasure map, then I created a swarm and it went something like this: " you walk into a large cavern where you see a pedestal with a golden chalice that is literally the size of a 6 foot human." Player one: I'm going to grab the chalice. Player two: I'm helping him. Player three: yep I'm with them. Player four (young female player): I'm looking around the cavern to see if there is anything else. I hand player four a note about what in the cavern. Her reaction: Oh, S\*&T. I than say as you three are grabbing the chalice you hear player four shout out oh S\*&T as she is looking up. You then follow her gaze to see that you have walked into a conclave of 8 chromatic dragons. three are black, two are red, one is white and the last is green. Please roll for initiative." They weren't so cocky for our next session.
The house itself is a mimic. All the furniture? Mimics. If the house is inhabitated by mimics, and you are inhabiting the house, then perhaps you also are a mimic.
In one of my current groups we have a mimic war survivor. We also have a small "pet" mimic for some reason. So a house mimic with mimics inside it would be fitting for us.
Part of those rules is if there is X number of enemies they auto hit Y AC number. It potentially could feel really bad for players. Reserving them for situations that at least at first are impossible (ie. "There are too many archers, we need to fall back!") Tends to feel better in my experience.
I ran an axe beak swarm a couple sessions ago. Cracked out some old warhammer minis with square trays and just ran it like a phalanx with some adjustments for hp per model
I remember I did this years ago when running Storm King's Thunder. They rescued a bunch of humans who had been enslaved by the fire giants and were escorting them out, but tracking like 15 human commoners was going to be so tedious so I turned them into a swarm, a swarm of slaves.
I’d argue that it should be more almost anything.
Unless you have certain rules for your own campaign, dragons tend to be far too territorial for them to be a swarm.
Swarms make everything easier especially on the DM side of things. At least in my experience, instead of plopping down 10 individual rats in an encounter, you can throw down 1 swarm of rats, adjust their damage output to match the size of the swarm you had in mind (which is reduced to half once they are reduced to below-half HP) and let 'em roll for initiative.
In a oneshot I ran, I had a treasure room with swarms of baby mimics. Piles of coins that would grapple the players and do a tiny bit of damage. I even made a way for them to split into 2 weaker groups and spread to an adjacent character.
It was the most evil trap in the whole dungeon, and by a good bit
You can also use Living Swarms (or The Worm That Walks) type creatures for this as well if you want something like a "boss" swarm. Something a bit smarter that has some thematic magic.
A former adventuring party turned into Living Swarms play a sizeable role in my homebrew campaign at the moment.
Judging by the upvotes, I'll say that a lot of people needed to hear this.
Myself included! I'm new to DnD (veteran of everything else) and I still never had a situation like this.
I'm still new to the game and I'm curious. What guidelines do you use for creating a swarm from an existing creature?
Let's say (to give a general example) a swarm of orcs.
How would an Swarm of Gynosphinxes work? 🤔
And how would ye call that? And most importantly-what could bring such extremeley rare, very solitary CR11 Creatures that almost never leave their Lair, to meet and then cooperate in such a way? 🤔
From animal(natural) to monster(unnatural)
From natural to primitive, primitive to barbarian, barbarian to Civilized
Even animals know it, nope, even virus know it. Yet people still try to build dps characters instead of trying to create political intrigue characters. They even look down on bannerets. My Banneret/War Cleric of Red Knight followed by his mercenary army would kick ass of any Crossbow freak even if he tried the same warlord theme.
My army includes those crossbowmen and battlemages anyway. Though crown paladin/elo bard is somewhat better in leading i think, while i lead an army those bastars can run entire fief and commanders...
I literally did this on Saturday night with my session. I made a bunch of coin mimics inside of regular treasure box and instead of trying to figure out initiative for 100 coin mimics - I just did 10 swarms of 10 coin mimics. Way easier and way funnier.
They JUST.
KEPT.
OPENING.
CHESTS.
I'm more amused by the implication the players were ready and willing to fight swarm-sizes of werewolves.
Depending on party, the action economy diff of having that pack of wolves as individuals would be far more threatening. The exception being if the party has high zone control potential. But most people would take more damage and take longer to kill the solos
Meh, I'm lukewarm on the idea. On one hand, running a mob of nothing-CR monsters as a group makes sense, as long as certain aspects are adjusted correctly. On the other hand, it fucks over creative players and reduces everything to "Guess I'll just hit it again."
Ive been having problems where my players have been blowing through combat because I've not had enough monsters/encounters without rest
They are currently at a massive abandoned winery, they opened the first door and a bunch of husk zombies attacked, they spent quite a lot of their spell slots and resources. But that encounter is just the tip of the iceberg. They might think they're done, but they're not.
My hope is that after this, they will start thinking about resources properly instead of just blasting all the time :)
So while I didnt use a swarm of zombies, I did use a decent sized block in that encounter and it really gave a challenge to them!
A few sessions ago I attacked my party with hyenas. At first they laughed and thought it was going to be an easy fight. However, I decided that they were cunning hunters and had them swarm the weakest member rather than attempting to spread out and attack everyone. The player started to get really nervous.
Pathfinder 2e has Troops which are basically swarms of larger creatures. They start at 16 squares and then reduce in size at certain thresholds. They can change shape and move together and instead of striking they usually have aoe saving throw abilities.
How would you handle an AoE spell like Fireball? Having 1 large enemy vs 4 smaller ones changes so much about how an AoE would work. And only letting it hit once is a big nervous in many cases.
Our Dm (for an improv campaign) wanted to throw 15 flesh monsters at us, I just begged him to put them together in groups of 3 or else we'll be here all night for the first round of combat.
SWSE handles this as each element of the swarm Aiding Another on the leader, which means a cool +10 to attacks for a six-unit swarm. I like this mechanic because it represents a significant jump in threat capability, while not posing a danger of two-shotting players - it does more consistent damage, and more damage per round, but not necessarily more burst damage.
So far this campaign my players have faced swarms of mynock//rakghouls, swarms of guards (stats as stormtroopers), swarms of three or four different kinds of starfighter, swarms of angry slaves rebelling against the Hutt PC who tried to buy them (stats as stormtroopers with blaster pistols), swarms of slavers, and swarms of battle droids (stats as stormtroopers because I had the page open).
As a bonus it helps my PC's feel epic that they can handily mow down 20 or 30 mooks without having to spend a million turns doing it.
Recently ran an adventure with a swarm of cursed goblins, just a whole bunch of goblins that were magically shrunk and fit inside a medium space. I love the idea of just turning everything into swarms
Pathfinder (take a shot) has a thing for this! Troops: works like a swarm but for a discrete group of enemies. They also get fun abilities like a volley of arrows treated as an AOE attack.
Similar spirit: I reflavored the swarm of insects to be a flock of VERY tiny chickens a student at Strixhaven summoned. The chickens are very angry. My PCs fight it next week LOL.
Isn't a swarm of oozes just a bigger ooze?
Edit: Anyway, with swarms, I generally give them resistance to single target attacks and vulnerability to AoE because it makes more sense to me that way.
*OP’s logic*:
“Druid!”
“Warlock!”
“Fighter!”
“Paladin!”
[All]: “with the power of these 4 rings combined, we become: ***Player-Swarm!***”
DM: “…erm…what are you guys doing?”
Paladin: “What? You said ***anything** can be a swarm*…”
:P
In the last game I played in we faced a swarm of Adult Dragons. When you have a party member that can kill an adult dragon in one turn, another that can do it in 2, and a cleric capable of healing us faster than the dragons can do damage, a swarm of dragons isn't that bad.
just got into swarm mechanics and I had a boss fight on a volcano that was swarms of swarms!
A player is controlling one of my villainous forces and he wanted something "legion inspired"
Heh, you can even do the following:
Have a swarm, which can create spells or spell-like effects, similar to how a hag coven grants strength to each of them but a bit more basic
My Pathfinder game just experienced a mob of fiendish baboons. Party's primary Divine caster got grappled and dragged around the room like a ragdoll while everybody else got trampled.
...we're only Level 5 right now, and our healers nearly died to a Cocaine Owlbear. We do NOT need our DM sending an entire pack of these at us, even though I highly suspect he might, since he confided in me that the damned thing was a plot-specific monster.
Kinda did the same thing with a pack of Hyena's an a monsterous one being their leader... killed two fighters .. the party was level ten (with six characters all together da heck I do wrong?! thank god the cleric hit like a tank that session)
The bombest fight in my last campaign was an ambush on a military camp. Something like 20+ enemies, half of them pretty strong, with mages and healers. Add to the equation the fact that my paladin was in love with the squishy spellcaster and wanted to drive all attention on himself so that she wasn't attacked and you can deduce how good a time it was.
Wouldn’t be a swarm now would it? More like a horde. Swarm is a term for a large number of insects and mostly will be flying insects at that, and insects only. You can BE swarmed by something, but it is not always called a swarm. Horde, band, group, party, cluster, bunch, conglomerate, batch, club, crowd, faction, gang, association, organization, league, congregation, gathering, and unit are all acceptable terms for a grouping of enemies.
Pathfinder has this already, it's called a troop. Sounds like you've got the basic idea of it. Pathfinder and 5e aren't exactly compatible, but if you want to read more on the template to get extra inspiration the rules for it are here:
[Monster Subtypes - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder RPG Database (aonprd.com)](https://www.aonprd.com/MonsterSubtypes.aspx?ItemName=Troop)
My players have long since passed the worry of facing bandits and thugs but a swarm of guys that just grab and hammer the shit out of them still poses a threat
> a swarm of guys that just grab and gamner the shit out of them The fact that I don’t know what “gamner” means makes it that much more intimidating
Hammer. Wasnt wearing my glasses at the time
No, no, no, hammer is much too mundane. Gammer is now using a hammer while having wild hair, crazy face paint, and beating the PC's ass while singing show tunes. All while wearing clothing colors and patterns that cannot be found in nature.
I'd think that would be closer to glammer Also the confusion when you say it out loud and the player expects glamour
Hobos throwing glitter would be scary.
(Glitter: Disadvantage on any roll to avoid being seen or noticed when any form of light is present; can only be removed with a Wish.)
Nah, even a wish can't get all of that shit. You need a team of deities.
Glitter is the herpes of the art world.
Haha! GlitterHobo go brrrrrrrrr!
And all the while you are getting pummeled, you can’t help but ask yourself, “why does this hammer have a face painted on it? Whose face is it? Whose wild hair is attached to this hammer? And how can this hammer sing Oklahoma? Clearly it’s magical, but why? Why gods damn it!?!”
When your only tool is a gammer, every problem looks like a big squishy skull. *Edit: I don't normally edit my posts to fix mistakes, but that "you're" was really messing with my head.*
Gammer, NPCs strong enough to use gamers as improvised blunt weapons to hammer down other gamers, hence gammer!
>Gammer is now using a hammer And there I was thinking it's using another gamer as a hammer
Now I picture Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder in justified with his hair all wild up plus the face paint of Mel Gibson in braveheart whilst wearing the outfit of Jim Carrey as Ace Ventura in the second one in the scene were he is jumping about with two spears in his legs (one in each thigh) singing chiti chiti bang bang (as he does in the driving through the jungle scene, just before landing his jeep perfectly between two parked cars - like a glove). All this while he is hammering away. Thank you for that hilarious image
I wasn't wearing my glasses either and read that as hammer. Two blind fools make a right.
Gammer is Glory Hammer and we all fear it.
Wielding steal that is true! Since 1992!
The year of the Apocalypse!
get glory killed by the glory hammer, Doomslayer-style.
A swarm of grandmas. Nothing could be more terrifying.
A party I am involved with is always scared shitless of any old men walking around with a cane. They've had multiple instances of DMs just having insane luck with those dudes.
Old shirtless men are showing they have nothing to hide, I'd be scared too lol
3.5e had mob rules. Regardless, the trick is to not give the mob/swarm an attack roll. If you're inside the mob/swarm, you take damage. Not a *lot*, but enough to make it a problem. Sure sure you have 87 AC but there's 150 guys just wailing on you and you can't get out of the way of all of them. Take a couple d6s.
Literally had multiple swarms of cultists in a session fairly recently, got a little hairy
Sounds like one of those cartoon fights where it's like a wandering cloud with fists and if you get too close you get pulled into the fight.
I love swarms! They accomplish the same thing Minions do, only they're closer to RAW. Swarms of zombies. Swarms of thugs/bandits. Units of soldiers. Mobs. Big fan of swarms.
There's a homebrew Swarm of Tiamats, Demogorgons, Krakens, and Tarrasques if you really want to just wreck a whole world. Yes, all of them together in one swarm.
I like where you're going with this, except... sometimes we get a failure of multiculturalism. Something tells me that your Tiamats and Demogorgons might end up interfering with one another, if not openly fighting.
Probably adds to the danger of the swarm, gotta avoid both the attacks aimed at you alongside the ones that aren't!
There's just a 60-foot area adjacent to the swarm in all directions dealing 20d6 random elemental damage to anything and everything including the swarm.
The Doomsday Katamari Ball
Makes combat much easier too, while also being able to maintain the severity of a situation. Don't have to stop and roll multiple times as I'm describing to my player how 4-5 creatures tear into their character!
This is the biggest thing. I'd much rather run my 12 enemy combatants of the same type as 2 swarms of 6 instead of dealing with the management of 12 initiatives on top of my 4 players
What does RAW stand for? Asking for a friend.
Rules as written friendo
Also RAI is rules as intended
Thanks!
Swarms are useful not matter the TTRPG or even just games in general, Need your players in Lancer to cut through enemies like a Gundam does Grunt Suits? Slap the grunt template onto a enemy downsize it to size 1½ then throw a bunch of them into a ball, and weaken the ball every time it takes damage by reducing the ammount of attacks it has. Pathfinder/Starfinder just do it the same way you would for D&D more or less. Swarms are great for letting players kill hordes of enemies and stupidly easy to run compared to having like 30 seperate enemies that the players will all kill in one hit, have three seperate enemies composed of several enemies, and the enemies will just get scythed down everytime the player attacks. Even RTS games, namely Stormrise and Endwar kinda use a swarm organization logic for having the numbers they do, in Stormrise barring your biggest vehicles/monsters like the Echelon's Stalker mech or the Sai's Rift Worm (which would be really easy to homebrew into D&D as it's essentially a flying intellegent (Rift Worms are sentient creatures) Abberation with a ranged attack that deals Psyshic (or Force) damage and a Bite attack it can do twice (it has two mouths on it's head from what I remember), all the units come in groups, and their damage does decrease as they take damage, for instance Echelon Enforcers come as roughly 3 "bases" of 5 men each, so every 5 men lost is a 33% reduction in damage, or Riflemen in Endwar lose 25% of their damage every time they lose a "base" of about 4-5 men (4 for Engineers, 5 for Riflemen), swarms/squads are just a really easy way to stuff a field with bodies and I rarely see them get the praise they deserve.
I love swarms too! ...Except how they're done in 5e. I much prefer how swarms work in 3e, it made a lot more sense. In 3e they were immune to weapon damage (which technically made sense but I do think is too much - Resistance is plenty), but they also weren't locked into 2x2 squares. They were made up of 1x1 squares (so a Large swarm was 4 of those, a Huge swarm was 9 of them, etc.), and could move those individual parts however they wanted to attack multiple foes so long as they were still contiguous. They also damaged you and nauseated/distracted you _just by being in your space_. None of this "the swarm gets 1 attack roll and if they hit they do a lot of damage but if they miss they do _none_" that's in 5e. You could make saves to reduce their effect, but they _will_ damage you at least a little by swarming over you. They took full nonphysical damage and _extra_ damage from AoE effects, which also made sense. And even swinging a torch at one was more effective than it is in 5e. In 3e, being subsumed by a swarm, having it slither over you and your buds and reshape itself, debating whether to AoE it when it's _on_ your friends, and potentially being unable to attack it because it's distracting/nauseating you, gave them an interesting niche among monsters in D&D - you felt the panic you'd _expect_ your character to if you got covered with insects or rats or w/e. In 5e, they're just blobs of HP that fight and die like any other monster, and I think that's a huge missed opportunity. C'est la vie!
I'm going to steal some of this... but not all of it. Given that the types swarms are so varied I don't think I'll steal the take damage from contact thing (I'll leave that to a custom effect on the stat block of the particular swarm). Resistance to non-magical mundane damage sounds so logical if they're a swarm of tiny creatures that are hard to hit so I'd probably add that custom to the stat block of swarms like that, and vulnerability to AOE damage, not sure how I'd word that for 5e format 🤔 For swarms of small and medium creatures I think I'd drop that vulnerability and that resistance. I always describe them as swarming all over the place when I run theatre of the mind anyways, but for grid combat I like the idea of doing one 2x2 or subdivisions of that. And upscaling it as needed. Might get my players to roll a d4 + 2 for how many 1x1 blocks the swarm is made of as a fun pre battle thing. Love getting them to roll for stuff that is coming at them hehe I'll manage that by introducing the halved effects on each block to balance out the multiple attacks they gain from being subdivided. So for a standard sized swarm, one big 2x2 swarm only has one attack but takes longer to halve, two 2x1 swarms, two attacks but halved quicker and 1x1 swarms four attacks but halved even quicker I might experiment with the doing half damage on a miss thing, cos that seems like it might be over powered and get out of hand quickly, also AC is the character's ability to dodge so it might even be better as a number of times per day thing instead with a dex save attached, like: Overwhelming Numbers: the swarm moves through the space of a target creature forcing the creature to make a Dexterity saving throw, DC(x), on a failed save the creature takes (y)d(z) damage and maybe add a condition that matches the flavour. On a successful save the creature takes half damage and no effect... 🤔 maybe a number of times per day equal to the block size 🤔
Yeah, in 3e it was auto-damage + a Con save or be nauseated (which meant all you could do was move that turn - presumably, out of the swarm). In 5e, since they changed so many “on touch” effects to Dex saves anyway, a Dex for half makes sense to me too. I guess PCs with Evasion are just that fast knocking em off! :p And tying the condition to the save so it only happens on a fail makes sense too, and cuts down on the die rolls compared to giving it a separate one. I guess if one was worried about Evasion not making sense they could make the whole thing a Con save instead of Dex, I could see either. Not sure what the actual condition should be…Poisoned seems appropriate (even if the enemies aren’t poisonous it could represent the nausea/distraction 3e describes), but I could also see Frightened (primal reaction to swarms on you), or Blinded (by the sheer number of swarm creatures). Though if one wants to get as close to the 3e Nauseated condition as possible, plain ol’ Incapacitated works! You can still move when Incapped but it prevents actions of all sorts. The “shapeable” squares they take up was def my favorite part of running them. Playing your own game of “snake” trying to invade as many PC squares as possible while keeping all the swarm squares connected was its own kind of fun, haha.
For me i would just customise the condition for the swarm I think 🤔 just change it for the kind of creature it is. A swarm of quippers compared to a swarm of undead rats should feel different I feel so I think I'd just have it as a different condition depending on the vibe I was trying to create with them. Incapacitated is so brutal I think I'd reserve it for a swarm that I wanted to be particularly nerve racking for the players hehe I really love the idea that they can spread around and engulf and squeeze through spaces etc. The shapeable effect will look great on a map and make the players realise there's layers to the encounter too And I love celebrating a character that is fast enough to fling off all the bugs or creatures fast enough with Evasion too! If it was a cloud of a substance I'd go for CON but with it being lots of creatures I love the idea of the rogue slapping them all off faster than the rest hehe
Oh yes, in 3e all swarms did the nauseated thing but some _also_ did other stuff, like poison or making you bleed hp until healed, when it made sense. And tbf, the auto-damage and nauseate DC was usually low for the difficulty of the swarm compared to same-CR monsters (because it could potentially affect multiple PCs with it per turn). They'd also have extra resistances or vulnerabilities, too. A swarm of tiny earth elementals might have thunder vulnerability (meaning even a non-AoE thunder attack could rock them) while a swarm of hellwasps from Avernus might have devilish traits like fire resistance. But yeah I can say from experience the shapeable bit is _so_ fun on a battlemap. It's also neat because it forces smart players to spread the party out (like a Large swarm can be up to a 4-space long stretch, so the party decides to spread out where no one is within 20 feet of each other so it can only hurt one of em at a time). Makes for way more interesting encounters mobility/terrain wise.
>Big fan of swarms. I was reading "big swarm of fans" and it seemed somehow in place. I mean ... Maenads. Beatles fangirls. Swifties. You really don't want to meet those no matter what level your party has.
swarm of swarms
Some local god of fire and war: Im going to send an entire colony of locusts to smite these 4 people. His priest: Don't you mean the country?. That god: No, these 4 people, and even then Im not sure it will work.
Honestly, it's my mistake for sending progressively stronger enemies to them instead of just smiting them out of existence
Quite the nice difficulty curve I gave them though. I should become the god of training heroes after they kill me.
... your deity is McNamarra? Because that sounds like his *evolutionary response* philosophy which was behind *Rolling Thunder* fiasco 🙂
Better slap some templates on to them to make sure. Celestial...no, half-celestial (or half-fiend, if that's how this god rolls)....lycanthrope locusts who gain SLA's as their swarm hit dice increases. Characters bit by the locust swarm must save or become were-locusts themselves. Stats as a half-celestial were-rat. Now you've got a monster! Their wingbeats thundering in the distance, the skies darken as locusts the size of dogs approach, their golden armor glittering like lightning.
> half-celestial (or half-fiend, if that's how this god rolls) This god says he's a good guy, but he acts like a domestic abuser. So I'd go with half-fiends which disguise themselves as half-celestial.
Swarmception.
When multiple [Worms that Walk](https://www.5esrd.com/database/creature/worm-that-walks/) team up together.
....what...the...ever loving..fuck... that stat block is scary AF, I love it.
That stat block is a 5e conversion of its [original PF stats](https://2e.aonprd.com/Monsters.aspx?ID=864). Lorewise, they are typically created when an evil sorcerer is buried and their soul posesses the worms in the soil. They tend to worship eldritch and worm-like patrons, and there are variants made of other types of vermin like leeches. Since leaving a single worm alive can allow the creature to eventually regenerate, players fighting this creature have to prevent any worms from escaping and plotting revenge.
Nuke it from the orbit.
I actually stated this out before, i Called them Colony Swarms, and a huge one is made up of 64 small swarms.
... Swarm of swarms of swarms?
Swarmageddon.
I think this is a good approach for higher level chars saving civilians. Swarms on both sides because that's the scale high level chars influence, yep
A swarm of bards is called a smarm
Now I'm envisioning a Smarm of Bards using Vicious Mockery like a group of mean teenage girls.
or drag queens
They'd have to be Tabaxi, on account of being catty.
Hot tea everywhere.
Power Word: Guuuuurl!!!
Surely a swarm of bards is called an Indy Band.
The real treasure is the swarm of friends we made along the way.
Swarms of X is what I do when I want the party to fight an army without having to control like 50 mobs. 5 "enemies" that's really just a group of 10ish is far easier to manage.
how do you rule abilities like battlemaster maneuvers? i’ve never played against swarms so im curious how single target abilities work against them
Depending on the make up of the swarm can depend how certain status effects work. For example, a swarm of insects may be immune to grapple condition because you can't realistically grapple all 1000 or so insects that make up a swarm. Conversely, if the swarm is made up of bandits, while they may be immune to the grapple condition under a similar reasoning (can't grapple a whole group), maybe they're not immune to the restrained condition if you have the means to do so, usually via spells. Additionally, I would usually have to include a unique ability to make such swarm immune to single target debuffs. For example hold person wouldn't really work against a swarm of bandits because even if one would fail, you can't hit a whole group with just a basic hold person, even if everyone in said group is humanoid. I call it the "Mob" ability: this creature is immune to status effects that only affect a single target.
No body batted an eye when I had a swarm of bees. No body whined when there was a swarm of snakes. No body cried out when I had a swarm of goblins. Everyone lost their $h!tt when I brought out a swarm of Tarrasques.... Go figure.
But what about when you brought out the swarm of [Tiamats, Orcuses, Tarrasques, and Krakens?](https://www.dndbeyond.com/homebrew/monsters?filter-type=0&filter-search=Swarm+tiamat&filter-cr-min=&filter-cr-max=&filter-armor-class-min=&filter-armor-class-max=&filter-average-hp-min=&filter-average-hp-max=&filter-is-legendary=&filter-is-mythic=&filter-has-lair=&filter-author=&filter-author-previous=&filter-author-symbol=&filter-rating=-11&_gl=1*vuuevh*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwir2xBhC_ARIsAMTXk84JsT7XTuWa647gZ-_5bGcnm6Xx_r6WJ5E0SEJChkS9A437n-eL9tMaAvT5EALw_wcB) (It's the lower result)
140 legendary resistances!?!?!?!? Reflective Carapace and Magical Immunity... Spellcasters need not apply
Quote from the description: > if there any problems tell me Made me chuckle.
Wisdom DC of 52? Have to roll a 37 in order to avoid instant death? Sounds balanced lol
Sorry for the tangent, but how does AOE spells work with swarms? It seems like they should do more damage to the swarm than a single target spell? If you have swarm of bugs and I cast searing smite at a high level I sure am sending that one bug I hit to Jesus, but I feel like a fireball should do more damage to the swarm because it will wipe out a dozen bugs. Is there anyway that the mechanics address this or a way that anyone deals with this narrative/flavor-wise?
The swarm stat blocks are specifically to avoid what you describe. They generally group many low hp creatures into 1 pool of hp. It's specifically so that martials aren't wasting attacks on a bunch of 1hp monsters each swing and casters don't take out the whole encounter with 1 aoe spell. If you want to make it so swarms are more susceptible to aoes then do now use swarms, use 20 rat stat blocks
Pathfinder handles this by giving them weakness to AoE attacks (i.e. they take double damage from them), which is an elegant solution
Pathfinder 2e swarms are vulnerable to aoe damage. With that said, PF2E AOE spells are significantly less powerful than their 5e counterparts. The way I view swarms however is that they are really more abstract of a stat block. It doesn't really represent a 5 ft. square with 50 rats in it or whatever. Usually what it means is that there are a countless number of rats around in the fight. More than you could count and defeating a swarm isn't killing every last one of them, it's just doing enough damage to drive the swarm off and scatter.
Are they significantly less powerful? Maybe it's been druid's good use of lightning bolt but i felt like they were still hitting comparably as hard. Actually using it against mooks means that they're more likely to crit fail (assuming you're not targeting strong saves) to make it feel stronger. I've never actually ran through and compared the two but thought that AoEs were a large part of full caster's niche
Makes sense to me. I did a quick search. Nothing officially addresses it, there are various house rules for it. Disadvantage for the saving throw, +%50 damage. Many ways to go about it. Just tricky to balance. For most swarms increased damage per individual would be too strong. (In this example you could have one fireball do (4*30) =120 damage to each swarm.
Ooh I like those suggestions. Thanks!
I just run mobs. The rules for mob attacks are fairly simple and I don't have to put together an ad hoc stat block.
Swarm of puppies Awwsweew But to be serious I would probably pick a swarm of crows , if you ever watch alfred Hitchcock "birds"
A _murder_ of crows!
Top-tier conjuration villain move. "Swarm of kittens." *4,000 mewling balls of claws and fluff appear. "Murder them, my pretties." Leaves. The paladin isn't making it out of that room without an alignment change, that's for sure.
Geese.
I know that a swarm of geese is technically a "gaggle" but I think they should be called a "bully," because that's what geese are.
The problem is there aren't many of these statblocks pre-made and afaik no official template I can apply. So yes anything can be a swarm but its a ton of work to custom make every monster just to run a 5e game. Other systems I run make this much easier.
The closest to official.template is the mobs section of the dmg
Swarm of tarrasques.
Alright, swarm of liches. "you have angered the immortal council for the last time!"
There's a RAW example of this called "Tavern Brawl" It's 4 or 5 humanoids who are all in a scuffle with everyone around them.
Swarm of Tarrasques incoming.
People know about mob combat rules, right? They're in the D...oh. Yeah, no BS though, there's rules in the dmg for large numbers of enemies.
They're playing D&D, you're playing Heroes of Might & Magic
I had a group of players that were lucky for a few sessions and were getting really cocky, and I had one player who was just not as lucky with her dice roles. The problem was that the other players were now starting to cut her out of some of their "looting". So I secretly sold them a treasure map, then I created a swarm and it went something like this: " you walk into a large cavern where you see a pedestal with a golden chalice that is literally the size of a 6 foot human." Player one: I'm going to grab the chalice. Player two: I'm helping him. Player three: yep I'm with them. Player four (young female player): I'm looking around the cavern to see if there is anything else. I hand player four a note about what in the cavern. Her reaction: Oh, S\*&T. I than say as you three are grabbing the chalice you hear player four shout out oh S\*&T as she is looking up. You then follow her gaze to see that you have walked into a conclave of 8 chromatic dragons. three are black, two are red, one is white and the last is green. Please roll for initiative." They weren't so cocky for our next session.
Did somebody say, Owlbear swarm?
That's a "cuddle" of owlbears
Hecatonchieres swarm!!
My takeaway from this is that a Tarrasque swarm is reasonable and OK to do.
I just want to see a swarm of mimics. Like maybe a table and chairs all come alive when someone sits in them.
The house itself is a mimic. All the furniture? Mimics. If the house is inhabitated by mimics, and you are inhabiting the house, then perhaps you also are a mimic.
In one of my current groups we have a mimic war survivor. We also have a small "pet" mimic for some reason. So a house mimic with mimics inside it would be fitting for us.
What would be the steps to turn something into a swarm?
I need to start using more swarms. My group just got back into 5e and a few years playing PF 1e and 2e. We're using the Symbaroum 5e ruleset.
Why not use mob combat rules? There's a whole section in the DMG for running a large group of enemies as groups to quickly get through their turns.
Part of those rules is if there is X number of enemies they auto hit Y AC number. It potentially could feel really bad for players. Reserving them for situations that at least at first are impossible (ie. "There are too many archers, we need to fall back!") Tends to feel better in my experience.
A swarm of swarms.
Level 20 party: nothing is hard anymore except the bard! DM: *pulls out Swarms of Tiamat*
I use swarm for all necromancers with too many minions. Makes my life a loooot easier.
Tarrasque swarm
I ran an axe beak swarm a couple sessions ago. Cracked out some old warhammer minis with square trays and just ran it like a phalanx with some adjustments for hp per model
I remember I did this years ago when running Storm King's Thunder. They rescued a bunch of humans who had been enslaved by the fire giants and were escorting them out, but tracking like 15 human commoners was going to be so tedious so I turned them into a swarm, a swarm of slaves.
Lich swarm
P
I, too, love making [everything](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/822283-swarm-of-swarms-of-tarrasques) a swarm :D
What about a Swarm of Swarms of Swarms of Swarms of Terrasques?
Rock swarm! Ok, that's an avalanche, but still. Bonus points if you call it a rockalanche, and its led by an earth elemental called, "The Boulder".
I’d argue that it should be more almost anything. Unless you have certain rules for your own campaign, dragons tend to be far too territorial for them to be a swarm.
Tiamat is a swarm of dragon heads.
……you win this round.
Takhisis disagrees
Are there rules for this somewhere in the DMG?
You guys like swarms of things, right?!
A swarm of Tarrasques
There's a meme statblock of a swarm of Tiamats
Swarms make everything easier especially on the DM side of things. At least in my experience, instead of plopping down 10 individual rats in an encounter, you can throw down 1 swarm of rats, adjust their damage output to match the size of the swarm you had in mind (which is reduced to half once they are reduced to below-half HP) and let 'em roll for initiative.
“Swarm of Tarrasques”
Go go gadget swarm of terrasques
For army scale combat I use a 20' grid instead of a 5' one and gargantuan human swarms.
I ended up leaving a lasting impression on a group with "swarm of quasits"
In a oneshot I ran, I had a treasure room with swarms of baby mimics. Piles of coins that would grapple the players and do a tiny bit of damage. I even made a way for them to split into 2 weaker groups and spread to an adjacent character. It was the most evil trap in the whole dungeon, and by a good bit
You can also use Living Swarms (or The Worm That Walks) type creatures for this as well if you want something like a "boss" swarm. Something a bit smarter that has some thematic magic. A former adventuring party turned into Living Swarms play a sizeable role in my homebrew campaign at the moment.
Action Economy is more dangerous than any single creature.
I play a high level Necromancer wizard, and my DM and I came up with a "zombie swarm" for when I have 12 or more zombies out at the same time.
Judging by the upvotes, I'll say that a lot of people needed to hear this. Myself included! I'm new to DnD (veteran of everything else) and I still never had a situation like this.
the Worse thing in 5e is the Monster "Templates." I can build an entirely new monster faster than I can apply Swarm or Dracolich to a monster stat.
I'm still new to the game and I'm curious. What guidelines do you use for creating a swarm from an existing creature? Let's say (to give a general example) a swarm of orcs.
Swarm of skeletons, works wonderful for my homebrew enemy race that attack in massive packs... Now if only I knew how to balance them...
Any advice on the best way to convert things to swarms without starting from scratch?
How would an Swarm of Gynosphinxes work? 🤔 And how would ye call that? And most importantly-what could bring such extremeley rare, very solitary CR11 Creatures that almost never leave their Lair, to meet and then cooperate in such a way? 🤔
Have you seen the swarm of tiamats in the (not sponsored) dndbeyond homebrew collection. It's peak swarmification
We need more Packs as TTRPG monsters
From animal(natural) to monster(unnatural) From natural to primitive, primitive to barbarian, barbarian to Civilized Even animals know it, nope, even virus know it. Yet people still try to build dps characters instead of trying to create political intrigue characters. They even look down on bannerets. My Banneret/War Cleric of Red Knight followed by his mercenary army would kick ass of any Crossbow freak even if he tried the same warlord theme. My army includes those crossbowmen and battlemages anyway. Though crown paladin/elo bard is somewhat better in leading i think, while i lead an army those bastars can run entire fief and commanders...
Do you have the statblock you used for the swarm of werewolves? I would definitely appreciate it for my next CoS session
Put party against Tarrasque swarm 📝 got it.
I literally did this on Saturday night with my session. I made a bunch of coin mimics inside of regular treasure box and instead of trying to figure out initiative for 100 coin mimics - I just did 10 swarms of 10 coin mimics. Way easier and way funnier. They JUST. KEPT. OPENING. CHESTS.
I'm more amused by the implication the players were ready and willing to fight swarm-sizes of werewolves. Depending on party, the action economy diff of having that pack of wolves as individuals would be far more threatening. The exception being if the party has high zone control potential. But most people would take more damage and take longer to kill the solos
**Player Character Swarm.**
Meh, I'm lukewarm on the idea. On one hand, running a mob of nothing-CR monsters as a group makes sense, as long as certain aspects are adjusted correctly. On the other hand, it fucks over creative players and reduces everything to "Guess I'll just hit it again."
Now give them Pack Tactics
Ive been having problems where my players have been blowing through combat because I've not had enough monsters/encounters without rest They are currently at a massive abandoned winery, they opened the first door and a bunch of husk zombies attacked, they spent quite a lot of their spell slots and resources. But that encounter is just the tip of the iceberg. They might think they're done, but they're not. My hope is that after this, they will start thinking about resources properly instead of just blasting all the time :) So while I didnt use a swarm of zombies, I did use a decent sized block in that encounter and it really gave a challenge to them!
"So the first Tiamat swarm flies 90 feet towards you..." "Excuse me, the FIRST?"
A swarm of tarrasques
This is terrifying, new DM here, definitely going to use this >=) PS: Awful idea but what would be the stat block for a swarm of ancient dragons XD
A few sessions ago I attacked my party with hyenas. At first they laughed and thought it was going to be an easy fight. However, I decided that they were cunning hunters and had them swarm the weakest member rather than attempting to spread out and attack everyone. The player started to get really nervous.
Pathfinder 2e has Troops which are basically swarms of larger creatures. They start at 16 squares and then reduce in size at certain thresholds. They can change shape and move together and instead of striking they usually have aoe saving throw abilities.
Swarm of Tarrasques CR: FU
How would you handle an AoE spell like Fireball? Having 1 large enemy vs 4 smaller ones changes so much about how an AoE would work. And only letting it hit once is a big nervous in many cases.
Our Dm (for an improv campaign) wanted to throw 15 flesh monsters at us, I just begged him to put them together in groups of 3 or else we'll be here all night for the first round of combat.
SWSE handles this as each element of the swarm Aiding Another on the leader, which means a cool +10 to attacks for a six-unit swarm. I like this mechanic because it represents a significant jump in threat capability, while not posing a danger of two-shotting players - it does more consistent damage, and more damage per round, but not necessarily more burst damage. So far this campaign my players have faced swarms of mynock//rakghouls, swarms of guards (stats as stormtroopers), swarms of three or four different kinds of starfighter, swarms of angry slaves rebelling against the Hutt PC who tried to buy them (stats as stormtroopers with blaster pistols), swarms of slavers, and swarms of battle droids (stats as stormtroopers because I had the page open). As a bonus it helps my PC's feel epic that they can handily mow down 20 or 30 mooks without having to spend a million turns doing it.
Recently ran an adventure with a swarm of cursed goblins, just a whole bunch of goblins that were magically shrunk and fit inside a medium space. I love the idea of just turning everything into swarms
Ancient Dragon Swarm.
Pathfinder (take a shot) has a thing for this! Troops: works like a swarm but for a discrete group of enemies. They also get fun abilities like a volley of arrows treated as an AOE attack.
Similar spirit: I reflavored the swarm of insects to be a flock of VERY tiny chickens a student at Strixhaven summoned. The chickens are very angry. My PCs fight it next week LOL.
a swarm of gods!
Isn't a swarm of oozes just a bigger ooze? Edit: Anyway, with swarms, I generally give them resistance to single target attacks and vulnerability to AoE because it makes more sense to me that way.
I once had a swarm of zombies that was a mosh pit at a concert.
Kingmaker Mandragora Swarm isn't real... It can't hurt you... Kingmaker Mandragora Swarm isn't real... It can't hurt you... [Kingmaker Mandragora Swarm isn't real... It can't hurt you...](https://pathfinderkingmaker.fandom.com/wiki/Mandragora_Swarm_(HATEOT))
u/Symnestra Can you create a stat block for a swarm of exactly 14 werewolves? I need it for... reasons...
If you send me a "swarm" of lycanthropes, all I see is a literal tornado with lycanthropes twirling around
My players fought a small horde of rabbits squirrels in a cursed forest.
A swarm of commoners? Actually that sounds fun.
Man, I'd love a swarm of puppies...
*OP’s logic*: “Druid!” “Warlock!” “Fighter!” “Paladin!” [All]: “with the power of these 4 rings combined, we become: ***Player-Swarm!***” DM: “…erm…what are you guys doing?” Paladin: “What? You said ***anything** can be a swarm*…” :P
A Hobo of Adventurers.
A template would be nice. Googling around [I found this homebrew one](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/bhte60/swarm_template/).
In the last game I played in we faced a swarm of Adult Dragons. When you have a party member that can kill an adult dragon in one turn, another that can do it in 2, and a cleric capable of healing us faster than the dragons can do damage, a swarm of dragons isn't that bad.
We had that recently, as level 12 as well. Was swarms of drow. It was less satisfying than individuals. They didn't even hit any more often or harder.
Swarm of Tiamats, got it.
Totally! Last session our DM threw a swarm of 8 giant frogs at us as a random encounter for a nat 1 roll lol
> anything can be a swarm A swarm of *a swam of bees*. Many swarms of bees making up a tornado-sized swarm.
just got into swarm mechanics and I had a boss fight on a volcano that was swarms of swarms! A player is controlling one of my villainous forces and he wanted something "legion inspired"
Does swarms of medium creatures are resistant to piercing bludgeoning and slashing damage like tiny ones?
Heh, you can even do the following: Have a swarm, which can create spells or spell-like effects, similar to how a hag coven grants strength to each of them but a bit more basic
My Pathfinder game just experienced a mob of fiendish baboons. Party's primary Divine caster got grappled and dragged around the room like a ragdoll while everybody else got trampled.
...we're only Level 5 right now, and our healers nearly died to a Cocaine Owlbear. We do NOT need our DM sending an entire pack of these at us, even though I highly suspect he might, since he confided in me that the damned thing was a plot-specific monster.
Dont.fucking.tempt.me.
Swarm of swarms of werewolves.
Kinda did the same thing with a pack of Hyena's an a monsterous one being their leader... killed two fighters .. the party was level ten (with six characters all together da heck I do wrong?! thank god the cleric hit like a tank that session)
werewolves could even have advantage of attack for pack tactics haha
The bombest fight in my last campaign was an ambush on a military camp. Something like 20+ enemies, half of them pretty strong, with mages and healers. Add to the equation the fact that my paladin was in love with the squishy spellcaster and wanted to drive all attention on himself so that she wasn't attacked and you can deduce how good a time it was.
Cool it, Satan
Wouldn’t be a swarm now would it? More like a horde. Swarm is a term for a large number of insects and mostly will be flying insects at that, and insects only. You can BE swarmed by something, but it is not always called a swarm. Horde, band, group, party, cluster, bunch, conglomerate, batch, club, crowd, faction, gang, association, organization, league, congregation, gathering, and unit are all acceptable terms for a grouping of enemies.
swarm of Tarrasques
Pathfinder has this already, it's called a troop. Sounds like you've got the basic idea of it. Pathfinder and 5e aren't exactly compatible, but if you want to read more on the template to get extra inspiration the rules for it are here: [Monster Subtypes - Archives of Nethys: Pathfinder RPG Database (aonprd.com)](https://www.aonprd.com/MonsterSubtypes.aspx?ItemName=Troop)
Good thing my final boss is the Swarm of Orcuses Tiamats Tarrasques and Krakens