My issue with your issue with 4E Swarms

[UserClone]

May I ask why people keep whining about weapon damage affecting insect swarms? You haven't seen any 4E insect swarms yet. If a level 12 Fighter can't hit a (Tiny, ~housecat-sized) Stirge or 2 with a sword swing, he probably would have died back at 2nd level when the Needlefang Drakes (also Tiny in size) proved likewise unhittable. Chances are, swarms of Fine creatures won't take much, if any, weapon damage from an arrow or flail. Truth is, we don't know yet. [/rant]

This is from the "stop saying 'internal consistency'" thread, but no one paid it any mind, as it was kind of o/t there.

[Rutee]

Given the general removal or vast lessening of effects that negate character types (Or at least, the reported removal of..), it's a pretty good guess that you can still swat at a huge group of flies with a sword. The real question is "Why shouldn't you?"

[UserClone]

It seems a natural thing to do, from my perspective; when a cloud of mosquitos descends upon me, I start swinging, after all. Open-hand, of course. I would never punch a mosquito. Or shoot an arrow at one. Seems to me that a simple houserule of "vs swarms of Fine creatures, Bludgeoning deals the normal 1/2 damage, slashing 1/4, and piercing is ineffective" would suffice to keep it realistic, if that's what you're into. *glares at self for ending clause on preposition*

[Jerthanis]

It seems a natural thing to do, from my perspective; when a cloud of mosquitos descends upon me, I start swinging, after all. Open-hand, of course. I would never punch a mosquito. Or shoot an arrow at one. Seems to me that a simple houserule of "vs swarms of Fine creatures, Bludgeoning deals the normal 1/2 damage, slashing 1/4, and piercing is ineffective" would suffice to keep it realistic, if that's what you're into. *glares at self for ending clause on preposition*

Actually, in the way you're using it here, "into" is not acting as a preposition, but as a particle. If, for example, the sentence still works when you transplant "into" to another part of the sentence, such as: "...would suffice to keep it realistic, if what you're into is that." (Which is legal, and expresses the same thing, though it sounds more awkward), then that means you didn't technically end your sentence in a preposition. The distinction between particles and prepositions is sometimes difficult, but you made no mistake here.

[Kurald Galain]

The real question is "Why shouldn't you?"

If you've seen the latest Indiana Jones movie, you should realize that the answer to that is "because you should RUN LIKE H*LL!!!!"

[UserClone]

So no genuine challenges to or agreement with my actual point, then, as of yet? Rutee sort of did, in admitting that it was a guess.

[Kurald Galain]

So no genuine challenges to or agreement with my actual point, then, as of yet? Rutee sort of did, in admitting that it was a guess.

Oh. Well, in that case, no. Your argument essentially claims that (1) swarms of tinier creatures should be harder to hit, (2) swarms should be hittable by high-level characters but not necessarily by low-level ones, and (3) we don't know yet. However, we've read the actual "swarm" rules in a preview (thus contradicting your third point), and these rules contradict your first two points.

[UserClone]

Exception-based ruleset. Those three words to me indicate that until we see an insect swrm, we don't know the differences between an insect swarm and a needlefang drake swarm. It makes perfect sense to be able to swing a sword at a hissing horde of housecats (yay, alliteration) because they are, individually, tiny creatures. but we haven't seen any solid proof that you can shoot an arrow at a pile of bugs and somehow hurt that pile, beyond a couple of bugs, which should really be insignificant to the swarm as a whole.

[JaxGaret]

Ever heard of speculation?

[Worira]

Hideous hissing hordes, wholly hairy housecats, hating humans? Hemophiliacs huddle horrified!

[Rutee]

So no genuine challenges to or agreement with my actual point, then, as of yet? Rutee sort of did, in admitting that it was a guess.

That was a challenge.

"The city's planning on pulling out all the stop signs and replacing them with shrubbery"
"Think they'll get the one on First and Main?"

[martyboy74]

Hideous hissing hordes, wholly hairy housecats, hating humans? Hemophiliacs huddle horrified!

Hairy hideous hissing hordes wholly having human hating housecats? Hemophiliac households huddle horrified!

That work better?

[KillianHawkeye]

You know what? I really have no objection to a 1st level Fighter having the ability to damage a swarm of bees with a longsword. People who whine about realism should play a different RPG. This is D&D, and it uses D&D physics, not RL physics.

If allowing clubs and arrows to damage a swarm of mosquitoes makes the game more fun for melee types and doesn't take any fun away from the casters, then realism can go strait to Baator.

There, I said it!

[Talya]

You know what? I really have no objection to a 1st level Fighter having the ability to damage a swarm of bees with a longsword. People who whine about realism should play a different RPG. This is D&D, and it uses D&D physics, not RL physics.

If allowing clubs and arrows to damage a swarm of mosquitoes makes the game more fun for melee types and doesn't take any fun away from the casters, then realism can go strait to Baator.

There, I said it!

Instead, maybe you shouldn't use swarms, then.

[Rutee]

Instead, maybe you shouldn't use swarms, then.

No, I think Killian had it correct.

"Hey, let Swarms match the intent behind the rest of the rules, rather then being some slave to realism that the rest of the system doesn't care about".

[KillianHawkeye]

Thank you, Rutee.

[Talya]

No, I think Killian had it correct.

"Hey, let Swarms match the intent behind the rest of the rules, rather then being some slave to realism that the rest of the system doesn't care about".

Yes, but the intent is stupid. Swarms lose everything about them that makes them interesting as an opponent if they can be killed the same way everything else can.

[Rutee]

Yes, but the intent is stupid. Swarms lose everything about them that makes them interesting as an opponent if they can be killed the same way everything else can.

DnD's intent has always been, no. 1, to have an interesting game. News Flash: An enemy that half of your standard party can not feasibly act against is not interesting to fight. It's boring to fight. If that's what made them interesting to fight (It's not), then they don't need inclusion in the rules.

[Talya]

DnD's intent has always been, no. 1, to have an interesting game. News Flash: An enemy that half of your standard party can not feasibly act against is not interesting to fight. It's boring to fight. If that's what made them interesting to fight (It's not), then they don't need inclusion in the rules.

Swarms were never boring. They were terrifying, because you couldn't just smack away at them with your sword. We actually had a fighter pour lamp-oil on his sword and set in on fire so he could do fire damage to a swarm recently.

[KillianHawkeye]

The intent is "Let's make it possible for every monster to be defeated by any group of characters. Let's also make sure that every player has something effective they can do no matter what creatures they're fighting, so 4th Edition Fighters don't end up just like 3rd Edition Fighters."

If you want to call that stupid, that's your choice.

EDIT: The fact is, whether or not a swarm seems "interesting" (to you) has no bearing on the validity of my original statement. The new rules make the battle more fun for everyone. Case closed. (And personally, watching the caster kill the enemies while I stand around holding my sword like an idiot does not strike me as being "interesting".)

[Rutee]

Swarms were never boring. They were terrifying, because you couldn't just smack away at them with your sword. We actually had a fighter pour lamp-oil on his sword and set in on fire so he could do fire damage to a swarm recently.

Swarms were always boring, because you can't touch them if you can't cast. As a coward, I can see how a fictional construct can be scary, but they're only scary if you can actually act against them. There's no emotional response in "Welp, I can't do **** that's actually useful, lemme know when the fight's over." Well, maybe frustration. Frustration is not a good emotion for a game to engender though.

[KillianHawkeye]

I agree, if the intent of the creature is to be terrifying, then they should be immune to EVERYBODY'S attacks, not just the Fighter-types. Even if the character should be afraid in that situation, the player won't be, since he can see how the other characters are not impeded. But if nobody can hurt the thing, than all the players will get a little scared and maybe run away.

I can guarantee you that the party will not flee from a swarm if only half the party's attacks are useless, and thus the useless characters will feel frustrated about their uselessness, not terrified about their entire group's uselessness.

[Talya]

The intent is [i]"Let's make it possible for every monster to be defeated by any group of characters.

1) Nobody who is prepared and/or quick-witted was useless against a swarm (see example of fighter who set his sword on fire).

2) You don't need to make every monster defeated by any group of characters, that's poor game design. You make many types of monster's who require very different abilities to defeat. You then let the DM pick and choose which ones he's going to use. Since there are many different party compositions, different fights are going to be harder or easier depending on the abilities of your party. That's how it's supposed to be. That's why you don't roll your encounters on a random table.

[Rutee]

1) Nobody who is prepared and/or quick-witted was useless against a swarm (see example of fighter who set his sword on fire)

Whoohoo, 4 freaking d6 of damage a turn, /if/ I hit with all my iterative attacks! 14 average damage, bitch! Eat it!

2) You don't need to make every monster defeated by any group of characters, that's poor game design. You make many types of monster's who require very different abilities to defeat. You then let the DM pick and choose which ones he's going to use. Since there are many different party compositions, different fights are going to be harder or easier depending on the abilities of your party. That's how it's supposed to be. That's why you don't roll your encounters on a random table.

You mean like 3rd ed explicitly endorses?? That notwithstanding, you've managed to sidestep a critical point; It's /worse/ game design to have a standard type of party (The archetypal Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric) and then negate half of that party in any given encounter. I don't think any party composition should be able to handle anything, but as a general rule, 1 controller, 1 Leader, 1 Defender, 1 Striker should be able to drop most things. I can see breaking that with specific encounters; After all, there'll always be unknown unknowns. But an entire subsection of monsters?


At any rate, you're not defending Swarms as they are. You're attacking the idea that everyone should contribute. The only defense you had was 'terror', but I already pointed out that there's no terror in a foe that's only implacable to /you/.

[Kurald Galain]

2) You don't need to make every monster defeated by any group of characters, that's poor game design. You make many types of monster's who require very different abilities to defeat.

I fully agree with that. Part of the fun of the game is occasionally getting into a situation where the "normal" tricks don't work, and having to do something about that. Besides, it's really quite ok if the player characters sometimes have to run away from things.

Thus, the 4E way of handling swarms is actually more boring, because you can handle them the exact same way you're handling anything else - by hitting it until it breaks. It encourages Xykon strategy rather than Redcloak strategy. Of course, this depends on your group - if everybody wants to be at maximum efficiency in every single encounter (which appears to be what 4E aims for) then that by definition reduces possible variation between encounters. Cue flaming reaction in 3... 2... 1...

[Jack Zander]

At any rate, you're not defending Swarms as they are. You're attacking the idea that everyone should contribute. The only defense you had was 'terror', but I already pointed out that there's no terror in a foe that's only implacable to /you/.

She isn't saying not everyone should be able to contribute. She's just saying some roles should be more effective at certain things than others. Any prepared meleer will have some flasks of oil, acid, or some magic item that can deal damage to swarms (even a simple torch can hurt them). They definitely should not be sitting down and waiting for the caster to win the battle for them. Sure, the mage is better at handling swarms, but that doesn't mean (s)he's the only one who can contribute.

The roles are reversed when fighting constructs. Mages are rather ineffective against them, but that doesn't mean they sit out while the fighters shine. They should be buffing the fighters or at least casting defensive spells on themselves while they run for their lives (yes, barely escaping alive can be fun sometimes).



Rutee, I've gotten so used to arguing against you, that I'm going to reserve all future opinions until after you've stated yours. Then I'll take the other side.

[Aquillion]

The thing is, though, isn't 4th edition giving lots more abilities to fighter-types? A ToB class is usually going to have something to do when fighting a swarm, just like a wizard usually has some trick to pull when faced with a Golem. The reason 3rd edition swarms were so annoying for fighter-types is because fighter-types only had one trick up their sleeve... but 4th-edition fighter-types would be quite capable of helping against a 3rd-edition swarm in one way or another.

I think the 'cinematic effect' of swarms being immune to weapons can be fun, and it's nice to have different types of enemies to force players to diversify their abilities and tactics. The problem is that in 3rd edition, most melee classes can't diversify their abilities or tactics very much (yeah, sure, burning oil on your sword for 1d6 damage. But your class barely helps with that -- you've been reduced to pulling a tactic that a Warrior could manage just as well, and it doesn't seem likely that your contribution against a Hellwasp swarm is going to be particularly noticable compared to a caster.)

But 4th edition is supposed to fix that by giving everyone a mix of Warlock-style, ToB-style, and Caster-style abilities. I don't see why they needed to change the monsters, too... what's the point of having all those nice new abilities if they've taken out the varied monsters to use them on?

[Reel On, Love]

\
The roles are reversed when fighting constructs. Mages are rather ineffective against them, but that doesn't mean they sit out while the fighters shine. They should be buffing the fighters or at least casting defensive spells on themselves while they run for their lives (yes, barely escaping alive can be fun sometimes).

No they're not! Solid Fog. Illusions. Buffs like Haste. Instantaneous Conjurations (orbs vs. no CON score). Other SR: No spells.

[Talya]

No they're not! Solid Fog. Illusions. Buffs like Haste. Instantaneous Conjurations (orbs vs. no CON score). Other SR: No spells.

Solid Fog never wins a battle. It just delays it a couple rounds.

Most useful illusions (other than personal buffs like mirror image) allow SR.

He included buffs in his statement.

Orbs are awesome.

[Moak]

Orbs are awesome.

Orbs are the spells that made golem risible,expecially thanks to the change of the spell immunity from 3.0 to 3.5

"Hi,golem,you were my worst nightmere,now I Orb you and you puny HP out of existence...Fighter-type,you are even more screwed"

The only exception is the Golem from the Draconomicon,probably,because isn't stated that they are immune only to spells that allows RI...even if I fear that it was only a typo..

I've always loved swarms (expecially cranium rat ones),but they were build to crash out fighter types...that are already crashed and umiliated by fullcaster all the time...

As a DM you must calibrate a fight against a swarm veeeery veeery carefull....or you can see a group of 5 lvl 4 player be near destroyed by CR2 swarm..