Hosting A Swarm

[Pinkcrusade]

Salutations, Playground.

An aspect of a character I am planning is to host a swarm (preferably flying creatures, such as flies) in a section of his armor and release them periodically upon his enemies. I was wondering if there were any in-game mechanics that would allow this concept to reach fruition.

Thank you.

[Venger]

Salutations, Playground.

An aspect of a character I am planning is to host a swarm (preferably flying creatures, such as flies) in a section of his armor and release them periodically upon his enemies. I was wondering if there were any in-game mechanics that would allow this concept to reach fruition.

Thank you.

If you didn't mind rolling necropolitan or warforged, you could talk to your DM about the hivenest template from dungeonscape. It essentially lets you add swarm damage/distraction onto your natural attacks, gives you the swarm's sensory abilities, and lets you explode into a cloud of bees when you're killed.

no listed LA, but it's fairly minor if your game's permissive with such things.

depending on what class you wanted to roll, warlock's summon swarm invocation (or just the spell on a variety of lists, such as dread necromancer) could also work.

if T1s are allowed, a child of winter druid is tight with vermin, so you could invite a swarm of beetles or whatever into your crevices via your wild empathy ability.

these are only a few options. handle animal optimization is an option depending on how high you're allowed to pump bonuses. totemists can make pretty much anything their pet, even taking the penalty for vermin into account, so that's another option if you enjoy incarnum.

[Deophaun]

You can fluff things like summon swarm for that. Warlock might be your best bet.

You could have a familiar, share spell alter self with it and turn it into an apocalypse frog swarm (BoED). The trick then would be giving it a useable attack, but I'm sure channeling touch spells through it would work fine. (Oh, and you need it to operate more than 5 feet away, but there are feats to accomplish that).

[AvatarVecna]

hivemind minus the blatant abuse can actually be interesting, but no DM would ever allow it because of the potential to go full H.I.V.E. Never go full H.I.V.E. for a real game.

[mabriss lethe]

I'm seconding a warlock with summon swarm. It will work right out of the box and is very easy to implement.

[Pinkcrusade]

The character is a Cleric, so the Warlock's Summon Swam Invocation will not work. I shall inquire about taking Hivenest with my DM.

Are there alternate ways for reaching this goal?

[Venger]

The character is a Cleric, so the Warlock's Summon Swam Invocation will not work. I shall inquire about taking Hivenest with my DM.

Are there alternate ways for reaching this goal?

Just get access to the spider domain. Boom, done. either use a wand or take the domain spontaneity ACF. hurl spiders at everybody all day erryday.

Cool. For hivenest, assuming RAW, you gotta be construct, undead, or plant (didn't mention that since volodni's a pain in the ass for +2 LA and I didn't figure you were going talontar blightlord)

[HalfQuart]

Are you thinking something like Skitter in Worm (https://parahumans.wordpress.com/)?

There's Vermin Lord in BoVD, although it doesn't sound like what you're looking for, even if you refluff the evil stuff.

It does seem like the Spider domain (SpC) fits the best, and is pretty easy to get. You could also go for the Arachnomancer (DotU). But those are very spider-centric, and not flying creatures. Maybe there's some way to work in Master of Flies (SS), or just change the Spider domain to the Insect domain to expand it to all insects?

[Bronk]

You could take the Wild Cohort feat:

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a

Then use this alternate druid companion list to get a locust swarm:

http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20040705a

The locust swarm is 'druid level -6', and wild cohorts are available at an additional 'druid level -3', meaning that you'd need to be at least level ten for that particular flying swarm.

[d20familiar]

There's also a Symbiote template from Savage Species. Obligatory link to Dread Blossom Swarm (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?259833-Gather-round-children-and-let-me-tell-you-a-story-about-the-forgoten-template) shenanigans.

[ImperatorV]

Dark Speech, a feat from FC1, has an option for giving a swarm a hive mind, and then allows you to give it a single command. Depending on your DM, "live in my armor and fight my enemies" could count, although this is unlikely by RAW. If your DM okays it though you could pull it off - then all you'd have to do is find a swarm to make a hive mind. Also saying words in a forbidden language to awaken a swarm and make it your minion is cool.

[ShurikVch]

Dragon #329 have various (swarm) options for Improved Familiar