Dire creatures and advancing swarms.

[Albions_Angel]

Hi all

So I am making gods. Yup. Gods. One of which is the Morrigan. Now I know that by the time any PC in their right mind is attacking her, the morrigan will be bringing her most powerful abilities to bare. But I like flavour, so I am looking to stat out a "dire crow(raven)" that she can wildshape into. Except there is NO dire template. All the dire animals are individual. I would be looking for the dire crow to be fairly physically powerful and at the end of it all, I am slapping "swallow whole" on top of it (because the morrigan in her battle crow form eats dead bodies. Shes not exactly a nice person). Any ideas?

In a similar vein, having her summon swarms of crows seems fun. And Murder of Crows looks cool. ToM, and they even go for the eyes. Perfect. But. You cant advance swarms. And slapping hive mind on them doesnt change the fact they they only have 18 hp and deal 1d6 swarm damage. Really lame. Anyone have a good idea how to advance swarms?

[Zaydos]

How big of a crow are you looking to end with?

As for advancing swarms, yes true normally they don't follow standard advancement because narrativistically/simulationist wise the individual members of the swarm wouldn't get stronger but these are divine supercrows. Change the type to Magical Beast and advance them all you like, just realize that normal advancement rules might not apply for CRs. Maybe give them some supernatural abilities, DR, and some aura of dread that penalizes saves/causes shaken. Note that swarm damage increases based on hit dice (I think 6 is 2d6, 10 is 3d6, and it goes up past it but I don't remember when).

[Albions_Angel]

Im looking for a large or possibly huge crow. Because why not.

Would you mind spelling out the swarm advancement for me. I get the HP defines damage, and I get slapping other things on them, but whats that about making them magical creatures? Are you saying me the SWARM a magical creature and use magical creature advancement, or are you saying make the CROWS magical creatures, advance them, and then stick them back in a swarm?

[Extra Anchovies]

Frostburn has Large-sized giant ravens.

MM2 has the Titanic template, which increases a Tiny or smaller animal to Gargantuan size.

[Albions_Angel]

It does o.0 How did I miss that!? Fr is one of my favorite books!

[ExLibrisMortis]

You could simply make a larger raven swarm. The base swarm occupies a 10' cube only, but nothing (well, just the rules) says you can't turn that into, say, four connected 10' cubes. After that, just quadruple base damage (to 4d6) and hit dice (to 16), adjusting other stats to match.

An alternative is to keep each cube separate, but add some choice monster abilities. Good options include the scouring construct Collective Health ability, which is based on magical scorpion swarms, the legion devil's Legion's Strength, Legion's Defenses, and Legion's Mind abilities, or the formian's Hive Mind ability.

[ShurikVch]

Dragon #289 have Kaiju template, which may give your raven Colossal size, +40 HD, and Swallow Whole special attack (it lower Int to 2, but you can fix it with some other template)

[Ruethgar]

If you wanted Huge instead, Dungeonbred Titanic Raven works as well. You can also use the Mob template from DMGII I think with the large ravens, Dungeonbred, Warbeast(MMII), and Magebred are all good templates to add to them as well.

[Zaydos]

Would you mind spelling out the swarm advancement for me. I get the HP defines damage, and I get slapping other things on them, but whats that about making them magical creatures? Are you saying me the SWARM a magical creature and use magical creature advancement, or are you saying make the CROWS magical creatures, advance them, and then stick them back in a swarm?

Ultimately advancing a swarm is playing around with creating your own creature. Personally in the case of a swarm summoned by a god I'd make them not be composed of normal crows but super crows and thus magical beasts. I'd up the hit die to d10, up the BAB to = HD (not that it ever matters for a swarm), and give them the hit dice that one feels appropriate.

As there's no real rules for how creatures' stats are represented as a swarm compared to individual creatures it'd be make the swarm a magical creature and advance it that way. Really, though, making it a magical creature is purely optional since it has almost no game mechanic impact (unless they have a means to affect the swarm as a whole which would normally only affect animals it equals out to +1 hp/HD) it's just a verisimilitude note.

[Extra Anchovies]

If you wanted Huge instead, Dungeonbred Titanic Raven works as well. You can also use the Mob template from DMGII I think with the large ravens, Dungeonbred, Warbeast(MMII), and Magebred are all good templates to add to them as well.

LOL, I love 3.5. Make a raven reeeeally big, then make it slightly smaller! Instead of taking a swarm of small birds and making it stronger, make large birds smaller and make a bunch of them into a swarm!

[Manyasone]

There are some templates in the advanced bestiary. One to 'swarm' larger creatures and some to alter existing creatures. All in all it's worth a check. It's by 'Green Ronin' so it's third party

[Sandsarecool]

If you don't mind the use of third party, The Noble Wild has a spell in it which transforms an animal into a dire version of itself, or gives it a +8 increase to it’s Strength, a +4 increase to its Constitution, and a +4 increase to its natural armor bonus if no such creature is listed. It also increases in size by one category, with all of the penalties and bonuses that entails.

It's quite a powerful spell, and is supposed to last minutes/level, so you may want to bring it down in power a bit, but there you go.