"Swarms"--overpowered?

[chevalier]

So I am running a party of three or four (if their NPC stays with 'em) 2nd level characters through a pretty simple, basic cave system dungeon (with some cool twists, but that's OT). I decided that they might run into a monstrous centipede (huge, CR 2), pretty basic low-level fodder, and that in a tiny room beyond it, they might find the centipede "nest", ie a bunch of baby centipedes, newly hatched. "Well, Chev," I thought to myself "maybe we call the writhing mass of 'pedes a 'swarm'." So I look up the swarm rules.

DIZ-AMN! This looks overpowered. According to the SRD, a centipede swarm has:

+lotsa HD (9d8 - 9)
+insta-damage, 1d6 for every creature whose space it occupies (characters AC and Dex are ignored, not even a reflex save for dancing around or swatting at the lil' buggers)
+two special attacks: poison and distraction
+and the real kicker: immune to weapon damage.

This one doesn't really make sense to me, it seems like even if you're hitting at a penalty for size and confusion, smacking some centipedes with a slashing or bludgeoning would kill a few and reduce the HP of the swarm.

So a mess of regular centipedes has a CR 6 [edit: typo --CR4 ]and a big bad monstrous centipede has a CR 2? This doesn't seem right.

I think I'm going to "fix" this by either eliminating the weapons immunity or going with damage reduction 5/(bludgeoning), or instead of a swarm per se, having a group of size-small monstrous centipedes, and adjusting the CR appropriately.

Thoughts?

[TehJhu]

Swarms should be hard. Its a massive amount of poisonous creatures assaulting you en masse.

I'd do the small monsters instead of weakening swarms. I always assumed swarms were full grown insects, not just babies.

[Miles Invictus]

Where did you get CR 6? The stat block says CR 4, which means it's considered appropriate for a party of four 4th-level characters. It has 31 hp, and takes 50% more damage from area effects, meaning Burning Hands does 6d4 (avg: 15) damage per casting, and Flaming Sphere does 3d6 (avg: 9) damage per round. Not to mention, energy weapons do their full energy damage, and a 4th level party can easily afford enough torches to immolate it.

I'd say it's doable...it'd just take a lot of resources for a 2nd-level party.

[chevalier]

Swarms should be hard. Its a massive amount of poisonous creatures assaulting you en masse.

I'd do the small monsters instead of weakening swarms. I always assumed swarms were full grown insects, not just babies.

Yes; I was thinking about using the swarm effect (regular size normal centipedes) to emulate a huge amount of monstrous centipede hatchlings. Small monstrous centipedes makes more sense, mebbe.

C.

[chevalier]

Where did you get CR 6? The stat block says CR 4

Oops! Typo. Fixed.


It has 31 hp, and takes 50% more damage from area effects, meaning Burning Hands does 6d4 (avg: 15) damage per casting, and Flaming Sphere does 3d6 (avg: 9) damage per round.

Where does it say that it does 50% more damage from area effects? This is what I get from http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/swarm.htm

"Swarms are extremely difficult to fight with physical attacks. However, they have a few special vulnerabilities, as follows:

A lit torch swung as an improvised weapon deals 1d3 points of fire damage per hit.

A weapon with a special ability such as flaming or frost deals its full energy damage with each hit, even if the weapon’s normal damage can’t affect the swarm.

A lit lantern can be used as a thrown weapon, dealing 1d4 points of fire damage to all creatures in squares adjacent to where it breaks. "

Thanks,

C.

[Tsotha-lanti]

It's something like 1,500 venomous centipedes, each probably 6 - 12 inches long (Diminutive). That'd be a whole mess of monstrous centipedes once they grow up, even with like 90% "infant mortality".

That's kinda deadly, I guess. Makes sense.

And they are, in fact, of low CR, because they are completely irrelevant once the casters get AoE spells.

They're immune to weapon damage because you can't hack apart a horde of literally hunders of tiny little creatures with weapons. They are, however, easily delt with by burning hands (1st-level spell), torches, and other sources of flame or AoE damage (alchemist's fire, acid flask).

Just use Tiny or Small monstrous centipedes.

[Jasdoif]

Where does it say that it does 50% more damage from area effects?It's mentioned in the description of the swarm subtype.


A swarm takes half again as much damage (+50%) from spells or effects that affect an area, such as splash weapons and many evocation spells.

[SamTheCleric]

I'd do the small monsters instead of weakening swarms. I always assumed swarms were full grown insects, not just babies.

Now I want to homebrew a swarm of babies.

[bosssmiley]

Now I want to homebrew a swarm of babies.

Wasn't that done about a year ago. Was it Fax Celestis who statted the Carnivorous Baby Swarm?

As for swarms in general. It's easiest for non-casters to fight them like Indy does: with fire!!! (is there any problem it can't solve?)

[Miles Invictus]

Nah, it was Vorpal Tribble (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10239).

[Chronos]

A centipede swarm isn't actually all that bad... It's got a speed of 20 feet, so the party can probably keep its distance from it (especially if the swarm has no motivation to pursue), and it'll only take about three flasks of alchemist's fire to kill it, even if the party doesn't want to or can't use spells. If you want to tone it down, though, you could just use the stats for a spider swarm (1d6 damage and 9 HP), and call them centipedes.

[Kol Korran]

Chevalier, you're treating it all the wrong way, and for the wrong reasons. the idea behind a swarm is not simply many monsters, but a different kind of challange. some monsters, or type of monsters in DnD require different way to handle them, instead just hack and slash (Hydra, some outsiders, some undead, oozes and more, for example).

swarms are about fighting a horde, in a fairly concentrated pace, but ahorde nontheless. the entire tactis of fighting them are based on moving as far away as possible, and doing area damage, not on bashing them ("yay! i killed two more! just several more hundreds left!")

swarms have many interests mechanincs, and applications, especially if combined with other creatures such as crowd controllers (preventign the characters from escaping easely), incorporeal undead or animated objects, traps and more. use swarms for horror, for added complexity to aneencounter or a location, a "variety encounter", or for theme purposes. don't just use it to represent several monsters... as to your situation: either use several baby centipedes, or just make them so newly hatched, so that they cna be squashed and easely killed by the players (no XP). not everything has to be turned to stats and challanges.

as to the "overpowered" comment- they aren't, they jsut demand different thinking than with most straightforward battles. most groups who met a swarm or two before can easely dispatch of them (not taking into account exotic swarms such a hellwasps). which is exactly why swarm are never the "main meat", but a "side dish" that adds spice to a situation.

[TehJhu]

In the beginning of the Age of Worms campaign, we nearly had a TPK due to a swarm. We killd all of the other baddies but were left badly hurt, the swarm was some sort of acid dribbling beetle, and it was seriously messing us up. All of our light was from magic/sunrods, so no fire there, and the wizard (me) had banned evocation and conjuration.

We wound up dragging half the party outside as the swarm chased us and then the DM was nice enough to say it dispersed once we got outside.

[bosssmiley]

Nah, it was Vorpal Tribble (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10239).

Ooops. Obvious in retrospect. :smallamused: