Is it possible to make giant ants scary to a 15th level party?

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Use the titanic template from MM II for the Soldiers.

Then use mob rules for the workers (from DMG II). Even at CR 8, they'll have a good grapple bonus. They should pin the PCs and let the Soldiers bite them.

 

[Sejs]

Axio-friggin-matic.

Any ant within a mile of another forms a hivemind. Shared consciousness.

Then make 'em bigger.

And make the queen a psion.

Maybe some of the royal guard as psychic warriors.

Also include non-giant ant swarms.

Oh, and something involving psychoactive ant honey. Maybe they're dissolving the bodies of the dead in that ruin and the honey contains echoes of their mental essence. Then, as a twist, include much more recent corpses that have been 'added to the pool' as it were. Other groups of explorers, caravans, ... someone the party peripherally knew...



And make it so that something in that ruin is what made the ants the way they are now. Before that, they were just a normal any colony.

 

[Question]

Meh just advance them a few HD, and stick the monster of legend template on the queen.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Bunch of good ideas, but it really depends on what you are looking for..

You can keep things pretty much 'normal' and still challenge the party by using advanced soldiers, layered defensive tactics, and the MOB template. The colony will have enough to overpower the party at some point so survival requires stealth and avoidance over the typical bash the door in.
- Your biggest single scare tactic is the hit/grapple/drag away. A large push of ants hits the party from the edge.. sure they can beat them off and kill a bunch, but if 2 or 3 get thier claws into a character.. they start hauling him away. Even without much tweaking of the core much. . The STR is a bit low, but with Aid Another grappling will get nastily possible.
More so if you hit the group while climbing. Remember, this is in the Ant's nest so the home turf advantage should be obvious.

Step it up one from this, add limited hive-mind ability. Basically same tactics as above but when an intruder is encountered a short distance 'there here' is telepathically shouted..meaning stealth is that much harder to acheive. I would suggest a short range so the party still can succeed at the stealthy thing.


Starship Troopers, even the movie.. , is a good reference for tactics and options. For nasty encounters have the ants tunnel into the midst of the party, splitting up the group and foiling most area attack options.
Definately give the Ants terrain advantage by having all the tunnels at least difficult terrain {that the ants ignore}, and throw in tunnels of various pitch and twistings..forcing combat during a climb {with all the denied dex and other fun stuff that includes...like only one hand for weapons }

Always give the party a way to run away.. preferably set things up so the first encounter screams 'run away' so they can get into the habit early on.

Make sure that the Ranger has a chance to shine with his abilities that should out-stealth the Rogue in this enviroment. The Ants have Scent.. so being stealthy will be difficult.


If this is supposed to cover an entire session, then go all the way through the Queen's chamber and all that good stuff. If not, one or two major encounters and call it good. Something like the scene in LOTR with the goblins pouring out of the cracks and crevices would be a good end to their time in the ant hill

Actually.. it sounds like alot of fun

 

[Vanye]

Came across this site today, and the link to their compilation of templates: http://www.crystalkeep.com/d20/rules/DnD3.5Index-Templates.pdf

Draconic giant ants...
Half dragon giant ants...
Half fey...?
Earth elemental denizen...?
Chimeric? Dragon/goat/giant ant?

 

[Delta]

No.

Jacking up archetypal monsters arbitrarily through HD advancement, templates, classes, etc. etc. etc. is just stupid.

Get a new monster.

 

[kigmatzomat]

"jacking up" archetypical monsters via templates HD advancement, and classes *IS* the rules. Admittedly, ants aren't intelligent enough for classes. They might be if you add a template, and therefore by the rules.

Personally, I say use stock "giant" ants and numbers. Huge, terrrifying numbers. Fire ants & harvester ant colonies number up to 5,000. Trouble is, they would require a large forage radius. Farming ants would be better.

Leaf-cutter ants, a kind of ant that farms, can have colonies of up to 8 million. Normally leaf-cutter ant farms require foraging in the trees to feed their fungus farms but in a fantasy setting it's quite plausible that the colony would be mostly self-contained or forage would be done underground.

Watch them freak as they walk through massive caverns hundreds of feet across with more than a thousand insects visible and realize this is a small chamber! On the plus side, the colony will be so large that most of the place will be unaware of an incursion, just as a New York City resident would be ignorant of a fire on the other side of town. However you can easily throw however many common giant ants you want at them.

The smart money is on them killing dozens of ants to create temporary barricades and then running madly back the way they came, doing the same thing again at each intersection.

 

[Fishbone]

Half-Fey ants? Draconic ants? Sometimes less is truly more. I second the suggestion for max dice ants, a size increase, and a few regular templates, say something like fiendish.
Some further thoughts:
Adding an ability is RAW in the core. If it helps a little, like poison(Cha-ching!) make it plus 1. If it helps a lot, 2.Use the winged template for flying ants. Make a Monster of Legend queen and give it 10 hit dice and another size increase.

 

[shilsen]

No.

Jacking up archetypal monsters arbitrarily through HD advancement, templates, classes, etc. etc. etc. is just stupid.

Get a new monster.

So why exactly do you think the rules for HD advancement, templates and classes exist, if they are not meant to be used?

 

[Infiniti2000]

No.

Jacking up archetypal monsters arbitrarily through HD advancement, templates, classes, etc. etc. etc. is just stupid.

Get a new monster.

You mean like a troll?