BlivetWidget
Explorer
I forgot this, and thought it was an optional rule because it's not how everyone plays. PHB189 says you are very much correct. Solution to my problem was sitting in the core rulebooks the whole time... thanks for the reminder!
D&D 5E Swarms of animated objects
- Thread starter BlivetWidget
- Start date
I forgot this, and thought it was an optional rule because it's not how everyone plays. PHB189 says you are very much correct. Solution to my problem was sitting in the core rulebooks the whole time... thanks for the reminder!
iserith
Magic Wordsmith
You're right and it drives me crazy when I turn up in a game where a DM rolls individual initiative for monsters. Though it's still the same amount of actions to resolve, it really does slow things down because the initiative rolling takes longer and then, if those monsters are interspersed with PCs or other monsters, there's a "gear-changing" that eats up additional time. It really adds up!
mortwatcher
Explorer
Huh, I never even though of it as a 10 separate creatures that have their own initiative and can each take a different action.
How I played it and how I would rule it as well is that they all move as one swarm and all attack one creature only. And you better stock up on some D20s. I pre-rolled all of their attacks and damage on a turn of the player before. Did not bog down the combat that way.
How I played it and how I would rule it as well is that they all move as one swarm and all attack one creature only. And you better stock up on some D20s. I pre-rolled all of their attacks and damage on a turn of the player before. Did not bog down the combat that way.
Esker
Hero
RAW, even if you wanted to have them attack different targets it'd take a bonus action from you per directive.
You're right about the fireball; it's unlikely that all of them would fail a DEX save.
I like the idea of 4 attacks at 2d4+7 that scale down as it loses HP; may as well just have thresholds at 150 HP, 100 HP and 50 HP where it goes from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1. With nice round numbers like that it's not really any harder than keeping track of whether it's above half or not.
I got around to doing the math, and I think you could get pretty close to the statistical properties of the individual objects by using a swarm that autohits and does 10d6 damage (with no modifier). The variance of that is now well below variance of 10 separate attacks, but not zero, as it would be if they always did average damage, which is a consolation prize for giving up the positioning and AoO ability of the individuals, and the average damage is the same as the individuals against an enemy AC of 18. Then at HP thresholds of 160, 120, 80, and 40, reduce the damage to 8d6, 6d6, 4d6, and 2d6.
If you really wanted to get fancy, you could add a constant modifier (which can be negative) of c * (18 - AC), where c = 3 at full HP, which will keep the average damage tracking roughly. At 120 HP c goes down to 2, and at 80 it goes down to 1.
You're right about the fireball; it's unlikely that all of them would fail a DEX save.
I like the idea of 4 attacks at 2d4+7 that scale down as it loses HP; may as well just have thresholds at 150 HP, 100 HP and 50 HP where it goes from 4 to 3 to 2 to 1. With nice round numbers like that it's not really any harder than keeping track of whether it's above half or not.
I got around to doing the math, and I think you could get pretty close to the statistical properties of the individual objects by using a swarm that autohits and does 10d6 damage (with no modifier). The variance of that is now well below variance of 10 separate attacks, but not zero, as it would be if they always did average damage, which is a consolation prize for giving up the positioning and AoO ability of the individuals, and the average damage is the same as the individuals against an enemy AC of 18. Then at HP thresholds of 160, 120, 80, and 40, reduce the damage to 8d6, 6d6, 4d6, and 2d6.
If you really wanted to get fancy, you could add a constant modifier (which can be negative) of c * (18 - AC), where c = 3 at full HP, which will keep the average damage tracking roughly. At 120 HP c goes down to 2, and at 80 it goes down to 1.
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