Stirges are a nightmare!

[Warbringer]

Well, yes, in theory if it can't land it begins to fall.

My favorite nonsense rule, and a pure artifact of turn based mechanics.

 

[Blackbrrd]

A problem of stirges is the +7 touch attack, 1d4 Con Damage, and CR 1/2. That can be lethal to a low level party. CR 1/2 scales to 2 Stirges for a party of 4 first level characters. A lot more for 4 second level characters.

Played smart, they should go after lone characters, say, that rogue sneaking ahead. With bad luck, the rogue will be dead before the party can catch up.

The problem is the 1d4 Con, which is too strong in not too rare circumstances.

(Even worse is the 1d6 Str from Shadows.)

Thx!

TomB

It gets even worse as you level up, since the number of stirges increases dramatically (if you just go by EL). The solution? Fireball. Who cares about a little friendly fire if you avoid getting 5d4 con damage.

 

[Celebrim]

A problem of stirges is the +7 touch attack, 1d4 Con Damage, and CR 1/2. That can be lethal to a low level party.

Sure. It can be lethal to a high level party as well, as both touch attacks and CON damage tend to be somewhat level invariant. So this is a monster that when it shows up at 1st level is dangerous, and tends to still be (circumstantially) somewhat dangerous for a very long time.

However, Stirges are tiny creatures with few hit points and their only attack involves drawing an attack of oppurtunity and takes a full round to accomplish - giving even a low level party a chance to respond. A party can wade through Stirges if need be, and if they are cautious and the circumstances in their favor they should emerge with relatively little losses. Likewise, even if things do go bad, it takes 3-4 Stirges to kill a PC since the worst that can happen is 4 CON loss per Stirge.

Played smart, they should go after lone characters, say, that rogue sneaking ahead. With bad luck, the rogue will be dead before the party can catch up.

Stirges have Int 1, so if you are playing them smart you are doing it wrong. An Int 1 creature shouldn't have any real understanding of cause and effect or be able to foresee situations or really understand much of anything.

That said, an Int 1 creature's basic instincts would probably be to attack prey when it becomes available, so ambushing the party rogue who is scouting ahead may well occur without any real planning on their part. My advice? Don't get more than a move action or at worst a charge ahead of your party. Also, combat reflexes is a life saver.

 

[Celebrim]

My favorite nonsense rule, and a pure artifact of turn based mechanics.

It's an artifact of simplified flight rules and a creature having low manueverability. If the Stirge was as manueverable as a house fly, this wouldn't be an issue. The problem is that its supposed to be roughly as manueverable as a Goose or Swan, which would likewise be unable to continue flight if it rammed into you.

The only real nonsense would be attacking on the wing, and falling 150' without the ability to recover which in practice is almost never going to happen.

And again, simplified flight rules. The flight rules just don't have the complexity and aren't intended to support aerial combat. There is no reason that a flying creature should be forced into a plummet manuever without a control check. It would be sufficient to force a dive manuever on the creature. And regardless of the manuever taken, a flying creature that isn't grappled, helpless, stunned or otherwise incapable of normal movement should always be able to attempt a landing manuever. But of course, to do all that we have to define manuevers and base DCs and a bunch of other things that 3.X never really bothered with because aerial combat wasn't a priority any more than detailed ship to ship combat.

 

[tomBitonti]

However, Stirges are tiny creatures with few hit points and their only attack involves drawing an attack of opportunity and takes a full round to accomplish - giving even a low level party a chance to respond. A party can wade through Stirges if need be, and if they are cautious and the circumstances in their favor they should emerge with relatively little losses. Likewise, even if things do go bad, it takes 3-4 Stirges to kill a PC since the worst that can happen is 4 CON loss per Stirge.

Stirges have Int 1, so if you are playing them smart you are doing it wrong. An Int 1 creature shouldn't have any real understanding of cause and effect or be able to foresee situations or really understand much of anything.

That said, an Int 1 creature's basic instincts would probably be to attack prey when it becomes available, so ambushing the party rogue who is scouting ahead may well occur without any real planning on their part. My advice? Don't get more than a move action or at worst a charge ahead of your party. Also, combat reflexes is a life saver.

Exactly. If spotted in time, Burning Hands, or a favorite area spell would clear out the pack. But if a player is ambushed, they could get in trouble.

"Played smartly" should be "played with appropriate animal behavior". A group of stirges ought to stay away from any noisy group. I'm thinking of how a group of bats would behave. Tiny, vulnerable creatures ought to look for low risk opportunities. I'd think they would avoid any strong activity, going for a lone, quiet target or group of targets, say, targeting a PC on watch while the party slumbered. Or, better, targeting a sleeping PC.

This seems to be a good model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_vampire_bat, which has:

The common vampire bat mainly feeds on the blood of livestock, approaching its prey at night while they are sleeping.

Using this sort of behavior would present stirges differently than they are commonly presented (alas). A group which disturbs a nest should see the stirges fly away. Hunting packs should be out during quiet, dark times. Or perhaps seeking opportunities during other encounters, drawn perhaps by the scent of blood.

Thx!

TomB

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

This guy loves Sturges.
Granted, this was for a Pathfinder game, where they exist on the Summon Nature's Ally I list. My Halfling Druid would Summon them in descending order of Spell level. 1d4+1 Sturges with a SNA III, than 1d3 Sturges with SNA II, etc. I would send them in waves against enemies, and watch my opponent become a desiccated husk.

A Sturge that failed to attach would still reside in the opponent's square, we didn't bother to think if it was hovering or resting on the ground since it was mechanically the same and as already mentioned, since it's likely falling less than 6', no damage for falling. The next round if it did not attach, it would try attacking again.

Useful info on Grappling.
Discussion and rules on attacking into a grapple situation.

 

[Dwimmerlied]

A fall of 6' likely harmless, yep. But I'd imagine they've fallen prone as a result. Though I love the imagery of swan-sized bat-critters crash-diving into characters (perhaps in slow motion, accompanied by classical music), I guess I'm gonna assume it was a design oversight and apply a free hover feat kinda like bats are capable of. Anyone ever seen the Attenborough docco with the bats hunting moths with sonar, hovering patiently for the opportunity for their prey to make the slightest move? Thanks for the help.

 

[Starfox]

Played smart, they should...

Not that stirges are noted for their astounding cerebral achievements.

 

[Umbran]

Secondly, I have fumble rules and attacking a creature in the same space as an ally (or yourself) increases your fumble threat range, with any additional chance of fumble resulting in accidentally attacking your ally (or yourself).

Which brings up a bizarre issue should the stirge roll the fumble: How does a stirge drop its proboscis?

 

[Celebrim]

Which brings up a bizarre issue should the stirge roll the fumble: How does a stirge drop its proboscis?

It doesn't. Many of the fumble results specifically exempt the penalty if you are using natural weapons, including for example all the results in the 'Drop Weapon' category and (I think) all the results in the 'Strike Self' category. In general, this makes it easier to fumble with a club than a fist, and easier to fumble with a sword than a club.

The Stirge could still produce results in categories like 'Clumsy Attack', 'Break Weapon', 'Trip Self, 'Overexertion', and potentially 'Strike Ally' categories (assuming adjacent allies, which in the Stirge's case, because it has no reach would have to be in the same square).

Break Weapon is a specially nasty case here, in that when you get this result with a natural weapon in most cases it means that you suffer hit point loss depending on the natural weapon type. (Again, you can see that my penchant for the color of realism tends to cause my rules to disfavor attacking 30' long creatures of horn and iron scales with nothing more than your bare hands, to say nothing of fire elementals or grey oozes.) I suppose in that case its conceivable that in the event of a Stirge fumbling and severely injuring itself, I might color the incident as the proboscis having snapped, but that would be more a matter of ad hoc ruling (having dashed itself unwisely against a steel shield, your average low intelligence creature is going to decide to stop attacking and flee this strange inedible creature anyway IMO). Likewise, some of the Overexertion results can lead to ability damage. I might color that in the case of the Stirge as having damaged its proboscis unwisely trying to stab through the breast plate of a suit of +1 plate.

Fumbles occur fairly rarely in my game, but are often sources of amusement, comic relief, and occasional utterances of 'oh crap'. As such, despite the extra overhead I find them worth the cinematic color they lend the fight, rather than just the recital of accumulating numbers that D&D is prone too. YMMV I admit.

tl;dr: Fumbles themselves aren't all bad, but many implementations of fumble rules are very poorly thought out. I'd like to think that mine are better than average.