Stirges are a nightmare!

[Umbran]

It doesn't. Many of the fumble results specifically exempt ....

And here, Celebrim takes a joke/amusing image, and beats it to death with a trout.

 

[Celebrim]

And here, Celebrim takes a joke/amusing image, and beats it to death with a trout.

Dude. How long has it taken you to realize that I have absolutely no sense of humor?

 

[Mark1733]

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:



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

Okay...This thread has been immensely helpful as I ended my last session with a cliffhanger: The party (4-6 PCs, 2nd and 3rd levels) is on their second night watch in a swampy trail with a fog descending (visibility in all directions is around 15 feet, concelament thereafter). They just killed an attacking bullywug patrol and put the bullywugs' heads on the creatures' spears. So I have stirges coming in as the scent of blood should be hanging heavy and a campfire is glowing through fog (bug light). The watches heard a flitting sound coming in, and they smartly woke the rest of the sleeping party. Now the party is standing around their campfire, awaiting what they believe are stirges. [cue the stinging trumpets, cut to black, "LOST" pops onto the screen] So now, how to best play the stirges?

1) First, how many? I am thinking at least around 8-10 (2 per player, Enc Lvl ~4). And randomly determine who they attack, with no more than 2 on a PC.
2) Being that they can fly 40 ft, they should have no problem staying concealed in the fog and then flying right in on their turn and attacking. Any disagreement?
3) They are coming from a specific direction, but I am thinking that they are actually coming in a wide-radius flight such that they would not be in close proximity to each other (15 ft radius, 5 ft or more between stirges) but no more than 5-ft difference in their distance to target. How to play that in a 3D space for AOE spells like a cone or something (not even sure they have such spells available)?

The party used up some spells in the previous fight with the bullywugs, but suffered very little damage. The party should consist of a H-E ranger, two H-E clerics (one is healing/good, the other is luck/chaos), 1 or 2 H-E druids plus animal companions, a halfling thief, and a gnome illusionist NPC (currently unplayed as he is magically uber-obsessed with a wizard's journal). I like the "miss by 4" rule and would not play the falling rule...I would play that they simply flap away and then back in for attack, provoking an AOO.

I appreciate any other thoughts or ideas on how to play this encounter.

 

[Celebrim]

I appreciate any other thoughts or ideas on how to play this encounter.

The really salient point to how I would run this encounter is the issue of concealment. I concur that visibility is below 40' since it is night and foggy.

Since each Stirge can enter the fight from within its movement while concealed, I had have each Stirge entering the fight would roll separately to surprise the PC it was attacking (probably move silently vs. listen). This would make them much more dangerous, since the main thing that makes stirges bearable is the fact they give an AoO when they try to attack PC's. At least some PC's are going to have some stirges clinch them before the PC can respond to it, which massively increases the danger.

Personally, I'd choose to not run this fight in a fashion optimal for the stirges, and instead optimize this fight for creating player panic rather than striving to kill and injure PCs

To do that I'd use slightly more stirges, but break them out into waves. I'd also use stirges as color - some stirges from later waves would first appear zipping by in the fog outside of melee range. The idea here is to give the players doubt as to how many stirges there are and how long the combat is going to last. Depriving players of concrete information about what they are facing is the best way to create player panic. Also by breaking the stirges up into several waves that appear on subsequent rounds, while you are giving the players more AoO and more time to respond to clinched stirges, you are also ensuring that a single area attack doesn't render the entire encounter anticlimactic.

 

[Starfox]

Add some wet brush to the fire. Insects and small fliers hate smoke.

 

[tomBitonti]

Some ideas:

Have some of the Stirges land on a mounted Bullywug head. They'll move on when they figure out there's no blood flow, but seems reasonable for some to be distracted by the heads. (And by any bodies left around, if these have not been dumped elsewhere.)

Having just one Stirge land on a mounted head, with a player noticing "odd movement" on the head, and allowing the player a short action before the flock descends, would be dramatic.

The Stirges could wing in from overhead. They don't have to fly close to the earth, and probably wouldn't, except to dip down now and then to scent the ground, since that would make them vulnerable to other swamp critters.

I like the idea of having waves of Stirges. A few would discover the party, and would signal (by high pitched chittering?) to others of the abundance of prey.

Grr, Stirges don't have a Move Silently skill listed. Strange. And no size modification to the skill, either. Dex is 19, so just +4 for that? Seems lame, but they are only CR 1/2, so perhaps not really a problem.

Thx!

TomB

 

[fjw70]

In my short 3.5 experience stirges were our first encounter. Seven 1st level characters against about two dozen stirges. If not for the sorcerer using all his spells for the day (all sleep) it would have been a TPK, but it didn't matter since the party was sufficiently weakened that the vampire and his minions TPKed us in the next encounter.

 

[Mark1733]

once again, this group does not disappoint. thanks for all the great ideas.