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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5315190" data-attributes="member: 78116">You see, the greatest flaw in your logic and what cripples your entire argument chronically is what is "obvious nonsense" to you isn't to someone else. Many DMs think critically hitting an undead creature is "Obvious nonsense" (such as a wraith). Their logic is just as good as yours is. That's the problem, when you start making groups of creatures randomly immune to things based on how they offend your sensibilities you are no longer logically balancing the game. Just throwing random immunities on things you feel like. That's not good game design IMO.Especially because as mentioned, swarms are already immune to forced movement and take 1/2 damage from melee/ranged attacks. Why do you feel they need further immunities on top of their already significantly strong condition resistance? Do you just feel some PCs should be even more useless than they already are while doing half damage?Personally I don't think so. Then again I don't decide to just stick immunities onto things at my whim, because everyone else has different ideas about what should/shouldn't be immune to what.On feat taxesThis isn't opinion, this is pretty demonstrable fact from just how prevalent poison immunity in the game is. If you want to use poison, you MUST take the feat or have poison spells be useless in a wide array of situations. Many creatures are immune to poison, outside one of the most significant groups of monsters like undead there are numerous other creatures poison immune. Poison immunity is far more debilitating than even fire immunity, because as I mentioned it also negates all your non-damaging conditions (not just the damage). That makes it huge.In short, you must take the relevant anti-poison immunity feats or find yourself useless if you want to actually use a lot of poison keyword damage and powers. You'll deal no damage OR inflict effects. It's a feat tax, pure and simple.They are vulnerable to bursts and blasts though, plus don't have special protection against many effects. This compensates a strong immunity and resistance. You seem to have missed where I said I don't mind immunities if there is something that makes them interesting. Swarms are interesting, because mechanically they interact with the rules very differently - they can occupy enemy spaces for example. My argument is that adding another immunity to an important aspect of how some characters operate is just bringing swarms over from "interesting" to "Boring". On your other points, you can find a lot of examples of various immunities while entirely missing the point I made.That point is there aren't groups of monsters generally immune to anything, those that are like swarms compensate with something else. Undead are a good example, they tend to be resistant to necrotic but are vulnerable to radiant. Therefore they have an advantage offset by a disadvantage, their disadvantage being pretty common in most parties with a divine character as well. On the other hand, immunity to a straight condition that is very common (sleep isn't a common condition btw) like grab or prone would be boring - there is nothing the PCs can do to get around it. On the other hand, few creatures are actually immune to these conditions like Torog for example is immune to prone, but honestly do you think the crawling god should worry about that?This is okay, because Torog is an exception - a precious snowflake amongst monsters and therefore his immunity makes him stand out. Personally I think there are far better ways of doing it, of which not a single counter argument has been offered against any of them I note. Same with the stun immune Daemon guardian, it's a precious snowflake among a rare assortment of monsters. I don't inherently have a problem with these things, but I just prefer different ways of enforcing disadvantages or immunities.Snowflake immunities like the tembo being immune to forced movement are okay.Making an ENTIRE CREATURE GROUP immune based on your personal whims is just boring.That's just IMO.I'd like to point out this is a good example of how "doing it wrong" goes. Note how many monsters are poison immune. y=You'll soon see why I noted to eamon using poison basically requires a feat tax, or be useless against a wide array of monsters. Poison immunity is very prevalent, even outside undead and that was my core point.It's boring, because I could make a power that makes it an interesting and relevant tactical choice. If you grab them, the creatures swarm over you and deal heavier aura damage, or inflict ongoing damage, or even slow/immobilize whoever grabbed them. On the other hand saying "That just doesn't work" isn't anywhere near as interesting - but again it depends on the amount it is used. Making the odd swarm immune to grab would be interesting, because it presents a different tactical choice. Every swarm being immune to grab is boring. That's the difference to me.Nope, because the party has both burst and area powers. As they do, they gain interesting tactical choices when facing swarms, needing to hold them back while the area and burst attacks whittle the swarms down. At the same time, while I put the melee and single target characters at a disadvantage in many encounters, I don't penalize them even further than they already are because swarms offend me in some other way. I don't - for example - make them immune to critical hits with ranged and melee attacks as well (which is just as plausible as being grabbed incidentally). Swarms have advantages and a disadvantage, the party has a wide array of skills so can take advantage of the disadvantages, while the melee guys can contribute. I don't stop the melee guys status effects and abilities from working. I don't punish more than the base rules already do. You are welcome to feel like punishing melee characters even more by denying them effects on a swarm, for example how do you know a swarm of insects "prone" anyway? By the time you're done I'm certain the melee characters might not even bother rolling dice on their turn, just say "I take total defense" and just not bother contributing to the game.Because that's what you're basically doing to those players. On the other hand, when they get a legitimate choice - not just simply saying "Your effects don't work", that makes the game better and keeps players who are at a disadvantage still invested in the game.It's for that reason I've been heavily minimizing daze and stun effects against PCs as well.</blockquote>

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