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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Someone" data-source="post: 5318183" data-attributes="member: 5656">I'd say that if we've reached the point where it's ok to make a Swarm B, identical in all aspects to Swarm A but that's immune to grabs, but not to declare that Swarm A can't be grabbed we're very, very close to start arguing how many halfling can dance in the head of a pin.Tony, everyone will be making arbitrary rules adjudications sooner or later. Some (of us) don't mind doing it in the middle of combat nor see combat as a special case regarding that - if that happened, instead of a game of roleplaying, it'd become a tabletop wargame that accurately simulates the behavior of plastic pieces in a battlemat, but that's another matter and I don't want to derail my own post.Back to the issue, suppose a player want to move aside a rock. You check the Moving Rocks Aside rules and find out that it's too heavy for him to do so, but the player says "I use my Fullblade as a lever."Since the setting's basic rules are approximately the same as ours, you know that levers multiply force and could allow an otherwise weak character move large weights. You have however the option of following the rules to the letter and disallow him to move the rock reasoning that the rules don't allow him to do so and say nothing about any lever stuff, or come up with a rule on using levers and perhaps weapon breakage, based on your most honest working of rulebook space problems, real world mechanics, game mechanics and/or sense of drama. I think most, if not all people here would agree to go for the second option despite that yes, it changes a rule, yes involves (shudder) "common sense" in it's application and yes, could bring arguments to the table discussing momentum, rock density, steel composition, crystallography, physics, precedents in fantasy literature, reminding the master how he allowed that other character to build a hang glider with parchment and brooms and only did that because she's his girlfriend, and yes, the ruling on levers will vary from table to table.The swarm grabbing issue is slightly different since it involves combat and therefore the risk of angering the people who spent hours with the CB looking for loopholes and strange combos and feel that changing a comma would threaten their delicate constructs of slaughter, but I feel that basically is the same: based on your common sense, you change a rule on the fly. You have basicaly three options, first allowing it as written and don't think about it (which honestly, at least to me it quickly degrades into "this piece of plastic doesn't allow the cardboard counter to move away"). The other two options are based on the fact that grabbing explicitly requires to have a free hand (some of us house rule that to "or other appendage" and allow tentacle-grabbing) suggesting that, in fact, the designer's basic idea of grabbing is to seize the opponent's clothing or a limb with your hand. Then you remember the swarm rules and check that they are immune to single target forced movement, which is consistent with a creature that's composed of dozens or hundreds of single beings, and realize that the basic grab, the seizing a handful of the opponent's anatomy with your hand, won't exactly work here as the members of the swarm you could grab on one hand aren't physically linked to the rest. Then the DM can just come up with a way to gram swarms without using just your hand, like "you throw your cloak over the rats" or whatever or, heavens forbid, ask the player how would he do that. He may even conceive that the swarm can't be grabbed if nobody can come with an explanation of how can it be, the same he wouldn't allow the character in the rock example to move it bsed on that it may exist a yer unknown way to overcome his low Strength. These last options at least pay lip service to the idea that the characters are "real", not a mere abstraction, which I repeat it's really important to some people. The most extreme case would be to totally forbid swarm grabbing no matter what, but I don't think anyone on this thread or the other one dedicated exclusively to that really advocated that.</blockquote>

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