Can a Druid Wildshape into a Rat Swarm?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Since it's classified as a tiny animal?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

No. It has the Swarm subtype, meaning that it is a collection of many individual animals, and druids may not wildshape into multiple creatures.

There is a feat, however, which allows them to do so, I believe.

 

[domino]

Isn't it considered vermin, instead of an animal, as well?

 

[IcyCool]

No. It has the Swarm subtype, meaning that it is a collection of many individual animals, and druids may not wildshape into multiple creatures.

There is a feat, however, which allows them to do so, I believe.

Where is this feat? And is it non-epic?

 

[Infiniti2000]

Isn't it considered vermin, instead of an animal, as well?

No, a rat swarm is a Tiny Animal (Swarm). Other swarms can be Vermin, however.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Where is this feat? And is it non-epic?

Complete Divine, maybe? It's not in any book I have, I don't think.

I think it's called Swarm Shape.

EDIT:

A similar feat, if not necessarily the one I'm thinking of, appears in Green Ronin's Witches' Handbook.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Not Complete Divine. It might be a 3rd party product cuz it doesn't show up in my collection of 3E WotC stuff (unless it's FR).

It does sound familiar though. Maybe it was a special ability of a prestige class? Hmmm, maybe in the Book of Vile Darkness?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

It does sound familiar though. Maybe it was a special ability of a prestige class? Hmmm, maybe in the Book of Vile Darkness?

There's something similar in Libris Mortis, but I don't remember the specifics - other than that it is a template that can be applied to Undead.

EDIT:

From the Return to Undermountain stuff on the WotC site:

The sand in the room could disguise a deadly threat. Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead contains the swarm-shifter template, which allows an undead to take the form of a swarm. The sand swarm form might be particularly useful, allowing an undead to lie in wait in the sand of the floor. The template can be applied to any corporeal undead with an Intelligence score, and it adds +1 to the undead's CR. A ghoul might be appropriate for a low-level party, but Libris Mortis presents many other great options.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ru/20050309b

 

[Saeviomagy]

See the problem here is that we have to decide what version of the word "animal" we are using.

If we use the english version of the word, then there's a lot of things which suddenly become valid wildshape targets. After all - who can deny that in common parlance a giant spider would be consider a form of animal? Or a roc for that matter? In this version, swarms are right out - noone is going to consider 500 rats to be "an animal".

However it's generally accepted that the word "animal" is the D&D variety, and includes any creature listed with type "animal".

Which excludes magical beasts, unintelligent aberrations, vermin etc etc. Unfortunately it includes many of the swarms.

However - you still can't turn into a swarm until you're at least 11th level druid. A swarm of rats (the biggest swarm) is a tiny animal.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Oh I definitely think it must have Animal as a descriptor, but Rat Swarm has that. It makes sense that a druid can't wildshape into multiple creatures though.