UngeheuerLich
Legend
[MENTION=8777]Draco[/MENTION]: Sorry, there are some things, that just don´t work. Grabbing 1000 little centipedes with bare hands... no!
Can a swarm be grabbed?
- Thread starter Reaper Steve
- Start date
UngeheuerLich
Legend
Ok, you won. But i guess no sane person would even try it, so it won´t come up at the table.
Primitive Screwhead
First Post
You know, I could have sworn this got covered alot upthread. If PC has a power that grab a foe on a hit, and the foe happens to be a swarm and the dice indicate a hit.. then it is up to either the player or the DM to provide the fiction that supports the mechanical result of 'grabbed' against the swarm.
"The monk strikes the middle of the swarm, knocking many of them over and scattering the others. Some of the centipedes swarm up the Monks arm.. biting and crawling into places they are not meant to be..." could be the fiction behind this;
PC turn - Monk hits swarm with power that 'grabs' opponent with an unarmed attack
Swarm turn - Swarm is immobilized, but attacks the Monk with its aura and basic attack
or;
"The Monk strikes in a quick pattern at the edges of the swarm, causing the creatures to crawl over themselves, mounding up higher than normal and trying to keep away from the Monks lethal feet."
or;... well, your imagination is the limit to this list.
Same goes for prone oozes, critical hits on animated boulders, and damaging a fire elemental with a fireball.... 4e presumes that the player can expect the conditions listed on the card will happen and enables a more tactical approach to combat.
Regardless, the players ability or inablity to explain how a 4e power inflicts a mechanical condition on the target should not affect how the target is affected.
Now, if you are playing a more free-form game system... then yes.. some rules even leave all the mechanical results of an attack to the description by the player.
That being said.. I agree with Infiniti... when using skills or stunts.. the decsription comes first and the DM determines which skill, DC and effect.. altho he/she should state those prior to the player commiting to the roll.
ie: [sblock]
Player: I want to stop these critters from moving, I am going to toss a blanket over them!
DM: Okay, that sounds like a good move {and I want to encourage this in my game}, so make a DEX based attack against the swarms REF, gain +2 if you are trained in Theivery. On a hit you will immobilize and blind the swarm until the end of your next turn.
Player: That works for me!.. reaches for dice
[/sblock]
DracoSuave
First Post
Who says you have to grab a thousand bugs? You don't have to kill a thousand bugs to dissipate a swarm.
Realistic way of grabbing a swarm: 'I run about the insects, when a multitude of bugs try to escape out the side, I kick, push, and sweep the bugs back into the original pile.' Bam. Grabbed swarm.
Fantastic way of grabbing a swarm: 'FELGAR OF THE TEN LEAGUES ROARS AS HE GRABS ALL THE INSECTS WITHIN HIS MIGHTY GRIP.' 'Felgar, you're not...' 'FELGAR CAN WALK TO ANY LOCATION IN THE MULTIVERSE IN A DAY. YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE WORLD AS FELGAR DOES. DO NOT PREACH TO FELGAR OF THE TEN LEAGUES ABOUT HOW SIZE AND DIMENSION WORK.' 'Seriously, you don't have the--' 'FELGAR GRABS THE COLONY'S QUEEN AND BEGINS TO BROWBEAT HER INTO SUBMISSION, AND THE REST OF THE INSECTS GO WHERE THE QUEEN IS.' 'Those bugs are on fire.' 'FELGAR IGNORES PAIN.'
'It does not work' is a cop-out answer. You know what does not work? Fantasy does not work. Rhe entire point to power fantasy is that it's doing stuff that does not work but is awesome anyways.
'It's fantasy' is damn well a good enough counter to that. 'It does not work' is what -makes- it fantasy. If I'm playing a character that can potentially grab gods and tarrasques, and all manner of otherworldly things... -really-... drawing the line at a pile of bugs is quite arbitrary and makes no sense given the milieu of what he deals with.
It's a matter of versimilitude. It doesn't matter if it's realistic. Indiana Jones jumping into a fridge to avoid a nuclear blast is not realistic. It's not even believable. But it's awesome, and that's why we buy it.
We buy it, because despite the fact that it is unrealistic, it would be cool if it were.
People can grab swarms, not because it makes sense, or is realistic, but because it is awesome. Because it is cool. Because a world where heroes could do that is awesome. Because it's fun to play that superhero. Because it's an escape from limitations.
Versimilitude has to take into account the world in question, not our world.
UngeheuerLich
Legend
If the player provides ideas... ok, i don´t know how to provide fiction support... and you know, i don´t want to. Sorry.
eamon
Explorer
And in the world in question, not everything is possible. It is not a free-form realm, and you may not have your PC walk through walls merely because you think it's cool.
If FELGAR the 1st level fighter starts talking about how he sees the multiverse and how this lets him control a swarms position - despite the swarm being able to move through tiny holes - then he'll earn a tidy penny as entertainer. He will not, however, actually succeed in his nonsensical atttempt. At least - not in my game.
As for sweeping and pushing a swarm back onto the original pile, should this work, then by similar logic forced movement should too - which the rules don't permit. What you're describing actually sounds more to me like an immobilizing effect to due a close burst - not a single target effect, but a sweeping effect. And if indeed a PC were indeed capable of such an effect, that'd be fine. A single-target grab-to-immobilize, on the other hand, does not make sense.
All these explanations about how a grab is supposed to affect a swarm rely on the notion that the explanation of the effect is not valid in any other circumstance. That's not how it works; whenever the necessary preconditions for that explanation is met, you should permit it to function. If your explanation of controlling the swarm rests on it having a queen and you being able to identify and target her to hold her, then why can't you target and perhaps kill the queen with a melee attack? Why can you push the queen somewhere? What happens with swarms without a queen?
If your explanation rests on "control of the multiverse" - well, can all PC's control the multiverse? If you can control thousands of creatures like this, can't you do anything else with that control? How 'bout whirling up a dust cloud to create concealment?
Grabbing a swarm simply doesn't make sense in game. You can make up some kind of magical pseudobabbel or gameworld effect as to why this works, but then the question arises as to how the mechanics you've just invented interact with the rest of the world - and probably they don't interact at all since they don't make sense.
So, you can permit grabbing a swarm - but by doing so you accept that fact that in-game consistency doesn't matter, and by extension that the fluff doesn't matter - these things are only window dressing to be discarded when convenient.
Which will it be, relevant fluff and consistency, or the game rules?
Primitive Screwhead
First Post
Consistant rules that a player can depend on for the win!
The fluff should support the rules and its the gms job to ensue it does...its not the gms job to randomly nerf an ability.
Can a halfing grab..and hold.. a storm giant in your game?
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The fluff should support the rules and its the gms job to ensue it does...its not the gms job to randomly nerf an ability.
Can a halfing grab..and hold.. a storm giant in your game?
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DracoSuave
First Post
If my character has powers that say 'walk through walls' then I bloody well -can- and -do- expect him to walk through walls. If my character sheet says 'This guy can do such and such a thing' then it is fair to expect such and such a thing to occur whenever I use that power.
If we're talking about a fighter who is an expert at grabbing being able to attempt grabs at swarms, then yes, he is capable of doing so.
Felgar doesn't want to play in your game tho. Felgar can't be heroic in your game because you apply arbitrary and non-sensible restrictions on him just because they violate your sense of literalism.
[/quote]And that is fair; provided you have equally logical and consistant restrictions for character classes that don't rely on the martial power source.
So... your logic says I can't grapple a swarm, but that same logic says I can't sweep bugs? That's something I -can- damn well do in the real world. Take broom. Sweep bugs.
It's not hard.
Here's the inconsistancy... you're saying that logically, because the rules say you can't do one thing, something else can't be used to explain some other completely unrelated thing.
Either you apply the rules and use them (grab works on swarms) or you go for descriptions that adequately describe what is happening (the above example works to grab swarms).
Your stance is that grabs don't work simply because you don't want them to, and nothing more. It's arbitrary, and has no actual basis in the fiction OR the game rules.
Nothing single target makes sense. We're talking about a swarm here. The very fact you're dealing with a swarm means that you have to abandon all precepts of one-on-one combat.
1) Using a queen to immobilize or control a swarm of bees is realistic. See a picture of a man wearing a beard made of bees. It's not only realistic, it's a goddamn real hobby.
Ergo, adapting that technique imagintively to a combat situation is MORE than kosher.
2) Killing the queen is a perfectly legitimate way of defeating a swarm. That is a perfectly valid way to describe the defeat of a swarm creature. It doesn't even have to be the queen. Those swarms probably have some sort of alpha dominant critters, so if you incapacitate/control the alphas, then the betas and omegas run in terror.
3) Using sweeping to keep a swarm's outliers from escaping the square the swarm is in is not the same as using sweeping to move a swarb 100 feet across the room. There is a large difference in scale.
To demonstrate the principle, take a handful of cravel. Now take a btoom. Sweep the gravel. SUCCESS! That's keeping outliers from escaping the swarm.
Next, take a large 6-foot tall pile of gravel. Try to sweep that pile away. FAIL! That's because that sort of technique doesn't work to move a large scale of gravel.
But, let's say someone disturbs that pile, and some of it falls to the side. Try to sweep the parts back into the pile. SUCCESS! That's because of the scale involved.
Swarms, by the way, are not immune to restrains or immobilizes. That's not the same thing as forced movement.
It honestly depends on the milieu of fantasy, to be honest. I don't expect something based on George R R Martin to have that sort of capability. I also don't expect swarms of insects with a hive mind and singular intellegence either.
However, if it's based on myth and lore, or high fantasy, or wuxia, I would be disappointed if my cunning sneak rogue didn't have the ability to whirl up a dust cloud to describe his concealment powers. That sort of thing is -exactly- what one expects in those genres.
Bullocks. It makes as much sense as any other rules abstraction necessary to account for the 'swarms are single creatures' rule in the first place. Grabbing makes no less sense than any other thing that you're explicitly allowed to do to a swarm.
Obviously it doesn't make sense to use the same technique on a swarm of bees as it does... say... a terrasque. But let's reduce that logic to its bare components:
I am using technique A to describe when I use effect B on creature C.
Technique A works to describe effect B on creature C.
There exists a creature D that Technique A does not work on, therefore
therefore
Technique A does not make sense as a description of effect B.
That is your logic, broken down into its components. Now... let's use the same argument form and other valid premises:
I am using the technique 'Stab him in the belly' to describe when I use the effect 'melee attack' on 'The Baron of Blades.'
'Stab him in the belly' works to describe 'melee attack' used on 'Baron of Blades.'
There exists a creature 'Swarm of Bees' that 'Stab him in the belly' work on.
Therefore
'Stabbing in the belly' does not make sense as a description of 'Melee attacks'
....however stabbing someone in the belly is a perfectly legitimate way to describe a melee attack. Therefore, the argument form does not hold, and therefore it is an invalid argument.
The point is... the moment you're dealing with a swarm, the most basic effects, such as a normal melee basic attack, require some form of comprimise in order for them to work in terms of the fiction of the game. If you can't accept that you can grab a swarm, then you can't attack a swarm either with non-area/close effects by the same logic.
Your 'this doesn't make sense' is a legitimate concern, but how you apply it is arbitrary at best. It has nothing to do with what makes sense, it has to do with a stubborn refusal to acknowledge that swarms require allowances at its most basic level. Grabs are no exception to that... and if you can make allowances for stabbing to mean something different for a swarm, then you have no reason not to give the same consideration for grabbing.
No, by allowing the grabbing of swarm, I -allow- consistancy, by giving those who apply physical techniques the same amount of fantasy and heroism as those who rely on magical stuff.
And the game is designed with that allowance intended.
I chose both. You've chosen -neither-.
That's the difference here.
DracoSuave
First Post
There's halflings, and then there are HALFLINGS.
But looking at the same sense of scale...
the question could be asked... 'Could a human grab a terrasque?'
Realistically? No.
But D&D is more about:
and less about:
UngeheuerLich
Legend
No, a halfling cannot grab a giant preventing him from moving... but he can grab a giant and move with it.
With a power that allows him to grab, i would allow it, with the standard grab maneuver... no.
Your D&D may be different than mine... i might be doing it wrong
[MENTION=14053]ST[/MENTION]ab a swarm of bees in the belly... you should come up with a better description for your attack. Sorry.
With a power that allows him to grab, i would allow it, with the standard grab maneuver... no.
Your D&D may be different than mine... i might be doing it wrong
[MENTION=14053]ST[/MENTION]ab a swarm of bees in the belly... you should come up with a better description for your attack. Sorry.
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