Can a swarm be grabbed?

[Someone]

Who cares about Fido the dog? Fido the dog is not a character at your game table. All this talk about Fido the dog is clouding the issue.

I care because the basic rules describe actions that everyone can do; everthing can basic attack, bull rush, grab, jump, etc. Not everyone can fly, come back from the dead once per day or load a handful of bolts in the crossbow and shoot everyone in sight. Basic rules tend to describe things that fall under Earth Physics, not Awesome Physics and that everyone and everything can do.

What you SHOULD be looking at is whether Bob the Godslayer can grab those same bees that he cannot bullrush. The fact is... he can. Easily.

He "esily" can because the rules allow him. If the rules said that he can bull rush the bees, you'd be arguing how the Awesome Physics of D&Dworld justofy that move.

Bob is not helpless at all before these bees.

He can still, say, Vorpal Tornado, or Come and Get It, or Shift the Battlefield.

Fighters do have close attacks, and many of those close attacks do have the ability to force things to move.

Bob is not helpless at all.

Not relevant.

Invoking page 42 is quite acceptable. Describe a way to use the environment or handy tools that it qualifies as an area or close attack, and the push is quite doable. That's -exactly- what page 42 is for. There's a reason why page 42 is getting expanded in scope in Essentials.

Not relevant. Bob can always grab the bees, regardless of the table he plays at. If he tries to bull rush the bees he needs to aks the DM to make a house rule on the spot. There's no justification whatsoever for that; it's inconsistent. Game balance doesn't jusify it. Awesome Physics don't justify it. That's the issue I'm bringing to the thread and you keep dodging.

I wouldn't call 5 extra points of damage and the ability to use forced movement overpowered.

ROFL! Say that at the CharOp forums.

And the answer to fix that is 'you can't use grabs either'?

That'd be my house rule, based on my honest interpretation of the author's intetion. It comes very, very close ahea of "you can bull rush swarms."

Explain that... area and close effects are 'overpowered' against swarms, so therefore you cannot grab swarms.

My brain exploded from that one.

Nice strawman. Have a cookie.

I can't disagree. The restriction against forced movement is somewhat odd... but it does make sense in a way. Regardless, it's irrelevant to the central point.

No, it isn't. It's the central point. Please don't ignore it.

And perhaps they did. Perhaps someone, generally a player, went... 'Hey, it dsoesn't say I can't grab a swarm of bees. Can I grab the swarm of bees?' And the guy running the game, one of the designers of the game went... 'AWESOME!' and thus it was allowed.

Cause... fourth edition IS the most playtested roleplaying game ever made.

Many errata documents fixing powers and how basic skills work tend to make that statement not so appealing. Nobody used Stealth when they were playtesting the game, but lots of people wrestled bees?

Except holding a swarm of bees in place is no more like swatting them 5 feet than using vines to restrain them with a druid spell is changing them into a newt. Unrelated things are unrelated.

That's the problem with this stretch of logic... the dots do not connect.

I don't quite undertsand what you wrote there.

More over... who the hell is Fido? Bob can grab those bees. Who gives a crap about some dog?

I could write Generic Non-Heroic NPC instead of Fido if you don't like the poor dog. GNHNPC, using close-to-earth-physics, can grab swarms without problems, and Bob, whose exploits include performing a rather violent vasectomy on Orcus, can't bull rush swarms even with Awesome Physics. And not only he just need to ask his DM to page 42 the action; he needs to aks his DM to explicitly break a rule ("Thou shall not Bull Rush swarms"). You can't seriously say it doesn't boggle your mind.

Well, yes, that's allowed in the rules, explicitly.

My bad, you're right on this.

Regardless, your argument points out something completely irrelevant, and uses it as an appeal to emotion so that we go 'Well this other guy can't do this other unrelated thing, therefore NO GRABS FOR ANYONE.' It's a very weak argument.

No it isn't. The argument is more like 'The rules on swarms are inconsistent. This simple house rule harms no one and fixes that.'

 

[eamon]

Why does abstracting a ranger shooting a swarm with an arrow to something appropriate for a swarm make sense... but abstracting a grab does not?

The onus is on you to prove that one, because if you cannot, you have an invalid (and almost hypocritical) argument.

[...]

REALITY allows for this to happen, so the LEAST imaginative explanation for grabbing/controlling a swarm "I grab/control the swarms alphas" is not only plausible, there are people who do this for a fun and interesting if somewhat scary hobby.

This fluff is potentially reasonable. However, for reasons discussed in a previous post which you haven't yet responded to, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. As to there being any kind of "onus" on me to somehow resolve this dispute - that's just childish. I have named several possible resolutions, one of which being to, you know, not allow grabbing a swarm. If anything, since I'm stating that there is to my knowledge no fluff that adequately explains how grabbing is possible yet forced movement is not, it would be rather much simpler for you to find a counterexample that does make sense.

Not that you'll be able to, since I'm almost positive such a fluff doesn't exist, but if you can find a fluff you'd be willing to use yourself that is consistent, feel free to post it.

I just think you lack imagination.

If you say so, it must be true. That's your argument with respect to grabbing swarms too, right?

Yes, but that's a matter of scale. Keeping something from escaping an area is not the same thing as removing it from that area. The same swarm is not immune to immobilizes, or even slows from melee and ranged attacks. Grabs are closer to an immobilize than they are to forced movement... the comparison itself is arbitrary.

Not the same, but related. Using your own example of swarm "alphas" - how would they be different, again?

The burden on you to prove is this:

That a hero on his way to immortality cannot grab a swarm. That such things are impossible in the milieu of heroic legend and high fantasy.

Not all PC's are epic tier; and all explanations you have so far put forward don't hold water. It doesn't fit the fluff because there is no in-game mechanic or explanation for why this should be possible; yet it is a generic combat ability possessed by all.

High fantasy is filled with rediculous stuff like that...

My fantasy is internally consistent, insofar as I'm sane and willing to spend the effort to think about it.

I find that immersion into the story and the characters is greater and more interesting when I feel like the challenges they face are meaningful and solvable. Out-of-the box solutions are more likely when people understand not just the numbers on their character sheet, but also how they translate to the game-world.

The rules are a means to provide a consistent and fun gameplay experience, not an end. The grabbing rules wrt swarms aren't critical to overal tactical enjoyment (grabbing is way to rare and tactically dubious for that) and aren't consistent, and as such they are means that are better avoided - i.e. don't use the rules as written for grabbing swarms.

 

[eamon]

What you SHOULD be looking at is whether Bob the Godslayer can grab those same bees that he cannot bullrush. The fact is... he can. Easily.

He "esily" can because the rules allow him. If the rules said that he can bull rush the bees, you'd be arguing how the Awesome Physics of D&Dworld justofy that move.

I also get the impression that DracoSuave real argument here is "the rules say so". He keeps on repeating how uber-cool these heroes are so that they can do things that don't make sense without breaking a sweat, yet he happily applies this "anything goes" logic very selectively - namely only whenever the rules happen to say something is possible and without regard for the in-game world.

Metagaming FTW.

Not relevant. Bob can always grab the bees, regardless of the table he plays at. If he tries to bull rush the bees he needs to aks the DM to make a house rule on the spot. There's no justification whatsoever for that; it's inconsistent. Game balance doesn't jusify it. Awesome Physics don't justify it. That's the issue I'm bringing to the thread and you keep dodging.

Exactly.

And the answer to fix that is 'you can't use grabs either'?

That'd be my house rule, based on my honest interpretation of the author's intetion. It comes very, very close ahea of "you can bull rush swarms."

As would be mine. Actually, I think I'd go further and prohibit all non-damage effects of ranged and melee attacks.

I could write Generic Non-Heroic NPC instead of Fido if you don't like the poor dog. GNHNPC, using close-to-earth-physics, can grab swarms without problems, and Bob, whose exploits include performing a rather violent vasectomy on Orcus, can't bull rush swarms even with Awesome Physics. And not only he just need to ask his DM to page 42 the action; he needs to aks his DM to explicitly break a rule ("Thou shall not Bull Rush swarms"). You can't seriously say it doesn't boggle your mind.

And in any case, Awesome Physics is a pretty terribly game mechanic. The PC's are strong, powerful, fast, superhuman - but they are limited and not all-powerful, even at level 30. Unless they're Pun-pun, say. Pun-pun must be fine, since the rules say so - it's Awesome Physics!

 

[Nytmare]

I care because the basic rules describe actions that everyone can do; everthing can basic attack, bull rush, grab, jump, etc.

To be fair, the rules have absolutely nothing to do with fights that do not involve player characters. If you want to have a dog and a swarm of anythings get into a fight, the outcomes are dictated by whatever the hell you want the outcomes to be, not by the zoomed in rules and details that govern player character interactions with the world.

If you want to insist on having someone's pet schnauzer show up mid PC populated fight, just to show how silly it is to have a little dog to grab a swarm of needlefang drakes, feel free. While you're proving that point, I'd urge you to heap on all the other combat world and battle map inconsistencies you can just to get all the BS out of the way at once.

At our table, there's no sense of responsibility for the player to figure out how the "grab" is happening. They usually do, but if they can't there are 4 other people there who are fully capable of patching the hole. Even if that patch is to ignore trying to find a suitable narrative to explain how a guy with a stick "grabs" a million bugs in the middle of an empty field, and instead just have the bugs not freaking move.

It's all abstraction, there is no spoon people.

 

[Aegeri]

I've already given the answer to that, just stuff the bugs down your pants and that's more than good enough. If you can't solve something by stuffing it down your trousers, it is frankly an unsolvable problem.

 

[eamon]

To be fair, the rules have absolutely nothing to do with fights that do not involve player characters. If you want to have a dog and a swarm of anythings get into a fight, the outcomes are dictated by whatever the hell you want the outcomes to be, not by the zoomed in rules and details that govern player character interactions with the world.

The combat chapter rules apply in general to combat - although it would be odd to resolve combat in such detail if it doesn't involve PC's, any combat that is resolved generally uses those rules. There aren't any others; and monsters get to shift, move, flank etc. just as PC's do. Of course, literally having "someone's pet schnauzer" show up mid battle just to prove a point would be ridiculous - although not nearly as ridiculous as grabbing a swarm.

People do have dogs, and they might well get involved in a fight. On the other hand, people don't have trans-dimensional reality dysfunctional grabbing abilities, even in epic tier, let alone in heroic.

While you're proving that point, I'd urge you to heap on all the other combat world and battle map inconsistencies you can just to get all the BS out of the way at once.

Some of those problems are actually solvable, such as, say, the grabbing rules.

We don't need perfection. We just need to strive for it, and that means fixing the problems we can fix, particularly those that are easy to fix. It doesn't get much easier to fix than the rules concerning swarms; doing so won't screw pretty much any PC worth mentioning (unless you overuse swarms, that is), particularly if you're helpful and honest upfront about house-rules such as this. If you feel melee & ranged characters are too weak in your campaign, you can compensate in other ways.

You could even remove the general grab and bull-rush rules from the game entirely without serious consequences; due to their poor attack scaling they become meaningless beyond the earliest levels anyhow. However, I prefer to fix swarms, since that makes more sense and is closer to the root cause here. Fixing grab and bullrush might be worth another house rule - if that's the kind of thing that matters to your group.

 

[Aegeri]

doing so won't screw pretty much any PC worth mentioning

You mean except for the brawler fighter whose complete class build breaks and is utterly useless? The problem with this logic is then why can he grab phasing creatures? How can he grab an amorphous ooze or a gelatinous cube? Once you begin bringing in exception based design, it's time to start applying it more or just admit you're doing it based on arbitrary preferences. Arbitrary preferences are an extremely poor way of making rules, as 3rd edition demonstrates so wonderfully for us (IMO).

 

[Nytmare]

Some of those problems are actually solvable, such as, say, the grabbing rules.

Solvable is another forum. This one is for rules as written, not should be written.

 

[Nichwee]

It doesn't get much easier to fix than the rules concerning swarms; doing so won't screw pretty much any PC worth mentioning (unless you overuse swarms, that is), particularly if you're helpful and honest upfront about house-rules such as this. If you feel melee & ranged characters are too weak in your campaign, you can compensate in other ways.

You could even remove the general grab and bull-rush rules from the game entirely without serious consequences; due to their poor attack scaling they become meaningless beyond the earliest levels anyhow. However, I prefer to fix swarms, since that makes more sense and is closer to the root cause here. Fixing grab and bullrush might be worth another house rule - if that's the kind of thing that matters to your group.

The first part of this quoted section suggests that Swarms don't happen enough for a change in rules to matter much - so why do they occur enough to require a change in rules?

Plus you seem to think that grabbing is something only done as part of the "generic grab" which is the type of grab an average jo-bag (or their dog) does, but it also crops up in fighter powers as a common and integral part of a given build type - if the PC is that kind of character he is the type to "be able to" potentially grab a swarm - via arm swinging to suck in insects, constant sweeping up the swarm with his free hand or just spotting the ones that the others seem to be taking a cue from and restraining this handfull of them.

Summery:
Can you grab a swarm?
RAW = Yes.
RAI = I think so, considering they made swarms immune to some stuff but left grabbed off this list.

Does it make sense?
Not in real life but it makes as much sense as a lot of D&D does - i.e. It does if you dress it up right.

Does it need changing?
IMO, no. It isn't a big enough issue to warrent possibly unbalancing a player's build just to help with a bit of fluff-fitting. Especially as this is an example where Melee power sources can end up getting hosed by excessive use of "But how does that work?" while all other power sources often get a free pass. Thus I am loath to justify this thinking, save where it stops abusive play (which this certainly isn't).
YMMV.

Beyond this I think we have covered the issue from every angle and it is about time this thread died.

 

[DracoSuave]

This fluff is potentially reasonable. However, for reasons discussed in a previous post which you haven't yet responded to, it doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

The problem with this is that, as I said, your 'scrutiny' when applied to anything you do to a swarm, does not get applied. In otherwords, your 'scrutiny' is applied to one thing while ignoring all the other things.

Here's my logic:

As to there being any kind of "onus" on me to somehow resolve this dispute - that's just childish. I have named several possible resolutions, one of which being to, you know, not allow grabbing a swarm.

Except your logic for doing so has itself failed scrutiny... your logic 'that grabbing the swarm doesn't make sense' when applied fairly, also disallows melee attacks, immobilizes, slows, restrains, dominates, stuns...

In other words, your scrutiny is being applied arbitrarily to one condition while allowing the rest to remain unchecked.

That is called 'inconsistant.'

The onus is on you to prove that it is not, because it's YOUR job to prove your point when presented with strong rebuttal. It's not MY job to prove your argument for you.

If anything, since I'm stating that there is to my knowledge no fluff that adequately explains how grabbing is possible yet forced movement is not, it would be rather much simpler for you to find a counterexample that does make sense.

And I have. Numerous times. Here it is in a nutshell:

Swarms are herds. Immobilizing the alphas in a herd will ensure that the betas do not go along with it. That's pretty simple. The alphas decide where the herd goes, and they go there.

However, forcing an alpha to move out of the herd does not have the same response. The herd still remains where it is, until the alphas decide on a new direction. The betas follow the alpha, not an external player. In order to move those betas, you require an effect that hits the entirety of the swarm, for the same reason that throwing a rock, no matter how big or important that rock is, is not the same thing as throwing a pile of rocks.

Controlling the alphas is a much simpler task than controlling all members of a swarm, and it is effective at what you want to do.

This has been explained before.

Not that you'll be able to, since I'm almost positive such a fluff doesn't exist, but if you can find a fluff you'd be willing to use yourself that is consistent, feel free to post it.

Post it, yet again, you mean.

If you say so, it must be true. That's your argument with respect to grabbing swarms too, right?

Moving a swarm and preventing the motion of a swarm are simply not the same thing. I don't understand how you have found correlation. By your same logic, freezing something must be the same as burning it.

The fact is... things that are opposite to each other are not the same thing, and sometimes it is more possible to keep something still than it is to make something move... and vice versa. There might exist monsters that are elementals of motion, that are immune to immobilization but where forced movemet works fine. It makes sense because stopping something from moving, and making something move are two COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.

The thing is, swarms are NOT immune to immobilization in any way shape or form. Grabbing is an immobilization, it is not forced movement.

Not the same, but related. Using your own example of swarm "alphas" - how would they be different, again?

No, they are NOT related. They're not in the same ballpark. They're not even in the same city. One is forcing something to move, the other is the prevention of motion. They are diametric opposite effects. If you can't understand how 'move' is different from 'not move' then I don't know how to explain this.

Not all PC's are epic tier; and all explanations you have so far put forward don't hold water. It doesn't fit the fluff because there is no in-game mechanic or explanation for why this should be possible; yet it is a generic combat ability possessed by all.

There is an in-game mechanic. It's called the Grab action, combined with Specific beats General. In this case, no specific rule indicates that swarms are immune to grabs, or for that matter, any immobilization or restraining effects. Nothing in any book printed in 3 years gives any indication that swarms can or should be immune to 'stay the hell put'.

Does there need to be a special exemption for swarms to exist for you to believe that they are grabbable? No. That's not how the game is designed. So to insist on that, of course you're going to be able to go 'Yeah, there's no in-game explanation!'

The truth is tho... out of every monster that is not immune to grabs, 100% of them have absolutely no rules explanation as to why they can be grabbed. None. Not one. So, by your logic, no monster can be grabbed.

Extending that to the point of absurdity, look at the kobold minion! It has text that says it takes no damage from misses! I also don't see any text stating it takes normal damage from hits! There's no in-game explanation why it should take damage from a hit! Therefore it must be immune to attacks!

What you are asking the game to do is have a special exemption in cases where something is already stated to be perfectly legal. Swarms do not need a special 'you can grab a swarm' rule, because it's already legally grabbable as a creature. No special explanation is necessary in an exception-based design, because it's NOT special. What you are asking of the game's ruleset is absurd. It's just not possible, plausible, or even reasonable.

My fantasy is internally consistent, insofar as I'm sane and willing to spend the effort to think about it.

I find that immersion into the story and the characters is greater and more interesting when I feel like the challenges they face are meaningful and solvable. Out-of-the box solutions are more likely when people understand not just the numbers on their character sheet, but also how they translate to the game-world.

The problem here is that those numbers are not relating to the game world. You've set an arbitrary limit on them for no other reason than some OTHER unrelated condition doesn't work on them. So therefore you've illogically extended that to include other, unrelated conditions.

If I sit at your table, and I look at how my numbers translate into the game-world, I run into a wall of arbitrary limitation that isn't based on anything that I've said or done or roleplayed.. you've already said 'Nope, can't be done' before I've even announced my intention to translate my character's sheet into agency.

If I create a character who is a grabbing expert, unless your name is Anderson Silva, he knows more about it than you do. I'll defer to HIS expertise over yours.

The rules are a means to provide a consistent and fun gameplay experience, not an end. The grabbing rules wrt swarms aren't critical to overal tactical enjoyment (grabbing is way to rare and tactically dubious for that) and aren't consistent, and as such they are means that are better avoided - i.e. don't use the rules as written for grabbing swarms.

Brawler Fighters, and Monks, disagree with you on this tactically dubious question.

In fact... an Avenger against an artillery monster with low reflexes pretty much loves the grab.

Tactically dubious? Immobilizes with sustain minor are bad these days? Who knew!