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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5309417" data-attributes="member: 51942">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?</blockquote>

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