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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 5312057" data-attributes="member: 51942">Nichwee: My preferred house rule is to ban by default all single-target non-damaging effects on swarms.  An alternative house rule would be to simply remove their immunity to forced movement.As to whether swarms are common enough to be worth bother house-ruling: well, it depends on how often you use them.  If you never do, for instance, it's obviously not worth it.  If you only very rarely use them, removing their special forced movement protection may be preferable.  If you use them and find that the "swarm" distinction should be a defining characteristic, you could go whole hog and prevent all single-target effects.I'm arguing about what the rules should have been all along; in practice simply not using borked bits of rules is just as practical; there's enough other creatures out there.Nytmare: uhm, what?Aegeri: Don't spring this house-rule as a surprise on a party including a Brawler.  I've yet to see a party with a brawler, and until now I've never included a house-rule without advance discussion and agreement by all players involved.  Also, in such a campaign, a brawler is still perfectly playable since swarms aren't that common, and note that other single-target powers are similarly tricky.  So, if a player still wants to play a brawler despite the swarm change, that's likely to work just fine.  Finally, I'd be quite happy to permit a magic item or feat to specifically address swarms, e.g. by turning some attacks into close attacks, or by specifically providing a means to hurt or hamper a swarm in other ways.I'm really not out to get the players. If this is perceived as a major balance shift to the player's detriment, I'll find some other way to compensate; it's not that hard to do and in a previous post I suggested a few possible avenues one could explore to achieve that.[sblock=In-the-why-do-I-bother-column]DracoSuave: you're simply ignoring  what I say at times and at other times presenting (then rebutting) arguments as mine  that I'm just not making.The "alpha" fluff doesn't work because (a) not necessarily all swarms  follow that structure; using this interpretation would limit swarm mechanics to being applicable to swarms which have a very small number of leaders. A more fundamental issue is (b) because it's inconsistent with the  restriction on forced movement.  Your idea that moving the "alpha's" away doesn't move the swarm but holding them in place does immobilize the swarm is a neat idea, and is better than the previous fluff you proposed.  I'm still not satisfied with it, however; it doesn't explain what happens once you've moved the "alpha's" away.  The swarm only follows if alphas move voluntarily (itself a tricky concept) but what then - is a swarm that has been subject to forced movement which removed the alpha's leaderless?  Does it provoke CA?  Is it immobilized?  Can the individual alpha's be targeted outside of the swarm - i.e. what happens if for any reason they can't rejoin the swarm?  What happens when they die?Your description of the tactical utility of grabs is so incompletely as to be worthless.  Describing a grab as a sustain minor immobilize is missing all the relevant bits.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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