can Blinding Barrage blind a swarm?

[jjf]

In an RPOL game, I have a player about to use his rogue's Blinding Barrage power on two Needlefang Drake Swarms. Two questions.

1. Since Blinding Barrage needs one thrown weapon per enemy, but each swarm is a collection of many enemies, how is this resolved? It makes no sense to say one throwing star -- which just last round did half damage -- now does 2W damage, +5 for the swarm's vulnerability to close attacks.

2. Would the power make the swarm blind? That makes no sense. How can a roiling mass of 20 cat-sized velociraptors all be struck blind by a single throwing star, or even 3 (if I came up with an arbitrary number that the player has to throw at the swarm just to try to make the game logic work).

Basically, I'm running in to the problem of the power's description in no way matching what it's supposed to be doing to the enemy. I have a hard enough time buying that throwing a handful of stars does extra damage to the swarm (the vulnerability makes sense with close or area attacks that flood the square with energy, but not with a close attack that sends a specific number of missiles at a specific number of heads).

Clarification? Advice?

Thanks.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

By RAW it is clear how it works.
The swarm would suffer from it's vulnerability, and be blinded on a hit.

But I can see your problem.

The question is, do you want to change the power of daily because a swarm will be hit a bit harder by it and you can't really imagine it?

I wouldn't change it because if the players are having fun it is ok.

 

[Rechan]

Descriptive fluff has no impact on how the rules work. A swarm can be knocked prone, etc. Unless the monster's stats say 'Immune to X', it can be effected by it.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

And on a second thought you should not punish your players because you can't imagine something.

But I like to help you, so try to envision this:
The rogue throws his weapon (dagger/shuriken/...) into the swarm, the weapon bounces between some of those drakes and makes them bleed. The other drakes start feeding on them (they are probably hungry), ignoring their surroundings (not literally blind, but you could treat it as blind).

So the thrown weapon starts a chain of events, that lead all together to the vulnerability of the swarm (they feed on ech other -- full damage +5) and its blindness.


I hope this hepls.

 

[Starglim]

Agreed. The attack injures or kills some of the swarm's members in such a way that the swarm becomes entangled and confused, reducing its ability to react in a similar way to being blind.

I don't have a problem with a rapid spread of well-aimed projectiles doing greater than expected damage to a swarm. Since the MM says that a swarm is composed of several Tiny creatures, it might be a reasonable house rule to say that "several" means at least 3 and thus the rogue has to use 3 missiles to affect the swarm.

 

[Starfox]

As soon as the throwing weapon is magical, it can conceivably be thrown once against each target in the swarm, because it instantly returns. Before that... imagination might indeed need some help.

I think both DM and players are in their rights to use the fluff text of powers to motivate how they sometimes do or don't work in certain circumstances. But as a DM, you should be much more careful with it - your word is law, and the only appeal the players have is to quit your game.

What I'd do here is say that it takes a couple of shuriken to get the effect - about half of what the player has.

 

[Hypersmurf]

As soon as the throwing weapon is magical, it can conceivably be thrown once against each target in the swarm, because it instantly returns.

With Blinding Barrage, the rules in the PHB don't permit it - the PHB states that magical thrown weapons return after a ranged attack, and Blinding Barrage is not a ranged attack.

-Hyp.

 

[Black Knight Irios]

Hypersmurf you're right on. And this fact gave me some headache before.

At lvl1 it is not a big problem to carry let's say 9 nonmagical daggers for Blinding Barrage (BB).

At lvl11 if you still have the power you have a +2 or maybe a +3 dagger as a main weapon. But I have no idea how you would have 8 other weapons with the same enhancement bonus...and with higher levels it gets even worse. So obviously all attacks except for one will have lowered chances of hitting the target.

And if you would use this power to flee, you would lose all those magic weapons (or if you notice, one round later, that you are going to lose the battle).

And I'm not sure if one could argue that you must hold all those weapons in your hands in advance (meaning before you use BB) to use them, that means either you have Quick Draw or you can only throw two weapons or let's say you hold one in your mainhand and Dex Mod in your offhand. And still how many Minor Actions you had to waste to do this...


So what do you think?
Should we allow those multitarget powers with only one magical weapon (which is thrown over and over again) to work?
[Leave Missile Weapons out, different topic with them.]

 

[Plane Sailing]

IMO (although plenty would disagree) you would be completely within your rights as DM to say "no, that doesn't work here" if it fails your "does it make sense" test. Give these particular swarm monsters an additional power "not affected by weapon close attacks" or something similar.

I don't believe that the rules give the degree of player entitlement that some other people believe. Nor do I think it actually does any harm to the game for players to have to work out how to get around certain problems rather than just 'playing the best card' over and over again.

Essentially, the responsibility lies with the DM. As long as you are consistent, that is what matters in the long term.

BTW, Needlefang drake swarms look potentially excessively nasty - it would be interesting to hear how the encounter with them goes no matter what solution you choose to go with.

Cheers

 

[jjf]

Alright, thanks for the clarification and advice. That does help.

I like your descriptive text, Black Knight Idios, I think I'll riff off that.

It's shaping up to be a tough fight anyway, and a strict reading of the rules would not require the rogue to use more than 2 draw actions to attack both swarms, so I'll give just say the rogue grabbed two stars in her hand with each minor action, then use four stars in the attack description just as a way of making more sense of it.