Converting monsters from Dragon magazine

[freyar]

Onto our swarmy friends. Let's do 9HD but not unholy toughness this time. I also see that they have Int, but, despite the little bit about telepathic communication, they almost seem mindless from the rest of the flavor text. What do you all think?

 

[demiurge1138]

They could just have an animal intelligence. Enough for skills and feats.

 

[Cleon]

Onto our swarmy friends. Let's do 9HD but not unholy toughness this time. I also see that they have Int, but, despite the little bit about telepathic communication, they almost seem mindless from the rest of the flavor text. What do you all think?

9 Hit Dice is my preference too.

I'd give them Intelligence 2 or 3, like in the original writeup.

As for the other Abilities...

Being Incorporeal Undead, they won't have Strength or Constitution scores.

Dexterity is presumably pretty high. How about Dexterity 20, so they get AC17 with their (assumed) Tiny size adjustment, to match the original's Armour Class of 3?

Wisdom and Charisma the same as a Shadow, i.e. Wis 12 & Cha 13?

Put that together and I get something like:

Str [FONT=&quot]–, Dex 20, Con[FONT=&quot] –[/FONT], Int 3, Wis 12, Cha 13[/FONT]

​

 

[freyar]

Those ability scores sound fine. Let's not forget the hivemind SQ, then.

 

[demiurge1138]

Agreed to those ability scores and to Hivemind.

 

[Cleon]

Agreed to those ability scores and to Hivemind.

How would Hivemind work? I'm thinking something simple, such as:

Hivemind (Ex?): A tymher-haid is immune to mind-reading effects and all telepathic attacks because its intelligence is distributed evenly among all the sparks in the swarm. Each individual tymher-haid is virtually mindless.
​

 

[freyar]

Well, there's sort of an implication in the Swarm subtype that Intelligent swarms should have hive minds, a la the hellwasp swarm (are there any non-mindless swarms without hive mind?):

Hive Mind (Ex): Any hellwasp swarm with at least 1 hit point per Hit Die (or 12 hit points, for a standard hellwasp swarm) forms a hive mind, giving it an Intelligence of 6. When a hellwasp swarm is reduced below this hit point threshold, it becomes mindless.

 

[demiurge1138]

Yep. Bats and rats. Int 2.

 

[freyar]

Yep. Bats and rats. Int 2.

Ah, of course! Well, I still think the following justifies Hive Mind in this case:

They communicate with each other by a limited form of telepathy that serves only to transmit imperatives such as “target” and “threat” identification.. A mind-reading creature would detect no mind at all in one spark, and only the most rudimentary one in the tymher-haid as a whole

 

[Cleon]

Well, there's sort of an implication in the Swarm subtype that Intelligent swarms should have hive minds, a la the hellwasp swarm (are there any non-mindless swarms without hive mind?):

Hive Mind (Ex): Any hellwasp swarm with at least 1 hit point per Hit Die (or 12 hit points, for a standard hellwasp swarm) forms a hive mind, giving it an Intelligence of 6. When a hellwasp swarm is reduced below this hit point threshold, it becomes mindless.

That will work. Do we want to add immunity to mind reading as part of hive mind? The rest of the telepathic/psionic resistance can come from the standard Undead resistance to mind-affecting powers, e.g.:

Hive Mind (Ex): Any tymher-haid swarm with at least 1 hit point per Hit Die (or 9 hit points, for a standard tymher-haid swarm) forms a hive mind, giving it an Intelligence of 3. When a tymher-haid swarm is reduced below this hit point threshold, it becomes mindless. An intelligent tymher-haid swarm is immune to mind-reading effects.
​