Excerpt: Swarms

[Dausuul]

Well, I can sort of understand swarms having combat advantage applied against them. If an opponent is on each side of the swarm, some members of the swarm may be fending off one, and some the other. The swarm's effectiveness is therefore split between the two opponents, and thus they'd a bit easier to get a solid strike on. I doubt swarms would just completely ignore someone coming up behind him--and if they did, wouldn't he effectively have combat advantage, since they're not working to avoid his strikes?

As for swarms gaining combat advantage against someone else, why not? A swarm is as threatening as any other combatant, and it would be foolish to completely ignore the swarm while fending off another opponent. You'd still be trying to keep your eye on them and send a few swipes their way to try and get them to back off a bit, so your concentration would be split.

Of course, it starts getting a little shaky when you try to justify the rogue being able to sneak attack a swarm...

 

[Mort_Q]

Of course, it starts getting a little shaky when you try to justify the rogue being able to sneak attack a swarm...

Nasty buggers... it's all about precision, patience, and quick reflexes.... wait for it.... wait for it... NOW...

The dagger flashes into the whirling maelstrom of X and comes back out with a respectable specimen impaled on its tip.

That's one! Far too many to go. Where's that blasted Wizard?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Over on RPG.net, we've got someone claiming the 4e rules are a "return to common sense" because he thinks you're expected to overrule the rules like this. In other words, he's claiming the designers wrote broken/incomplete rules in order to "empower the DM".

Old school.

 

[Duelpersonality]

Of course, it starts getting a little shaky when you try to justify the rogue being able to sneak attack a swarm...

Here's a bit of a question: a rogue's sneak attack comes on a melee or ranged attack, so does the SA damage also get cut in half?

 

[keterys]

Indeed it'd be halved... clearly, though, he's darting in and stabbing repeatedly into a ton of them that are facing the other way.

 

[robertliguori]

Interesting discussion. I have a few reactions, but these are just thoughts as I have no basis for backing them up.

1 - Auras - Folks are acting like aura effects stack, but based on the logic in the rest of the game I highly doubt it. The way these are written is confusing, but I'd expect that only one swarm could attack a character at the start of that character's turn, no matter how many are present.
2 - Ongoing Effects - My understanding is that the same source of an effect does not typically stack. In addition, new effects of the same type do not stack. I'd expect that essentially untyped is indeed a type for this purpose.
3 - Paladin Marks - I read the only taking damage once per turn as being per turn of that creature. Hopefully this is more explicit somewhere as I can understand the interpretation put forward.

Overall I do think swarms are fairly different from 3e, but I'm not sure what I think about the fact that they don't mention combat advantage at all. Apparently two swarms can flank someone and a swarm can itself be flanked. It may be that there are other combat advantage reasons they left it in, but I wouldn't have minded if swarms neither gave nor received combat advantage.

So, take a monster Foo with a Foo aura that inflicts 1d6 damage and 5 Foo damage (save ends). Take a Bar monster, with a Bar aura. Assuming that Foo and Bar are equivalent in rarity and resistability, the monsters Foo and Bar should be equivalently XP'd. However, an encounter that has a Foo and a Bar will be much harder than just a Foo or just a Bar. This bodes ill for the vaunted XP system's predictive capacity.

 

[Hussar]

So, take a monster Foo with a Foo aura that inflicts 1d6 damage and 5 Foo damage (save ends). Take a Bar monster, with a Bar aura. Assuming that Foo and Bar are equivalent in rarity and resistability, the monsters Foo and Bar should be equivalently XP'd. However, an encounter that has a Foo and a Bar will be much harder than just a Foo or just a Bar. This bodes ill for the vaunted XP system's predictive capacity.

Not really. A creature with an ongoing aura will do less direct damage (most likely). So, if I have two different auras up, I'm doing less direct damage overall. A creature with an aura tied to a leader style creature, for example, will create an encounter where the leaders abilities synergize with the aura creature. The two aura creatures simply do two separate types of aura damage - potent perhaps, but, lacking any synergy.

So, an encounter with 5 brute swarms would be equally challenging to an encounter with 3 brute swarms, an artillery and a leader simply because the other types give different, but equally effective bonuses.

The problem, RobertL is that you are only looking at a small part of the encounter - 2 swarms. An encounter should have 5 parts, not two.

 

[Rechan]

If a Foo and a Bar have an overlapping aura, then wouldn't the Foo and Bar be doing damage to eachother?

 

[keterys]

Not if it's an aura 1 and they're 2 spaces apart... with a chunky PC sammich in the middle.

 

[Rechan]

Not if it's an aura 1 and they're 2 spaces apart... with a chunky PC sammich in the middle.

I'd say then that it depends on what they are. Some creatures may not play nice together.