How frequent are vermin encounters in your game?

[justanobody]

"Oh god the rats!"

Anywhere there is sewage or dark areas, vermin will propagate. While a swarm of rats isn't always a scheduled encounter per say, they end up showing up often thanks tot he antics of the players and where they end up getting themselves.

 

[Shroomy]

Often. More used than dragons and silly creatures like Grell or Grick

Our party got double-teamed by a trio of gricks and a grell. Man, that was a brutal fight(our fighter was down to no surges, 0 hit points, and two death saves since the grick alpha and grell decided to play tug-of-war with him); I will never use the word "silly" in relation to them again!

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I like using vermin, especially Rat Swarm. I also use them if not as enemies but as interactions with the environment. So for instance a floor covered in scrambling rodents would be difficult terrain. Or a flying swarm of locust causing it to be hard to see.

My setting too being bayou has every form of vermin available. So they are a fairly common sight, but just not always in combat form.

 

[Syrsuro]

Yeah, mixed groups of carnivorous bugs do have some issues.

That's what makes social insects like Ants so much more fun. They have a reason to cooperate and you can have specialized types filling different roles in the combat.

Aside from that, I don't think I would mix different types of vermin too much: Their lack of intelligence means they wouldn't distinguish between the PCs and the other vermin - they would all just look like prey.

That said: I can imagine exceptions - perhaps they all share a taste for warmer flesh....

Carl

 

[Orius]

Often. Most of my dungeons have featured giant spiders. Other types of vermin show up as well, but there's always spiders.

Other favored vermin are dire rats and fire beetles. They're my low-level staples. A lot of it's because I go in for the realistic ecology angle, so abandoned ruins have a lot of stuff like vermin and undead, instead of the 8-bit dungeon where you just run into all kinds of crap nilly-willy.

 

[Noumenon]

I like insects because giant insects are "magically cool," but not made-up like a Vrock. Giant spiders, giant centipedes with Trample. Small insects make good minions and have an automatic creepy factor. A hill giant with a bag full of centipedes is way cooler and meaner than a hill giant with a couple goblins. Also, insects don't need motivations explaining why they're there or why they're attacking you.

What I hate about insects is you can't level them up to challenge a ninth-level party no matter what template you put. The fireballs just slay all of them and they can't touch the armor. Swarms don't level up well either.

 

[Rechan]

One thing I've been wanted to is have an area the PCs need to go into, or get something from, that has a large swarm of wasps or hornets that treat the area like a strongly defended territory.

But instead of treating it just like a swarm (or multiple swarms), it's more like various dangerous terrain that spreads or moves, and possibly a skill challenge to try and get past them (smoking them out, masking your smell, etc).

 

[roguerouge]

Vermin are in a ton of low-level modules, so they get used at least once an adventure for me. (One PC campaign means that modules for levels 1-5 are still viable with only a little tweaking for a 8th level character.)

 

[Stormborn]

"Oh god the rats!"

Anywhere there is sewage or dark areas, vermin will propagate. While a swarm of rats isn't always a scheduled encounter per say, they end up showing up often thanks tot he antics of the players and where they end up getting themselves.

Except in DnD Rats are not "Vermin." Vermin: "This type includes insects, arachnids, other arthropods, worms, and similar invertebrates."

Back to the point, I use vermin fairly often at low levels, but their frequency slows down the higher we go. Much more often than dragons though.

The exception to that, of course, is in campaigns that focus on Insect worshipping cultists or dragon spawn raiders.

 

[the Jester]

Depends on what you mean by vermin. Are you speaking with the 3e definition in mind? Or more like the 2e non-definite term that saw use in spells like anti-vermin barrier?

Also, what do the choices mean? If I use vermin about every other game, is that "Often," or only "Sometimes"?