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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JiffyPopTart" data-source="post: 8102362" data-attributes="member: 4881">I agree, but then we have doubled back to what makes D&D a game.Yes, there is no reason for an ancient evil hag to ever expose themselves.  Yes, they could singlehandedly decimate the entire population of a fantasy town or city.  They could do all these and sow even greater chaos, but to do so without giving the players some sort of interaction point then what you are describing is either narrative the players aren't supposed to interact with OR poor game design.I had a hag as a major opponent introduced in my first 5e campaign.  At low levels the player characters took over an abandoned keep and the campaign centered on them opening it up as a settlement on the edge of the wilderness.  Very early on in their possession of the keep they realized that a portion of the wall in the basement level has some major powered wards keeping something sealed INSIDE the wall.  They wisely choose to not mess with it.  The ward was keeping a hag trapped in a small cavern starving for the hundreds of years that the keep sat idle and overrun.  Eventually, over the course of the campaign, when the players were a more appropriate level to deal with the threat, some gnomes who had taken up residence in the basement took it upon themselves to do a little remodeling, which accidentally led to cracking the ward and setting the hag free.The hag immediately set up on the denizens of the keep, feasting on the weak for a few weeks to get back to strength.  Over this time the PCs learned there was something preying on sleeping people and killing them in their beds, but not physically.  This gave them information leading them towards knowing something was happening on another plane or psychically and they prepared to beat this creature.  A scouting mission by one of the players into the Ethereal let them spot the hag feeding off of another victim.  The hag, in turn, noticed the PC who fled back to the prime material.This finally led to the showdown between the party and the hag as an opponent.  The hag began "feeding" off of the nightmares of the PC that had spotted her.  The hag wanted the PC to know who it was because she was angry at the world and also knew the PC was already frightened of her for real (since they have fled).  After a couple days of no sleep the party realized it was do-or-die (literally) to end it.  They tore down the wall that the cracked ward was placed upon and found the natural cavern hidden behind it.  While exploring the caverns the hag fled (just as they would not wanting to just straight up fight the party).  Since the had was no expecting the party to invade her cavern, however, and since she fled quickly she left her hag-bag behind when she went.  The party found and claimed her hag-bag and used that as the bait to draw her out into the prime material for a straight up brawl.  The had, driven mad by hundreds of years of confinement AND super angry at the PCs for invading her cavern AND touching her hag-bag was lured in and once present was defeated by the party.Everyone is able to play the game in the way their table thinks is fun.  To me, its not fun to present a challenge to the party that they are unable to interact with and solve.  This is why my hag didn't show up until the appropriate time in the campaign, didn't immediately just try to kill the party members so they died before they knew what was happening, didn't just run away taking her hag-bag when the heros knocked down the wall, and ultimately came back to fight to retrieve her hag-bag when the players used it as bait.So, yes, a cranium rat swarm can, by the rules, disband into X number of individual cranium rats and mix in an existing rat population.  They could follow the PCs fairly unnoticed this way.  They could hide behind walls or nooks and crannies and crevices.  But, when they form a swarm they create a medium sized "creature".  This is a human sized pile of rats acting in unison.  How many completely hidden nooks and crannies in a sewer can accommodate a medium sized creature?   Cranium rats cannot "hide" in plain sight.  [USER=6906155]@Paul Farquhar[/USER]  may have set up his rats to be behind walls and looking through spyholes, but my interpretation of the scene that the rats were in was that the PCs were in a fairly standard sewer and the rats were in the sewer with them, visible enough that if the players had asked to inspect individual rats they might have noticed the rats were strange.When the swarm "forms" to be the size of a normal man the PCs would instantly notice a medium sized swarm of rats as different than lots of individual rats.  That is just the basic rules of D&D.  There is nothing in the cranium rat swarm that gives them any sort of invisibility or hide-in-plain sight abilities.  What is being discussed here is giving the rats extra abilities not called out in their write up by saying that is just how it would work and then adding "Look how broken no components is" when you added a magical "Improved Invisibility" power and "Free Stealth Check" to the creature getting to cast the spell.All of this said... [USER=6906155]@Paul Farquhar[/USER] said that it was still OK for the monsters to be able to do this, just not the PCs.  I don't understand the logic.  Either something is overpowered or its not.  As far as I know the lack of components only interacts with one small segment of opponents in 5e, those that can cast Counterspell.  If I went through every monster and NPC write-up in every 5e book, what percentage of those have the ability to counterspell?  I will be generous and say 2%.  Does the fact that 2% of all the monsters and NPCs in 5e lose out on ONE of their abilities upset your campaigns so much?There has been much talk about how you can't lock down a psion with hoods and gags and hand binding and swords at throat, etc.. and that's an indication no components is overpowered.   Does anyone think its unfair you can't lock down a druid because they can turn into a bird and fly away?  How about a sorcerer with Subtle Spell?  How about a cleric using divine intervention?</blockquote>

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