Editing Swarm (section)

== Overview ==

Swarms are notorious for their host of immunities and special abilities. Since killing a few rats in a swarm of hundreds isn't very useful, weapon attacks do half or '''zero''' damage (depending on the type of swarm). A swarm is immune to spells that target a specific number (including one and touch attack based spells) of creatures. Energy attacks do their normal damage, and area of effect damage abilities actually do 1.5 times as much damage. They don't target armor class, doing damage simply by being in your square.

While many swarms have a low [[Challenge Rating]], they are notorious for being very deadly to low level parties, who have very few reliable means of damaging a swarm. Area of effect spells are rare and don't do that much damage anyways, and splash weapons are prohibitively expensive. Energy damage is virtually impossible outside of your precious few spells, many of which don't even work on swarms since they are single-target based. There are only two weapons cheap enough for low level parties to field against swarms: Torches and lantern oil.

Torches are improvised weapons that deal some fire damage on top of minor bludgeoning, but the rules aren't even consistent on how much fire damage (torches themselves say 1, swarms say 1d3). Since torches are an ''improvised'' weapon you take a -4 penalty to hit if using one. Good luck hitting an effective 18 AC at level 2 (and you need to do it ~6 times)! Lantern oil is a bit better, dealing 1d6 damage and then 1d6 damage the next round (both multiplied by 1.5, so two successful ones might kill a rat swarm), but it takes a full round to prepare (rules are mum on if you can keep them prepared for throwing long term) and only works half the time! You might also get lucky with some GM's who will have the swarm of, and we stress this, wild animals, shy from the fire but that won't help a magically encouraged swarm.

Alongside the [[House Cat|housecat]] and incorporeal foes (e.g., [[ghost]]s) swarms are some of the deadliest monsters for their CR in the [[Monster Manual]]/bestiary. They kill a lot of unprepared adventurers and even some prepared ones. The ''Mummy's Mask'' [[Adventure Path]] includes an early ''summoned'' scarab swarm that, being a summoned creature, disappears in two rounds. Jim Groves, the author of this part, [https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qsco?The-HalfDead-City#47 outright stated] this was to warn players that there were swarms in the adventure and to prepare accordingly. Yes, he felt the PCs needed to be warned about a generic nameless enemy type before any of the threats that were important to the story. And he was ''right.'' 

Interestingly, since undead creation is based on hit die instead of creatures targeted, swarms can be made into [[Undead]]. Insects in particular can become exo[[skeleton]] creatures difficult to distinguish from normal instances. Thankfully this doesn't increase their lethality and even drops it slightly: [[Turn Undead]] (and Channel Positive Energy in [[Pathfinder]]) actually work against them, as does holy water (though it's still expensive).

===Video Games===

The video game Pathfinder: [[Kingmaker]] (the only D&D rules based video game to actually feature swarm monsters, besides the sequel WOTR) featured a cave with spider swarms early on, it was possible to make this your third fight after the prologue sequence, and this prompted much butthurt. In response the developers made it optional and gave further warning/explanation in the Enhanced Edition. 

It only got worse in the sequel, [[Wrath of the Righteous]]. In this game, the addition of Mythic Tiers in addition to normal character levels should make swarms a breeze, right? WRONG! You don't just fight spiders or rats, you fight swarms of flying rat-sized demons called Vescavores, who can eat through literally anything except for [[adamantine]]. In addition to the usual annoying swarm traits like distraction, they also have tons of [[Damage Reduction]] due to being [[demon]]s, can confuse/stun the entire party with Gibber, and resist usual swarm weaknesses due to having [[Bullshit|Fire and Lightning Resist 10]]. Unless you have an [[Alchemist (Pathfinder)|Alchemist]] who can throw bombs, get ready to [[rage]], especially on the higher difficulties. Later on, you get fiendish ticks, which have the same damage reduction on top of immunity to physical damage. On the plus side, if you want to control some swarms of your own and don't mind [[Khorne|killing literally everyone]], you can take the [[Worm That Walks|Swarm That Walks Path]]. Yes [[DOOM: Repercussions of Evil|John. You are the swarms]]! Also has a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D490Y1JFXr4&ab_channel=HSHAZAM hell of a theme song!]