Editing Swarm (section)

== Variants ==

"What if we made swarms, but of human sized enemies?" was the natural evolution of swarms, and there's at least 3 different variants in d20 based games and none of them are that good.

3.5's ''Dungeon Master's Guide 2'' introduces Mobs. Mobs are supposed to be spontaneous groups with no leader, like an angry mob or stampede of animals, but while officially a template that alters a creature a mob is effectively a single CR 8 creature that gets a few changes from the base creature.

[[Star Wars D20]] Saga Edition introduces Squads in ''The Clone Wars Campaign Guide'' as a +2 Challenge Level template. Unlike other examples, squads are a relatively small number of foes, generally 3/4, but share many similarities. Squads are bigger, harder to injure, have double the HP, get +4 to attack (as they are considered to be aiding another), make all attacks (except Attacks of Opportunity) as selective area effects and can't be grappled. On the weakness side they take extra damage from area attacks, which are '''everywhere''' in Saga Edition, and don't get any bonuses to autofire themselves, even though autofire is an expendable foe's best chance of hurting a PC that outclasses them. Also they can't walk through narrow spaces even though they're still just a bunch of medium creatures who should be able to walk in sequence. Interestingly the template doesn't restrict what it can be used on, so you can technically apply it to spacecraft and vehicles... where it actually works quite well since autofire is rarer in space and narrow obstacles are rarely extant.

[[Pathfinder]] introduced troops. Unlike the rest, troops aren't a template but a type of creature. Troops don't quite work since ''all'' their attacks are automatic or (for ranged attacks) reflex save based, meaning AC is useless, and they don't really play nice with allies since they can't really be buffed. As of the end of the system's official support there were a mere dozen troops, most of which were only published in [[Adventure Path]]s.