Enveloping swarms?


Rules Questions

Liberty's Edge

My players came up with an interesting tactic against swarms that I had not thought of previously.

They wanted to use large fabrics against swarms. Such as throwing a large carpet over crawling swarms, or using a large sack to scoop out portions of flying swarms.

Intuitively, this feels to me like it *should* work.

Would you allow this to work, and if so, what sort of attack roll would you use, and what sort of damage would you assign?

I'm thinking that putting a heavy 5' by 5' carpet over the square where a crawling swarm is would immobilize it, but causing damage would require a full-round action jumping up and down on the carpet to cause 1d6 damage per round, perhaps?

Grand Lodge

Touch attack, usually.

Effects would depend on swarm type, and material used for the "attack".

Remember that even a crawling swarm is more than just a simple layer on the ground, they will be on top of each other, and, if possible, go up on at least the lower part of the wall.

Liberty's Edge

Yeah but with a heavy enough carpet, a cockroach won't be strong enough to go upwards and they'll be pinned down.

Liberty's Edge

I suppose we are speaking of a swarm made of fine or smaller creatures.

Carpet: entangled, possibly held in place until the swarm make an escape check. No damage.

Sack: as above, but with some possible damage if the creature making up the swarm are large enough that they can't leave the sack through the mesh (I assume a canvas sack). Probably 1d6.

Liberty's Edge

Yeah, sorry, I'm talking about mainly swarms that are too small for weapon damage. Weapon damage swarms are relatively easy to fight.


In Fellnight Queen, one of the swarm encounter setups includes mention of possible creative tactics against the flying one which includes luring it into one of several tents and dropping the flaps which would treat the swarm as entangled and stuck in those squares.

You could use that logic chain to resolve similar creative applications thought up by players. (for a carpet, i'd treat it like a Net, and the swarm has to make the 'get free' check or that part of it is stuck in that square.)

Shadow Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens Subscriber

I like to adapt stuff like this to existing rules - Rathendar's idea of "treat it like a net" is a great idea. I'd also allow it to work as a dirty trick, using the normal rules for that maneuver.


The butterfly net states working like a normal net vs fine or diminutive creatures. But it might be a little small for a swarm.

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