So I had a session with my players yesterday, and we had a rather lengthy discussion about the distraction ability that swarms have.
The party ran into a Worm that Walks, which is a swarm of sorts, and the druid attacked him with a load of swarms. I ruled that he was immune to the distraction effect, simply because he is a swarm himself.
Then I started wondering if other creatures should be immune to this effect, not everyone should get nauseated by swarms?
Any thoughts on this?
He's listed as an aberration, which can become nausiated. Story-wise nausiated can mean a lot of things, not just actual nausia, even though it's described as stomach distress. Like distraction itself which applies the nausiated condition, it's not so much you're sick to your stomach at being covered in bugs, it's more you're so occupied thrashing around flipping out that there's bugs all over you that you can't do much else. Yea, he doesn't have a stomach or body, but imagine two ant swarms battling or bees fighting off wasps, the two swarms are totally occuplied in dealing with the other. In this case, I think I'd allow the worm to engulf the swarms regardless of being nausiated, but still be preoccupied by them otherwise if it fails the save.
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Then I started wondering if other creatures should be immune to this effect, not everyone should get nauseated by swarms?
Undead and constructs are immune to any effect that allows a Fortitude save, unless it also works on objects. Most other creatures can be affected.
If the worm that walks discorporates (I think it would be fair to let it swap its move action for a free action), nausea doesn't prevent it doing swarm damage, which is probably an area effect as well, to all creatures in its space. It should be able to gobble up a creeping doom in 4 rounds and survive the damage itself, though it won't be happy about it. Wasp swarms from insect plague will go down faster. Naturally that's 4 rounds in which it's not casting spells on the party.
Since it's a fort save for the distraction, anything that has no con score (and thus passes all fort saves automatically) such as undead and constructs.
The only PC thing that actually becomes immune that I'm aware of is the Blight Druid in the APG. At level 8 (I believe) he becomes immune to disease and anything that causes sickness/nausea. Lots of PCs become immune to disease, but he's the only one that I know of that gets that extra perk.
Oh... and I actually think that swarm vs worm that walks is.... oddly appropriate. He's a swarm, but another swarm is wailing on him. It's like a scale down of two armies fighting.
I would have had him roll a save (assuming he actually isn't immune in his entry somewhere). If I recall worm that walks had a pretty beast fort save. I doubt if it would work, but I can see it having the potential of distracting him.
Thanks for the reply guys!:)
Yeah, this makes sense, and I knew about undeads and constructs though:)
Indeed, my player is actually a blight druid (a goblin none the less) and his distraction DC is a beast of its own so most monster stands nauseated all the time hehe;)
But the swarm vs swarm thing makes sense, thanks:)