Ok, so I'm making a swarm of screaming fire skulls (which I mentioned in a previous thread a few weeks ago) and the screaming ability says a beheaded can use it once every 1d4 rounds. Well, if I've got a whole swarm of these things, is there another ability I might substitute to reflect that they're screaming constantly?
Basically this swarm "creature" so far has the burning skeleton and burning beheaded variants, and the screaming beheaded variant, but once every 1d4 rounds for a scream doesn't seem right for a whole swarm of the things.
Eh, make it happen every round.
They all scream together, so it would only be every 1d4 rounds. The more powerful scream is modelled by having a higher DC (Because the swarm will have more HD.)
Seemed like OP wanted them to "scream constantly", so every round seemed more appropriate. As for hit dice, I had no information on it, so I assumed that they wouldn't change. If they do, increase the DC accordingly.
Skull swarm is 2 hitdice, so the DC change isn't significant. I might bump the HD to 4 HD though since it doesn't make sense to me that one is 1 HD and a whole swarm is 2 HD. I mean I understand defeating a swarm isn't necessarily destroying it but rather can be dispersing it harmlessly, but a skull swarm doesn't really disperse harmlessly, you know? I mean if it disperses you have a quantity of flying skulls.
The whole idea of swarms to begin with is to make it mechanically easier to deal with a large quantity of very small monsters.
Whether the swarm screams every round or every 1d4 rounds is pretty irrelevant when you consider that any creature that is affected by it, whether it makes the save or not, can't be affected again for 24 hours, so really having it scream constantly becomes more flavor than mechanical, at least to my reasoning.
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I did a search for the word "cacophony" on the PRD. I found a couple creatures with cacophony in ability descriptions.
I also looked up allip because I know it has an auditory attack.
Right now the text for my fire skull swarm reads:
Screaming (Su) Once every 1d4 rounds, a screaming beheaded can open its jaw and emit a bone-chilling scream. All creatures within 30 feet must make a Will save or be shaken for 1d4 rounds (DC 12). This is a sonic mind-affecting fear effect. Whether or not the save is successful, an affected creature is immune to the same skull swarm’s scream for 24 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based.
I think to get away with changing it to say:
Screaming Chorus (Su) A screaming skull swarm is composed of a multitude of screaming skulls. While individual screaming skulls may only scream every so many rounds, the swarm of them emits a constant cacophony of blood-curdling screams. Upon hearing the screaming chorus, all creatures within 30 feet must make a Will save or be shaken for 1d4 rounds (DC 12). This is a sonic mind-affecting fear effect. Whether or not the save is successful, an affected creature is immune to the same skull swarm's screaming chorus for 24 hours. The save DC is Charisma-based.
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Would that change the creature's CR or would that be a CR-neutral change? As far as I interpret it, it would be a rather neutral effect since the creatures that hear it can only be affected once per 24 hours anyway.
And I'm favoriting my own post just so I can find it later.
It'd be pretty neutral, in my opinion. You might be able to increase the radius from sheer volume. That might bump the CR, but I probably wouldn't anyway.
Mechanically it's the same, so the CR would be +0; if you wanted to be a complete and utter b*****d, though, you could make each skull, as a "Beheaded", get a crack at the characters, and force multiple consecutive saves, one for each skull in the swarm.
That might actually be something to throw at them again in a few levels to catch your PCs off-guard with something they think they know all about ;)
Swarms, particularly flying swarms, if I remember right, are usually composed of hundreds of their representative creatures (but I might be thinking back to 3.5e), so I definitely wouldn't want them saving against all the included creatures.
The swarm I statted has all the properties of a burning skeleton and a burning beheaded, so like a burning skeleton it explodes when it reaches 0 hp.
Well, I was thinking once a swarm is "dispersed," a number of screaming fire skulls are expelled in the Fiery Death explosion equal to the swarm's HD, and each one of them has the normal screaming ability too, and they're not technically the same creature so PCs would have to save against those screaming skulls again (but at a lower DC since they have less HD).
That's not bad if the swarm HD remains at 2 HD, but gets annoying if I bump the swarm up to 4 HD. That would mean the CR X swarm explodes into a CR 3 encounter with four CR 1/2 fire skulls. Of course I haven't looked to see what the CR would increase to if I increase the HD from 2 to 4. Right now at 2 HD it is CR 3 for the swarm (CR 1 basic skull swarm, +1 burning-skeleton variant, +1 burning-beheaded variant, +0 screaming variant).
You could stat out a Large swarm of humanoid skulls to bump this to a higher-level encounter if you were so enclined; but I see your point, given that the Skull Swarm entry lists it as Tiny.
Still, this has given me something for later in my current campaign, so thanks for letting me mumble to myself for a bit.
You could stat out a Large swarm of humanoid skulls to bump this to a higher-level encounter if you were so enclined; but I see your point, given that the Skull Swarm entry lists it as Tiny.
Still, this has given me something for later in my current campaign, so thanks for letting me mumble to myself for a bit.
You lost me with your first sentence. A swarm of humanoid heads would be listed as tiny because the creature size is the size listed for a swarm of the creatures, but the swarm itself occupies 4 squares. That would be true whether it was 2 HD or 4 HD, at least as I understand it.
Hmm... Something I just noticed:
Swarm Traits: A swarm has no clear front or back and no discernible anatomy, so it is not subject to critical hits or flanking. A swarm made up of Tiny creatures takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons. A swarm composed of Fine or Diminutive creatures is immune to all weapon damage.
But the Skull swarm's listing says it is immune to weapon damage. It's made up of tiny creatures so should, by the swarm subtype description, be taking half damage from weapons.
The standard beheaded doesn't have any special reason it would be immune to damage so I'm thinking that's probably an oversight in the creation of the swarm.
OK, so I guess I should have phrased that as a question.
Should I keep the skull swarm's listed immunity to weapon damage or should I follow the general swarm rules that swarms of tiny creatures take half damage from slashing an piercing weapons?
If I follow the latter, how much damage do they take from bludgeoning weapons? Full damage? (I'd be fine with that. They're skulls, after all.)
What do you think about saying a bludgeoning attack does normal damage to the swarm AND actually knocks a skull out of the swarm, thus spawning a separate flying skull, up to the number of HD of the swarm?
What do you think about saying a bludgeoning attack does normal damage to the swarm AND actually knocks a skull out of the swarm, thus spawning a separate flying skull, up to the number of HD of the swarm?
Assuming that you're not going to let the newborn skull shriek again, I'd say it warrants a CR bump, because the enemy now gets, essentially, an extra attack every round. So, that said, it sounds like a neat encounter, and not like the changes would be overwhelming, so I'd go with a +1 on the CR (although that's just shooting from the hip, and I may be lowballing it here).
PS - thanks for making me reread the swarm description
I finally got around to using my screaming fire skull swarm recently.
The previous session before this last one, I forgot about the immunity to weapon damage of the skull swarm.
Then when the party encountered another one last session I took it into account.
I'm still not sure if I should treat the skull swarm as immune to weapon damage or not. The creature entry lists it as immune to weapon damage, but the swarm traits say swarms of creatures of that size take 50% piercing/slashing damage.
Thoughts?
On the one hand, if it's immune to weapon damage it's one of the few things the party ranger can't just annihilate with his bow.
On the other hand, it also makes him useless in the fight unless there's other stuff to fight.
On the one hand, swarms of tiny creatures aren't normally immune to weapon damage, but take only 50% piercing/slashing damage. On the other hand, specific creature stats trump general rules, so the immunity may be intentional for this specific kind of swarm, and not an error at all.