Hi guys,
My players just landed on Bonewreck Island and they are about to meet the first mosquito swarm. One of the player characters has a trait that lets him use dyplomacy on vermin (wasp whisperer - it functions like wild empathy). If it funtions like diplomacy I will need to set an attitude for the swarm in order to calculate the DC. The swarm is mindless but (I guess) hungry, would it be unfriendly or hostile? If i set the swarm to hostile there isn't really any chance the player will save the group from the swarm (with no critical succes it will just go from hostile to unfriendly - that's not enought to stop an attack). How would you rule this?
How do you do it with animal empathy? Is an hungry animal (predator) hostile?
And another question: The players have a chance to be infected with ghoul fever by mosquitos every time they sleep. Could the player with wasp whisperer help with this and spend the night repeling them? How would you set the DC for such a task? I guess the individual mosquitos that come at night aren't really hostile?
According to the druid entry for wild empathy, wild animals start as unfriendly default, so I would set the swarm as the same.
For the night, I would probably just make the mosquitoes not attack the wasp whisperer character, but you could go either way and let him repel all night (of course, he wouldn't get any rest...)