Dismiss / Banish a Swarm?


Rules Questions


Can a swarm be dismissed/banished?

Sovereign Court

Depends on the swarm.

If it's a swarm you yourself summoned with a spell, look at the duration; if it's got a (D) in the line, you can dismiss the spell as a standard action. Significantly, the Summon Swarm spell isn't dismissable this way, and stays around for 2 rounds after you stop concentrating; that's because the swarm can turn on you.

If the swarm is extraplanar, you can banish/dismiss it the same way you'd banish other extraplanar creatures, but subject to the swarm property; that is, a single-target spell doesn't affect the whole swarm, but area attacks work quite well.

If the swarm is native to this plane, you can't send it back to a different plane.

Did you have a specific swarm in mind?


Dismissal and Banish both target "one" or "one or more" creatures.

Swarms cannot be targets by spells that affects a discrete number of creatures, except for mind-affecting effects in certain circumstances.

So generally speaking, those spells do nothing to it.

Sovereign Court

Some of the alignment-hoser area spells might do it though.

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