Swarm meets common sense vs RAW

[W E Ray]

This almost came up in tonight’s session:

2nd Level PCs facing Army Ant Swarm.
PC Druid to cast Summon Nature’s Ally— ANT EATER!

Now, it didn’t happen but, well, could an ant eater, as per RAW, do damage to a Swarm of ants even though it has no AoE attack?!

[ErichAD]

I don't see an ant eater anywhere in the Pathfinder. If you invented one, I suppose you could let it attack swarms, but I also don't think they'd be a level 1 summon. I'm not sure ant eaters are good at eating swarming insects, don't they typically tear open hives, eat a bit, then move on to another hive?

[MrCharisma]

Aren't ants Fine creatures? So an Ant Swarm contains ~10,000 ants?

The reason swarms are immune to single-target damage is because killing a single ant does 0.01% of it's health (technically 0.02% since "killing a swarm is dispersing it when you kill half if my memory serves me)

So an Ant-eater would be able to eat some ants, but not meaningfully damage the swarm.

After looking up an Ant Swarm you'd have to kill ~204 ants to deal 1hp of damage. So if you feel like tracking that then sure.

[W E Ray]

Ah ha, thanks guys — a sensible argument to bandy about with the other players.

[ErichAD]

It looks like giant anteaters eat 30,000 ants a day, so 3 swarms over the course of a day. I can find one reference to a 100 ants per minute number, but 1hp per 2 minutes isn't great. They're doing some damage, but probably not at a rate that warrants the use of hitpoints.

There's also a number of researchers who believe that anteaters grazing methods are there to avoid facing soldiers in a hive, so attacking a swarm is probably not part of their normal behavior.

That said, anteaters are supposed to eat ants, and it's probably more fun for everyone if they can do that. Whether you let them deal normal damage to swarms, or allow them to clear a swarm out over several minutes would be entirely up to how little you wanted to adhere to reality.

[gnoams]

Swarms never functioned on common sense. A swarm can run through a wall of fire and somehow not all die. A swarm can attack someone with a fire shield spell going and... well by RAW it's arguable that they even take any damage as the spell requires you to be struck and the swarms just do auto damage without striking.

According to national geographic, the giant anteater can flick its tongue at a rate of 150 times per minute and eat 35,000 ants and termites per day.

The best thing to summon to fight ants is... more ants! Summon your own swarm, drop it on the enemy swarm, and watch the miniature battle.

[Dragonborn3]

That's why I love the Vomit Swarm spell. It is useful for fighting swarms. :)

[LordKailas]

gnoams wrote:

The best thing to summon to fight ants is... more ants! Summon your own swarm, drop it on the enemy swarm, and watch the miniature battle.

A swarm vs swarm fight, should probably use the mass combat rules...