Spolier Alert

WARNING: Posts addressing individual campaigns contain spoilers, including: Lost Mine of Phandelver, Horde of the Dragon Queen, The Rise of Tiamat, Yawning Portal, Princes of the Apocalypse, and home-brew content.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Swarms of Medium or Small Creatures

Work in Progress...

D&D 5e has plenty of swarms most of which are medium (1 space) swarms of tiny creatures like: Rot Grubs, Ravens, Insects (Wasps), Rats, Bats, and quite a few more.  

The only non-tiny creature, medium swarm I have found is the Skeletal Swarm, which is a Large (4 space) swarm of medium sized creatures, which sticks closely to the pattern of the other swarms.  

As a DM, I  have bumped into situations where I have a large group of relatively low powered small or medium sized creatures creatures that are more powerful than the typically nearly trivial individual member of a swarm.  These groups could be productively lumped into a swarm to speed play.  I want to explore how I might do this in my games in this posting -- essentially, how to make something like a mob of villagers a single swarm instead of a bunch of individuals to manage.