4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

I never tried using swarms in 3e, but these seem pretty straightforward and easy to implement.  The only thing I really don’t like is that they are medium creatures.  I can see that for insects, as a 5x5 foot carpet of insects would be intimidating, but for flying creatures, it seems unlikely to me that an entire swarm of would fit neatly into a 5x5 space.  I know it’s all abstraction, but I would have preferred large, partially for aesthetic reasons, and partially because the swarm minis I currently own are all large.

yes you are correct they do have aura 1 effectively making them huge, but one thing i don’t is this, wouldn’t a burst that hit a part of that aura but not the center of the swarm do some damage, not full damage but a little, like say just your bonus from your ability score?

Ah yes, I had overlooked the aura at first glance.  That does make them much more like how I would picture a swarm in real life.  3x3 is much more fitting than just 1 square.

I guess it makes them easier to handle when used as a 5’ square with 1 reach. That means that they can damage a 9 square area, but when they move through narrow places, it is easier to fit them.

Do we know for sure that aura 1 has the same area as close burst 1 (i.e. a 3x3 square)?  When I first read the excerpt I interpreted aura 1 as having an area similar to burst 1 (i.e. a 1x1 square) that was always centered on the creature.  In other words, the swarm’s aura only affected creatures in it’s space.

Also, what do we know about reach at this point?  Unless I’m mistaken, these new swarm rules mean that the swarm can attack adjacent creatures in addition to those whose space they occupy.

Oh, and I’d just like to say that the combination of the aura and a regular attack means that swarms are really going to hurt for creatures stuck within them.