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swarm
I've hired some more laboratory assistants, all of whom have been instructed to wear matching red waistcoats and answer to the name “Griswold.” That lovable scamp Griswold is not to be given cheese before noon, as it upsets his delicate constitution.
Swarm is a weird archetype mostly suitable for the referee to run large groups of weak enemies with minimal fuss, but there's no reason why a player can't take levels in it if it's available and they want to be able to say “my guy is actually 15-20 nameless chumps that mill around in the background and die all the time”.
| Swarm | You're a bunch of creatures. | |
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| caret-right | Horde | Increased swarm size. |
| caret-right | Multiattack | Attack multiple targets at once. |
| caret-right | Redshirts | Benefit from constituent deaths. |
| caret-right | River | Move freely around obstacles. |
| caret-right | Split | Divide into weaker individuals. |
Swarm
| Utility | plus-circleI Am Legion: While you generally act like a single big creature, you're actually a whole bunch of smaller creatures working in concert (like a cloud of locusts, band of goblins, or crew of comedy pirates). Exactly how many isn't important and might vary from scene to scene or even moment to moment, but despite your numbers you're not too much more effective than any single other creature. plus-circleSingle Mind: You have a single inventory (any extra items carried by your constituents outside of your inventory inevitably get lost, gambled away, forgotten, or consumed), a single stock of Flesh/Energy/Attention (all constituents live and die together), and pool of accumulated XP (all constituents level up and learn new abilities together). All effects treat you as an individual, not as a crowd. Multi-target attacks hit and affect you just once. If you get a condition, everybody in your swarm gets it. When you recover, everybody recovers. That kind of thing. plus-circleSingle Consumption: When you use resources (Provisions, Supplies, Mojo) to feed yourself, power an ability or whatever just 1 point will completely satisfy the cost for every one of your constituents somehow. You can also use just one keystone to level up. Any other situations where each party member must pay a price (using a toll bridge, maybe) also allow you to pay it just once despite actually technically being more than one creature. plus-circleBig, But Actually Small: You occupy space, carry weight and crew vehicles as a single creature two sizes larger than you actually are, but act as your true size for purposes of size-based attack failure (both incoming and outgoing). You can pass through any gap or passageway that is accessible to a creature of your true size. minus-circleBottlenecking: When passing through a space too small for your effective size but not too large for your actual size (like, say, doorways) you take an impairment to movement speed as your constituent creatures all get in each other's way. |
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Horde
| Utility | plus-circleHuge Swarm: There are a LOT of you. You occupy space, carry weight and crew vehicles as a creature three sizes larger than your true size instead of two sizes larger. | |
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| caret-right | Alternative | plus-circleThe Worm That Walks: You can choose to occupy space, carry weight and crew vehicles as a creature four sizes larger than your true size instead of two sizes larger. This lasts until the end of the current session. minus-circleThousand Hungry Mouths: Bumping your effective size up four categories costs 3 Provisions. |
Multiattack
| Offense | plus-circleSplit Focus: When you make any attack, you can choose two targets/areas of effect instead of the normal single one. Both must be valid targets (within range, etc). Your attack hits both, but has a special failure chance of 3. Roll just one die for multiattacks. | |
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Redshirts
| Protection | plus-circleWe Go Through These Guys Fast: Members of your swarm seem to be dying constantly (and tragi-comically). Every time you take any damage at all (even if it's just to Attention) it kills a few of you, though there mysteriously always seem to be more. This serves as an effective warning, making your allies look briefly to their own defense. When you take damage, all further attacks against any allies within 10 meters of your location have a special failure chance of 3 until the beginning of your next turn. minus-circleSo Long, Ensign: You do not personally benefit from this effect, only your allies (and only when you get hurt). |
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| Protection | plus-circleCannon Fodder: When you take serious damage, you can offload the consequences to some of your less-important drones. Every time you lose a point of Flesh, you can choose to retain it and temporarily lose access to a Swarm ability instead. Pick one Swarm ability you know and mark it somehow; you can't use or otherwise benefit from that ability at all. plus-circleKeep This One Though: If you choose to lose access to the Redshirts ability in order to save a point of Flesh, you lose the ability to add protection to your allies when you take damage but you can keep sacrificing other Swarm abilities freely. plus-circleReswarm: You regain access to any lost Swarm abilities at the end of the session. |
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River
| Movement | plus-circleLiving Flow: You don't take any impairment to movement speed when passing through gaps accessible to creatures of your true size. | |
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| Movement | plus-circleEngulf: You can freely move through and share spaces with other creatures, including enemies. plus-circleBeset: When using attacks against enemies that you've engulfed, you gain a backstab bonus (+2 damage) if applicable since you're striking them from all angles at once. |
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Split
| Utility | plus-circleScatter Bitch, It's The Five-O: You can break into a whole bunch of individual creatures as an action. Doing so produces one creature of your true size per level you have. All your constituent creatures have your full loadout equipped and can be controlled individually. plus-circleRecombination: You can remake your normal swarm-self around any individual creature created by Split as an action. This removes all other Split creatures (they either run back to rejoin the crowd or die somewhere off-screen and are seamlessly replaced). At least five of the original number of Split creatures must be alive in order to remake the swarm, else you've got to just struggle along as individuals. Swarms automatically reform at the end of the session so long as even a single individual member survives. minus-circleWeak, Confused Bastards: Your constituents are much less effective alone than they were together: each has exactly 1 point of Flesh/Energy/Attention, can take only 1 action per round and has a special failure chance of 6 with all attacks. |
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| caret-right | Alternative | plus-circleReformation: You can remake your normal swarm-self even if there are less than five Split individuals remaining. minus-circleRecruiting Fee: Reforming a broken swarm with few individuals costs 1 Provisions. |
swarm.txt · Last modified: 2020/11/19 13:42 by kyle
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