Insect Swarm
- Armor Class
- N/A
- Hit Dice
- 2 to 4
- Attacks
- Swarm (1d6-1)
- Special
- immune to normal and magical weapons; Sleep, smoke, fire
- Move
- 3 Fly 6
- HDE/XP
- 2 HD: 3/60; 3 HD: 4/120; 4 HD: 5/240
Description
An insect swarm is not a single creature; rather, it is a large group of ordinary flying or crawling insects moving as a unit. In general, a swarm fills a volume equal to three 10' cubes, though it is possible for a swarm to become more compact in order to move through a small doorway or narrow corridor. If the swarm consists of crawling insects, it covers three 10' squares and the flying movement above is ignored.
Any living creature within the volume or area of the swarm suffers 1d6-1 points of damage each round. Damage rolls are doubled if the victim is unarmored; for creatures which do not wear armor, any creature with worse than AC 5 [14] is considered unarmored. Damage is reduced to a single point per round for three rounds if the character manages to exit the swarm. It is possible to "ward off" the insects by swinging a weapon, shield, or other similar-sized object around, and in this case damage is likewise reduced to 1 point per round. If a lit torch is used in this way, the swarm takes 1d4 points of damage per round.
Weapons, even magic weapons, do not harm an insect swarm. An entire swarm can be affected by a Sleep spell. Smoke can be used to drive a swarm away; if the swarm moves away from any victims due to smoke, the damage stops immediately. Finally, a victim who dives into water will take damage for only one more round.
See Also
Source note: This creature is converted from Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game, 4th Edition Release 142, © 2006–2025 Chris Gonnerman. The Basic Fantasy textual material is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International; this page adapts that creature to White Box.