Chi-Town - Summon Insect Swarm

[DD The Shmey]

A while back I was reviewing Necromancer spells for use in Necro-Tech equipment, and I was surprised at the range, duration, and area of effect of the spell "Summon Insect Swarm".

Range: 1000 miles,
Duration: 12 hours per caster level,
Area Effect: 100ft radius per level caster level.

So a single 10th level Necromancer sitting in a swamp in Alabama (or Madhaven, or anyplace on half the continent) could cast a spell summoning an insect swarm to cover a 1000ft radius (2000ft diameter) area right in the heart of Chi-Town. This swarm reduces vision to 10ft, interferes with radar and other sensors, clogs engines, air intake valves, valves, joints of bots/borgs/vehicles, causing engines to overheat, and reduce the speed of movement by half, and reduce number of actions of those in the swarm by half. This could easily bring that part of the city to a standstill.

What's more, it only costs 80 PPE, so if the Necromancer is sitting at a nexus point drawing in 20ppe per melee, he could cast another one of theses spells to blanket another area one minute later. With 9 castings he could cover a square mile. If he keeps it up in four hours he could cover a 5 mile by 5 mile area, or spending most the day (15 hours) he could cover a 10 mile by 10 mile area. This swarm would last for 5 days.

In order to get a general idea of where to aim his swarm, it would probably be useful for the necromancer to have seen the Chi-Town super structure and been in the Chi-Town area before, but I would assume that any spell that lists an effective range of 1000 miles does not need to have line of sight.

There is really no saving throw, or defense I can think of other than to try to track down and kill the necromancer, which at that range, ... how are you going to find him?

Those inside the city would be fine, but outside the impact would be horrible. In addition to disrupting general commerce and civilian quality of life, the cities defenses would be greatly hampered. Radar and visual scans would be impossible, all those flying patrols could probably keep up for a while but eventually they would need to be grounded to clean out the air intakes/cooling systems.

I read that environmental body armor will prevent the insects from crawling in ears, nose, mouth, and the associated disgusting and sensations. It seems a little unclear which penalties listed below remain for those with EBA. I initially could see an argument for all of the penalties listed being prevented by eba or none of them prevented.

After reading it a while and thinking I am under the impression that this eba protection would probably prevent some of the penalties listed, but not all (based the earlier description of effects on vision, vehicles, engines, and what not). Certainly the loss of sight and hearing would remain for those in EBA. I would argue that the reduction in speed is more related to the hampering of sight and clogged joints/ engine problems, that would occur for vehicles and those in EBA. I am less certain on the loss of initiative, combat bonuses, and half of the characters melee actions listed in the spell description. But these game mechanics related details are really just getting into the weeds. I would imagine the overall impact of such a huge insect swarm based attack on Chi-Town (or any non-magical city) would be devastating.

Thoughts?

How would the CS react, what would/could they do?

[Mack]

I've got a different interpretation of the 1,000 mile range. I believe it works the same as the spells Summon Vampire and Summon the Dead.

The swarm doesn't gather a thousand miles away. Rather, insects up to a thousand miles away will respond to the Necromancer's call and travel to him.

I'm not aware of any summoning spells where the respondents don't travel to the caller's location.

[Killer Cyborg]

Sonic Flea Collars ftw.

[DD The Shmey]

I've got a different interpretation of the 1,000 mile range. I believe it works the same as the spells Summon Vampire and Summon the Dead.

The swarm doesn't gather a thousand miles away. Rather, insects up to a thousand miles away will respond to the Necromancer's call and travel to him.

I'm not aware of any summoning spells where the respondents don't travel to the caller's location.

Well that's an interesting interpretation.

There is nothing in the spells description that indicates the listed range is related to where the insects are coming from. My immediate response is questioning why would you need to know that? Mechanically speaking, how would knowing where the insects came from be relevant to the effects of the spell?

I'm going back and reading Summon Vampire, and Summon the Dead spells.
Both of these spells have a description of the creatures in question gathering and traveling too the caster, and even mentions how long (hours) it could take for them to get to the caster. The text in these spells explicitly relates the range listed to the area from which the creatures are summoned. For the vampire one, it also adds that if there isn't a vampire within range, that none will come.

In contrast Summon Insect Swarm simply states the spell will "cause flying insects to amass". Without that additional language that the other spells contain which describes the creatures traveling to the caster and the amount of time it takes them to get there, I am inclined to believe that the insects just appear suddenly and immediately. I would even go so far as to say that the insect swarm would appear even if there are not any insects within the listed range, as the spell doesn't say anything about that limitation.

I believe the spell works the same way as Summon Fog, which has some similar effects to the insect swarm, obscuring vision, slowing people down, and large area of effect. This spell says Range: up to 10 miles away per level of experience". Although, you might argue that the moisture that forms the fog is coming from up to 10 miles away, ... I think that sounds silly. Summon and Control Rain as well as Summon and Control Storm both have a range "Immediate area around the mage or up to 10 miles away per level", language which really makes it clear that the area of effect does not need to be centered on the caster.

I can already hear an argument about insects being living creatures, and not a weather phenomenon, so I've been reading some other summoning spells.

Summon and Control Animals, and Summon and Control Rodents both list a range of 600ft. The animals one says later in its description that "as usual any animal which comes into the arcanist's 600ft range while in the pentagram will obey the mage ...". The Rodents one doesn't mention the range, but does say that "as long as the mage stands in the pentagram he can control any other types of rodents". The spell Summon & Control Canines lists a range as "Varies", but then goes on to say that "The pentacle will also give the arcanist the power to control any other canines which were not originally summoned, within 200ft/line of vision...".

None of these spells description say that the summoned animals appear right next to the caster, nor do any of them describe that the creatures summoned must come from within the listed range. Indeed they seem to imply the opposite in the latter case, that the creatures are likely to have came from outside the listed spell range, as indicated by the description of the ability to control additional creatures within the listed range that were not originally summoned. In fact there is nothing in the descriptions of these spells that indicates that you cannot use them when inside on a spaceship, far away from the natural habitat of the creatures.

Finally there are a number of summoning rituals that list a range as immediate or not applicable, where it describes the summoned creatures showing up right next to the caster. If the area of effect of the insect swarm was restricted to be centered on the caster, then why wouldn't the spell list a range as "immediate"? ... Although to your credit, these summoning rituals often seem to be related to creatures that were summoned from another dimension.

[The Beast]

I've got a different interpretation of the 1,000 mile range. I believe it works the same as the spells Summon Vampire and Summon the Dead.

The swarm doesn't gather a thousand miles away. Rather, insects up to a thousand miles away will respond to the Necromancer's call and travel to him.

I'm not aware of any summoning spells where the respondents don't travel to the caller's location.

Then how far away can the summoning mage control the swarm from?

[Axelmania]

There is nothing in the spells description that indicates the listed range is related to where the insects are coming from.

It's in the title: "Summon" swarm, not "Send" swarm.

My immediate response is questioning why would you need to know that? Mechanically speaking, how would knowing where the insects came from be relevant to the effects of the spell?

If there were no insects within 1000 miles, you couldn't summon them.

Then how far away can the summoning mage control the swarm from?

I don't see anything on Africa 107 indicating you can actually "control" the swarm at all, just summon and keep them confined to a given radius for the duration.

While it's true there is a control aspect to "Summon Magot" and "Summon Worms of Taut" (both spells ought to have "and control" in the title!, like Summon & Control Entity) both explicitly state "will obey"

[DD The Shmey]

I've got a different interpretation of the 1,000 mile range. I believe it works the same as the spells Summon Vampire and Summon the Dead.

The swarm doesn't gather a thousand miles away. Rather, insects up to a thousand miles away will respond to the Necromancer's call and travel to him.

I'm not aware of any summoning spells where the respondents don't travel to the caller's location.

Then how far away can the summoning mage control the swarm from?

I don't see anything in the description about controlling the swarm. The spell's effect seems more like a persistent area effect that affects everyone within it's area, than a spell that creates a new "entity" on the board that has actions to be controlled. It doesn't even have any language excluding the caster from the penalties, so I imagine the swarm would affect the necromancer just the same as anyone else.

[DD The Shmey]

There is nothing in the spells description that indicates the listed range is related to where the insects are coming from.

It's in the title: "Summon" swarm, not "Send" swarm.

It's called "Summon Fog", "Summon and Control Rain", and "Summon and Control Storms", but they can all have their radius centered at a point miles away.

hmmm...

You know guys, maybe you do have a point.

Asking the questions "Why did the author list the range of the spell at 1000 miles? and not something much smaller", and "What other spell lists a range of 1000 miles?" I am left going back to the Summon Vampire spell.

Thinking in general about authors creative work flow, since both of these spells were created and written at about the same time, it is likely that some of the text was copy-pasted, including the 1000 mile range. If I look at the text for Summon Insect Swarm spell in a vacuum, there is absolutely nothing that tells me that the 1000 mile range has anything to do with the range that the bugs can be summoned from. However, when I look at the spell in this context, it is possible that the author intended the two spells to have similar restrictions. Since vampires are NPC's that would come to the party with their own backstory and character, it seems fitting that more text is dedicated to their journey to the summoner, whereas nobody cares about where the bugs came from, so the text for the spell didn't describe it.

While I acknowledge this possibility, I still think it is more likely that the author thought of the spell as a nondestructive area effect attack, like the Summon Fog spell, or cloud of smoke, which would be thrown at the opponents. I believe this due to the description of effects being more akin to an area effect debuff than a creature summoning, also the fact that it seems to affect the caster just as anybody else, and finally due to the description not mentioning anything about the radius of effect being centered on the caster, or any limitation of the spell not working if there are no bugs within the range.

[Mack]

Anyone else notice the math for this spell doesn't match the description?

A level 10 Necromancer would summon 10,000 bugs, and make a cloud with a 1,000 ft radius. That's a circle with an area of 3,140,000 square feet. Which means 1 bug for every 314 square feet (that's 1 bug in a 20 ft diameter circle). I presume the Necromancer can choose to concentrate the insects into smaller circle than the listed 100 ft / level.


[And as a ridiculous aside, I have this image in my head of a squad of Skelebots armed with fly swatters, smacking everything in sight.]

[Nekira Sudacne]

as hilarious as that is, I think somewhere in their highly advanced technology base someone knows how to make insect fumigation.

[TeeAychEeMarchHare]

as hilarious as that is, I think somewhere in their highly advanced technology base someone knows how to make insect fumigation.

Or flamethrowers.

[Axelmania]

Anyone else notice the math for this spell doesn't match the description?

A level 10 Necromancer would summon 10,000 bugs, and make a cloud with a 1,000 ft radius. That's a circle with an area of 3,140,000 square feet. Which means 1 bug for every 314 square feet (that's 1 bug in a 20 ft diameter circle). I presume the Necromancer can choose to concentrate the insects into smaller circle than the listed 100 ft / level.

Maybe as the spell gets to higher levels, the insects are magically sped-up so that they compensate with speed-blurs to reduce sight/visibility what they couldn't accomplish if moving slowly?

The automatic 1/2 actions and 1/2 seems kinda weird, I can see how it would be that distracting to many people, but I imagine large/strong targets without exposed orifices wouldn't be as easily slowed by bugs. I couldn't see an Elemental in particular, caring about it in the slightest.

[DD The Shmey]

Anyone else notice the math for this spell doesn't match the description?

A level 10 Necromancer would summon 10,000 bugs, and make a cloud with a 1,000 ft radius. That's a circle with an area of 3,140,000 square feet. Which means 1 bug for every 314 square feet (that's 1 bug in a 20 ft diameter circle). I presume the Necromancer can choose to concentrate the insects into smaller circle than the listed 100 ft / level.

Yeah, I noticed that glaring math issue. I'm choosing to ignore that # of bugs statistic, and just assume that palladium intended to say "A bunch of bugs" and 1000 was the biggest number they could think of. Without ignoring this item there is no way that the bugs would be so thick as to obscure vision limiting it to 10 feet.

[DD The Shmey]

The reason why I posted this topic was to bring light to the power of the spell Insect Swarm and discuss the effect it could have if deployed on a large scale.

Mack pointed out an alternative interpretation of the spell range, which significantly weakens the spells effectiveness by making the area of effect centered around the caster. Axelmania seems to support this range interpretation, but I am curious what other people think.

If we run with this interpretation, then the caster wouldn't able to simply stand at a nexus someplace absorbing free PPE to repeatably cast the spell. He would need to travel to location, putting himself at risk to cast the spell with his own PPE. After casting he would need to travel through the swarm (supposedly at limited speed himself) and back out into the open before he would cast the spell again to create another area of effect and extend the chaos. He would quickly run out of PPE after a few castings.

I think that it would also simplify the coalitions response, causing them to immediately hunt down and kill the caster to end the spells effect. In the end, the spell under this interpretation is not really an issue in terms of game balance.

...

Nekira Sudacne and Killer Cyborg both mentioned using chemicals or other technological methods to kill or repel the swarms of insects. If you guys were really playing this out, what kind of rules would you use to determine the effectiveness of such chemical deterrents against the spell effects?

[Nekira Sudacne]

The question of that is easy: What effects does the spell have on the combat effectiveness of any other summoned creature. If you use summon rats to summon a rat, are the rats somehow magically protected from being shot or stepped on by a power armor?

Odds are, you'd say no. Same way you can defeat a summoned demon in combat.

So if the creatures summoned by magic are ordinary creatures that can be killed normally, then Gas would be as effective as any other weapon.

So sure, you summoned 10,000 inscets, then, all of them die. The spell only means you'll get them if available, nothing stops the enemy from killing them or any other summon.

[TeeAychEeMarchHare]

The reason why I posted this topic was to bring light to the power of the spell Insect Swarm and discuss the effect it could have if deployed on a large scale.

Mack pointed out an alternative interpretation of the spell range, which significantly weakens the spells effectiveness by making the area of effect centered around the caster. Axelmania seems to support this range interpretation, but I am curious what other people think.

If we run with this interpretation, then the caster wouldn't able to simply stand at a nexus someplace absorbing free PPE to repeatably cast the spell. He would need to travel to location, putting himself at risk to cast the spell with his own PPE. After casting he would need to travel through the swarm (supposedly at limited speed himself) and back out into the open before he would cast the spell again to create another area of effect and extend the chaos. He would quickly run out of PPE after a few castings.

As someone else said, it's "Summon swarm", not "Create swarm thousands of miles away". It draws insects from within the 1000 miles and summons them to the caster's location. That's my take on it. Although after actually reading the spell description in the book, and comparing it to Summon Vampire on the next page, I can see why someone would say that the swarm can appear a thousand miles away. It's another bit of poor writing.

I often wonder if there is anyone doing editing or play-testing at PB.

[Axelmania]

The trick is to give a scroll of SIS to a wandering burbite.

[DD The Shmey]

The trick is to give a scroll of SIS to a wandering burbite.

I like your idea, but scrolls are so old fashioned. I'd prefer it to be a magical warhead on a techno-wizard, or Necro-Tech missile. DB13 Fleets has those Anti-Magic Cloud missiles, its easy to imagine the same thing with a Summon Insect Swarm warhead.

You know that reminds me, ... I actually have a bunch of Necro-Tech devices that I've created over the years. Maybe I should start a new thread and post some of it.

[Axelmania]

Paper's cheaper than gems.