Players be like
Insect swarm creates a magical effect, it doesn't summon literal bugs. And before you call me a buzz kill, it's kind of lame to try and essentially skip the encounter I spent time building.
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Can you even cast animal shapes on so many bugs at once?
Then after viewing your link I have two things.
First, I guess you'll have to downsize a bit. Elephants are classed as being to big for the spell to work, so you'll have to go with something like horses.
Second: is the range/area of 30 feet in reference to how close they have to be to you, as well as the aoe?
Rules as written, it affects an unlimited number of willing creatures within a 30 foot AoE of you.
But it has a duration of 24 hours, and you can continually retrigger it as many times as you want during that time by expending a standard action. I could see an argument being made to ready an action to transform the bugs when they come into range as they dive bomb the opponent, but even if that works, the caster is going to be awfully close to ground zero.
So no falling horses from 200 feet above. Sad face.
Just do something to get a fly speed first, then go 200 feet up before casting.
As far as I can tell this would work actually. I can't see anything in the rules text that says it wouldn't. The creatures would certainly die on impact (excess damage in this case will carry over to their normal form's HP pool) but they were fine being summoned into battle to possibly die anyway so I don't see what changes, they'd probably still be considered willing considering they are summoned creatures under control of the caster. And the spell states they retain the transmuted form for the duration (24h) or until dropped to zero hit points, and does not state the creatures would revert when leaving the spell area.
Well fuck me. I don't want that to work, but I think it does. I can't argue a reason it wouldn't. Have fun carpet bombing your enemies with horses, I guess.
except that elephants are size Huge, and you can only make Large creatures with Animal Shapes.
:)
Hippos work, trade some size for extreme violence from the ones that survive the drop.
They're probably all much closer than an elephant length right? So them all turning into elephants would cause the size of the swarm to instantly and violently expand, possibly ejecting some of the outer ones at great speed and endangering everyone within a considerable difference.
It's a little more violent than that. It's a small nuke going off.
So you're saying it's a pressurized pachyderm propulsor? An elephant ejecting explosion? A hephalump hurling horde? I like it, and I definitely like the potential for kinetic chaos.
It’s not perfect, but my ruling would be the “swarm” of locusts count as one animal, so they’d still get an elephant falling on the BBEG, but it’s not ridiculous.
"Due to the close proximity of the insects to each other the whole swarm explodes into a mist of blood and parts of elefant carcasses raining down all over the battlefield. Time for everyone to roll..."
You can't roll a reflex save against elephant matter coming at you at the speed of light.
Why the speed of light? Because the amount of pressure from compressing the elephants into that small area is the energy of a small nuke.
I mean, you can roll a reflex save against a fireball that you're at the center of, so reflex saves just don't make sense.
Closer to the speed of sound than the speed of light. But still a dang quick wave of blood coming at you!
Or they are forced apart and cover such a large area they fall on everyone
Elephants fall everyone dies
That's like a mass driver event.
Buzzkill DM: Locusts, even under the loose control of a druid, are not intelligent enough to be "willing" to be transformed, so they can't be targeted by animal shapes, rules as written.
Better DM: That's cool as hell. Do it.
Best DM: I'll allow it, but you better start watching the skies from here on out. If you can do it, then the enemy can too.
Pedantic DM: Okay, you've successfully turned all the "inects" into elephants. All zero of them, because "inects" and "insects" aren't the same thing.
I wouldn't make enemies do the same trick. Rather, I'd look for other cool tricks for the enemies to pull on the players.
Lol just have the elephants roll initiative. They will attack everyone. Mass chaos.
Thinking quickly, the BBEG casts Berserker and Shield Bubble as AoE spells in the sky above him.
While he does suffer considerable damage once they all hit the ground, the enraged elephants do not. Now the battlefield has hundreds of larger-than-life bucky balls rolling in every direction.
Each player must flip a coin before every turn to determine if they successfully dodged the latest pachydermian steamroller barreling towards them with reckless abandon.
I like it.
Well, the ones that survive the fall damage, anyway.
It seems to me that the insects from Insect Plague are a magical effect and not creatures that can be defeated or altered.
Furthermore, even if they were actual locusts as per the spell, they would be unwilling to turn into elephants and plummet to their deaths.
So. There is an insect swarm 200' above the BBEG's head and the druid is trying to cast an 8th level spell with no legitimate targets.
Paladin, you're up.
I mean the spell says it conjures locusts. I don’t see any reason to think otherwise.
The second bit is more interesting since locusts almost certainly aren’t capable of understanding or consenting to a spell effect and don’t know they would die if they participated. But I would rule all creatures that can’t understand enough to consent automatically reject such magic.
There's nothing in the verbiage that lets you fight off the insects in any way. Fireball it? There's still locusts everywhere. Didn't even thin out the cloud.
Maybe if a summoned swarm of insects had mass charm or mass suggestion cast on it to cause the insects to obey, I'd allow that although it clearly bends the rules even at that point.
Animal Shapes, as another pointed out, has a range of 30 ft, so either the elephants can't fall as far or more shenanigans need to be added. (Distant Spell, if it can be obtained, still only makes that 60 ft.)
And Animal Shapes has a range of 30 ft