Role-playing Games Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for gamemasters and players of tabletop, paper-and-pencil role-playing games. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I ran into a monster that I'm thinking of using next session. It's the scarab swarm from the Sandstorm Book. The creature's entry reads the following type:
SCARAB SWARM, DEATH Diminutive Undead (Swarm)
It is a swarm of undead bugs. So my question is, would the cleric be able to turn this swarm as a normal undead monster?
Yes. Turn/Rebuke Undead states:
Turning undead is a supernatural ability that a character can perform as a standard action. It does not provoke attacks of opportunity.
You must present your holy symbol to turn undead. Turning is considered an attack. You turn the closest turnable undead first, and you can’t turn undead that are more than 60 feet away or that have total cover relative to you. You don’t need line of sight to a target, but you do need line of effect.
The link to "undead" from that directly links to the undead "type".
So the only requisites for the target is that they are within 60 feet, you have LOE, and are "undead" (i.e. of type 'undead')
So the turn should work perfectly well.
Assuming that nothing else prevents the cleric from turning a given swarm -for example, not having enough dice- the fact that it's a swarm won't prevent the cleric from turning it either.
A swarm is a single creature in D&D. The collective essentially takes on its own quasi-existence, independent of but coterminous with the creatures that comprise it: a hive-mind, collective unconscious, or whatever you want to call it. This single creature is what the cleric turns. The creatures that comprise the swarm (scarabs, in this case) merely follow the swarm, because that's what swarming creatures do: technically you haven't turned any one scarab, but because you turned the swarm, the scarabs act as if turned.
In theory you could use the mob rules to turn large groups of bigger creatures -say, an entire zombie horde- as a single creature, but the CR for something like that should probably be really, really high: best left to epic levels.
Your monster have a HD that is not from each individual but from the swarm. That amount of scarabs together create the HD that your Cleric must turn. You only have to make sure that the Cleric have the necessary level to turn that monster, changing the amount of scarabs that the swarm have.
Libris Mortis (Oct. 2004) on Undead Swarms and Turning says
Because undead swarms are made up of many weak undead creatures, they are more vulnerable to turning than normal undead. For all purposes related to a turning check or turning damage, treat the undead swarm as having only one-half (50%) of its normal Hit Dice. Add any turn resistance only after halving the swarm’s HD. (82)
Thereafter follows an example incorporating a corpse rat swarm (92-3).
However, Sandstorm (March 2005) includes the Challenge Rating 7 death scarab swarm (184-5) without reprinting these rules from Libris Mortis. A DM that ignores Libris Mortis's rules and, instead, for example, treats the swarm as a single undead entity of the creature's listed Hit Dice (an impressive twelve) will see the swarm much more easily resist the turn attempts of the typical clerics challenging it.
I can't see why not. They're of the Undead creature type. A cleric's Turn Undead ability should definitely work.
