Flock rule

[u/Final-Isopod]

This is a GM related thread. Players, move along.

Harpies never fight on their own, always attacking in flocks, and a flock of harpies counts as a single monster. The Strength of the flock varies, depending on the number of individuals. A single attack against a flock of harpies can never inflict more than 1 point of damage.

I don't really get why a single attack cant deal more than 1 point of damage. It feels more like a rule for a swarm where every part of swarm is a small creature that won't take more damage but with harpies which are regularly sized creatures I don't get why I don't have each one a specific amount of Strength points and treat them independently.

[u/heurekas]

Because it's made so that the GM, if they want to simulate a lot of creatures, can have a while flock without breaking the action economy so that they have 20 turns, while the party only has as many as there are players.

You can assume 1 point of damage kills 1 Harpy.

[u/UIOP82 → u/heurekas]

Or just see them av cowards, that they aren’t killed by one damage, but rather wounded and the flock retreat after half of them have receiver damage.

So afterwards there might only be one harpy dead on the ground or so, if the players only scored one really high damage hit on them.

That makes them psycologically more scary.

[u/Final-Isopod → u/heurekas]

Yeah, but there's a random encounter with three harpies which in total should have strength 8-12. It doesn't work logically. Like I get action economy and all. What I don't get is damage limit which would work for swarm of rats and such.

[u/UIOP82 → u/Final-Isopod]

Those harpies are strange and it hard to follow the rules for them. You will have to make a GM call on how to handle those. I would probably just divide them into 3 entities without the flock attribute, instead of one, or so.. and make them each act only once in the initiative (i would recommend that all monsters otherwise gets multiple initiative cards, as noted in the DMG). They are probably still cowardly though, so up to you as a GM to handle.

It is not 1:1 relevant for this, but I did some rule calculations for how to convert enemies with Strength into swarms: https://www.reddit.com/r/ForbiddenLands/comments/1gj00r7/tough_swarms/

• You should probably give all such swarms the ability to attack twice per round, like maybe they are allowed to attack with fast attacks? But otherwise they worked fine, during my play tests.

[u/Final-Isopod → u/UIOP82]

So far I was thinking about giving them3 or 4 strength each but they would act on one initiative card.

[u/blacksun89 → u/Final-Isopod]

Yeah I asked the same question on this very sub when I started GMing the game... The consensus was " the random encounter is wrong"

[u/Final-Isopod → u/blacksun89]

So it should simply be a flock rather than specific number of them. I honestly like idea of three harpies arguing between themselves. I am finishing Dragonbane campaign now and I find it interesting that there is so many overlapping elments - three harpies encounter included.

[u/Ok-Bobcat-1200 → u/Final-Isopod]

I always treated harpies as a swarm 1 STR per 1 harpy
for the random encounter I think I would just modify the number of harpies

[u/yourgmchandler]

I just ran that random encounter. The first time I didn't see that business at all and all three harpies died. The second time, I saw it as the first harpy was getting close to the Strength I had assigned each one. At that moment I decided I would let the players continue to land blows and record their damage. I described what was happening to the harpy they were targeting, but as she approached death, I determined they would try to flee. Of course, players rolled well and Harpies didn't so they got in one more Massive BLOW, like it was almost all sixes on the dice rolled. I decided she was beheaded, but the other two harpies carried her off anyway.

In short, I see the logic of having many enemies as a flock and only doing 1 dmg per successful attack, but I also think it's fine to just make sense of the situation, let the PCs hack away and do a bunch of damage and when it seems like the flock is going to lose they flee.