How tf do you deal with swarms

[Shuriko]

they're just immune to everything single-target? burning hands and fireball arent even enough to kill them outright

[Yannir]

Torches in the early game.

[hilburnashua]

Alchemist's fire and acid flasks to weaken them as they approach. Never, ever charge them. If they say something like infernal or demonic hit them with holy water as well.

[mk11]

Depends on the swarm. They have varying immunities. You need to read what they are.

For example, the spider swarms in Through The Ashes about the only thing you can use are the thrown flasks of which there are lots to be found. The rat swarms in Market Square you can just stand above them and shoot them with arrows.

[Ishan451]

Early game: Spread out so they can only pile onto one person, then hit them with Torches and Alchemist Bombs, plus AOE spells.

Midgame: Try to get them all to pile onto Seelah, as Paladin she should be immune to disease at that point and she probably has high enough AC to be barely hit by the Swarm. Then hit them with AoE Spells and Alchemist Bombs like Alchemist Fire and Acid Flasks.

[Silyon]

Originally posted by Ishan451:

Early game: Spread out so they can only pile onto one person, then hit them with Torches and Alchemist Bombs, plus AOE spells.

Midgame: Try to get them all to pile onto Seelah, as Paladin she should be immune to disease at that point and she probably has high enough AC to be barely hit by the Swarm. Then hit them with AoE Spells and Alchemist Bombs like Alchemist Fire and Acid Flasks.

Small nit-pick, Swarms ignore AC. Any creature the swarm ends it's turn on is auto-hit by it. DR can lower that damage, but the bonus conditions (usually Nauseated) are the real damage they do.

But yes, any AoE effects are what you use to kill swarms. Fire and Acid flasks early game, AoE spells, scrolls, and abilities later on. If you have the Last Sarkorian DLC, it also includes an amulet that lets melee-types bypass Swarm immunities and make you immune to the Nauseated effect they hit you with. Otherwise, difficulty slider; dropping below Core for the encounter turns off swarm immunities and let you hit them like any other enemy.

[Ishan451]

Originally posted by Silyon:

Small nit-pick, Swarms ignore AC.

It has been quite a while but when i fought a certain Swarm Boss and set Seelah as the primary Swarm target, but i believe i've seen Swarms miss attacks. I thus believe they don't use the PF1e automatic damage, but instead Touch AC in the video game.

[reidj062]

Originally posted by Shuriko:

they're just immune to everything single-target? burning hands and fireball arent even enough to kill them outright

With the Leper's Canyon ones, sheer melee damage is actually the key, counter-intuitive as that is. Particularly with bludgeoning weapons. Your fire spells won't do enough damage to bypass their resistance unless you have ascendant element already.

[Cursed Life]

The are way weaker than Kingmaker, luckly.

[Chunky]

The Act 3 ring you get from campaign mode is the easiest way. here are a couple tips:

- Itemization. Act 2 vendor sells bookworm's headband that makes you immune to vescavor confusion effect and a cape that gives you DR to swarms

- Act 3 Stevanius? ring. A ring made through campaign mode allows you to convert any character's physical damage to force as a free action, so all characters will do full damage to any swarm with physical attacks.

- Kiting. Kiting swarms through a selective blade barrier on real time with pause actually works fairly well.

- Save the fire storm scrolls from the glabrezus for situations when there are just too many of them.

[Uzkin]

Basically, the swarms are overtuned in the Pathfinder rules system. This game compensates for it by providing similarly overtuned items against them. In addition to the ones in the post above, there are swarmbane amulets from Ulbrig's dlc.

Edit. This is not new in cRPGs. For example, in BG2 the beholders (esp. the Elder Orbs and such) were absolutely ridiculous with their chain-gun insta-death gaze barrages but the game provided a couple of items that gave complete immunity to all of that (Cloak of Mirroring, Shield of Balduran, ...) which turned these near-impossible fights into free XP.

[reidj062]

If the swarms are overtuned and the items are overtuned, then neither is really overtuned, is it? It's just balanced. The difficulty of the encounter really depends on how aware you are of how to handle things. It's very hard to handle vivasector swarms if you don't have those items (which requires awareness of where to find them) and you don't read the stat block carefully. I made the mistake of focusing on fire AOEs for Leper's, which is usually common sense. But with the fact that they have fire and acid resistance of an ungodly level for that point, that's pointless unless you have ascendant element (and you only have 1 mythic level at that point). I found my tanks were more successful at dealing with the swarms then anything else, despite the damage handicaps swarms have.

[Uzkin]

That's why I said "in the Pathfinder rules system", and contrasted it with "this game".

[Yannir]

Originally posted by Uzkin:

Basically, the swarms are overtuned in the Pathfinder rules system. This game compensates for it by providing similarly overtuned items against them. In addition to the ones in the post above, there are swarmbane amulets from Ulbrig's dlc.

Edit. This is not new in cRPGs. For example, in BG2 the beholders (esp. the Elder Orbs and such) were absolutely ridiculous with their chain-gun insta-death gaze barrages but the game provided a couple of items that gave complete immunity to all of that (Cloak of Mirroring, Shield of Balduran, ...) which turned these near-impossible fights into free XP.

Tbh. I never found the Beholders in BG2 that difficult. Mind Flayers and Vampires caused way more issues to me.