Everything

Sometimes groups of animals attack en masse. A Technocrat might use special pheromone sprays to attract a swarm of wasps, crows, or rats and then sic them on a particular target, whereas a Dreamspeaker can accomplish the same goal by commanding the spirit of that type of animal.

Instead of trying to determine what each and every member of a pack or swarm does, simply roll to see if the swarm itself harms a character. The most common types of swarms are listed in the table below. Roll the listed damage dice pool once per turn (difficulty 6) and allow the characters to try to dodge or soak the result. Packs attack once per turn per target, and they act on the initiative given on the chart.

Characters that successfully dodge can move normally for the remainder of the turn. Otherwise, the swarm slows the character down to half his usual movement. If the swarm scores more than three health levels’ worth of damage in one turn (after the target soaks), or if the player botches an appropriate roll, the swarm knocks the character down and overruns him. At this point, the character can move only a yard or two per turn, and the swarm’s damage difficulty falls to 5. Efforts to get back up and continue moving have higher than normal difficulties (typically 7 or 8), depending upon how big the members of the swarm are.

The health levels listed reflect the amount of damage it takes to disperse a pack or swarm. An additional two health levels’ worth of damage destroys the attackers completely. Pistols, rifles, and small melee weapons (knives, brass knuckles, bottles, bare hands) inflict a single health level per strike, no matter how many attack or damage successes you roll — that is, the strike hits only one creature. Shotguns, submachine guns, and large melee weapons (swords, staves, boards, chainsaws) inflict normal damage (each damage success rolled eliminates one health level from the swarm as a whole), as do large-area attacks (Molotov cocktails, plasma gun bursts, gusts of wind, explosions). Swarms and packs don’t soak. Larger packs can attack two or more characters at once and can be attacked by all of them in return. Packs can also attack anyone who helps an overrun character. A normal human can outrun some packs or swarms (those consisting of rats or bugs) but can’t hope to outrun others (those consisting of hyenas or birds).

Swarms may also have stronger poison than usual, pass on rabies or other diseases, induce allergic reactions, or otherwise inflict substantially more damage than normal. For more about venom and toxicity, see “Drugs, Poisons, and Disease” in Mage 20, pp. 441-444.