You could also be an actual monk. As a ranger you would probably already have high WIS and DEX, with just one level in monk you get unarmored defense that gives you AC = 10 + DEX modifier + WIS modifier, probably a lot more than what you can get from wearing armor.
@@TheClericCornerwhen I first heard of swarm keepers, my first thought was “DR. BEES”, starting combat by making surrounding terrain difficult (but make it look like normal grass with flowers, even inside buildings, and then use your swarm to solve the problem of an encounter woefully underpopulated by bees
I absolutely ADORE the flavor potential of the Swarmkeeper. Rangers in general are cool, but Swarmkeeper in particular could be: Sand-bending desert wanderer Excessively flamboyant hippie surrounded by flower petals Necromancer with a plague-bringer vibe, using insects and rats Necromancer with a Twisted Disney Princess vibe, with a swarm of undead fairies Non-Twisted Disney Princess, with fairies, birds, and similar
Other options: Dhampir with swarm of bats for extra edgy-ness and dracula flavor (make sure to ask santa-DM for a Cloak of the Bat as the cherry on top). Samurai/Onna-musha with a cloud of razor-sharp sakura petals following you for a mistical Lady Snowblood/Kill Bill vibe.
My favorite so far was my Disney princess SK Ranger. "All the precious creatures of the forest" would come to her aid whenever she needed it. We were playing Curse of Strahd so impossibly cute forest critters popping out of seemingly nowhere and everywhere kinda became a running gag with the players. It's a thing of beauty when a charging werewolf gets juked by Bambi's dad charging through or pecked apart by a swarm of happy little bluebirds. Barovia was never the same.
I played a deep Gnome SwarmKeeper that had fireflies as their swarm. Was a guide to a safe haven in the Underdark. Uses the fireflies like rope lights.
A vampire swarm keeper who can disappear in a cloud of bats. Classic one. I’m preparing a list of Orzhov character and these reflavoring are helping me a lot. Thank you so much from Spain!!
Im gonna leave some predictions. Lets See how many i can guess - Someone who controls Elements (propably Wind. Maybe Earth or Water) - legally distinct Magneto - Someone who pushes people around via Sheer Strength - legally distinct Jedi (a.k.a a telekinetic) - Someone who uses Gravity Magic/Powers (i.e. dunamancy from Exandria)
I have a Swarkeeper for our Curse of Strahd game: She is designedto be close to Nature. Having a "one sacrifice for the greater good" mindset, putting her Clan and Swarm always on first place even if she is alone in the wildernes. Lotusden Halfling. Twigblight swarm. (Spoiler: as the grasp of strahd weakens the swarms true form emerge --> Pixies) She is a lost scout for her wandering nomad Clan of Halfling. Due to her kindness and lonelyness in the wilderness playfull Pixies took a liking on her. and started following and careing for her as she cared for them. Quirks: Always refers to herself as "We" always including the Swarm in every decision. Not using "I / myself" Hickups on being frightened
I absolutely love swarm keeper. My ranger was essentially cast out of time due to a bit of an accident, and spent about 30 years trying to get back. To do so he used essentially time travelling bugs that look like gloworms to do so. When he teleports by way of this, my DM flavoured it that he steps out of the timeline and re-enters. The spells are quite easy to flavour in this way. Add into this my DM adding a "time stop" rule where my ranger can permanently expend HP to pause time (it's flavoured that the effort of locally stopping time literally begins to rip you apart), and it's a really really fun character!
How about a swarm that is part of your own body? Like long hair or Dr Octopus style tentacles that emerge. Makes for a great visual when you get the small fly speed and hover to picture your animated hair holding you aloft.
I love the idea of the earth bender swarmkeeper, especially if you can pick up magic initate for druid spells like Magic Stones, Mold Earth, and Tremor.
I once had this idea for a Swarmkeeper that was really a bunch of forest animals using a big hat and a trenchcoat to go around as an adventurer. I used the warforged for that flavor at first, and I never got to actually use that character in a campaign
I like the idea of a Fairy Swarmkeeper with a whole tribe of Pixies hiding beneath their clothes. Making them look larger than they actually are and acting as singular being until combat starts.
An idea for a Swarmkeeper I've wanted to try is a Disney Princess, whose swarm is a bunch of friendly mice, birds, and other fluffy critters that follow her singing.
As someone playing a Swarmkeeper in a campaign I very much like this one. My ranger's swarm is a flock of spectral ravens that follow him around due to a curse on his family from the raven queen that he is trying to unravel.
Taking a page from Elden Ring, I replaced my swarm with wind magic like the Banished Knights. The extra damage from the "swarm" even works if you imagine it as something like an injection knife, forcing air into the wounds and opening them up even more
This is great. I built out a character that had a couple levels of swarm keeper and used a cinder swarm (small elementals). They were able to refill their ranks after taking damage by awakening cinders and embers from campfires during a rest or just from damaged items that caught fire during combat.
So, this video REALLY helped with an old character concept I had very early in 5e. Reflavoring the swarm helps SO much with this concept of an assassin who uses ashes and burned remains for killing targets. Probably my edginess character, but still a favorite of mine I still always wanted to make work with the idea I had in mind. Rebuilt the dude 10 times over trying to make the idea work, but think this is what I needed to sorta bring back the original vision!
@@TheClericCorner Hey thanks~ It's really fun thinking of a character concept and seeing how you can make it work in d&d, just like how a lot of people try to make their favorite fictional characters in the system. Hope to see you do stuff like this more! Bet there are a lot of subclasses that people haven't thought to reflavor like you did here!
I absolutely love the flavor potential of the Swarmkeeper! For a one shot, I once played a Stars druid/Swarmkeeper ranger where my swarm was made up of small wisps
I'm playing a Swarmkeeper in my current game. Her entire gimmick is she has a horde of Chwinga, who stay alongside her constantly. They're the comedic relief of the group, always getting up to antics and hijinks on their own, ranging from mock trials to wrestling matches. And in combat, they all form up like a tiny mute military troop, assaulting the tall folk Gulliver's Travels style with miniature siege weapons, with one dubbed "The Commander" wearing a helmet with a riding crop and directing the rest of them around. It's really funny having a bad guy be taken down by a pint-sized ballista, and then be tied down with tiny ropes while a Chwinga silently barks orders to their companions.
I like the fiend one cause it gave me the idea to do a Legion type character, like the one from the Bible, You're only 1 soul in a swarm of many demons, those demons can form into Imps and such but You're essentially a living hive mind, perhaps partway through the campaign, you can be forcefully purified, or maybe you made a pact with this demonic hive to gain power to do some task, it'd be interesting to see the growth of this character, especially if there's a cleric who finds a way to purify them, making them switch subclass
This video was the first I've seen of yours and it was great! I really like the topic of reskinning and I'll give some more of your videos a watch. Thanks!
I like the idea of the swarm being shadow. Darkness gathers around the character as he hides and stealth’s like a cloak made of shadow. Likewise the shadows could gather on his face and close in around an NPC he is attempting to intimidate
I definitely played a crazy cat lady, swarm keeper (Half elf because stats) She caused a lot of chaos She knitted a lot (still hasn’t confirmed nor denied whether or not her yarn is from her cats) And when she finally got those flying cats, she was so ecstatic
A personal favourite of mine is the swarm being the ranger. I played a character that was a swarm of spiders, they ate an adventurer and while doing that also gained his some of his memories, received a consciousness and shared a mind. They were a hivemind of spiders thinking they were "Average Joe". They were fully covered in order to conceal their biology and their goal was to become human again. I used a modified Dhampir as the race as almost all of its features work for a spider swarm and added the ability to squeeze through tight spaces if I remember it was like 1 minute for 5 feet and you had to strip everything off. You can also do really cool flavour stuff with your spells by making them all spider based, Ensnaring Strike restraines enemies with web, Web is well web, Faerie Fire is spiders sticking to the target and so on. It's also fun to have this big secret and trying to hide it from your party while dropping little hints like some crawling sounds, quenstionable morales and confusing past about "their" old party.
Reminds me of this character concept that I toyed with a bit. A deep gnome swarmkeeper ranger with a winter theme. Her swarm was a bunch of snowflakes.
My Disney princess swarmkeeper who uses a swarm of little forest critters was incredibly fun! It's amazing to see a beautiful young woman singing and dancing across the battlefield while her enemies are being damaged and shoved around by a hoard of bluebirds and chipmunks made for great theater-of-the-mind.
Swarmkeeper gives me both the dark knight vigilante with a bat swarm vibes and the fairy tail vibes all at the same time. Flavor potential is S tier. Swarm could be bats, bees, fairies, will o whisps, nanomachines, drones etc.
The Will-o-Whisps one is really cool, since they're the souls of actual evil people who didn't passed on. So imagine how much of creep you need to be to keep them in line and get them to work with you! Like a spitefull warlord and whoever hits you first in combat you cast hunters mark on them to reflect how cruel and quick to anger they are. Or if you want to get more specific, you could be a hobgoblin warlord or captain and your Will-o-Whisps are your most trusted subordinates.
@@nicolaezenoaga9756 plus as you defeat enemies in combat, your swarm increases (flavor) by one more. Force them to pay you back for the arrogance of getting in your way :)
For my Swarmkeeper Ranger, I’d use the “Reborn” lineage from Ravenloft and the “Golgari Agent” from Ravnica. An undead warrior who uses the magic of spores and fungus to carry out missions of his faction.
I used swarmkeeper to make Vivien Raid from MTG but a bit more spectral. Each animal spirit was a dead person that seeked her help offering a bit of power to avange or give final rest to him. Each spell and abilities was a animal. Her background was haunted one and she was the supernatural gift from ravenloft that gives messenges and the person is haunted.
A Swarm Keeper i really wanna play for Curse of Strahd would be a character whose brother is infected with vampirism, they travel together and in fight or flight situations they becomes a swarm of bats that my character could control.
This series is so awesome! I spend so much time looking for homebrews (which is fun) but this is such a unique and exciting way of looking at RAW- thank you!!
I once made a Swarmkeeper reflavored to be more like a Psi Warrior Fighter. He doesn’t have a swarm. Instead, most of his subclass features are psionics. When you hit a creature, Gathered Swarm lets you deal piercing damage to them or try to push them in any horizontal direction, or lets you move 5 feet by the swarm, which won’t provoke opportunity attacks. But for my ranger, the bonus piercing damage is him accelerating the weapon with telekinesis to have more oomph behind it, the forced movement is a force push, and the self-movement is a telekinetic self-propulsion. Swarmkeeper magic gives you spells at certain levels. Here’s how I’d reflavor them: Mage Hand: My Ranger has the Telekinetic feat, which lets him cast Mage Hand and make the hand invisible, but the feat also enhances Mage Hand’s range if you already know Mage Hand. So, yeah. It’s just telekinesis. Faerie Fire: Psionics are sometimes associated with glowing energy. This is that, on your enemies. Web: Mystical chains that bind a creature that steps into the area. Don’t ask me how they’re flammable, though, I don’t know either. Gaseous Form: My ranger just uses psionics to cast a pretty standard gaseous form. Which I guess is technically reflavoring, as I think the original flavor is meant to be turning into part of your swarm. Arcane Eye: Psionics and extended senses go hand in hand a lot of the time. Insect Plague: The spell does piercing damage in a sphere, which becomes lightly obscured difficult terrain. Toss a bunch of your arrows in the air and use telekinesis to have them swirl around in a sphere.
Heeeeeeck yeah, I commented in your other video about making a "Shadow-Boxer" who misunderstood the term shadow-boxing and accidentally became able to manipulate shadows to fight! (swarmkeeper Ranger with Twin Crossbows + the CBM feat). This subclass has so much crazy reflavor potential.
Rat king. SK ranger multiclass with 2 levels in druid for wild shape. It plays best in city sewers or dungeons and caves, where rats can be communed with and controlled via animal handling and spells for espionage, Intel gathering, disruption, infiltration and exploitation.
My current character, Spidel, is a Thri-Kreen (reflavored as a spider) (who is only humanoid because of a magic ritual done by his mother on him) and his mother was killed in the crossfire in a raid by some paladins. His swarm is his tens of thousands of brothers and sisters (normal spiders, except slightly magical from the power of nature and are sentient) he saved from the raid, all of which he individually has a sibling bond with. The effects he does at range with the swarm are reflavored as the Spiders flying on a crossbow bolt with a web connected to the crossbow to retreat after biting the enemy. He is really powerful (Dual Wielding hand crossbows with a shield, with an extra hand to do Somatic Components and load crossbow bolts), and the flavor is pretty cool as well.
I'm currently running a swarmkeeper using the reborn lineage as a race. His swarm is a bunch of flies and they come from inside of him. The mental image that led me to the idea was the old Candyman movie, except with flies instead of bees.
One of my friends, who I've been playing D&D with for years, played a Swarmkeeper Ranger. He flavored his Ranger's Swarm as birds and it was pretty neat to seeing as they were so big there were only two or three of them at a time, and I just thought was cool, especially when he'd describe one of the birds merging with the arrowhead for the Gathered Swarm extra damage. But some of these options are just really cool. Not the biggest Ranger player, being a Bard or Sorc, guy but the flavor might just sway me yet.
Doing a Halloween themed a two shot this and next week. Rolling up lvl 5 char for the mini campaign. Thinking a jack-o-lantern swarm summoning ranger might fit the theme nicely.
3:18 building off the elemental concept a little, instead of going down the “Avatar” route I was thinking of “One piece” and the logia devil fruit users.On paper being a plasmoid but in game you’re a person made out of one of these elements: fire, water, smoke , sand
This also kinda implied that you take damage differently (at least in my head) because I imagine having a sand man body id need to be somewhat concentrated on maintaining a physical human looking form
Great ideas. I went with the classics though, when I built an incarnation of one of the apocalyptic riders: Famine. Picked Dhampir for the insatiable hunger vibe, and Swarmkeeper Ranger for the on-brand locust swarm. TBH, not the most cheerful of characters, but a kick-ass concept IMO.
Hey. Well done on passing 6k subs! I know the idea has been done a million times. But I like the idea of a rat swarm. A rat king on a living throne of rats which carry you around. That idea is fun enough, but add conjure animals to that idea. I know that conjure animals can only summon up to 8 animals of 1/4cr. But I would allow 8 rat swarms (1/4cr) to be summoned with conjure animals at my table. So 3-5 levels in swarm keeper ranger, then the rest of the way with druid (I know spores would be very thematic. But I like Shepard druid for this idea). You could possibly even exploit movement speed in combat. 8 summoned animals grappling you and moving you on their turn. Or just using them to grapple enemies and allies. Since it's technically forced movement, the rats could be used like a disengage action for your party or your self. Im getting off topic, lol. Great video.
Thank you so much! So nice! And I would absolutely agree with you! Allowing to summon rat swarms is incredibly thematic. Sure the idea has been done, but like how you added to it!
I’m actually working on a concept that I feel Swarmkeeper is the best option for. The child of a Vampire Hunter and a Vampire (or another human who had yet to fully turn Vamp), meaning either a Dhampir or a Variant Human with a feat that grants Vampire-like abilities, such as Fae Touched (exploding into Bats to teleport, with Gift of Alacrity for your vampiric speed), Shadow Touched (going invisible, and using illusions, or even an Inflict Wounds that is a bite), a Magic Initiate feat for Charm Person, or something like Alert, just to name a handful. Due to their vampiric heritage, they have an affinity for bats. So their swarm is a bunch of little bats that hang out around the ranger, who is both raised to hunt monsters like Vampires, but just wants to help people, even the undead. Still tweaking the backstory but I already love this character who’s of 2 Worlds.
I am doing a swarmkeeper that uses a dark black mist that originates from a shadow like creature she had a contract with. I like imagine it's making her a bit of a specter or shadow.
I have a few Swarmkeeper ideas: one is a beekeeper who keeps their bees alive and in return all bees have an affinity with them and if need be join his swarm when called upon. my other idea is more specific, he goes by Nightjar: an Aarakocra part of the brewers guild who wandered too far into the Feywilde looking for ingredients for his liquors and spirits, got cursed into being plagued by Twig blights who he brought to heel and now uses as his swarm, and when they fall in battle, he picks them up and distills them, making a hallucinogenic spirit that only he has the secret recipe for, selling it at a premium. he employees guild security and law protection to keep his proprietary secret from getting out.
Another Swarmkeeper Variant: The Pack Rat. Instead of a swarm of animals, they animate the ever expanding pile of random garbage that they collect. Perfect for players who keep jamming everything they find into their bag of holding.
My Swarmkeeper Ranger has a swarm made of ice and snow. So I'm in an Icewindale campaign and recently got to level 3. My ranger has a deep hatred of Auril and the endless winter she brought, along with all the monsters the storms have brought in. So the very lands of Icewindale have taken a fragment of the winters power and given it to him. His mage hand is a snow hand, the swarm turn into ice spikes when doing additional damage. Spells have a snow and winter theme to them (eg Fairy Fire has an aurora borealis effect)
i like the idea of the spirit guardians swarm, i made a concept of a green hair half-elf with her fox companion, but was having trouble on how to fit the swarm concept, now i can just say that the fox is a single spirit (green like my hair) that follow me and acts like a familiar, but when the battle starts she "clone" or "divide" herself to make the swarm
When I heard of the class, I immediately thought of Gaara from Naruto. His sand fits offense, defense, and even flying. I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking out of the box with the swarm.
I'm doing a flower witch with a bee swarm. Think Dani from Midsommar covered in flowers and bees. My idea is that her magic makes you hallucinate. So is that swarm actually making a giant hand in the sky? Is it actually making her fly? Did that flower girl actually just teleport or are you hallucinating? Then you realize too late that the bee stings and daggers are all too real
OMG I LOVE THIS! SO many ideas to reflavour the swarm.... minds racing. why? why would you do this to me? combination of Zookeeper & Elemental with Mephits! i got an idea: a Warforged being the home of a fey queen bee. surviving, growing stronger and rebuilding her colony within. the colony growing is represented in levelling up and again new features and abilities as you have more bees in your swarm
I dont know why but a swarmkeeper that controls worms sounds awesome to me. Edit: This was my inspiration for that concept ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-HaCMgQm8VAw.htmlfeature=shared
For the longest time I’ve been really wanting to play a swarmkeeper who’s truly disgusting, just really gross, so his swarm is flies that he’s just grown accustomed to having buzzing around him
It also says that it can shift dependent upon your mood it’s all up to you what you choose for your swarm so you could have so you could have something innocent and cute looking in town and not then in battle the terrifying and dangerous in battle
To me, Swarmkeeper feels like it would work really well as a basic Air Master ranger. All the features lend to mobility or damage, and the spell list is just air pushing and pulling things. Obviously Swarms lend to a more diverse character base, but Air feels like a well-used glove fitting on the hand
My Swarmkeeper Ranger (that died within 2 sessions of getting their subclass) was a Fungus themed one, with her swarm being a bunch of decomposer bugs like maggots, flies, cockroaches! She was really fun to play and it was a pity they died within like 5/6 sessions xD
While its probably out of the bounds of things, having a swarm of kobolds doesn't sound so bad, maybe their taken up like so many critters adopted as party mascots before them and keep them out of trouble; carrying away their master in times of danger or fighting alongside them when combat comes up.
Love this! Would love to see your flavor ideas for clockwork soul sorcerers. They are one I have trouble finding concepts that interest me but I love how the subclass works
Not solely hexblade, but I'm planning a divine soul sorcerer/hexblade that's a Scourge Aasimar. His guide/patron is a Solar who is lending him a greatsword for his pact weapon. I'm thinking a 14/6 split, mostly divine soul. And reflavoring the specter as the soul having a chance to redeem itself. Although sorlock can be OP, I think keeping it in melee with lower health due to sorc should even that out but with GWM it won't fall to far behind in dpr. Most spell slots would be for shield/absorb elements, spiritual weapon and for concentration have spiritual guardians/summon celestial. That leaves meta magic for quickening green flame blade. And warlock spell slots for smites.
My reflavor of a Swarmkeeper may not be unique and in hindsight resembles Elise from League of Legends. A Dhampir (mechanically) spider humanoid (was it via curse or monster attack, etc? That is the question) the swarm are spiders, the small flight by the swarm is by strings of silk which are so fine they are difficult to see and yet durable. Also the Ranger spells fit with this idea very well. Casting Web and conjure animals of course lol and Guardian of Nature and the racial bonus spider climb. *Spider-Ranger Spider-Ranger Does whatever a spider can*
My friend is converting Elden Ring into 5e and I'm already thinking about using the fingercreepers as a swarm. hehe. just some disembodied hands off to do their master's will.
I would love some drunk ranger with all kind of bottles with booze around you, taking some sips in between turns. Then when you get a health potion it just gets added to the other bottles.
