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[Criptfeind]

I don't know what a level 20 fighter is actually doing fighting infinite ravens, but they probably have high enough ac and miss chance to dodge a majority of hits. They'll probably kill 5 ravens a turn or so.... From attacks and aoos. So it'd probably take more then 200 in a straight up fight. And the fighter might potentially have the regen to just take them forever... But otherwise yeah eventually they'd be able to kill the fighter, assuming he didn't somehow retreat or hide or something.

[GiglameshDespair]

If the level 20 fighter has adamantine armour he's literally unhurtable by the ravens, as it grants dr 3/-.

[smjjames]

You know, Vaarsuvius going off alone is the perfect time for those three fiends to sneak in a 'time steal' or whatever they're calling it.

[Arcvasti]

No wonder everyone says fighters suck.

Eh, that's mostly because wizards have access to a bunch of things that straight-up incapicitate people while not allowing saving throws[Ray of Enfeeblement and Forcecage are the big ones I remember] or while targetting peoples' weak saving throws[Dominate Person, Otiluke's Resilient Sphere]. All this on top of several effects that make them very hard to hurt without magic of your own[Divination magic, Fly, basically any illusion spell]. There are some feats and builds that help to some extent, but Otiluke's Resilient Sphere in particular is straight-up invulnerable to non-magical damage and checks Reflex saves, which aren't that good for Fighters.

[Criptfeind]

It also has to do that just a straight up fighter without anything fancy, just taking the basic feats and spending wbl on basic gear actually falls behind monsters stat wise at appropriate CR. Of course you can optimize some which helps to a greater or lesser degree. But a core spellcaster or even like, a core rogue, simply has a lot better options for dealing with simple bog standard fights. Just like at say, Triceratops, which is your bog standard pile of meat monster. It has way more hp then a fighter of the same level, does probably quite a bit more damage, yeah it's AC is crap but it has enough of an attack bonus to probably be hitting the fighting just as easily as it's getting hit. A spellcaster, even in core, is going to have plenty of ways to go toe to toe with this thing and a few instant wins, a rogue will have some useful skills to try to tilt the fight towards himself and can throw out fistfuls of d6 at least. The bog standard beat stick fighter just hits and gets hit until one of them dies, and it's honestly probably the fighter. When all you bring to the table is being a pile of meat with a sword it really sucks when your fighting bigger piles of meat with bigger swords. It's just really sad to be an unoptimized fighter.

[MrWiggles]

Swarms in pathfinder, are immune to most damages. They need to be hit with an action that has an area effect.

[Mathel]

So bog standard fighters and swarms. Can we get a fighter to fight 1000 mosquitoes?

Also, with the immunity to damage, does that apply even to swarms of stuff like ravens, which could be hit by a weapon.

I have no idea what would the 3 fiends accomplish by using some of the time they get to own Varsaavius now. Yes, they would delay him, but according to current knowldge it would not hurt the party much.
They would hurt the party much more by taking him over at the start of the fight with the giants.

[Culise]

So bog standard fighters and swarms. Can we get a fighter to fight 1000 mosquitoes?

Sure. That's when we try to argue with the GM that Great Cleave should work on individual mosquitoes within a swarm.

[hops]

A good fighter would just ask the wizard to set the swarm on fire.

[Mathel]

That reminds me of a wizard who wanted to lure flies using a rotting corpse, so he could shoot them with magic missiles for XP.
(It was in a homebrew campain I run.) He did not even think about setting the swarms on fire with his fire spell (he had one.)

[Criptfeind]

Also, with the immunity to damage, does that apply even to swarms of stuff like ravens, which could be hit by a weapon.

Can't tell you about pathfinder but in 3.5 I think typically a swarm made of tiny creatures takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons and and swarms made of smaller creatures take no weapon damage. There are a few ways past this. Torches do a minuscule amount of fire damage. Weapons enchanted with energy damage do their energy damage still (although that's typically not a lot.) I feel like there's ways to transform weapon damage into energy damage, although I can't recall any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's an enchant or something somewhere that'd do it, which would probably be your best bet for beating a swarm to death with a weapon.

[MrWiggles]

Also, with the immunity to damage, does that apply even to swarms of stuff like ravens, which could be hit by a weapon.

Can't tell you about pathfinder but in 3.5 I think typically a swarm made of tiny creatures takes half damage from slashing and piercing weapons and and swarms made of smaller creatures take no weapon damage. There are a few ways past this. Torches do a minuscule amount of fire damage. Weapons enchanted with energy damage do their energy damage still (although that's typically not a lot.) I feel like there's ways to transform weapon damage into energy damage, although I can't recall any off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's an enchant or something somewhere that'd do it, which would probably be your best bet for beating a swarm to death with a weapon.

Well in Pathfinder they take no damage from slashing, piercing(sp) or bashing (or the harder way to spell it). And they take no damage from any spell which targets a single creature. The framing, is that its a swarm. You cannot defeat it in any meaningful amount of time by killing it one at a time. So while sure, you swing the sword into a swarm and you are defaintly killing some of them, you aren't killing enough of them at once for it to really matter. The same for magic missile ect. I happen to know a but, because we were playing a horror campaign, and uh... 4 level 2 character couldnt take out one swarm of rats.  Nearly killed all of us. We came back at it when we were level 3, and we had viles of stuff to set a square on fire, and therefore set the rats on the square on fire. ANd we nearly died anyway and our half vampire palading thingy nearly died to the rat fevor disease thing they have. But we did manage to break the floor safe from dropping it from the high tower the rats were living.

[Akura]

This comic runs on 3.5e rules(with... modifications for plot), not Pathfinder.

This is the swarm page for the 3.5e SRD(see this as well). Swarms cannot be hurt be weapons or single-target effects(like magic missile), but take an extra 50% from area effects(fireball). Using a torch as a weapon still deals 1d3 fire damage a hit, and weapons that do energy damage(such as a flaming sword) do the full energy damage per hit(but not the weapon's damage). They do not attack(or make AoO), but instead enter their opponent's space(provoking AoO from opponent) and do automatic damage(no attack roll) at the end of their move action.

[scriver]

That's really why swarms doesn't really work as a concept with rodent or bird sized animals. For the "you kill with every strike but it doesn't matter" to make sense with animals bigger than insects they'd have to be truly enveloping in numbers and compacity. A swarm of rats would have to be described more like a tidal wave or an avalanche. A normal murder of crows or just a large bunch of rats wouldn't really do.

[Mathel]

Also, I do not think that swarm of any Tiny creature could get through Full Plate (Including greaves, gauntlets, boots and helm.) They do not have enough strength to punch through and they are too big to ignore it. Against rat swarm, having chain mail (again including pants, gloves, boots and some sort of helm with visor) should be sufficient. They could weight you down, but not actually hurt you.