I am trying to argue that Nauseated affects swarms (as a reult of the swarm being in a stinking cloud) but I am being told that Swarm Attack is not an action because it does not require an attack roll and the damage is just auromatic because the swarm stopped in your square. My argument is that the Swarm Attack is the action that does the automatic damage and a nauseated creature cannot do anything but take a move action.
Looking at RAW I can't see where swarms act unlike a normal entry in the bestiary with regard to action costs or where their attack is not actually an action.
Their attack is referred to as an attack in the swarm description but I was told that it doesn't count as an attack because it is not capitalized (except for the Swarm Attack description which doesn't count because it is "automatic").
Thinking about it outside of rules, a swarm is still a bunch of creatures that have to do something to inflict damage – rats bite, wasps sting, etc just like their larger bestiary entries. I understand why there is no attack roll – it would be impossible to defend against a swarm of hundreds to thousands of tiny or smaller creatures. But if the swarm didn't have to do anything to inflict damage then wouldn't it happen whenever something passed through the swarm not just on the swarm's turn?
I also found this forum thread and in the end it looks like the consensus is that the above is correct: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2qq0g?Stinking-cloud-on-swarms
Can somebody explain to me where I am wrong?
In the end it is not a huge deal for game play, but I would like to know where I am reading the rules incorrectly.
Best Answer
By default, attacks take an action. And nothing in the swarm rules specifically overrides this, so their attack should also take an action. Keep in mind that the swarm attack is listed as the monsters attack, not as a special quality or (Ex) ability.
If the writers had intended for a swarm to perform two move actions and attacks, they would have spelled this out more clearly. You can try to interpret the word "automatic" to mean that no action is needed; but since it appears in a discussion of how the swarm needs no attack roll, that seems a more obvious reason for the word to be used!
The kind of baseline assumption of rules system like this is that, if a creature has a special exemption to the normal rules, that exemption only bends the rules as much as necessary. Swarms play perfectly fine if you assume they require an attack action; if you assume they don't, then you immediately run into further questions.