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School conjuration (summoning); Level bard 1, cleric 1, ranger 1, sorcerer/wizard 1
Casting Time 1 standard action
Components V, S, M/DF (a single piece of ammunition)
Target one container touched
Duration 1 minute/level
Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no
When cast on a container such as a quiver or a pouch that contains nonmagical ammunition or shuriken (including masterwork ammunition or shuriken), at the start of each round this spell replaces any ammunition taken from the container the round before. The ammunition taken from the container the round before vanishes. If, after casting this spell, you cast a spell that enhances projectiles, such as align weapon or greater magic weapon, on the same container, all projectiles this spell conjures are affected by that spell.
These alchemical powders have a gritty consistency. When poured on a weapon and placed over a hot flame for a full round, they melt and form a temporary coating on the weapon. The blanching gives the weapon the ability to bypass one kind of material-based damage reduction, such as adamantine, cold iron, or silver. The blanching remains effective until the weapon makes a successful attack. Each dose of blanching can coat one weapon or up to 10 pieces of ammunition. Only one kind of weapon blanch can be on a weapon at one time, though a weapon made of one special material (such as adamantine) can have a different material blanch (such as silver), and counts as both materials for the first successful hit.
So, what happens when Abundant Ammunition is cast on a quiver containing ammunition that has been treated with Weapon Blanch, and that ammunition is used?
Am I correct in that the ammunition appears in exactly the form it had when taken from the be-spelled quiver, or does it just come back as the base ammunition (if the attack hit), enhanced by any spells cast onto the quiver after the Abundant Ammunition spell has been cast?
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| 11 people marked this as FAQ candidate. |
Bumping this as the question has recently come up for me.
Do things like weapon blanches, which are not part of the arrow itself but rather a separate substance sitting outside the arrow, get replicated?
What about poisons? That seems like it could get silly, fast.
Any more thoughts on it?
If I am reading the description of Abundant Ammunition correctly, it would only apply if you were casting a spell that enhances the ammunition, not applying a blanching or a poison.
I would think of it that the Abundant Ammunition spell is cast, so it has in its memory a standard arrow to replenish, then you apply a blanching to each standard arrow you would be using. It doesn't reset its memory until another spell is cast on it.
*EDIT*
Just saw the ammo was pre-treated with blanching. Abundant Ammunition should replace those pieces of ammo directly as they were at the time the spell was cast.
As an added bonus you should be able to enchant the blanched ammo you cast AA on and it will have 2 different types when you hit :)
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If a substance coating the arrows (such as blanching or poison) also gets duplicated, then what if I coat a quiver full of arrows with gold? I'll then just cast abundant ammunition (outside of combat). Each round I'll dump all the arrows onto the ground, and it will produce a whole quiver full of gold-coated arrows each round after the first. With ten rounds per level, this means I can multiply my wealth by 10 as a first-level character. If I have a caster level of 10, then I can multiply my wealth by 100 with a mere first-level spell and ten minutes of work.
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If a substance coating the arrows (such as blanching or poison) also gets duplicated, then what if I coat a quiver full of arrows with gold? I'll then just cast abundant ammunition (outside of combat). Each round I'll dump all the arrows onto the ground, and it will produce a whole quiver full of gold-coated arrows each round after the first. With ten rounds per level, this means I can multiply my wealth by 10 as a first-level character. If I have a caster level of 10, then I can multiply my wealth by 100 with a mere first-level spell and ten minutes of work.
check out the bolded line from the spell:
When cast on a container such as a quiver or a pouch that contains nonmagical ammunition or shuriken (including masterwork ammunition or shuriken), at the start of each round this spell replaces any ammunition taken from the container the round before. The ammunition taken from the container the round before vanishes. If, after casting this spell, you cast a spell that enhances projectiles, such as align weapon or greater magic weapon, on the same container, all projectiles this spell conjures are affected by that spell.
The arrows would disappear after one round after being removed from the quiver.
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Bump!
I came upon this thread when my dwarf bard and his heavy repeating crossbow decided to invest in some clips of ammo (one adamantine, one cold iron, one silver, etc).
I'd like to know if I could cut the cost by making one of those full of blanched bolts instead, and just cast Abundant Ammunition at the start of each fight I want to use one in.
I think so. I would like to make a Poisoner Rogue who UMDs a wand of this for cost-effective poison use. I would like to verify this before making the character though, so I'm going to flag this(Jiggy's post) for FAQ. I would encourage you to do the same.
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The question is in fact :
Does a level 1 spell allows me to avoid spending a lot of gold on weapon blanches ?
It is rather obvious to me that the answer RAI is NO.
RAW, I believe that the ammunition is what appears on the equipment lists : an arrow, not a weapon-blanch coated arrow. Note that MW ammunitions are specifically noted to be okay, while if the rule was "ammunition exactly as it was before casting AA", there would be no need to specify the MW ammunitions case.
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The question is in fact :
Does a level 1 spell allows me to avoid spending a lot of gold on weapon blanches ?
It is rather obvious to me that the answer RAI is NO.
Not looking for RAI or your opinion. I'd like something more RAW or official for the purposes of PFS play. (If it were a home game we'd be in RAI territory and I could just accept a GM ruling and not bring it up here.) Seeing if anyone has got a more solid answer in the year or so since this thread was last updated.
Wouldn't be a problem if PFS allowed me to purchase a single adamantine arrow. Maybe an off-topic version of the question would be: is there any way to purchase a single adamantine arrow in PFS?
(Though I guess it doesn't matter too much for my archer these days: just about to level and take Clustered Shots, so don't really need this trick.)
RAW it says it duplicates the arrow. The blanch is not a part of the arrow any more than poison would be.
If RAW says it duplcates the arrow+any additional enhancers then it would include poisons and blanches.
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RAW it says it duplicates the arrow. The blanch is not a part of the arrow any more than poison would be.
If RAW says it duplcates the arrow+any additional enhancers then it would include poisons and blanches.
Actually, RAW says that it "replaces any ammunition" fired in the previous round and specifies that it must be cast on a container holding "nonmagical ammunition or shuriken."
An arrow treated with a weapon blanch or a poison sure looks like "nonmagical ammunition" to me.
Sure, your thought makes sense. If I were running a game I'd probably rule something like that. And maybe that's the best we can do, shrug and make sense of it.
If we wanted to be really silly with RAW, we could insist that my quiver with 59 magical arrows and 1 nonmagical arrow is "a quiver or a pouch that contains nonmagical ammunition or shuriken." That's what you get for looking too closely at RAW.
But the request is simply to see if anyone has a more definite RAW or official source to settle the question. If not, that's fine. I don't use this trick and don't need it. But it occurred to me as a possibility so I'm curious.
I am not aware of an errata\FAQ clarifying this.
I think a separate question would be this: Is the latter part of the spell, regarding replacing ammunition enhanced by spells after the fact, restricted to 'replicating' only spell-enhanced ammunition? RAW, the answer would be 'no', but from a point of intention it sounds like the spell is meant to replicate ammunition that has been imbued with temporary enhancements.
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I am not aware of an errata\FAQ clarifying this.
I think a separate question would be this: Is the latter part of the spell, regarding replacing ammunition enhanced by spells after the fact, restricted to 'replicating' only spell-enhanced ammunition? RAW, the answer would be 'no', but from a point of intention it sounds like the spell is meant to replicate ammunition that has been imbued with temporary enhancements.
Haha. Cast Abundant Ammunition on your own quiver, then cast Magic Weapon on your friend's arrows. Now your Abundant arrows are all magic!
Clearly the lesson here is that this spell is strictly RAI territory.
Well, it's got portions of it that are clear: If you've got a quiver that contains only magical ammunition, the spell won't work. But it definitely has a number of questions surrounding it:
1. If a quiver contains five mundane arrows and a single +1 arrow*, will the spell fail to function at all, or will it simply replace only the five mundane arrows? Or: Since it will replace masterwork ammunition, would it also replicate the +1 arrow, but only as a masterwork arrow with no additional enhancements?
2. If all the ammunition in a quiver is non-magical, but is pre-enhanced through other temporary means (like weapon blanches or poison), will the spell replicate the ammunition with the temporary enhancements, or just as standard arrows?
3. If all the ammunition in a quiver is non-magical, and after you cast Abundant Ammunition you apply a temporary non-magical enhancement - which is similar to enhancing it with a temporary spell after the fact - would this allow it to replicate the ammunition with the temporary enhancements?
[edit]
If this was the case, I could picture an evil prankster bard screwing over an archer 'ally' by using Swap to drop a single magical arrow into his quiver...
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This spell is best utilized by buying a single arrow of each special material.
Agreed. Definitely the best use of the spell. [Though as Majuba and RE point out, you'd have to get enough arrows to last you a round since they only replace at the beginning of the round.]But is that possible in PFS? I thought I'd read some official ruling that you have to buy arrows in bulk, can't buy single arrows. A couple more-veteran players made that claim independently last week in the conversation that got me interested in the blanch + AA question. But now that I'm hunting for the ruling I can't find it.
Anybody care to confirm and link? Or are my buddies and I just imagining it?
You can shoot more than 1 arrow in a round, so you probably want to buy more than one.
You have to buy ammunition in the quantities it is displayed in. That's 20 (or 50) arrows.
This spell is best utilized by buying a single arrow of each special material.
Almost--since the replacement only happens at the beginning of the round, you want as many of each special material as you can shoot in a round.
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This question came up twice at Dragonflight last weekend, first with weapon blanching and then with alchemical cartridges.
The ruling was that weapon blanch is "an alchemical treatment applied to ammunition", and therefore would not be replicated with abundant ammunition. This same ruling would apply to poisons applied to ammunition.
That worked fine until we ran into a gunslinger who wanted to use abundant ammunition on alchemical cartridges. Now, are these "ammunition" in their own right, or are they "bullets that have some kind of alchemical treatment applied to them"?
Until there's an official clarification, for PFS games I'm using the following distinction:
Abundant ammunition replicates non-magical ammunition that can be purchased from an approved equipment list. Any alterations to the ammunition will not be replicated, but the ammunition will still be replicated as it was purchased.
There should probably be some caveat that "it has to be listed as ammunition on at least one approved list." I do not want to deal with Abundant Fuse Grenades.
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I cast raise thread again, seeing how the question has come up in the PFS boards.
RAW it says it duplicates the arrow. The blanch is not a part of the arrow any more than poison would be.
If RAW says it duplcates the arrow+any additional enhancers then it would include poisons and blanches.
I think that this is the right reply, but I would really like a official reply.
Another question for added fun: what happen when the spell end?
Example: I start a fight with 3 arrow, cast abundant ammunition and then fire 2 arrows. 2 newly summoned arrows appear in my quiver at the start of my next round.
After a couple of minutes the spell end.
What happen to the 2 summoned arrows in my quiver? They stay or they return from where they did come?
Summoned items normally stay forever, but the items summoned by this spell disappear 1 round after they have been removed from the container.
If the ammunition remain after the spell has ended, what stop me from buying 20 adamantine arrows, casting the spell on my quiver and then removing the arrows and putting them on a shelve.
Next round I get 20 new adamantine arrows.
Now I wait till the spell end and then remove the new adamantine arrow from the quiver. There is any reason why they should disappear? The spell is no longer working, so its secondary effects shouldn't work.
If the ammunitions disappear even after the spell has ended, how can I determine what are the summoned ammunitions and what are the "real" ammunitions?
In the fist example I have 3 arrows, 1 is a normal arrow 2 are summoned arrows. If I am disarmed and in dire straits and have to fight in melee using only a arrow as a dagger, one of those will last more than 1 round, the others will disappear after that (I had to fight once that way, the target was a spirit possessing innocent people and there was a chance to eject if from the host if you were using a silver weapon, so I used silver bullets as an improvised weapon [as a rock] instead of my scimitar, so it isn't an impossible scenario).
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Well skipping the part with the blanches, because meh, I don't feel like dealing with it.
with the spell description I think the whole reasoning is you put bit of ammo in pouch, cast spell, now take ammo out and fire, the ammo your pulling is the cloned ammo. when the spell ends, only the real ammo is left,
at least that's my read on it.
The problem is that what it do happen in the opposite order: you fire the ammunition, then the spell replenish your reserve.
I cast raise thread again, seeing how the question has come up in the PFS boards.
If the ammunition remain after the spell has ended, what stop me from buying 20 adamantine arrows, casting the spell on my quiver and then removing the arrows and putting them on a shelve.
Next round I get 20 new adamantine arrows.
Now I wait till the spell end and then remove the new adamantine arrow from the quiver. There is any reason why they should disappear? The spell is no longer working, so its secondary effects shouldn't work.
"The ammunition taken from the container the round before vanishes."
So the first 20 you take out and put on the shelf disappear in one round, fired or not.