Cheap ammunition spells VS technological gear


Iron Gods


Since party came to Scrapwall(they are past the control room and defeated Kulgara) the Techslinger was struggling to get ammo for Infernal Pistol. I allowed him to get some hidden by Meyanda in Receiver Array, and some from rats.

But now they figured out - why fight for ammo, when we have cheater(sorcerer) around? So they figured out 2 spells:

Reloading Hands (level 2): http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/spells/reloadingHands.htm l#reloading-hands

And Abundant Ammunition(level 1): http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateCombat/spells/abundantAmmunition .html#abundant-ammunition

Do you think those spells should work with Technological Gear? From my reading:
Abundant Ammunition - since it requires single piece of ammunition and neither battery nor nanite canister powered weapons can have "pieces of ammunition" I would say it's impossible to cast on those weapons.

Reloading Hands - I actually believe this could work, and that it would even refill weapon fully. As 2nd level Sorcerer Spell I don't think it would be that much of a "cheat".

Sorcerer needs to lose 1 round touching techslinger, which means he has less time to cast protection etc. to him, losing 2nd spell slot at current levels is no small deal.

What do you think? Are there any reasons why it shouldn't work or I shouldn't allow it? I wouldn't like to put myself into situation where they get nuclear bomb launcher in book 3 and get infinite ammo for that. Well, I could always make the nuclear bomb launcher timeworn, so no reloading there :)

Silver Crusade

I don't think either of those would work.

Tech weapons aren't loaded with ammo, they go off batteries.


I gave the PCs in my campaign an unlimited source of energy for recharging weapons (they salvaged and refurbished the spaceship from the haunted valley in Lords of Rust). This did not make their technological weapons overpowered. I added a Plasmathrower to the treasure in Valley of the Brain Collectors, and though that weapon is powerful given plenty of charged batteries, it fit the power level of the party.

The Recharge already exists to recharge batteries and internal power packs, so I would not give recharging to Abundant Ammunition nor Reloading Hands. But Meyanda' Inferno Pistol is a special case, a weapon that uses nanite cannisters rather than charges. That is enough like conventional ammunition that Reloading Hands is plausible. The only other items that use nanite cannisters are the single-use cortex gun and the reuseable nanite hypoguns. Would you allow your sorcerer to cast Reloading Hands on a brown-rated nanite hypogun that heals 1d8+1 damage per injection? In the long run, that would be cheaper than a Wand of Cure Light Wounds. A more extreme case would be a red-rated nanite hypogun whose special function consumes 5 units from a 10-unit nanite cannister to mimic Heal. Perhaps Reloading Hands can't reload the special functions.

The only two weapons with extremely powerful ammunition are the grenade launcher and the rocket launcher. For those, you could rule that explosive ammunition is beyond the scope of Reloading Hands.


@Rysky: Yes, except for Nanite powered weapons :)

Nanite Hypogun is a valid concern. Brown is one thing, but with ability to cast 2nd level spells 6 times(on next level 7 times) it becomes overpowered quickly. Black is already 2d8+3 and they have it.

Recharge at least forces players to pay 500GP for recharge(1 charge per level). So it cannot even reload fully until level 10. Seeing how normal battery costs 100GP and this spell requires 500GP I guess someone really didn't want spellcasters charging stuff.

But on another hand, rules as written the reloading hands won't work on hypoguns. They might have "gun" in name, but reloading hands is clear that it targets "projectile weapon touched". Hypogun is a gear, not a weapon. Spells are like that, very specific in strange ways, just like wish. Sure, it might look like a weapon, but it is not, so spell fails.

I can see only 4 regular nanite based weapons, Dart Gun, Id rifle, Mindrender and Death Ray. I don't know if they will become available later on, but I guess even if they do they will be timeworn.

Maybe I could create some nanite recharging spell, working only for weapons that would require at least some material components. A mix of Recharge and Reloading Hands. Maybe put it on level 3 to make it a bit more prohibitive in use. Trading Lightning Bolt use or other 3rd level spell for up to 10 nanite charges, that can be only used in weapons, plus losing sorcerer spell slot seems like fair trade. Especially if you include cash cost. Plus, I expect the character to get battery powered weapon at some point.

Or maybe I'll even agree to use Reloading Hands on nanite weapons, but first I'll warn the party that weapons are weapons, not hypoguns etc.

Silver Crusade

Areinu wrote:
@Rysky: Yes, except for Nanite powered weapons :)

Ah, didn't know about nanite weapons.

*reads Nanite Canister description*

Eh, that still reads more like a charge than ammunition.


Yeah, the more I think about it the less I like the idea. I am thinking about letting them use Nanotech Lab in The Choking Tower. The module suggests it can be done, so I guess... If they abuse it too much I can always say the lab malfunctioned or destroy it in some other way.

Silver Crusade

lol, yeah

Sovereign Court

I'm going to use Torch as a stable power source, as yet another way of giving them a reason to care about the place.


Rysky wrote:
Areinu wrote:
@Rysky: Yes, except for Nanite powered weapons :)

Ah, didn't know about nanite weapons.

*reads Nanite Canister description*

Eh, that still reads more like a charge than ammunition.

Gunpowder itself is measured in charges, but Reloading Hands can create gunpowder. In the dart gun or inferno pistol, the nanites are just a material to be molded and shot out of the weapon. In the death ray, id rifle, or mindrender, the nanites spread through the victim's bloodstream and start attacking the victim's body or nervous system. We have two different levels of nanite activity here.

An interesting possible limit on the death ray, id rifle, mindrender, or nanite hypogun is that Reloading Hands creates conjured ammunition. What if that ammunition disappears after hitting the target? Thus, the dart gun and inferno pistol work as normal, but the other forms of nanites disappear before they can finish their job.

Areinu wrote:
Yeah, the more I think about it the less I like the idea. I am thinking about letting them use Nanotech Lab in The Choking Tower. The module suggests it can be done, so I guess... If they abuse it too much I can always say the lab malfunctioned or destroy it in some other way.

I put a working nanotech lab in the Aurora beneath Iadenveigh. I wanted to give more story about Casandalee to encourage the search for her, so the party found her notes. She had repaired the nanotech lab and was going to use it to recycle and clean the contaminated water beneath Iadenveigh, but the fight with Unity's robots broke the recycling system. My party maxed out Knowledge(Engineering) so they finished activating the system. The recycling would take a year to purify the groundwater, but would yield a thousand nanite cannisters as a side effect.

My players were excited about the underground lab. They told the Iadenveigh town government that they would destroy the machinery that leaked into the groundwater rather than telling them the truth that the high-tech would clean their water. They went back into the Aurora to supposedly destroy te machinery but dug a secret tunnel to the surface with adamantine pick, Stone Shape, and Burrow. Then they sealed up the original entrance to the Aurora.

However, they used the secret tunnel only once. The time required to craft technological items was too much, and they didn't like having to sneak into Iadenveigh to use their tunnel and live off of rations to use the lab, when they had a much nicer setup in Torch.

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