delveg's page

At our last RPGA game day, a player asked about a special ability. Her character was an Archer, and she wanted the Spell Storing ability to be part of her bow. (Rather than arrows enchanted with the ability.) While I ruled on the fly, I'm wondering what you think the right answers are.

a) Can a bow have the spell storing enchantment on it?
b) Does the bow confer the stored spells to arrows fired from it? (Otherwise, you just have an enchanted improvised quarterstaff, which wasn't the effect she was going for.)
c) If the arrow misses, is the conferred spell used up? Can you choose to confer the same spell on the next arrow? Do you not even decide whether it is used until after a hit is determined?

I've noticed that a few recent books have had excellent introductory material... all mixed in with advanced options and the like.

The clearest example of this, to me, was the PHB2. (Excerpt) It begins with new and expanded classes and continues with more feats and spells. That sounds like an additional options, additional complexity book, right?

But then they shift their focus. The next chapter is about identity and personality archetypes-- old hat for many of us, but great stuff for people new to roleplaying. Somehow, though, they decided to bury it more than halfway through the book. The same's true of the first half of the next chapter... then they're back to extra options (teamwork virtual feats, and the like).

Do you agree that this stuff doesn't really fit? I know that I wouldn't expect a newbie to buy the PHB2 for a chapter and a half-- but maybe, if this was united with other newbie stuff, they'd have a supplement made for new players.

Does anyone have other good (already printed by WOTC) chapters that could be seperated out of their existing text and added to a "newbie friendly" book?