Speaking about tanglefoot bags, I was wondering what other DMs do when the players get ideas of an alcehmical nature (fixing alchemist's fire on the end 10' poles, pouring multiple vials of acid into one large glass container to throw, hitting an enemy that's already hit with a tanglefoot bag with another tangle foot bag). I know there's some adapted rules for different alchemical weapons like long burning alchemist's fire from Dragon 334 but I'm sure things like this have come up in everyone's campaigns at some point or another. I know in the Age of worms we filled a bag of holding with the alchemist's fire vials that were found in a storage room beneathe the arena and dropped it on the undead worm (the name of which escapes me but it was rather discouraging for our DM). Any thoughts or previous experiences would be appreciated.
Luckily, whenever my players decide to do something like that the fault is always mine. It's always when I introduce dangerous alchoholic beverages with special properties, like White Dragon's Breath, a freezing concoction that will knock you out with one drink. What I didn't expect was that my players would buy a whole keg of it and use it to freeze things, including their enemies. I see it as part of being a DM. Sometimes you're forced to improvise something that's not covered in the rules and you should reward your players for coming up with good ideas.
However, when there's a room full of shocker lizards and one of the players has the idea to build a Faraday cage to negate the electrical energy, you have to step in and say that their characters have no knowledge of modern-day physics.
I find the fairest, fastest, and easiest system for dealing with "stacking" alchemical items like alchemist's fire or acid (or holy water) is the size system. A vial/flask/pint/whatever is one unit of the basic size(which we will call small because small creatures can use them at the same efficiency as medium). 2 smalls make a medium, 4 smalls make a large, 8 make a huge, and so on. So if you want to take a gallon jug, put two pints of alchemists fire in, go for it. It makes a "medium" jug, and does 1 step up on the dice damage, as per shift from small to medium weapon. So it does 1d8, and splashes for 1d2. A "large" grenade would A weigh a lot, and B suffer penalties as for trying to throw a large weapon: can be done with both hands at a -2, can not be done one handed. Or maybe it could be, but an additional -4 for a one handed attempt.
Overall, I find this system works very well. For things with DCs, I usually raise the DC by 1 for every size increase. Dropping a bag of thunderstones on someone will almost guaranteed deafen them, but your using up a lot of money to do it.
I wouldn't increase any sorts of radius, size limits, area, or splash effects unless it were increased two or three size categories up. Even then, minmal increases. A huge tanglefoot bag could potentially affect something 1 step up from the normal size limit.
What do others think of this system?
What do others think of this system?
Sounds good to me.
Of course, imposing too strict a limit on such 'tricks' is complicated in this case by the fact that the BBEG has already set an example of their effectiveness by causing the destruction of an entire ship with a couple of barrels of alchemist's fire. When the players find out about that, expect to see their eyes light up with ideas.
True, but Vanthus didn't just throw a keg of alchemist fire on deck, he loaded multiple barrels of alchemist fire into the entire ship. With even just six or seven barrels (Collosal grenade, roughly 300 pounds each) of alchemist fire, under my system, your doing somewhere in the range of 14d8 with 1d8 splash damage, an extra radius of 1d2 splash damage, and catching on fire.
That will easily sink a ship with no casters on board to snuff the flames with control flame. Especially if they're places strategically for maxiumum burn and escape prevention.
If my players are willing to purchase and tote around 2000 pounds of alchemist fire just for the chance to drop 14d8 on someone, I'll let them. Considering the cost, and the problem of method of delivery, anything they can accomplish with that they deserve to accomplish.