I'm working on some houserules, and I'm looking at the d20PFSRD equipment list and finding it a bit...excessive. So, which items do you think are absolutely critical to any adventurer? Are there items listed that you can't even imagine a use for? Has anyone ever actually needed to buy a basket or a block and tackle?
I usually buy what seems to make sense for my character.
I mean really most stuff costs what? 1gp or so?
If I think my character knows how to fish, he gets a fishing hook and some twine. If he's the scholar type he'll carry around alot of empty paper and ink, even if it's probably not necessary for anything.
Backpack, bedroll, blanket, waterskin, trail rations, torches are probably the most essential things to have.
I think I saw once an "Standard Adventure Pack" that had all those minor things in one convinient to buy packet. But think that was in a 3.5 book.
Toilet paper. I'd never leave for an adventure without it.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Toilet paper. I'd never leave for an adventure without it.
Real heroes shoot fireballs from their eyes and lightning from their arse. Don't need no toilet paper.
I like to have a wooden cup and bowl. A small metal mirror is nice to have as well. If I'm a strong or physically active character, then I like to have lengths of rope and grappling hook as well. Torches are a cheap and versatile tool, regardless of vision-type.
I've always found the equipment list to be too limited.
Here's what my characters use pretty much every day in every adventure:
chalk
oil
rope
string
needle and thread
fishhooks
ink
paper (or parchment)
bell (string, a fishhook and a bell is a lot cheaper than "alarm")
canvas (If my char has the str to carry a lot)
light source (torch, sunrod, lantern, candle, usually more than one type)
flint and steel
sharpening stone (for role play, but i always carry one)
extra clothes
watertight container for scrolls or maps
standard backpack, bedroll, rations
netting (very useful in multiple situations)
empty flasks
crowbar (especially my skill-monkey chars)
grappling hook (again, if str is sufficient and a skill-monkey)
hammer and pitons (or the "climbing kit")
lock (my rogues will practice lockpicking in camp)
mirror (great signaling device)
and, of course, standard waterskins, pouches, bags, etc.
Now, I will sometimes work with my GM to allow my character to have some or all of the following non-standard items:
awl (or ice pick)
leather straps and/or cord
copper sheets
straws
arrow making supplies
bag of marbles or ball bearings
elastic bands
telescoping or folding "pole" (I hate the standard 10 foot pole)
pigments (water or oil based)
glass cutter (adamantine should work for this)
glue
If I have a particularly fastidious character he might bring soap, perfumes, powders, etc....
But in general my skill-monkeys have a pretty impressive collection of odds and ends in their stuff.
|
I'm working on some houserules, and I'm looking at the d20PFSRD equipment list and finding it a bit...excessive. So, which items do you think are absolutely critical to any adventurer? Are there items listed that you can't even imagine a use for? Has anyone ever actually needed to buy a basket or a block and tackle?
I've never needed a basket, but I can think of times they'd be useful -- Kingmaker has a side-quest that involves gathering turnips for example, and a basket would be useful for that.
As a player I've used a block and tackle many, many times. They're useful for opening stone caskets/coffins, so that you can stand back ten feet and not get grabbed by the undead thing inside as soon as you slide the lid off.
It's also really useful to have two block and tackles and plenty of rope, because if you set them up correctly you can make it possible to lift really heavy things - I once had a DM put a gold statue in a dungeon, and he expected that we'd have to leave it behind because it weighed about 1500 pounds. When I showed him that we could lift that, lower it on a sledge, and drag it out of the dungeon he really freaked out. We we're fourth level and had just netted ourselves about 75,000 GP.
Personally I think the most unsung champion of standard equipment is the Iron Piton and Hammer. Useful for everything from making your own ladder to casting Fighter Lock on a door. What's Fighter Lock? It's the non-magical version of Arcane Lock, where you pound a piton into the door frame and wedge the door shut.
The most inexplicable piece of equipment? A water clock. Why? And so expensive!
When I make a character, I rarely start with all that equipment. My standard starting package of equipment is simple: Backpack (bedroll, large sacks (2), trail rations (3 days), waterskin), Belt Pouch (excess starting gold).
If I need a basket, I would use survival skill to weave one out of local foliage.
Block and Tackle is one of the items that I think tends to get abused almost as much as a ten foot pole. A block and tackle is a large collection of pulleys arranged to provide leverage to lift things. They are bulky and heavy. I try not to have too many bulky and heavy things in my bags and I always total up the weight to ensure my character's aren't carrying more than they actually can. In fact in my current campaign, my witch is carrying too much to move at normal speed and is taking AC penalties from the extra weight.
Characters hauling around block and tackle, ten foot poles, crowbars, pick and shovel, etc. are implausible to me. Besides the sheer weight of all that heavy equipment, they are all also large, bulky and difficult to put in a pack. If my characters have low str the crowbar and grappling hook are the first things to go from my standard load.
I sometimes will play a ranger or druid who prides themselves on not needing anything but their survival skills, and they will sometimes not even carry a backpack. But most of my chars will have a well-packed backpack, and on occasion, I'll even buy a donkey to carry stuff.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I'm working on some houserules, and I'm looking at the d20PFSRD equipment list and finding it a bit...excessive. So, which items do you think are absolutely critical to any adventurer? Are there items listed that you can't even imagine a use for? Has anyone ever actually needed to buy a basket or a block and tackle?
Everything on the list.
Block and tackle was useful for getting a paladins horse over a cliff. (horse not happy. Person who decided to pull rope from directly under the horse even less happy)
Basket: Popular with gnome summoners for their edelion to carry them in. Flowers on the front are optional.
Brassbaboon: I'm just curious. What do you use the copper sheets for?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Brassbaboon: I'm just curious. What do you use the copper sheets for?
Since I don't carry ten foot poles or quarterstaffs, I sometimes make them in the field, and when I do I use the copper sheets to protect the ends of the poles or quarterstaffs by wrapping the end, pounding the copper into a cap, and then heating it to fuse it together. Sometimes if the GM allows it I use magic fire spells to do this.
I also use it to modify iron pots and pans to make them cook better since some of my characters take cooking very seriously.
I've rolled them into tubes and melted them watertight to hold scrolls or important papers. I've even used them to hold samples of liquids that I thought might be valuable when I didn't have a spare flask for that purpose.
I also use them when I need some small object for a special purpose, such as making a crude bell or whistle. Copper is easy to cut, easy to bend and shape, easy to beat into shapes, easy to melt, etc. A round stone, a hammer and a fire is all you need to make a copper pot.
And it's reusable. You can always beat the copper back into sheets when you are done with it.
Most of this is more role playing than mechanics, but I do like to role play. If I buy a wooden shield, I'll frequently cover it's edges with copper to improve its durability.
Lots of stuff like that.
|
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Characters hauling around block and tackle, ten foot poles, crowbars, pick and shovel, etc. are implausible to me. Besides the sheer weight of all that heavy equipment, they are all also large, bulky and difficult to put in a pack. If my characters have low str the crowbar and grappling hook are the first things to go from my standard load.
Someone doesn't know how to play the game.
Pair of Horses: 150 GP
Wagon: 35 GP
Four Teamsters for a Week: 8.4 GP
Never having to carry your own gear again? PRICELESS
I'm working on some houserules, and I'm looking at the d20PFSRD equipment list and finding it a bit...excessive. So, which items do you think are absolutely critical to any adventurer? Are there items listed that you can't even imagine a use for? Has anyone ever actually needed to buy a basket or a block and tackle?
If I'm a low-str character I can barely carry my weapon, and I usually get by with chalk, a mirror (good for signaling and looking around corners) and writing supplies. If I'm a high str character, lots of rope, a miner's pick and a portable ram (+4 to open doors? yes please). Block and tackle seems to be mostly for those with mounts (I knew a paladin who'd use one to get his goat into dungeons) but is probably also helpful for transporting low-level wizards who can't yet avoid Climb checks.
Donkey-carts are also really useful at low levels if you're travelling around outside a lot.
Brassbaboon: I'm just curious. What do you use the copper sheets for?Since I don't carry ten foot poles or quarterstaffs, I sometimes make them in the field, and when I do I use the copper sheets to protect the ends of the poles or quarterstaffs by wrapping the end, pounding the copper into a cap, and then heating it to fuse it together. Sometimes if the GM allows it I use magic fire spells to do this.
I also use it to modify iron pots and pans to make them cook better since some of my characters take cooking very seriously.
I've rolled them into tubes and melted them watertight to hold scrolls or important papers. I've even used them to hold samples of liquids that I thought might be valuable when I didn't have a spare flask for that purpose.
I also use them when I need some small object for a special purpose, such as making a crude bell or whistle. Copper is easy to cut, easy to bend and shape, easy to beat into shapes, easy to melt, etc. A round stone, a hammer and a fire is all you need to make a copper pot.
And it's reusable. You can always beat the copper back into sheets when you are done with it.
Most of this is more role playing than mechanics, but I do like to role play. If I buy a wooden shield, I'll frequently cover it's edges with copper to improve its durability.
Lots of stuff like that.
This is genius and I'm stealing it.
Characters hauling around block and tackle, ten foot poles, crowbars, pick and shovel, etc. are implausible to me. Besides the sheer weight of all that heavy equipment, they are all also large, bulky and difficult to put in a pack. If my characters have low str the crowbar and grappling hook are the first things to go from my standard load.Someone doesn't know how to play the game.
Pair of Horses: 150 GP
Wagon: 35 GP
Four Teamsters for a Week: 8.4 GP
Never having to carry your own gear again? PRICELESS
Hmm... I guess you missed the part where I said that I sometimes purchase beasts of burden for this purpose. It's people who haul around all this junk and say it's in their backpack that I am referring to. Since I seem to need to spell it out this way.
|
|
This is genius and I'm stealing it.
You should be aware that brass is really overselling the ease with which copper can be used for these kinds of purposes. The examples he gives that require melting really aren't really feasible, especially if your GM knows anything about metallurgy. Copper has a melting point around 1900̊ F (higher even than silver), which isn't an easy temperature to reach in most dungeon type settings -- for example, a fire built in a fireplace (at its hottest point) only reaches up to about 1500̊ F. A torch is going to be even less than this (about 1250̊ F), and a candle (1000̊ F) even less so.
Lead sheets, which have a low melting point (about 650̊ F), would be much better for creating seals around things (and have the added advantage of blocking almost all detect spells), or for use a solder for copper.
But then one also has to consider the flash point for things like paper (451̊ F), where they just burst into flames. If you heat a copper tube around a scroll to seal it, you're likely to end up with a tube full of ash.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Lead sheets, which have a low melting point (about 650̊ F), would be much better for creating seals around things (and have the added advantage of blocking almost all detect spells), or for use a solder for copper.
As an added bonus long term exposure causes lead poisoning. Score!
Lead sheets, which have a low melting point (about 650̊ F), would be much better for creating seals around things (and have the added advantage of blocking almost all detect spells), or for use a solder for copper.As an added bonus long term exposure causes lead poisoning. Score!
Yeah, I wasn't going to mention that since it's a GM thing, and I've seen some GMs that would do this.
Again this whole thing is getting perilously close to "you put your science in my fantasy RPG!" stuff. I tried to keep it pretty high level and flavorful deliberately. I think it works that way, but for people who want to quote literal melting points of particular metals, it is sometimes pointless to say "yeah, in THIS UNIVERSE that's where copper melts...."
|
Lead sheets, which have a low melting point (about 650̊ F), would be much better for creating seals around things (and have the added advantage of blocking almost all detect spells), or for use a solder for copper.As an added bonus long term exposure causes lead poisoning. Score!
Bard: Guys! The assassin just got to the king!
Cleric: He's not dead yet, but... *casts Detect Poison* has some magic poison still in his system. I can't quite figure it out. Wizard what do you...*beat*
(Cleric looks in horror at the Wizard.)
Wizard: ... What?
Cleric: By Sarenrae's light! You're the assassin! You've got poison all throughout your hands! Guards! Guards!
Nobody has a 1 lb sack of flour? The really low level equivalent of detect invisible/glitterdust? I'm shocked. Plus you can make bread if you're low on rations. I also like beef jerky (handy when your druid is attempting to soothe a beastie) and rock candy. Rock candy also works as a critter snack, and in a pinch you can use it to bribe stupid monsters that think it is some some of shiny gem. It's also tasty.
Spare sacks. Nothing is sadder than a big pile of loot with not enough carrying capacity. High strength doesn't make the bag bigger, tough guy.
Mostly Everything On The List Can Have Several Uses, Even If They Are "it's useless, let's put it in the fire". I Had An Elven Swashbuckler Once Who Carried Around Soap Because He Wanted To Stay Clean; The Party Was Happy To Have Him When We Fought A Mimic :)
It's people who haul around all this junk and say it's in their backpack
First off a character with a 20 strength can cary an obscene amount of stuff, especially if they're in medium to heavy armor anyway and don't care about getting slowed.
Secondly, handy haversacks and bags of holding. Its your own personal wagon sized inter-dimensional storage space.
Also, if you see someone hiking a long distance like the apalachian trail, an actual inventory list for the things they've got in that pack gets pretty long.
All the equipment is useful if you can find a original and fun way to use it.
I like caltrops to alert me when monsters are wandering in parts of a dungeons we alredy "clean up"
Also as a DM you can have add situations in wich a piece of equipment migth come useful. For example keeping track of the oil for a torch and the radius of illumination a torch provides. 'couse if you keep track of this sort of stuff it would make sense for a PC to buy a better illumination equipment, like a lanttern.
Also is your dungeons is very featureless it makes excellent use of a chalk to aboy getting lost. I have a character that his hobby was making a map of korvoza's sewer system so he always use a compass, chalk, antitoxin, everburning torch, paper, pencil. But my Dm provided the situation for me to use this stuff.
At the end it is what makes sense for a charecter.
Handy haversacks and bags of holding are really the perfect way to carry things like block and tackle, and at a certain level you can almost assume that most characters have one or two and that it is full of all kinds of assorted paraphernalia. My issue is with low level characters hauling around so much stuff that they'd look like a cartoon, most especially the ten foot pole. There's a reason the ten foot pole is a standard comedy routine for RPG parodies.
Once you have a bag of holding pulling out something like a bellows or a comfy chair is no longer a silly proposition. That's actually exactly the sort of thing real people would do with the ability to haul arbitrarily large and heavy objects on camping trips.
Way back in 2e days my brother used to carry all kinds of crazy stuff in his bags of holding. After he retrieved some ridiculous item I asked him if he had a country store in the bag. "Yep." He said. His chaotic evil character had broken into a store and quite literally emptied the shelves into his bags....
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I have a lot of ladies in my games, and they like to shop, even though it's just make-believe. Believe me, going to town to buy non-magical jewelry, clothes that offer no AC bonus, fancy hats, baskets, nice little boxes, etc., do still matter to some players.
But the most important thing not to discount is the GM's ability to MAKE something necessary, or to work the seemingly unnecessary things into an adventure. It can add realism, character, color and flavor to an adventure, just to shut the magic item chapter and tool around a bit with the standard equipment list.
I have a lot of ladies in my games, and they like to shop, even though it's just make-believe. Believe me, going to town to buy non-magical jewelry, clothes that offer no AC bonus, fancy hats, baskets, nice little boxes, etc., do still matter to some players.
But the most important thing not to discount is the GM's ability to MAKE something necessary, or to work the seemingly unnecessary things into an adventure. It can add realism, character, color and flavor to an adventure, just to shut the magic item chapter and tool around a bit with the standard equipment list.
The first part made me giggle. Does that make me a bad person?
My druid is a female. That's because the custom race the GM and I came up with that sounded fun was an elf/dryad hybrid, and it just didn't make sense to have a male character.
Since she grew up in an oak grove until she joined the druid society, she never went shopping until she started adventuring. At first I played her as not even realizing the value of money. She'd give her coins away since she saw no use for small metal disks.
But over time her party members have taught her about money and now she enjoys spending it. She has discovered a real interest in shopping, although she still doesn't quite get the concept of "clothes."
So since I've started role playing her as enjoying shopping now, does that make ME a bad person?
Toilet paper. I'd never leave for an adventure without it.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I removed some posts. Stop sniping, stop picking fights.
Just as a friendly tip, I was actually more scared during the brief window between the posts disappearing as if erased by an angry yet subtle god and the followup admin post than I am now that I know who or what did it.
Since I have the asst. software dev on the hook, I'd like to request that the site's forums have better mobile support. I've had to settle for shorter (and perhaps thereby more abrupt and offputting) posts than my desktop-equipped peers.
Edit: By way of example, the phone autocorrected 'asst software dev' to 'Assyrian software December.' I didn't realize the error until I had already posted.
I always buy tons of equipment at character generation just in case it might come in handy.
It very rarely does.
sharpening stone (for role play, but i always carry one)
Actually, Adventurer's Armory made this a nice thing for low levels beyond the RP reason.
Greg
I can find myself wanting a signal whitsle or a signal horn.
Yeah I have had players take the plates (for eating) out of a dungeon and they were not that special really.
In the last campaign I played we found some fancy stuff in a dungeon and tried to take a fancy carriage out, but couldn't figure out how to do it.
I made an NPC Inquisitor/Fighter who I gave a blade boot. He hasn't seen action yet, but he has the travel domain, so im hoping it can be a cool holdout option. And the travel domains ability will help with the issue of difficult terrain.
For those of you who find the list lacking--what would you add?
How about some of the other less used entries--does anyone use firewood? It seems the full selection of utensil/container items does actually see use in other people's games, so I suppose I'll leave those on.