Ideas for Awesome Contraptions

[sphar]

The title says it all.What are some awesome contraptions you would love your character to have? I'm currently playing a rogue who is going to be build around making epic gadgets.So far,he has.....

*Built a hidden crossbow that fires from under your arm
*A crossbow quiver that feeds bolts into the crossbow
*Dynamite attached to your arm that you can light to fire >:D
*A crossbow that pops open,as to allow that crossbow quiver mentioned above to work
*Coins that become shurikens
*A helmet that,when a button is pressed,makes glasses/goggles pop out that have various effects
*Thieve's tools that pop out of your gloves

[Ironicdisaster]

Parachute backpack!

[Tiny Coffee Golem]

http://members.fortunecity.com/kainwind/archive.html

[skrahen]

part one....party member recently killed in action, another captured by evil wizard, evil wizard used cacodaemon to eat soul of dead party member for soul gem.....
...part two...captured party member trussed up bound and helpless with contraption adjacent to him. contraption is goblin rigged heavy ballista set for coup de grace on captured hero...trigger mechanism is soul gem. when it shatters ballista discharges....evil wizards monologues.. evil laughs....mocks captured hero about whether he is more important than the "dead one"..."i guess we'll see"

...part three....after captured player is taken aside and the above scene is played out return to rest of party to see what they do about the current situation...if they raise dead on the dead comrade which is the most likely response first, then captured hero gets to make horrible fort save. of course creativity counts, player may attempt to foul ballista mechanism with fluid(various) or who knows but it makes for great tension build....

[sphar]

Tiny Coffee Golem wrote:

http://members.fortunecity.com/kainwind/archive.html

Yes. :P

[CalebTGordan]

I actually built a tinker gnome alchemist for this type of thing. I was constantly coming up with funny ideas for contraptions.

One of them was a trap that used a bag of flour and a candle to create a fireball.

Have your crossbow fire bolts with long copper wires attached to them. Have the wires attached to a lightning rod. Apply electricity damage to the rod.

If you have time to set up the trap, place a hidden catapult in a ditch and cover it with a camouflaged sheet.

Your crossbow can have little storage compartments in the stock.

Watch Goonies for inspiration.

[InsaneFox]

In my last campaign I introduced the Skyfish. Effectively it was a large, extremely fast flying bird-like creature that has vermin intelligence. Living purely on instincts and reflexes, they were bred and studied by people living in a remote part of the mountains. These people developed a complex harness for the Skyfish that effectively provokes specific nervous responses when various pulleys and levers are activated, with a helmet that completely blocked their visual and auditory senses. They worked very similar to speeder bikes.

In that same campaign (since there was a good amount of arial combat, the PCs were not actually PART of it, but it played a part of the story) I also introduced the Repelling knife, effectively it's a repelling device that can be attached to a 3/4"to1 1/2" piece of rope or chain, that also has a blade on the end of it. Allowing raiders to disengage the mechanism and attack their enemy from the air with the same device.

[Set]

Probably not realistic, but perfectly fine for a world with spiked chains and starknives, most likely...

A pair of curved notched short swords that can be screwed together at the hilts to form into a shortbow.

A plate of metal that unfolds like a war-fan, but into a full circle (not a half-circle). When folded, it rests on the forearm like a bracer and gives the defensive benefits of a buckler. When unfolded, it functions as a light shield.

A crossbow with sharpened blades serving as the 'bow' that can be used as a dagger (hand crossbow), hand axe (light crossbow) or battle axe (heavy crossbow).

A cloak with a weighted hem that can be used to strike another for weak damage (1d4 bludgeoning), but is more useful as a disarm/trip weapon. Can also be used defensively (+1 AC when used one-handed while fighting defensively, using total defense or using combat expertise).

[Doomed Hero]

I call this the "This Is Not The Hammer" gun

0) Imagine that ride at the carnival that swings a big boat up and around in a circle, so everyone inside ends up going upside down. This is, essentially, what we're building. Keep that in mind as you're reading the technical descriptions.

1) Make a heavy battering ram that is about a foot thick. Case the head in adamantine. Make sure it is thin enough to fit through a ring gate. Affix the ram to a pendulum so that it swings around a central point. Now, use block and tackle and some strong friends to haul the ram up and around the axis until it is perpendicular to the ground. Now secure it there.

2) Attach a ring gate to the same central axis as the ram, let it hang freely at the bottom of the swing. Put a stopper on the side the ram is secured on, so that the ring can swing fine in one direction, but is stopped if it tries to swing the other way.

3) Attach the other end of the ring gate to an easy to carry stock. (I picture this looking something like a sawed-off shotgun with a big ring at the end of the barrel.) Instead of a trigger, have a use-activated Message spell that tells one of your trusted minions to release the ram.

4) Aim ring-gate-gun at the door/wall/badguy in front of you. Pull "trigger".

5) The Ram swings down, the head goes through the ring gate and comes out the other side (where you are holding the ring-gate-gun), hitting whatever is in front of you like the fist of an angry god. As it swings back the way it came, the ring gate is stopped at the bottom by the stopper but the ram goes back to where it started (to be reset by your minions), retracting the ram from your "gun".

The best part about this is that none of the weight of the ram is ever being supported by your "gun".