Thrower's Bandolier silliness

[Sanityfaerie]

So, there's a lot of focus on the bits of the thrower's bandolier that let you put runes on things. That's fair... but I think that the real opportunity for shenanigans here is something we've all been sleeping on.

Activate (two action activity) envision, Interact; Effect All weapons attuned to the bandolier, not including any weapons you're currently wielding, return to the bandolier.

There's no range limitation. There's no LOS. There's not X-per-day. It cares not about who might have been holding the weapon, or what might have been done to it in the meantime. You spend the actions, and the weapons return to the bandolier. That's it.

- You could use it to pass messages. Leave a dagger with someone, let them affix a message to it by one means or another (depending on what your GM will allow). At the end of the day, drag your weapons back to you and get an update. Presumably it is not possible to have two different bandoliers attune to the same weapon, but this is not specified. If it is not so, the message-passing bets even easier.

- You have a really nice dagger. You sell it to someone, or use it as a bribe. On your way out of town, you call it back. Even better, if you first wait until they sell it to someone else, it's quite possible that they get blamed.

- You offer to arm a rag-tag group of desperate whatevers. All you have are daggers, but that's better than nothing, right? Well, no. You get them fully committed, and two actions later, it's exactly the same as nothing.

- You kludge together an impromptu bridge, using items from your bandolier as critical structural components (bolts an pins and whatnot). I don't have to tell you the rest of how this goes, right?

That's just what I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more.

[Jacob Jett]

Yeah...but isn't this like a sunk cost? You can't use the ability until certain conditions are fulfilled. I think some of these, especially the passing of messages, is not really practical unless the timeframe in which it occurs is quite small (like hours not days).

[Sanityfaerie]

Jacob Jett wrote:

Yeah...but isn't this like a sunk cost? You can't use the ability until certain conditions are fulfilled. I think some of these, especially the passing of messages, is not really practical unless the timeframe in which it occurs is quite small (like hours not days).

Oh, it absolutely has do be done over the course of a single day, and these things each require their own kinds of setup... but shenanigans basically always require specific kinds of setup.

Is this enough to make it worth buying a bandolier just for the shenanigans? Probably not, unless your GM is particularly permissive. I mean, this isn't "high level 5e caster" shenanigans or anything. It's just that it is shenanigans, and it's kind of exciting to find that in PF2. I think it's worth exploring.

I'm not sure what you mean about a sunk cost.

[Jacob Jett]

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean about a sunk cost.

You have to give away the item in which you expect to X (e.g., receive a message). You then cannot use the bandolier's ability to summon things back until such a time as you expect to receive the message. This seems like a high risk, low reward use of the bandolier since things can and often will go awry (GMs are devious after all).

But overall, I think I'm fine (as I believe you are) with these kinds of Oceans XX, Mission: Impossible type of shenanigans. Prepping for a heist isn't a bad thing. And the players are going to have to scramble when things go sideways. This sounds like a fun if difficult to pull off novel use of the bandolier.

[Pronate11]

Jacob Jett wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean about a sunk cost.

You have to give away the item in which you expect to X (e.g., receive a message). You then cannot use the bandolier's ability to summon things back until such a time as you expect to receive the message. This seems like a high risk, low reward use of the bandolier since things can and often will go awry (GMs are devious after all).

How often are you so lazy that you can't manually pick up your weapons? This seems like a low risk, low reward use, that can be high risk sometimes (you drop your prized dagger in a bottomless pit) or high reward (you gain critical information) depending on circumstances

[Var Sardos]

Okay, just my two cents here: As a GM, I wouldn't allow the message thing to work, because it calls back the dagger, not anything attached to it.

I would probably allow the "sell the dagger and reclaim it later" bit, but the whole point of the thrower's bandolier is literally that you don't need to rune up individual daggers, so unless you need pocket change, you do have to "sync" it to a dagger worth some cash (that is, individually runed/enchanted), which is your point.

But the thrower's bandolier is a common item. Your PC isn't going to have been the first person to think of something like this, so any merchant or other NPC buying magical daggers is probably going to be aware of that sort of gambit.

The lynchpins in a bridge/scaffolding however is neat, and that does seem like an impressive impromptu use of it.

[Jacob Jett]

Pronate11 wrote:

Jacob Jett wrote:

Sanityfaerie wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean about a sunk cost.

You have to give away the item in which you expect to X (e.g., receive a message). You then cannot use the bandolier's ability to summon things back until such a time as you expect to receive the message. This seems like a high risk, low reward use of the bandolier since things can and often will go awry (GMs are devious after all).

How often are you so lazy that you can't manually pick up your weapons? This seems like a low risk, low reward use, that can be high risk sometimes (you drop your prized dagger in a bottomless pit) or high reward (you gain critical information) depending on circumstances

It's the coordination of the effort that makes it high risk. And you've deprived yourself of a useful magic until the effort makes.

Var Sardos wrote:

Okay, just my two cents here: As a GM, I wouldn't allow the message thing to work, because it calls back the dagger, not anything attached to it.

Hrmmm, what if the dagger has a hollow hilt? Or the message is scratched into its surface. IMO, it's probably too fiddly not to let the message thing work considering the amount of coordination needed.

[Sanityfaerie]

Var Sardos wrote:

Okay, just my two cents here: As a GM, I wouldn't allow the message thing to work, because it calls back the dagger, not anything attached to it.

I would probably allow the "sell the dagger and reclaim it later" bit, but the whole point of the thrower's bandolier is literally that you don't need to rune up individual daggers, so unless you need pocket change, you do have to "sync" it to a dagger worth some cash (that is, individually runed/enchanted), which is your point.

But the thrower's bandolier is a common item. Your PC isn't going to have been the first person to think of something like this, so any merchant or other NPC buying magical daggers is probably going to be aware of that sort of gambit.

The lynchpins in a bridge/scaffolding however is neat, and that does seem like an impressive impromptu use of it.

The message thign is not so easily thwarted. What about if it's a dagger with an unscrewable base and a cavity that contains something? Even if you're not willign to let them get that far, it woudl be possible to scratch a message into the dagger itself. If nothing else, a shiftign rune woudl permit all sorts of shenanigans with "and I'll shift it into an ornate sword with this written in runic script along the blade."

Side thought: Shifting Rune used in similar ways might give conditional bonuses to bluff checks in all sorts of situations, in that whole "Of course I believe it! I even had it etched on my blade!" way.

As far as NPCs buying and selling... well, it they're upmarket enough that interacting with magical items is a thing for them, then yes. Still lots of opportunities for grifting the little guy... and, again, a shifting rune means that you can go after people who'd be buying magical weapons but maybe not dialing in so much on dagger-related con jobs.

That's not to say that a capable GM cant' shut this down in any of a variety of ways, even without houserules (and there are a number of reasonable houserules that would do it just fine) but it's not quite as simple to do as it might seem at first glance.

[Gaulin]

This is why we can't have nice things.