helium3 said:
Well, actually you can't put arrows in a bag of holding. The 3.X specifically state you can't put anything in it that might pierce it. Talk about UNFUN!!
I suppose I should have been more specific. You put the arrows in a box. You basically have to do this. If you have four fights per day, at level 16, shooting around 6 arrows per round, you can expect to fight for at least 20 rounds. Even with salvage, you can expect to use up more arrows than you reasonably should be carrying on your back, even with a basic magical quiver.
Gallo22 said:
Time consuming for you maybe. Here's how we do it.
Archer: "Oh DM, I used up 13 arrows how many was I able to retrieve?"
I (being the DM) answer "you were able to retrieve 7, 2 can be repaired (see I'm letting my character use his knowledge skill to fix arrows in the "dungeon of no-arrows") and the other 4 are completely usless.
I'm glad you came up with a house rule to fix this flaw. Its a pretty good house rule! Maybe your house rule should be how the official rules work!
Raven Crowking said:
No....All you have to do is say to the DM "I scavenge whatever arrows I can find on the battlefield. How many do I get back?"
Same answer as to Gallo22.
Look, I'm glad you guys agree with me that the rules in this area are unnecessarily complex, and should be altered. I don't see why you think they should be the same in the rulebook and altered by DMs, though. This is a new edition. Its the perfect time to take the alterations DMs tend to make to the rules, examine them, and if they're quicker, more efficient, and accomplish largely the same thing, perhaps include them as the new official version.
SavageRobby said:
What seems to be missed is that the challenge isn't the die roll (thats not a challenge; thats luck). The challenge is in avoiding the need for the die roll in the first place.
Not always possible.
Speculation at this point in other threads seems to be that save or die effects will be tied to the condition track. That seems an entirely adequate way of handling things. Instead of risking instant death in the first round of combat, you risk instant death if you are unable to keep your hit points above the insta-kill threshold. Now you have a layer of protection, and most importantly, a layer of protection that's in your control. Now if you die, its because you accepted a risk, or you screwed up. That's fair.
Regarding death generally,
In my games, character death happens 1) when players screw up, 2) when players choose to accept extreme risks, and 3) in climactic battles. After every death, a player should be able to say something like the following:
1) "Uh, I guess climbing out on the slippery roof to chase the fleeing wizard wasn't such a great idea with all this armor on... So much for Reginald."
2) "GUYS! We totally could have taken that dragon if we'd followed through on the plan! If you go back, maybe you can cut enough of Reginald out of the dragon's stomach to resurrect. Guys? Guys!"
3) "Its ok. I held the pass long enough for the villagers to escape. Reginald goes to the gods with pride."
4) "Woah! That was some fight! We barely won, and Reginald didn't make it!"
The players SHOULDN'T be saying things like this:
1) "Stupid rogues. Stupid coup de gras while I'm asleep in my own home."
2) "Stupid petrification. Stupid medusas disguised as peasants."
3) "Stupid random encounters. Stupid x3 criticals that do all my hit points in one attack. I can't believe he confirmed that! He needed a 19!"
So how should the risk of death be maintained in ordinary encounters where the players haven't screwed up and haven't intentionally accepted unusual levels of risk? How should the dice just rolling badly for you be handled?
Easy. Instead of having the dice go against you all in one shot and killing your character, they go slow. Instead of "BOOM! HEADSHOT!" we'd have danger which
looms over your character, forcing you to change your tactics. This already happens sometimes. Suppose a fight against a bunch of orcs is going worse than expected due to a few lucky criticals. The cleric responds by running through combat, taking some AoOs, and casting a powerful heal spell on the fighter. The wizard uses a powerful attack spell he would have otherwise saved for later. No one dies (unless they screw up and don't change their tactics), the risk of death is preserved, and players were forced to react to it.
But in order for players to do this sort of thing, they need tactical options. The fighter on his own can't do much in 3.5. Chances are he can't run away faster than his enemies can chase, and he has few tactical choices in combat that would let him alter his strategy to account for bad luck earlier in the fight. He has to just plunge onwards and hope for the best.
This is a place where rules updates can make things better. By giving the fighter choices, you can have the risk of death loom over him, and force him to alter his tactics out of fear. A "second wind" mechanic usable once per day is a simple way to do this, as could any "per day" ability. The Warblade from Tome of Battle can do this with a feat that lets him alter his maneuver choices. I'm sure more ideas could be found.
See? There are two ways to create the fear of death in an encounter. The first is to have previously taught the players that any battle bears the risk of BOOM! DEAD! The second is to menace the players with threats that let the players know that unless they react, they will die, and then follow through if they fail to react.
I prefer the second. I've played games that used the first, and those are ok for what they are. I went through a lot of characters, didn't get attached to any of them, but had an ok time. But when I want to play with a character I actually care about and develop, I need the second kind of game.
Its easy to turn the second kind of game into the first, simply by using more powerful monsters. You can't turn the first into the second without the rules support to do so.
Regarding player's rights versus DM's nobless oblige-
No rules change will alter this issue. I'm just willing to sympathize with both sides. I've run games where players have wanted to change things in ways I didn't like, "Its a Heroes of Battle war campaign between a human nation and a hobgoblin nation. Do you really have to play a gnome? What are you gaining from this?" and in campaigns where the changes were ones I could easily encompass "Ok, I suppose that explanation works for why a druid would enlist in the army." In both cases the decision was made based on mutual conversation, respect, strength of preference, and the availability of alternate games and players. No rule will, or can, change that, as this issue is fundamental to the social dynamics of gaming groups, not the rulebook.
