Holy Water Ammo

[Burn_Boy]

I had a thought today while I was at work. I was going through my last quest in the undead campaign I'm running and going over the strategy my paladin set up in the town that was being attacked by undead... flaming skeletons to be exact... and the main strategy was gratuitous use of holy water and it got me thinking about something.

Unless we're totally off track, holy water deals 2d4 damage to undead, which isn't much but when your town is being attacked by hundreds of mere 4 HP skeletons it can be a damn good weapon. My players found creative uses for it, trenches filled with it, it in pots rather then boiling oil etc. But later I had another one.

I've read about Durable Arrows which, if I understand correctly, cost 6g a pop but can always be retrieved so long as they're not shot like, off the wrong end of a cliff or something, but they never break. Now my idea is to get 10-20 durable arrows and a few pints of holy water. I would empty the holy water into my quiver so that my arrows would soak in it. I would also have a stopper at the top of my quiver so that the holy water wouldn't spill out but with slots so I could draw my arrows out without any hindrance. So my bow would be a very effective weapon against the undead without having to spends oodles of gold on magic weapons and the like.


Your thoughts? And did I miss something in the rules that would make this plan totally ineffectual?

 

[ruemere]

Holy Water is expensive.

Additionally, grenade-like containers are prone to breaking.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Burn_Boy]

25g isn't that expensive once you've been through a quest or two...

Also, I don't know if you fully understood what I was saying. I'd just fill my quiver, that holds my arrows with it so that my arrows would get soaked with holy water. I was wondering if drawing them and firing them would have them lose their "holy water-ness" or not.

 

[Crothian]

Quivers aren't water proof, the water will leak out and soak into the quiver some.

 

[akbearfoot]

An arrow soaked in holy water doesn't deal extra damage to undead any more than an arrow soaked in acid does.

grenade like weapons, such as alchemists fire, holy water, and acid flasks do very specific things. A entire flask of holy water has to be thrown at a single creature for it to be effective. You can't fill a super soaker with holy water, and get a bunch of extra shots because you use it sparingly.

I am a big fan of the Supernatural series, and their holy water sprinkler systems. But it's not D&D. It doesn't work that way in 3.x/Pathfinder.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I would consider it totally ineffective even if you have a waterproof quiver so the holy water stays in.

Consider:

The arrow goes flying through the air at something over 100mph. That means the arrow is subject to 100 mph winds. Can you say "blow drier"? You might have a slight dampness left after the flight but that would be such a tiny fraction of a vial of holy water that it would do far less than 1hp of damage.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

If you look on the weapons table here you'll see there are actually "Raining Arrows" with a write-up. As written, they're pretty dumb, 30 gp for 20 of them, which is insane compared to normal holy water prices. But hey, it's something.

 

[ruemere]

If you look on the weapons table here you'll see there are actually "Raining Arrows" with a write-up. As written, they're pretty dumb, 30 gp for 20 of them, which is insane compared to normal holy water prices. But hey, it's something.

It's still cheaper than Holy Water flask (Bless Water requires 25 GP to produce a single flask), as you effectively get 20 attacks for the price of 30 GP as opposed to a single flask.

There are many design issues with the arrows though (price violation, container size, arrow range/balancing), and so I would ban the item from my game immediately.

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[jefgorbach]

random thought: Bless a decanter of endless water ??

 

[Scott DeWar]

i think part of the bless water thing is the need for powdered silver. you wiould need a continuoous supply of silver with that decanter.