Need hundreds of feathers to make arrows

[delericho]

Have the wizard teleport to a larger town and buy lots of arrows. Or you and the wizard could just wipe out the small army.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

A few thoughts:

-First, what size/shape of feather do you need? A single bird likely possesses over one thousand feathers total on it's body, in the same way I possess over one thousand hairs on the top of my head. If the letter of the law is "provide 1000 feathers", hand them 1 sparrow, mission accomplished.

-Since you likely need feathers of a certain size and shape (I'm sure others know better than I about this), I'm assuming you need the longer wing feathers from duck-sized & larger birds. Can you get 50 useful feathers off of a single Chicken or Goose? If so, 200 chickens or geese should do the trick. At 1gp each, you could buy them someplace and deliver to the locals, they can pluck the birds themselves.

-If it is a matter of larger sized feathers, how about a single, much larger sized feathered creature? Would the DM permit there to be a Roc, a Griffon, or some other bigger creature that could provide thousands of feathers? You might be able to ask for them, than see if Healing magic can restore the lost feathers quickly, or otherwise be in the debt of the animal or magical beast.

-You're a 15th level Druid, spam spells. To accomplish this specific task, you could:
Commune With Nature: inquire to the presence of the birds you need, or perhaps their nests already filled with shed feathers.
Call Animal + Speak With Animals + Charm Animal or Dominate Animal: Repeat the process enough times to bring the appropriate birds to you and get them to be willing to have the necessary feathers plucked.

-Finally, YOU ARE A 15th LEVEL DRUID. Offer your services against a small army, you can have so much more effect than one thousand arrows. You're talents are wasted on feather gathering. How about you offer the following:

Before the battle, use Rampart, Animate Plants, Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Control Water, Obsidian Flow and Move Earth to create whatever sort of massive walled fortress, moated defense, tree-fortified, glassed landscape you feel like. They have you picking feathers, you could be creating an elevated, defensible metropolis in the span of 2 weeks. Once that's created, you offer to Transport Via Plants to where the enemy is located, cast Control Weather before revealing yourself to whip up some impressive environmental effects, Wild Shape into something awe-inspiring like a Huge Air Elemental and calmly explain that you are a high level Druid speaking on behalf of the locals you are defending, politely requesting they back down, throw a few powerful spells around to demonstrate your point or Euphoric Tranquility the enemy commander into declaring the war ended, than Word of Recall yourself back. If the enemy arrives and STILL feels like taking them on, you've got a bazillion possible area damaging spells. One casting of Earthquake should finish an army.

...And you've got a party that I'm assuming is close to your level, any of which could contribute a variety of helpful skills better than gathering feathers.

 

[BOZ]

Plucking alive or dead wouldn't matter much - the feathers should still disappear when the duration ends.

Yep, that's what I figured.

What about spamming baleful polymorph? You could turn all sorts of critters - mice, snails etc... - into chickens (assuming chicken feathers work for arrows). At 15th-level you should be able to spam that quite a bit each day.

Also, at 15th-level you can cast control winds with enough power to cause tornado force winds over a massive area. (By the way, that's the only spell you need to destroy a small army. Forget the feathers!) Would your DM allow you to use that to wipe out every bird within the spell's area of effect and bring their bodies to you? If he won't allow that, just tell him you wiped out his army using the same spell.

Baleful polymorph on a mass scale might be a great idea! Control winds might work, but that sounds a lot riskier, and has a chance of drawing a lot of attention and possibly disrupting the local ecosystem.

wildshape into a bird and provide the feathers yourself? To be honest, I'd do this the traditional way: have the town's kids collect feathers and bring them to you. Shouldn't take them more than 2 or 3 days.

I don't know about the wildshaping... sounds painful. Having the kids help might not gather a lot of feathers, but it would give them something to do, and everyone wants to feel useful!

If you can't find birds, consider using leaves or paper. You simply need something thin and slightly flexible to stabilize the arrow's flight; feathers are just the traditional item to use, not mandatory. (Heck, you could leave the feathers off entirely, but that will greatly decrease range - you're basically making the bows into spearchuckers).

DM already said paper won't work, so I am going to assume he would say the same thing about leaves.

The D&D way: Sneak into the small army's camp and steal their arrows.

Probably very risky ... the little intelligence we have so far says that they have over 10,000 and some powerful spellcasters who are likely higher level than us. We're trying to keep our resistance on the downlow for now. Getting more info on them is definitely part of my plan.

Have the wizard teleport to a larger town and buy lots of arrows. Or you and the wizard could just wipe out the small army.

It's my understanding that the townsfolk have put in requests to other towns for supplies, and come up short on feathers, but I may be wrong on that. Will have to consider that.

 

[BOZ]

A few thoughts:

-First, what size/shape of feather do you need? A single bird likely possesses over one thousand feathers total on it's body, in the same way I possess over one thousand hairs on the top of my head. If the letter of the law is "provide 1000 feathers", hand them 1 sparrow, mission accomplished.

-Since you likely need feathers of a certain size and shape (I'm sure others know better than I about this), I'm assuming you need the longer wing feathers from duck-sized & larger birds. Can you get 50 useful feathers off of a single Chicken or Goose? If so, 200 chickens or geese should do the trick. At 1gp each, you could buy them someplace and deliver to the locals, they can pluck the birds themselves.

-If it is a matter of larger sized feathers, how about a single, much larger sized feathered creature? Would the DM permit there to be a Roc, a Griffon, or some other bigger creature that could provide thousands of feathers? You might be able to ask for them, than see if Healing magic can restore the lost feathers quickly, or otherwise be in the debt of the animal or magical beast.

-You're a 15th level Druid, spam spells. To accomplish this specific task, you could:
Commune With Nature: inquire to the presence of the birds you need, or perhaps their nests already filled with shed feathers.
Call Animal + Speak With Animals + Charm Animal or Dominate Animal: Repeat the process enough times to bring the appropriate birds to you and get them to be willing to have the necessary feathers plucked.

-Finally, YOU ARE A 15th LEVEL DRUID. Offer your services against a small army, you can have so much more effect than one thousand arrows. You're talents are wasted on feather gathering. How about you offer the following:

Before the battle, use Rampart, Animate Plants, Wall of Stone, Stone Shape, Control Water, Obsidian Flow and Move Earth to create whatever sort of massive walled fortress, moated defense, tree-fortified, glassed landscape you feel like. They have you picking feathers, you could be creating an elevated, defensible metropolis in the span of 2 weeks. Once that's created, you offer to Transport Via Plants to where the enemy is located, cast Control Weather before revealing yourself to whip up some impressive environmental effects, Wild Shape into something awe-inspiring like a Huge Air Elemental and calmly explain that you are a high level Druid speaking on behalf of the locals you are defending, politely requesting they back down, throw a few powerful spells around to demonstrate your point or Euphoric Tranquility the enemy commander into declaring the war ended, than Word of Recall yourself back. If the enemy arrives and STILL feels like taking them on, you've got a bazillion possible area damaging spells. One casting of Earthquake should finish an army.

...And you've got a party that I'm assuming is close to your level, any of which could contribute a variety of helpful skills better than gathering feathers.

Definitely some helpful suggestions there for when it comes down to fighting, so thank you for that. What we're expecting from the band of raiders is as follows. The first wave will not be expecting an attack from us; they are coming to extract their tribute from the town in return for their continued existence, and they likely don't know that adventurers are helping them. So, changing the look of the town and local area is not a good idea yet; in fact, we started with casting wall of stone, but that made the captain of the guard nervous about the success of our ruse. The second wave is probably when more of your ideas about fortification and landscape alterations would come in handy then; if we are successful in eliminating everyone who comes in the first wave, that will likely come in the form of a more combat-ready force to investigate what happened to the tribute-gatherers and punish the townsfolk for their resistance. If we are successful in defeating them, then whatever comes in successive waves will be ready for a more powerful force (us), as I imagined they will have realized there is more than just the townsfolk resisting them at that point. At least, this is what the locals predict, so who knows how it will really go.

We definitely do need the villagers (about a thousand of them) to provide support, as it would be sheer hubris on our part to think that we can take out a superior force without help. But they are only a support role, so we are helping them help us.

So, as for the feathers, the DM wasn't specific on the types we need, so I am not sure. We have brought up getting feathers from a griffon or something, but he did say those would be too large. Not all the feathers of a bird are the same size, so I am not sure that one bird would have all the "right kind", and you probably right about needing wing feathers. The person I am helping is a fletcher and he raises birds of prey, waiting for them to molt and then collect the feathers, but he only gets enough feathers from this to keep the town's hunters in supply of arrows. I do like your idea on how to call the birds though, so that is something I will consider either in conjunction with or an alternative to baleful polymorph.

 

[BOZ]

RUMBLETiGER, you are linking to spells in the Pathfinder SRD; do you know if the non-PHB spells are in D&D 3.5 books, and if so what books?

 

[MarkB]

Probably very risky ... the little intelligence we have so far says that they have over 10,000 and some powerful spellcasters who are likely higher level than us. We're trying to keep our resistance on the downlow for now. Getting more info on them is definitely part of my plan.

Ah. When you said "small army" I was imagining something in the low hundreds, maybe a bandit group. I'm pretty sure 10,000 backed by high-level casters counts as a large army by most standards. And frankly, I don't see how a few hundred arrows will make a difference in a confrontation on that scale - you might be better served looking for other ways to defend the townsfolk.

 

[Umbran]

The European way: buy several whole dead geese at the market for chump change, or go out geese hunting.

This. Fletching arrows typically calls for the flight feathers, and each goose has a whole bunch of them. Feathers should not be a major resource block.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Have the wizard cast fabricate.

Even at minimal caster level you'll have enough for an army. Save your manpower for other tasks.

 

[BOZ]

Ah. When you said "small army" I was imagining something in the low hundreds, maybe a bandit group. I'm pretty sure 10,000 backed by high-level casters counts as a large army by most standards. And frankly, I don't see how a few hundred arrows will make a difference in a confrontation on that scale - you might be better served looking for other ways to defend the townsfolk.

Maybe "moderate-sized" was better than small, but regardless, we still have to deal with them. I'm not going to tell these people how to defend their town, and if they don't have the resources to buy what they need, but if I can do it without much hassle, then I might as well. I am also going to help the fletcher by fashioning arrowheads and shafts using wood shape and then ironwood on the arrowheads. The other party members are helping out by training the townsfolk into militia, and/or casting spells and providing other support, so why shouldn't I do my part?

This. Fletching arrows typically calls for the flight feathers, and each goose has a whole bunch of them. Feathers should not be a major resource block.

Thanks, that should help! If geese are in short supply, there are spells suggested above that I can use to obtain them.

Have the wizard cast fabricate.

Even at minimal caster level you'll have enough for an army. Save your manpower for other tasks.

I know that fabricate was being suggested, but I think the DM brought up some issued why that would be difficult. Something about her not having enough ranks for the skill check, I think.

 

[delericho]

It's my understanding that the townsfolk have put in requests to other towns for supplies, and come up short on feathers, but I may be wrong on that. Will have to consider that.

One big advantage of teleport and it's greater cousin is that you can try towns further away. But it's really starting to sound like your DM is just being awkward - for 15th level characters, getting a supply of something as mundane as arrows really shouldn't be an issue.

I know that fabricate was being suggested, but I think the DM brought up some issued why that would be difficult. Something about her not having enough ranks for the skill check, I think.

Fabricate also requires that you have the raw materials on hand. So, without the feathers it won't work anyway.