Bow of True Arrows (SnF) for 6th level character; good idea?

[Valen]

One of the characters in my game is a Rog3/Sor2 who is pretty handy with a bow and is working towards becoming an arcane archer. The party consists of 5-6 players, each at 5th level, almost 6th. When designing the next adventure, I was looking through cool items to include and I came across the Bow of True Arrows in Sword and Fist by WotC. For those who do not have the book it is a +1 mighty composite bow that stores the spell true strike, granting the benefits of that spell to every arrow it fires. It is an unlimited use item and it only costs 4,000 gp. I checked the errata and there is no mention that the price is wrong.

The thing is, the more I thought about this, this items seems far too powerful for the cost (doing a quick creation check, I came up with closer to 6,000 gp which still seems low to me given the power of the item).

With this weapon, an archer is going to hit a target of AC 30, at least 50% of the time (and ignores the miss chance from concealment). At 5th and 6th level, there are few opponents with ACs above 23 or so.

What this long winded explanation comes down to is:

Is this weapon too powerful to give to a 6th level character?

 

[ForceUser]

Is this weapon too powerful to give to a 6th level character?

Yes. +20 to hit on every strike is beyond broken. For the cost listed I'd let it true strike, at most, 3 times per day. Errata it yourself.

 

[JacktheRabbit]

Do you have to activate the True Strike and because of that only fire every other round?

 

[hong]

Do you have to activate the True Strike and because of that only fire every other round?

Use-activated enchantments are generally either always on (ring of jumping) or a standard action to activate (ring of invisibility). It makes MUCH more sense to have a bow of true arrows require a standard action. In this case, you could get the true strike benefit at most once every other round, barring stuff like haste.

 

[Storm Raven]

Do you have to activate the True Strike and because of that only fire every other round?

Yes. This makes it not broken.

 

[Storm Raven]

Re: Re: Bow of True Arrows (SnF) for 6th level character; good idea?

Yes. +20 to hit on every strike is beyond broken. For the cost listed I'd let it true strike, at most, 3 times per day. Errata it yourself.

It is a spell trigger item. You must activate it with a spell trigger each time you use the True Strike ability. This limits the individuals who can use it to those with True Strike on their spell list, and to firing every other round. This balances the item right off the bat.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Bow of True Strike

<slow on the post click>

 

[Valen]

Do you have to activate the True Strike and because of that only fire every other round?

The text states, "This +1 mighty composite longbow stores the true strike spell, which the wielder can activate with a spell trigger (as with a wand)."

My understanding is you can use a wand every round, so I would assume the same for the bow. Even if it took a full round to activate each time, it seems like the weapon would be too powerful. I understand that true strike is just a first level spell, but it still seems too powerful.

I think I am going to put in a 3 times per day limit. Using the creation formulas, I come up with about a 3,800 gp item. This seems to me to be much more reasonable (but still on the powerful side).

 

[Mark]

Re: Bow of True Strike

<slow on the post click>

Welcome, jodyjohnson!

 

[FCWesel]

I had a charcter who had this. Keep this in mind however.

To get the benefit, you have to spend one attack action to trigger the spell, as it does so like a wand, and then you get ONE attack, the next round at +20.

If you have two or three attacks per round, that only lets you make 3 attacks as opposed to 6 possible attacks. Granted you are very likely going to hit with that +20, but usually, usually more damage is better...

For my guy it was great. The way the GM did it was this. I could either get 1 attack a round at +20 or I could get my three attacks per round as normal...both with ONLY a 5' movement.

We had talked about seeing how manytimes a day a wizard of my level with my intelligence could cast true strike and limit it to that much, but in the end didn't.

It is not as overbalancing as it may seem. After all, in D20 it doesn't matter how much you OVERHIT hit the target, just that you do. With the exception that it likely garanteed the crit if a threat came up.

If anything, treat it as a wand with 50 charges that he can get "recharged".

My suggestion is to test-play it, telling the player UP FRONT that you want to see how balanced it is in play and that you may modify it later down the road if it is too unbalanced in the end.

If a playert is given that warning stright up they wont (shouldn't) have a problem of "unfairness" later on.