Bracers of Archery

['o Skoteinos]

The Bracers of Archery explicitely excluse crossbows when it comes to giving proficiencies, but do all the other bonusus work with crossbows? If not, how much would Bracers of Archery, crossbow variant be?

 

[pontus]

They only work for true bows, but I see nothing wrong with creating a version for crossbows.

 

[Darkness]

The other bonuses from bracers of archery don't work with a crossbow, either.

As for making the same thing for crossbows - it should cost the same if it worked the same way (but for crossbows instead of bows, of course).

 

['o Skoteinos]

Darkness, I don't really agree: normal bows are martial weapons, normal crossbows (light and heavy) are simple weapons. Wouldn't the price be a bit lower, because the proficiencies aren't needed?

 

[Cloudgatherer]

I could see the crossbow version being slightly cheaper. After all, normal bows can be fired at the iterative attack rate, while crossbows require reloading as a MEA. How much cheaper it should be, is up to you.

 

[Altalazar]

Or the bracers could cost the same but make reloading quicker.

I made a variant of Bracers of Archery that work normally, but have an extra feature - on each bracer there are three golden inscribed hearts. When a critical is scored shooting a bow with the bracers, one of the hearts (on each bracer - so that means three charges) is used up and instead of doing normal crit damage, the damage is x10 critical. You could obviously envision differing versions of that. The only problem with it is you can't control when it goes off. So you could waste it on a kobold if you get a critical. So far, it hasn't come up, because even though this is a mainly archer character, and he has had the bracers a LONG time, he has yet to get a critical with them. A few times he would have if he hadn't been fighting a creature immune to crits.

It is a much more powerful version of the item, but it is limited use and not entirely controllable. Kinda cool, I think.

 

[Ravellion]

I hope you haven't shot yourself in the foot with that item Altalazar. For all you know, he could drop the main antagonist with one volley of arrows.

Still, cool idea... I wouldn't like the risk of anti climax though.

Rav

 

[Altalazar]

Not if the main dude is immune to crits. Besides, even without such a thing, the unexpected can always happen. Sometimes it is more fun when it happens that way. I've had many a game where some small element that I thought wouldn't be that big a deal turns into some climactic scene, while the final 'scene' isn't all that exciting. You really just never know and can't necessarily plan it either.

 

[UofMDude]

Not if the main dude is immune to crits. Besides, even without such a thing, the unexpected can always happen. Sometimes it is more fun when it happens that way. I've had many a game where some small element that I thought wouldn't be that big a deal turns into some climactic scene, while the final 'scene' isn't all that exciting. You really just never know and can't necessarily plan it either.

You mean like when we spent four hours doing magical recon and scouting when you expected us to just walk up to the door and knock? Hey, it was climactic for US!

(Behind the door was someone mostly harmless. Obnoxious and racist - an elf - but harmless)

Seriously though, in my experience the climactic scenes are often the ones players (and the DM) least expect. Often the "boss monster" gets taken down without danger because the party is prepared for it. And sometimes the players just stumble into a gruop of monster you expect them to have only moderate difficulty with but because they aren't prepared (or maybe have exhausted half their spells and are down a little on hitpoints) it becomes a very difficult battle.

UofMDude