New Excerpt: Battle standards.

[garyh]

I like the battle standards. It's a great flavor item for a warlord to have, for instance.

 

[Engilbrand]

I only got to glance at them, but I could tell that I liked them. My players get to scope a dragon's horde tomorrow night. This, as well as stuff from some of the other recent excerpts, will definitely be showing up.
I don't see cost as that much of an issue. More than just gold cost, there's the action cost. It's a standard action to plant it. It's probable that some other actions would benefit the players more. I think that it will help the planning stages of things. Knowing where to plant it before a combat would also help make things interesting. I look forward to seeing more of these.

 

[greyscale1]

Actually the more I think about these, the more I like them.

I didn't really like them so much as things players could make or buy (or find really) but then I had the Idea that they would carry the standard of whatever patron they were working under to further differentiate the 'flavors' of the NPC parties.


Neato.

 

[Scribble]

Interesting.

My only concern is the cost. A standard gives benefit X. For the same amount of money I could hire & equip 1,000 mercenaries for six months. I think the latter will give you more bang for buck in most cases.

The bang of course being the sound of my giant d20 against your noggin for even thinking about making me DM 1000 NPCs... (minion or not!)

 

[blargney the second]

More than just gold cost, there's the action cost. It's a standard action to plant it.

Yup, that's what I was going to say - a standard action is really expensive.

On top of that, I think it might use up one of your magic item uses for the day, which are a finite and valuable resource.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

A battle standard is a magic item. No. These battle standards are magic items. Where did these people learn English? Or are they really that ignorant? (Yes, I'm just venting.)

And I find the Capture the Flag possibilities annoying. We plant our standard and there's a concerted rush by the enemy to pick it up and replant it for thereselves. Then we do the same. So much for all the manouverabilty 4E is supposed to bring to the game as everyone is milling around trying to guard or take the thing!

Also, the Solitair sure didn't seem like it gave anywhere near enough of a benefit to be worth over a million gold.

YMMV.

 

[blargney the second]

Uh, Ed, the battle standard is an encounter power. There will be no replanting.
-blarg

 

[Phoenix8008]

A neat idea with lots of interesting possibilities. Have to think on this some more and see what I can come up with...

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I look forward to using something like this with the barony's standard (or maybe the imperial standard). I may have to reverse engineer this for the 3E portion of the campaign now.

 

[Grimstaff]

This puts me in mind of the Black Company and its' standard, which turned out to be a magical artifact (The Lance of Passion). Good stuff.