The 10-foot pole, antithesis of what adventuring should be?

[Cadfan]

I'm all for my PCs carrying 10' poles. They'll feel really smart up until they try to charge through a tight doorway with a 10' board strapped to their back.

Where do people carry these things, anyways! Pockets? Oh, don't tell me. Massive amounts of bags of holding. Good thing we've got all those "realism" oriented adventurers out there with their portable universes holding extra long planks making fun of me and my tendency to reward fast paced gameplay.

 

[coyote6]

Where do people carry these things, anyways!

Quivers of Ehlonna, in those six slots for bows, staves, polearms, etc.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

It took us to level 5-ish to start using "Trappy the Badger" as out 10 foot pole

Trappy the Badger! I love it!

 

[Zweihänder]

As far as I can remember, the 10' pole was officially introduced as an aid to the Balance skill. Something like a +2 bonus? Now, obviously it was introduced with the possible jokes in mind; it would kind of have to be. But, why steer clear of them? The item has a logical, ordinaryish purpose. It's fine by me if players want to get creative; it means I get to, as well.

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

Where do people carry these things, anyways! Pockets? Oh, don't tell me. Massive amounts of bags of holding. Good thing we've got all those "realism" oriented adventurers out there with their portable universes holding extra long planks making fun of me and my tendency to reward fast paced gameplay.

D'oh! *slaps forehead* Totally slipped my mind - literally the last session I ran, the PCs had me doing the "ten-foot pole in the type I bag of holding" math. I had to come up with a ruling on the spot as to whether BoHs in my campaign were of fixed dimension, 100% flexible, or somewhere in between. (I.e., if we stick a ten-foot pole in this bag, is the holding space now ten feet by 1.73' by 1.73' or ten feet by three feet by one (or whatever), or does it just hold as much as it holds?) I ended up just assigning any old thing they throw in there a "cubic footage" rounded to the nearest whole number, and when they hit 30 and stuff starts poking out I'll let them know.

 

[D.Shaffer]

I'm all for my PCs carrying 10' poles. They'll feel really smart up until they try to charge through a tight doorway with a 10' board strapped to their back.

There's a reason many people mentioned 5 foot poles and tying things together.

I hope all those DM's out there, cackling in glee over the thought of making people do a multitude of skill checks for carrying 10' poles around are doing the same thing for those same players and monsters carrying around pole arms. Fair's fair, right?

If people are toting around a 10' pole all the time just for trap detecting, I'd be a bit more liable to look at the DM as the cause then the player. There's a reason they're being that finicky.

 

[Rykion]

In the old days, my character wouldn't be caught dead without multiple 4' poles designed to screw together. I would never walk around checking every square of a dungeon, but they came in handy when dealing with suspicious looking floors/items/chests/halflings. They're also good for walking sticks, checking depth, crossing pits, makeshift torches, spears (my spikes were threaded as well), and using for leverage. As important as spikes and rope in the good old days of dungeon exploration.

I don't always carry them anymore as they don't seem that important with the 3.x rules or adventures.

 

[Cedric]

Early in my group's adventuring career we found a Wand of Summon Animal or something, level 1.

Which meant we could summon a celestial badger, who would exist for one round before vanishing. It was considered a "Joke Treasure".

It took us to level 5-ish to start using "Trappy the Badger" as out 10 foot pole

My group was faced with a dungeon on the outskirts of a small town to explore and soon discovered that while the dungeon was rich in treasure it was also rife with traps.

So, the party went back to town for more supplies to help defeat the traps. Unfortunately, being a very small farming community, no worthwhile equipment was available.

So, the group pooled their funds and purchased 300 chickens, which were then deposited at the entrance to the dungeon and herded before the group.

The chickens manage to successfully trip just about every trap in a large section of the dungeon.

And lo, Chicken Dungeoneering was born. Not suprisingly, every subsequent town did not have a surplus of chickens and they were available for purchase only in small sums, not suitable for Chicken Dungeoneering.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

When I want to play cinematic or high fantasy or something else, other games seem more appropriate.

LOL!

If I wanted to play grim and gritty, D&D is the last game I would play.

Pre-3e D&D can be rather schizophrenic. On one hand we have the level ups and big piles of accumulated ablative hit points. On the other hand the weakest poisons that seem to appear in real play (make your save at +4 or die) still can kill the brawniest hero outright 10% or 5% of the time.

Are we playing high fantasy or grim & gritty? Both? Either? Neither?

I suppose there are some who will prefer wild eclecticism because they found a way to make it suit their style of play.

Personally, I prefer a design philosophy that fully accepts as its core belief that we like the hit point mechanics, and uses this as a standard to normalize all the game mechanics. If the kind of scaling we see in hit points works as the fundamental mechanic of combat, then that kind of scaling is a good starting point for all aspects of the game.

 

[Someone]

Why use poles, when you can use halflings? They also make funny noises when squished by traps.