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

[Mark CMG]

[homer]ummmmm..... pokey.[/homer]

 

[MerricB]

You laugh now. But the next time a company of chargers is rolling at you in a ten foot corridor, you'll wish you had a line of pikemen to stop that charge cold.

And those pikemen will wish for a better weapon when a fireball comes down that corridor...

Also, it's a pity about the pikes when you are in a 5' wide corridor which then turns.

Cheers!

 

[Hypersmurf]

This also explains why sonic attacks overcome hardness.

Well, Psionic Sonic Attacks do. Most others don't, but at least the damage doesn't get divided before the hardness is applied like with Fire, Cold, and Electricity...

-Hyp.

 

[el-remmen]

To me the 10 foot pole represents--to me--what D&D was meant to be:

• The humor that is meant to be ever present but not to the point of constant parody
• The caution that explorers of the dark & unknown should have
• The PCs are heroes, not Heroes

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

I just wanted to say that this is the best characterization of what I think D&D is I have ever read. Almost makes me want to start a separate thread to talk about it.

Oh, and I love 10' poles, and yet would be a pain in the ass as DM in terms of enforcing the awkwardness of carrying one around, and would expect any DM to do the same to me if I were playing - and I do sometimes play the kind of character that would carry one around (or try to).

 

[Templeton580]

*

 

[RFisher]

So for you, R, D&D involves a part of unrealistic premises that make up the "genre" of D&D without making it "parodic". Did I understand it well enough? PCs are people adventuring, without necessarily being "Heroes" in a Classical (read: mythical) sense of the term, right?

If I understand you correctly, I think you understood me pretty well. (^_^)

I start to get nervous when using words that contain "real" when discussing role-playing games, but I think I may find some of those "unrealistic premises" closer to realistic than others. But, when it comes right down to it, it's a game. & a fantasy game at that.

I think a mix of motivations for adventuring--profit, experience, thrills, & even a touch of fighting the forces of evil--rings truer than Mythic Heroes with High Ideals.

Although, truth be told, I've done plenty of the latter sort of thing in my games. Even when playing D&D.

I also wish to note that I said the 10' pole represents things, not necessarily that I think D&D is actually about carrying a 10' pole around a dungeon & poking every square inch with it. (Heck, a 10' pole has many more uses than that! (^_^))

Although, truth be told (again), if a PC in a game I was running took a 10' pole along, I would likely forget to consider that fact, & it wouldn't bother me too much. I'd rather just handwave it & continue enjoying the game instead of beating myself up for not being a detail-oriented DM/person.

I just wanted to say that this is the best characterization of what I think D&D is I have ever read. Almost makes me want to start a separate thread to talk about it.

Thanks! It's nice to know that occasionally when I'm trying to make sense of the nonsense in my head I occasionally write something that makes sense to someone besides myself. (^_^)

 

[DestroyYouAlot]

I gotta say, I highly encourage preparedness and forethought - and I'm pretty hardcore about the "if you didn't bring it, then you don't got it, and now you need it" thing. The way I feel, this world is here whether you are or not, and yes, the guy who designed this dungeon did it to keep people out, and of course, if you go to Hill Giant Hill, there are hill giants there, I don't care if you're all first level... In short, bring what you can carry, and if you're smart and lucky, you can dump it and bring back gold and goodies in its place.

(We had a few chuckles last session: It was the first snow of the adventuring year, and the party left bright and early for the ruined keep with their brand new hireling and their wagon full of implements of destruction... And got two hours out of town before I reminded them that it was twenty degrees and snowing out and no-one was wearing cold weather gear. They got to sit around making Fort saves to avoid frostbite while the bard ran back to town to buy cold weather gear, and tarps, and horse blankets, and brandy... and spent a few hours saying farewell to the love interest... and got back around dark. The next morning I reminded them that they didn't have enough rations for the journey... and when they got back from that, that they had forgotten about the horse feed. )

 

[iwatt]

Ok, poking buttons, shifting small things. But triggering pit traps?

/M

Actually, poking things with a 10' pole isn't easy at all. When I was a senior in high school, I kept forgetting my keys. Since I was getting home at 4-5 AM, ringing the doorbell was out of the question. I'd have to leap over the fence, pick the 10' pole used to skim pools, and then proceed to hit a switch that opened the backdoor. All this through a small window that I would leave open. Believe me, it takes a lot of patience, specially if you're trying to do it stealthily, with bad-lighting.

I never thought my dissolute youth would help in a D&D discussion. Except maybe in drinking contest rules.

 

[noffham]

I have to say that I've never witnessed anyone tapping on every 10' square of floor. Most DMs in my experience would get the point and just tell us there was no pit within the area we were looking at, or that we'd found it and go on from there. And we really only bothered looking when the corridor/chamber was described to us as being unstable or looked like a perfect ambush chokepoint.

10' poles, like just about everything else you carry into the dungeons, are tools. Some people can't figure out how to use a hammer correctly, others of us delight in being the party MacGuyver. If it makes the game more fun for someone to haul around various bits and bobs because they can think of 20 different ways they'd be useful, why all the fuss about it?

Seems to me that if a group is going to picayune everything to the point of absurdity, that it sure ain't the tools that are the problem.

Just my couple o' coppers.

Noffham

 

[Teflon Billy]

Pole-vaulting.

There are a thousand-and-one uses for the ten-foot pole, most of which aren't overly paranoid.

A bit of paranoia is fun, but making it the focus gets old. I could enjoy playing a game where one dungeon (a temple of the god of traps?) is super-duper-trapped, but only if told about the shift in style OOC.

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