The Rod of Seven Parts: Kauai Team OOC

[CanadienneBacon]

Thanks. Edited accordingly.

 

[Mista Collins]

I am going to be gone until March 8th. I might be able to find some downtime during my training for this new job, but it is very unlikely. Feel free to NPC Chev until I return.

 

[BRP2]

Sorry, I'm posting now. I should be more catched up and more involved now, my internet messed up for about 30 hours, but I just got it fixed.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Thanks for the head's up that you'll be away, Mista Collins. I 'preciate that. And thanks for posting, BRP2. I 'preciate that, too.

 

[Voadam]

Trying to lay the foundation for multiclassing into wizard at level two.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Cleaning a carcass would fall under the Survival skill in my opinion. Using the materials to then craft something would fall under the craft skill; respectively craft (bower/fletcher) for making a bow and craft (armorsmithing) for armor. [...snip...] If you want to be more liberal then you could equate it with dragonhide as a special material, mirroring the costs, time and results for that material as presented in the Dungeon Master's Guide; allowing for the manufacture of the types of armor usually limited to being produced with metal.

Unless someone owns, say, Fiendish Codex I and can tell me whether there are guidelines in there for demonhide armor, I plan to use the dragonhide guidelines as presented in the DMG. Two out of the three large sized spiders are being harvested. The third spider, Traven, was trampled in the street, rendering its remains unsuitable. Using the chitinous plates on one spider's exoskeleton, an armorsmith can produce one suit of masterwork banded mail for a small or smaller creature, or one suit of masterwork half-plate for a creature tiny or smaller, or one masterwork suit of full plate for a diminuitive or smaller creature, or one masterwork breastplate for a small creature, or one masterwork suit of hide armor for a medium or smaller creature. For the tiny and diminuitive suits, cost will be more (if you can find a smith who can even do it) because it's tricky to make a suit of armor so small. In addition, there will also be enough hide to craft a light or heavy masterwork shield. The legs, all sixteen of which are viable, provide enough material for sixteen small-sized masterwork short- or longbows.

Dragonhide, or in this case demonhide, costs double what masterwork normally costs, but takes no longer to fashion into items than does ordinary material. You'll want to know this when you take the bits of leftover tanned, cured spider to the armor and weapon smiths.

Maelicent has never seen a demon spider before and would have little intimate knowledge with how to best butcher the creatures that their best parts could be kept intact. Modeling his butchering technique off of what he might know to do when dealing with a more mundane monstrous spider, Survival DC 20 sounds appropriate to harvest the wolf spiders. One roll per each spider.

Now, as for how long each spider will take Maelicent to butcher. Working by himself in unfamiliar territory with improvised tools...24 hours of work per creature. If he rolls well on his Survival check, the amount of time it takes him to butcher a wolf spider can be reduced by -2 hours for every +1 by which he beats the DC of 20.

If Maelicent fails to beat the DC 20 by 4 or less, then he'll need to spend another 12 hours before he can finish butchering but will be assumed to have the job done in 36 hours. Failure by 5 or more will indicate that the attempt went so badly that not all of the creature's parts can be harvested. I prefer to leave this a bit open to DM interpretation as to how much, if any, he can get.

Take a moment, please, to review the above and chip in with any comments or questions.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I have posted in the IC to the effect that the night passed uneventfully. Please indicate in the IC where your PC stayed and what errands he might have done last night or this morning. If there is some small task like buying gear or quickly going to talk to someone that we can simply assume to have done before 8 am, so much the better. There were two hours in the evening and two hours in the morning during which shops in town were still open. I don't want to hand wave details away but neither do I want to ignore them altogether. If you feel like your PC is good to go and wants for nothing, then go right ahead and post as much in the IC.

 

[Voadam]

I'll wait until I've got more than 6 cp before I buy anything substantial.

 

[Ambrus]

Unless someone owns, say, Fiendish Codex I and can tell me whether there are guidelines in there for demonhide armor, I plan to use the dragonhide guidelines as presented in the DMG.

I flipped through the book but, unsurprisingly, there's nothing in there about making demonhide armor. I did notice that the arms & equipment guide does include rules for making chitin armor and weapons out of giant spider remains. Here's the blurb if you're interested in comparing:[sblock=Chitin]Difficult to work and dangerous to obtain, the exoskeletons of massive insects are still used to construct weapons and armor, especially in areas where metal is scarce. Weapons and armor made from chitin weigh half as much as similar metal items. Although chitin can replace metal in most items, chain weapons such as the spiked chain cannot be made from chitin, nor can chainmail armor or chain shirts.

Giant insects and similar creatures are the only sources of chitin plates big enough for crafting armor. To provide workable chitin, the creature must have a +5 natural armor bonus or better. Much as they can work choice bits of dragonhide into armor, armorsmiths can make one suit of banded mail for a creature up to two sizes smaller than the source creature, one suit of half-plate for a creature three sizes smaller, or one breastplate or suit of full plate for a creature four sizes smaller. In each case, there is enough material left over to create a large or small shield, one large or medium-size weapon, two small weapons, or 50 arrow or bolt heads, provided that the source creature is large or bigger.

Chitin has a hardness of 5 and 10 hit points per inch of thickness.

Market Price Modifiers
Heavy Armor +10,000 gp
Shield +2,000 gp[/sblock]
All things considered, I think the system you outlined is essentially better since the costs of chitin armor seem outlandishly overpriced to me. That's just my opinion though.

Take a moment, please, to review the above and chip in with any comments or questions.

Well, since Maelicent is limited to light armor, the medium and heavy armor types which can be made out of the chitin means that he'll be looking to sell the bulk of the materials he harvest rather than seek to have armor made for himself; the exception might be a masterwork buckler. The only other thing he's be interested in is having a masterwork composite long-bow made out of some of the leg segments for himself. The only thing to figure out is how much the materials can be sold for.

Since a craftsman must pay half of the desired item's final price in materials it would appear to be a simple matter to figure out how much the materials are worth. The only confusion lies in the fact that the same materials can be used to fabricate various items, each with their own gp value. For simplicity's sake I'd suggest averaging out the costs of the possible end products to set a gp value for the whole lot.

Lessee... Taking into account that each demonhide item is worth twice the standard price:

2 masterwork suits of banded mail sized for a small creature would cost 1,600 gp.
2 masterwork breastplates sized for a small creature would cost 1,400 gp.
2 masterwork suits of hide armor sized for a medium creature would cost 660 gp.

Averaging out the values of all three armor types, we end up with a cost of 1,220 gp.

2 masterwork light shields would cost 636 gp.
2 masterwork heavy shields would cost 680 gp.

Averaging out the values of both shield types, we end up with a cost of 658 gp.

16 masterwork small-sized shortbows would cost 10,560 gp.
16 masterwork small-sized longbows would cost 12,000 gp.

Averaging out the values of both bow types, we end up with a cost of 11,280 gp.

Adding the three totals together (1,220 + 658 + 11,280) we end up with a total cost of 13,158 gp for all the weapons and armor which can be produced from the two wolf-spiders' remains. Since a craftsman only need pay half the price of an item for the raw materials then all we have to do is divide the final number in half and we get the total worth of the materials for both wolf-spider carcasses: 6,579 gp. Unless you want to consider raw chitin as trade goods, then Maelicent should be able to sell the materials for half their normal price. Dividing our last total in half again gives us Maelicent's final sale value of the materials: 3289.5 gp. Like I mentioned above, Maelicent is hoping to get the local craftsmen to fashion him a small masterwork composite long-bow out of two leg segments (at a cost of 800 gp) as well as a masterwork buckler (at a cost of 330 gp).

Subtracting those two amounts from the final sales value leaves Maelicent with a net profit of 2159 gold pieces and 5 silver pieces. Isn't math fun?

The sinew will be included in the sale of the leg segments to the bowyers to make bowstrings. Mael will likely keep the wolf fur bits to add to his coat as a mantle to cover his shoulders. He'll try to peddle the wolf skulls to local alchemists or apothecaries along with whatever other organs they might be interested in for whatever the going rate on demon parts is. If there are no takers on those, then he'll probably end up giving one to Vaja and Frane as a trophy for the bar. The other he'll harvest for fangs to add to his own costume.

I don't really agree with your statement that Maelicent is "in unfamiliar territory" and working "with improvised tools". He's been coming to the Cockatrice for the past six months and he's got two hunting knives and a sturdy handaxe on hand to work with. The human city is a little strange, but it's hardly unfamiliar territory to him anymore. I don't know what other tools Maelicent might need, but if he thought he was lacking anything in particular then he would likely have stopped off on his way back to the Cockatrice to purchase whatever he'd need for the task at hand.

As for Maelicent's activities, I think I've sufficiently outlined his intentions earlier.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Thanks for looking up chitin armor in AEG. That's definitely way more than I feel is a good idea to hand out in what is, basically, treasure to a 1st level party. Thanks too for doing the math on how much we might be looking at in terms of what the spider carcasses might be worth. While I can do the math, it's the time and opportunity that I lack. Three small children and a baby at home makes me very appreciative of help on the accounting front. I'm comfortable giving out the roughly 3-4k in treasure. Maelicent will have skinned and tanned the carcasses but it was a group effort to slay the things. I'll leave the specifics of how to divvy up the gold you might earn from the spider carcasses at the hands of the group; essentially, that's a player thing, not a DM thing. My part is to make sure the math is straight, to account for how long it takes to do the butchering to see if it somehow will interplay with how the adventure runs, and to NPC the sale and manufacture of any items crafted from the carcasses (and this only because no one seems to want to dump skill ranks into Craft (weapon or armorsmithing), or to spend the in-game time messing with crafting weapons or armor).

Thinking it through, you have a valid point in that Maelicent is not a total stranger to the city. In going off the mental cues as provided in your textual description of his thoughts, though, Maelicent is still a foreigner in the city but he would at least know how and where to find most things that he might need to go about his daily business. When I said "in an unfamiliar environment," I more meant that I didn't think he'd butchered anything before in a stable in a city. The stable is smaller than a woodland clearing, there's the question of whether the beams in the small stable will hold up the large beasts vice using a stout and mature tree in a forest, etc, etc, etc...

As I see it, we really only have two things left to agree on. The first is whether Maelicent gets any sleep at all during his butchering or if he stays up all night. I recognize that you all want to rp, but I also need for everyone to be on the same page in terms of being together, adventuring together, whether you all are diurnal or nocturnal, etc... What I'm getting at is if Mal stays up all night, then he may end up being exhausted, which comes with certain penalties as per the DMG. Is Mal going to be making a habit of staying up all night? My concern is long-term on this issue. Let me know what you're thinking on this subject. The second thing to agree on is the Survival DC for the butchering. If Maelicent has enough coin to do it, he could stop by a butcher's on his way back to the Cockatrice and spend 20 gp to buy a masterwork filleting knife and a boning knife. He'd know where to buy the knives and how much they'd cost. I want to go with a DC 20 because this isn't just your average everyday butchering job. The spiders are large and have a foreign anatomy. The special tools (in this case knives) would lend a +2 bonus to the Survival check.