D&D 5E Thief Rogue throwing Ball Bearings everywhere

[MostlyHarmless42]

What? No! If a thief can make boots immune to them for his friends then everyone else would have them too.

Pretty much this, obvious caveats being the assumption that it is a common enough practice and something people could afford or access. Would I allow a player to make it? Sure, but enemies would have them as well if it is realistic to do so. And a merry arms race between making better caltrops and anticaltrop boots would ensue.

Also I'd probably consider making them some sort of attachment or special boot, and give them advantages / disadvantages. For example, snow shoes are great at walking on snow but awkward as all heck when trying to use them otherwise and no sane person would wear them except for when they are needed. And I'd imagine such an attachment would cause issues with other things like the above post mentioned the tearing of carpets or scratching if floors.

 

[BlivetWidget]

It is much more than this. You can mold them, but you have to remove the molding excesses and polish them to perfect spherical shape if you want them to roll and no just stand where they land (more or less). This is a lot of work. Making just one bead with classical instrument took me about an hour. The second was faster but was still about half an hour and I cheated using a motorized polisher. No, it is a lot of work.

You seem to have quoted @TheCosmicKid but completely ignored what they wrote. A shot tower is a building expressly designed for producing spheres of lead in mass quantities by dropping liquid from a height. The lead solidifies into spheres as it falls and is collected at the bottom. You could accomplish the same thing with a cliff next to a lake, and the low melting point of lead (you can do it over a campfire) makes melting it at the top of the cliff a trivial exercise.

Furthermore, in order to create a walking hazard, you don't have to have perfect spheres. If you covered the ground in lead M&Ms, it would still be a significant walking hazard and impossible to run on.

 

[jasper]

Ball bearings are non-trivial to manufacture in large quantities, unless your game world has technology equal to 19th century+.

At the very least, charge maybe 2s each for them.

Glass marbles would make more sense. Still not easy to make, though.

(Yes, I know the official gear list has 1,000 for 1g. It bugs me.)

Ball bearing made out pewter. Ball bearings made out clay. Ball bearing made Dwarf apprentices to work on their smithing skills.

 

[jasper]

OR a bullet mold. And nothing says the ball bearings have to be all perfect. Just enough to do the job.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

so, the easiest way to bypass caltrops and ball bearings is to jump over them. The jumping rules state that you can clear an area a distance equal to your strength in Feet. Ball bearing cover a 5 foot area. Jump over them.

I actually consider ball bearings and caltrops to be pretty useless if you know where they are. You have to place yourself in a way that your enemies are forced to step in them, usually by making sure you are adjacent to the square where the ball bearings are placed so that when they come to attack you, they are forced to step in the space. Otherwise, your allies can circumvent ball bearings all over the battlefield just by hopping over the space. No special shoes required.

EDIT: Jump: Strength in feet if you get a 10 foot run, 1/2 strength if no 10 foot move. Therefore, anyone with a STR of 10 can jump over a space with Caltrops without needing to move 10 feet.

 

[Helldritch]

You seem to have quoted @TheCosmicKid but completely ignored what they wrote. A shot tower is a building expressly designed for producing spheres of lead in mass quantities by dropping liquid from a height. The lead solidifies into spheres as it falls and is collected at the bottom. You could accomplish the same thing with a cliff next to a lake, and the low melting point of lead (you can do it over a campfire) makes melting it at the top of the cliff a trivial exercise.

Furthermore, in order to create a walking hazard, you don't have to have perfect spheres. If you covered the ground in lead M&Ms, it would still be a significant walking hazard and impossible to run on.

Yes you can do them this way but they won't be spherical. Yes, they might roll on a perfect floor, but it is not the case of stone floor where there are many ruggedness such as the floors in a dungeon or castle or a street. In our modern era, floors are perfect but it is not the case in a fantasy setting with old tombs.

 

[BlivetWidget]

Yes you can do them this way but they won't be spherical. Yes, they might roll on a perfect floor, but it is not the case of stone floor where there are many ruggedness such as the floors in a dungeon or castle or a street. In our modern era, floors are perfect but it is not the case in a fantasy setting with old tombs.

This is getting ridiculous. Please stop with this nonsense already and just google "shot tower." Falling drops of lead do form spheres due to surface tension, they just need far enough to fall.

And no, they absolutely do not need to be perfectly spherical on a perfectly flat surface in order to roll. Have you ever played outside? Gone hiking? Anything? Even a sprinkling of very rough gravel on a very rough surface (for example, asphalt in a cul de sac, or pebbles on a dirt trail) is quite enough to give many a playing child a painful case of road rash from slipping.

 

[Undrave]

So I was looking at the thief archetype for the rogue and my question is, would it break anything if a rogue with leatherworker tools could make boots that make you auto succeed against ball bearings. I find it odd that the thief screws his allies and his enemies by using caltrops and ball bearings.

Is it something that comes up that often?! I think the Thief just needs to learn how to properly use them to funnel enemies.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Ball bearings are non-trivial to manufacture in large quantities, unless your game world has technology equal to 19th century+.

It's called "magic"

 

[BlivetWidget]

Ball bearings are non-trivial to manufacture in large quantities, unless your game world has technology equal to 19th century+.

It's only difficult if you want to use them in a mechanical interface to reduce friction. If you're out to make a tripping hazard, they are extremely trivial to make. I can do it with a campfire, an iron skillet, some lead, and a bucket of water. The higher I can get above that water, the more perfectly spherical they will be. But I could do it from a standing height and get results good enough for making a tripping hazard.

FFS people, if you put a handful of cubic, six-sided dice on a racing track, you would cause serious injury. Yes, those cubes you roll every game night. Cubes. You do not need perfectly identical, mirror-polished spheres to trip someone up.