What's a Caster Without Spells To Do?

[Dannyalcatraz]

"Improbable"? That's about a one in twenty-five thousand chance. 12 successful saving throws is about one in 500, and 8 or 9 failed Ref saves is also about one in 500 (give or take). The odds that BOTH are true? One in 25000.

Dude, I've personally had 2 dice rolling sequences (for 2 different PCs in 2 different games) that involved probabilities that were literally longer odds than winning the Texas Lottery. One was a string of 8+ consecutive natural 20s, the other a similarly long sequence of natural 1's with a percentile die thrown in the mix in which I succeeded on everything but a "00"...and rolled "00".*

The thing is, we're talking long odds...but they're spread out over 30+ years of gaming, over tens if not hundreds of thousands of die rolls.

As for corroborating evidence, how, on the Internet, could I possibly supply any? Even if I did get the other participants in those events to take the time to join ENWorld and address your specific concerns, they could be dismissed as being me with additional accounts.








* FWIW, both incidents have been recounted here on ENWorld.

 

[Empirate]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]: What exactly are you trying to do here? Posting long (and actually quite lucid) comments on how other people probably never had that exact experience they're describing, or how their DM did a bad job - how is this contributing to the discussion at hand (namely, casters do run out of spells sometimes and there's stuff that happens then and there's stuff that shouldn't happen even then etc.)? To me your recent posts in this thread smack mildly of accusation, but of what are you accusing the other regulars, and what for? I don't get it. Are people having badwrongfun, is that it, or are some points made by them just rubbing you in such a wrong way that you can't not post a comment?

Not that I want to bash your posts or anything, but to me it looks like we had an interesting discussion going, and now all of a sudden people are just defending their descriptions of what they assert actually happened at their gaming table against your objections.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I'm quite sure my players would have found it amusing to go after the people who did this, keep on hitting their camp and wiping out some guards, and forcing them to move on. For months. And just said about it to anyone who wanted to know why they didn't rescue the prisoners. "Hey, we hit the camp but they killed all the prisoners before we could deal with all the guards. And I'm afraid the ringleaders got away too. Do you want us to go after them?" Which isn't even a lie.

I have to ask. Would your players deliberately let the prisoners get killed just so they could do this? I'm curious.

Also, kudos to them for taking the initiative on something like that.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, sorry about that. Got caught up in earlier discussions. So, let's try this then.

DannyA - what did your group do next after that? I mean, the point of this thread is what should casters without spells do. In your example, the caster had spells pretty much throughout the encounter. So, it's actually not really talking about the OP. So, after this event, did the party carry on and have two or three more encounters? Or did they stop?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We continued. We had no more offensive spells, but we were hardly gimped.

The Druid could fight and had all of his HP. The archer had his short sword and all of his HP. The Mage had a staff, daggers (and rocks). My PC- a Ftr/Th- had his rapier, shortsword and daggers. The hammer-throwing cleric found his hammer and was good to go. Etc.

 

[Bluenose]

I have to ask. Would your players deliberately let the prisoners get killed just so they could do this? I'm curious.

Also, kudos to them for taking the initiative on something like that.

I asked them yesterday, by email. Only a couple replied to far, but they both had pretty similar views. Anyone who starts killing prisoners/hostages/people who can't resist around them is going to have a very miserable time for the rest of their life - and that life is going to be shortened. I'll quote one of them:

If this is someone just killing people for the fun of it, then they've signed off being alive. I don't care how long it takes me, I'm going to find out who they are, where they've gone, and I'm going to track them down. And then I'm going to get creative about killing them. And it isn't just going me either. What do you think *name removed* will want to do? And I won't even feel sorry for them.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

To return to the OP, Does anyone have reusable or single use magical items they really like? I player who had a Psion carried around a few Hammerspheres to break out when he'd run low on PP and wanted to smash something.

My Factotum had a Bag of Endless Caltrops (Arms & Equipment version) to feed his pet Rust Monster, always useful for a little battlefield control to limit enemy movement speed.

What's worked for you as a good ol' fashioned fallback?

 

[Grogg of the North]

My Factotum had a Bag of Endless Caltrops (Arms & Equipment version) to feed his pet Rust Monster, always useful for a little battlefield control to limite enemy movement speed.

Did you just start feeding the rust monster till it followed you? I've gotta hear that story!

My barbarian had a pet worg he trained* until a dragon breathed on us.

*Beat into submission.

 

[Jacob Marley]

To return to the OP, Does anyone have reusable or single use magical items they really like? I player who had a Psion carried around a few Hammerspheres to break out when he'd run low on PP and wanted to smash something.

My Factotum had a Bag of Endless Caltrops (Arms & Equipment version) to feed his pet Rust Monster, always useful for a little battlefield control to limite enemy movement speed.

What's worked for you as a good ol' fashioned fallback?

Amber Amulet of Vermin
Boots of Swift Passage
Gloves of Object Reading
Healing Belt

Bag of Boulders
Bag of Endless Caltrops
Eternal Wand
Hammersphere
Rod of Sliding
Rod of Transposition
Survival Pouch
Tanglepatch

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Did you just start feeding the rust monster till it followed you? I've gotta hear that story!

Raised it from infancy from a Rust Monster Wand. To a Full Grown, 10HD Warbeast mount. All the info is on the blog link off that Enworld post. Enjoy!

That Factotum joined the Mages of the Arcane Order (the group, not the PrC) and taught a class at Mathghamhna on Aberration Handling, giving Rust Monster eggs to his students. The knowledge is spreading in our game world of how to raise these little buggers to be affectionate pets!