Post/Author/DateTime	Post
truehero 07-16-05, 02:26 PM	Ok all, Im in a bit of a quandry here. I am a 9th level artificer and I cant decide what to make for my party that would best help us all out. Its hard to balance items between scrolls, potions, wands ect. So im coming here to you guys. So far Ive made a few: Bags of holding Havard Sacks Bag of tricks -- I love this bag lyre of building -- we made a super fort/inn/dungeon What other items have people found invaluable in groups? or even just for their characters
ILL34GL3 07-16-05, 02:30 PM	Cloaks or vests of resistance. A pair of boots of flying or slippers of spider climb. Use them to climb up the tower, then drop them down to your buddies so they can do the same.
NeueRegel 07-16-05, 02:45 PM	For a "party", instead of a "character", I'd have to say "wands of cure~". A lot of battery life, that half the members can access if the cleric's down. (Even the low level rangers, paladins, bards, etc). Just make sure that everybody knows "what" the wand is (the only prereq to use it), and what pocket/pack the thing's kept in. The best thing your party can take along is teamwork and knowing when and where to shine with your class, and when to let somebody else. NeueRegel
Adlar Hodge 07-16-05, 02:47 PM	A portable hole. Have the whole open up into a large storage room where you can later on make a stepladder to get in and out of the hole and have a construct do all the heavy lifting inside the hole. Find a Dragon's horde but you have no wagon with you? Portable hole is the way to go.
Atar 07-16-05, 02:56 PM	At least two people that are good in melee/magic on their own and give them both a ring of sustenance. So if you have a fighter and a paladin, give them both one and you'll never have to worry about 'shifts' during sleeping times again. Also the Greater Choker of Eloquance is sweet if your character is a sweet-talker. And the Possum Pouch from Song and Silence is a cool gadget and cheap. Maybe add a permanent Nystul’s Undetectable Aura to it for a higher funkism rating :) (this is all 3.0 btw, we play 3.0)
Keenath 07-16-05, 03:41 PM	For a "party", instead of a "character", I'd have to say "wands of cure~". A lot of battery life, that half the members can access if the cleric's down. (Even the low level rangers, paladins, bards, etc). More to the point, a wand of Cure Light Wounds. CLW wands at 1st level are the cheapest healing you can find -- Average of 5.5 healing per use, which works out to 15 gold per charge, or 2.72 GP per HP. No other cure spell is as efficient; Minor and Moderate work out to around 7.5 gold per HP, and the higher spells are even worse. If you need to have a few emergency in-combat cures around (for when the cleric's down or busy), potions are your friend. But that wand of CLW means between combats you can heal up quickly and keep moving, and the Cleric doesn't have to spend so many spells per day on healing. Any sort of stat-booster is nice for the melee fighters, and casters love their headbands and cloaks. You're an artificer? Try making some homonculi. They rock! (Use the Eberron CS -- they list four or five new homonculi with great powers.) Storage is great, but if you have a few Handy Haversacks already, you won't be needing too much more. How many coins are you planning on FINDING?! Since you're 9th level, I'd devote resources at this point to further enhancing magical weapons (I think you just now go the ability to go to +3, right?) and armor. I tend to find that spell storing items, like wands and scrolls, are more useful for keeping utility spells that you expect to need than in-combat spells. That's because in combat situations, you need as many caster levels as you can get in most cases, and that makes wands, et al., expensive. There are exceptions (grease, web...) but in most cases, wands of Knock or Levitate are better than Fireball or Lightning Bolt.
Derren S. 07-16-05, 03:55 PM	Helms/Headbands of Opposite Alignment for the really nasty BBEG you manage to capture/subdue.* *Only for non H&S groups as they can't get the loot when they turn the evil guys good.
Thorak 07-16-05, 04:01 PM	Storage is great, but if you have a few Handy Haversacks already, you won't be needing too much more. How many coins are you planning on FINDING?! Since you're 9th level, I'd devote resources at this point to further enhancing magical weapons (I think you just now go the ability to go to +3, right?) and armor. My party has easily found 30,000gp worth of coinage we've left behind, for lack of any way to carry it. We're playing a time-sensitive campaign, without "magic shops" stocked with any item on demand, so we usually can't comission anything and the chances of finding a magical container just haven't worked out, significantly. We've got a couple minor things, like a chest we wrap in a Sash of Diminution (shrinks item wrapped by 95%), but we've got them all full. It's gotten to the point that coinage is irrelevant; it's value per weight simply isn't high enough for us to bother. A portable hole would be great, but we've been trying to find one since level 4, and we're level 12 now. The only one we found was being used by the magic shop for storage, and they weren't willing to part with it without a decent trade. We've got stuff we could trade now, but we've been teleported several times and are hundreds of miles away at this point, in the middle of a cursed desert that screws with magical transportation spells. And too pressed for time to take the several weeks to pack ourselves out of the desert. Of course, we're raiding ancient tombs and such, so we're finding lots of nice valuable trinkets that are easier to carry and worth more than coinage. We're not hurting for cash, it's just that there's a huge amount we haven't been able to transport. That's my anecdotal 2 copper, anyway. Wait, scratch that, I don't have any copper. My anecdotal 2 platinum. That's the smallest change I can bother carrying these days.
tarkin 07-16-05, 04:32 PM	When you go in to a dungeon, does each and every room have a deadily monster waiting to kill you? It shouldn't, that would be very unrealistic. If the monsters are allies, they should be massed together, (5 in one room instead of 1 in each of 5 rooms). If the monsters are not allies, they need some buffer zones so they don't hear each other fight, then when one kills a monster, the other sneaks and and attacks it (cause the new guy figures out the other one is probably weakened from it's own fight). Similarly, it is PATENTLY RIDICULOUS to supply players with so many monsters they don't have time to take a week off. Yes, I know you are enjoying playing at adventurer. But if you are going to do it anything close to realistic, you have to realize that the characters would NOT go on a deadly adventurer every day. It's supposed to be a JOB to them, not a vacation. Moreover, it is a messy, vile, disgusting job, with a high risk of death and dismemberment, and a very UNCOMFORTABLE one. If your characters have that much money WHY ARE THEY STILL ADVENTURING???? To get money? :rofl:, you get money to BUY things with, it is worthless if you don't want to buy anything. They should be DEMANDING a week off, with BATHING, dancing girls, bards, gambling, more wine then they can even think of drinking by themselves, the best food in all the lands, etc. etc. I could see you saying that your wizard was too poor or too drunk to make magic items, but not having enough time to make items demonstrates that you are not playing the same game most of us are. Some of us are playing a role-playing game. Some of us are playing a dungeon crawl. Some of are even playing Hack and slash adventure game. But you are not even playing that. You are playing an arena combat simulation, with a big arena. There is nothing wrong with that perse, but your advice is therefore not helpfull to us. The poster clearly has the capacity, unlike you, to buy magic items. He is playing in a realistic rpg game, not just an arena combat simulation, and as such can buy or make magic items. (Note, it is also incredibally unrealistic that no one sells magic items. Supply and Demand. If no one is selling, then what are you doing adventuring? Just start up a Magic Item business and charge 10 x normal price. If no one else is selling, then people WILL pay you what you demand. Clearly, there are enough monsters in the area to warrant such a business, otherwise you would have enough time to make your own magic items.)
Tusz 07-16-05, 05:26 PM	If you're playing in a small enough group, a 10' by 10' carpet of flying would be useful for long treks. Other than that, items that summon creatures are beneficial to the whole group in combat.
BloodGod 07-16-05, 05:50 PM	Rope. Chalk. Crowbar. Oh. Magical. Armor. Weapons. On a smaller scale, various +2 or +4 abilty increase items. Cure potions. Scrolls for the cleric. Mainly the first and last two. -BG
Raven Dark 07-16-05, 06:06 PM	Wand of Invisibility Our group bought one of these earlier in the campaign and use it prior to any expected encounter. Its kept us alive during the Grasp of the Emeral Claw module so far. It is amazingly useful for ambushes.
Earthcrosser599 07-17-05, 04:36 AM	A Ring of Sustenance (sp?) is really nice.
Thorak 07-17-05, 02:02 PM	When you go in to a dungeon, does each and every room have a deadily monster waiting to kill you? It shouldn't, that would be very unrealistic. If the monsters are allies, they should be massed together, (5 in one room instead of 1 in each of 5 rooms). If the monsters are not allies, they need some buffer zones so they don't hear each other fight, then when one kills a monster, the other sneaks and and attacks it (cause the new guy figures out the other one is probably weakened from it's own fight). Our DM is pretty good about the realistic aspect of things like this. Similarly, it is PATENTLY RIDICULOUS to supply players with so many monsters they don't have time to take a week off. It's not that there are so many monsters. It's that the bad guys have too big a head start to sit back and relax while they do god-knows-what. Yes, I know you are enjoying playing at adventurer. But if you are going to do it anything close to realistic, you have to realize that the characters would NOT go on a deadly adventurer every day. It's supposed to be a JOB to them, not a vacation. Moreover, it is a messy, vile, disgusting job, with a high risk of death and dismemberment, and a very UNCOMFORTABLE one. And our party has been thoroughly abused and shafted in the campaign. We aren't doing this for fun. If your characters have that much money WHY ARE THEY STILL ADVENTURING???? To get money? :rofl:, you get money to BUY things with, it is worthless if you don't want to buy anything. They should be DEMANDING a week off, with BATHING, dancing girls, bards, gambling, more wine then they can even think of drinking by themselves, the best food in all the lands, etc. etc. Because money is, to each member of the party, only a minor consideration. Our goals and drives aren't the same (in fact, they conflict regularly), but money isn't on the short list of any of us. For the most part, we're more concerned about things like stopping the orc horde from sacking a defenseless town, stopping the powers that are organizing the humanoids and giants against the civilized peoples, etc, etc. If we take a week off, they don't, and get a week further ahead of us. And they already have a head start. There are occasionally times we've had where we thought the danger had passed, and took some time then, but that's only happened twice thus far in the adventure, and only for a couple weeks each time. Then something came up, and we had to move quick to try and forestall it. I could see you saying that your wizard was too poor or too drunk to make magic items, but not having enough time to make items demonstrates that you are not playing the same game most of us are. Some of us are playing a role-playing game. Some of us are playing a dungeon crawl. Some of are even playing Hack and slash adventure game. But you are not even playing that. You are playing an arena combat simulation, with a big arena. I'm sorry, whaaaa? How can you even begin to make that assertion? Perhaps doing your best to save the world against overwhelming odds and with far too little actual information, in a campaign where the world doesn't stop when you do, is to you an 'arena combat simulation', but it's the most realistic and tense campaign I've played in in a long time. Maybe the campaigns you play are all "invade the dungeon looking for fame and fortune", and the world just sits and waits for your characters to interact, but that's hardly the only, or even the most realistic, style of campaign. There is nothing wrong with that perse, but your advice is therefore not helpfull to us. The poster clearly has the capacity, unlike you, to buy magic items. He is playing in a realistic rpg game, not just an arena combat simulation, and as such can buy or make magic items. Again, you entirely missed my point; a realistic RPG does not mean you can buy any magic item in the DMG at your local Magic-Mart. (Note, it is also incredibally unrealistic that no one sells magic items. Supply and Demand. If no one is selling, then what are you doing adventuring? Just start up a Magic Item business and charge 10 x normal price. If no one else is selling, then people WILL pay you what you demand. Clearly, there are enough monsters in the area to warrant such a business, otherwise you would have enough time to make your own magic items.) They're being sold. Just not in every village (because the DMG is very clear that magic items aren't for the common folk, but are a luxury only the very rich, a term including adventurers, can afford), and not a complete assortment of everything you could want at every store. And we don't have the time to spend comparison shopping all over the world. But then, you're suggesting that the only realistic, role-playing style game that's possible is a non-time-sensitive dungeon crawl for fame and fortune. So I can see how the vast possibilities outside that limited perspective might have passed you by.
Hitman 07-17-05, 05:15 PM	Our campaign has been CRAZY. I am a 12 Psion (Telepath). In my party are a 14 Hexblade, a 5 Cl/4Sor, and a betraying Rakashkha (sp?) whose levels are 1/2/1/1. He's like a monk/assassin/prestige class/classX. We started off seeking out a mage and an artifact (we knew NOTHING ABOUT IT except a vague sketching on an old piece of paper the guy who commissioned the adventure gave us). The artifact had four pieces, and the mage seemed always a step ahead of us. When we finally caught up to him in the final cave, he was staring wondrously at a small doorway-sized lava-fall (as in like a waterfall). He looked at us and the DM pointed out the mage's lips were moving so I use Mind Thrust and luckily was able to kill him in one quick stab. He wasn't casting, but I couldn't take the chance. We were tired, had just gotten out of a heated battle, and I had a bad single encounter (by myself) with the mage's apprentice and the apprentice's invisible two-headed dog. Anyway, as we approached the lavafall, I was walking ahead of everyone since I was the best off (Gotta love Empathic Transfer Hostile), and the mage burst through the lava, slammed in the cave wall, and slumped to the ground. He was charred and dying I guess, but his body was still moving and his only working eye was searching around blindly. He made a concentration check I guess, because his eye focused on me. Just before his death his ring started glowing and about that time a spear pierced the lavafall and killed the mage. Rocks moved to stop the lava, and a being stepped through. He blasted us back and I knew we stood no chance at this point, so I grabbed my allies and teleported to safety. I had a few potions and cure scrolls from the apprentice handy, so I gave them to the Cleric/Sorcerer and he healed us. I teleported us back in fully healed and buffed, and we destroyed the being. As the mass of dying convoluted flesh oozed to the floor, it hardened and became the four pieces of the artifact. I gathered them in my bedroll (we weren't supposed to 'touch' the artifact, part of the deal), and we took them back. Then we were unlucky enough to be sucked into a portal, and the Rakashkha was given money by a demon and we were pretty much sold into slavery. Three months of torture later (after being taken completely apart and put back together, probed, prodded, poked, bled...) we were released by our captors to do their bidding. We were to kill a list of generals they deemed problematic. We killed 7 of 8, but the 8th proved to be too much (mostly because our DM had told us we'd be up two levels after this one particular cave which didn't happen... Partly because he was just a bad mofo and we weren't meant to beat him). After a bounty hunter came to finish off Jack (the last one we couldn't beat), we were eventually bought back by the party member that sold us in the first place. We continued on and met up with another friend's character. My psicrystal noticed the Rakhashka sneaking off and it woke me up. I followed him and observed him stealing from the newfound Half-Orc. When the cat left, I woke the sleeping Half-Orc and enlightened him to the Rakhashka's constant steps towards betrayal. I offered him his equipment returned and a 10K GP reward for the death of the Cat-boy. We fought two dogs, a large skeleton and a dragon in this cave. With the dogs and skeleton dead, we laid into the dragon. All of a sudden, the half-orc started his assault on the cat-boy, ignoring the dragon. That lapse in attack allowed the dragon to activate a ring he had on, effectively neutralizing me in the fight. Then the Rakhashka ran off. At that, the half-orc pledged fealty to the dragon in exchange for protection and came to swing at me. I got my OoA and stunned him, then killed him in one foul swoop. I teleported from the cave with the orc's body and came back in for my allies. After tucking his former possessions into my bag of holding, we called it a night.
James Wildspell 07-17-05, 08:50 PM	Back to the OP... Ring of the Ram is a very handy item. If you do have to bash down a door, it is very nice to be able to do it without physical contact. And since it is usually not needed, it doesn't need to be equipped all of the time, leaving a ring slot open for another ring to be worn most of the time. Keoghtoms' Ointment is a Cleric in a jar. As a "party" item it is useful insurance against your Party healer getting herself knocked out of action, kidnapped, etc. Horn of Valhalla Everyone can use some extra muscle at times. These are Barbarians. They are also constructs. They will fight for you. Your DM may weep, but she will live to create a new adventure, so don't worry about her feelings. :headexplo
jaerad 07-17-05, 08:52 PM	Party Essentials (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=174240) ^ A mix of class/ability essentials and magic items. Also has a lot of good ideas sprinkled throughout. It's definetly a good read. Thorak, Shrink Item is your friend. You can shrink stuff for weeks at a time easily. You can't shrink magic items, but you can shrink barrels full of gold and carry them in your pocket.
Rulebook 07-18-05, 01:57 AM	the portable hole is a true essential. we've done so much with them its not funny. we went on a ocean/desert voyage, so we filled the hole with water. our cleric can purify it if it goes stagnant so we werent worried about that. what we were worried about was the 6' diamater 10' tall cylinder of water running out. that amount of area (with no weight gain) holds a LOT of money too. using a portable hole as a piggy bank works really really well. we had over a million platinum in it once! (it was a really high level game where we didnt spend any money for a LOOOONG time) heck, i had a recent character who put a bed, footlocker, small desk, everburning torch and a few other amenities (and had his Pixie cohort fill the entire thing with permanent images to make it look freaking HUGE inside) and made himself a comfortable little abode for use when camping! (we rule that all the contents of a portable hole are statically placed, so when you open the hole its the same room, with a hole opening into it from different angles. this is not a good thing if you open it on the celing.) buying a few dozen CLW wands is always a good idea. ropes of climbing for the non-physically adept of the group. a few scrolls of Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion is also a good idea, for when camping in hostile territory just dosent cut it.
q'afuu 07-18-05, 03:00 AM	Must haves? After a certain point, every party has to be able to deal with invisible and/or flying opponents. Pretty much everything else might be a serious nuisance, but those two are IMX potentially far beyond that. Items to handle that are indispensible at higher levels. A close third would be something to cure level drain.
Zorminster 07-18-05, 09:02 AM	I would consider something like an everburning torch (or actually, anything with a permency light spell on it) to be a necessity. (unless of course, everyone has darkvision) If you will be seeking out items of power- you always need a way to detect that magic/alignment. Anyway you can get to scry is also very useful (or it has been for us anyway)
Fanged Fremont 07-18-05, 09:55 AM	At 375 gold a pop, you can't go wrong with wands of detect magic. Discover non de-aurafied traps, illusions, pick out the 'good stuff' while looting corpses, and more. For 4000, you got the good ol' Amulet of Health. 18 more hitpoints for you level 9ers. But my favorite (other than the portable hole) is rope. Get some good elven rope. I Forget the price but it's stronger than silk and maybe you can talk your DM into letting be like the LotR rope that unknots itself when you want it to.
Bopple 07-18-05, 10:09 AM	One of the theoretically indispensable items is a Ring of Greater Counterspelling, containing MDJ. If a DM were to run a campaign truly objectively, you are to face MDJ, sooner or later(and more frequently than you expect). But practically, I have rarely seen such DM.
DarknessEternal 07-18-05, 10:22 AM	Magic Sleeping Bags are always a must in my group, as we never have renewable healing sources.
AramilWindwalker 07-18-05, 10:24 AM	Everyone needs that old kobold corpse(or a living halfling) to smash skeletons with.