OracleofWuffing
2009-11-13, 11:55 PM
An... initially innocent question asked elsewhere (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7304482#post7304482) kind of developed into a significant threadjack, so this topic is about doing silly things involving caltrops. I'll try to summarize the key points in the other topic to the best of my abilities, I'm certain I will miss anything and apologize in advance. Apology. There may be a few catgirls killed in this topic, even this very post, but I won't apologize in advance for that. Not apology. In case the title of the thread doesn't make it clear, the entire idea is supposed to be a :smalltongue: sort of thing, so please don't take things too seriously. If something sounds too serious, I encourage sarcasm tags and/or smilies where appropriate.
Without further adieu, it was pretty well concluded that an ordinary bag of caltrops could be spread on a five-foot square as a free action. The reasoning behind this is that the Player's Handbook does not indicate what kind of an action it is, dropping things is a free action, and caltrops will always point upwards when they land.
Now, let's say you took the Quick Draw feat. For whatever reason. The Quick Draw feat says that you can draw a weapon as a free action. Now, you can't really draw a bag of caltrops using quick draw, as a bag of caltrops is listed as gear and not weapons.
Here's where things start getting :smallsigh:. Let's use caltrops as improvised weapons. Caltrops are objects, and they're not made for combat, so they can apparently be used as improvised weapons. Since an improvised weapon is a type of weapon, you can draw caltrops using quick draw. Yes, this also means you can draw anything you have using Quick Draw, including maybe the entire material plane, but that's a topic for someone else to discuss.
Next comes the :smalltongue: part. There isn't a RAW guide for how many caltrops are in a bag of caltrops (It should be noted that Curmudgeon, who is more talented than I at making caltrops, came to the conclusion that there should be up to roughly seven of them, going by real-world metrics). RAW does say, however, that a two-pound bag fills a five-foot square. So, if you have a bag of caltrops, it is possible that that bag contains only two one-pound caltrops, which are enough to fill a five-foot square.
So, using this abomination of RAW and logic abandonment, you can draw two caltrops as a free action (a total of two free actions), drop them as a free action (a total of four free actions), and they'll act just like caltrops that you've spread out on the floor. From there, do whatever.
As with other things on the internet, this has accumulated it's share of :smallmad:, so here's a few aspects of that:
One could say that Quick Draw should be limited to "actual" weapons. While this is a possible solution, I don't really like the idea of declaring things as "weapons" and "not weapons" on the fly. Especially with Drunken Masters about.
One could say that spreading caltrops should be a standard action. This is claimed to reduce their effectiveness in combat. However, the Bag of Endless Caltrops, in Arms and Equipment Guide and again in Magic Item Compendium, creates mundane caltrops which require a standard action to spread. Naturally, whether this applies to the Bag of Caltrops is up for DM interpretation, and I'd lean to say most DMs would say yes. But again, this is a :smalltongue: topic, and I'm going to run this out as far as I can.
You could run into a "reasonable limit of free actions" using this nonoptimal joke of a strategy, but the involved parties, we can safely assume that the limit is somewhere between two to thirty free actions per round. As you only need four free actions to pull this off once, I'm comfortable with that range.
Now, logically, using such a small amount of caltrops to cover a five-foot square should be less effective than using a nice sevenish caltrops. Yes, that's how things work in the real world, and that's probably what a DM is going to say. But the book says it's the weight of caltrops you use, not the number. :smallwink:
It might be a better idea to just avoid all this hoop-jumping and create a new spring-loaded type caltrop, shove it into a weapon sheath, and call it a day. The two things I have against that line of thought is that I like fiddling with the existing rules, and even if I did go that route, I'd rather go all the way and create magic magictrops which magically produce the same effect as caltrops and magically cost the same as a bag of caltrops, they also magically spread themselves and magically regenerate, they magically work in an antimagic field, and they can be enchanted with magic- just that I can't have a familiar when I want to use that item. :smalltongue:
So, all that explained, anywhere else anyone wants to run with this? I'd really like to see some larger shenanigans done with this sort of thinking.
Without further adieu, it was pretty well concluded that an ordinary bag of caltrops could be spread on a five-foot square as a free action. The reasoning behind this is that the Player's Handbook does not indicate what kind of an action it is, dropping things is a free action, and caltrops will always point upwards when they land.
Now, let's say you took the Quick Draw feat. For whatever reason. The Quick Draw feat says that you can draw a weapon as a free action. Now, you can't really draw a bag of caltrops using quick draw, as a bag of caltrops is listed as gear and not weapons.
Here's where things start getting :smallsigh:. Let's use caltrops as improvised weapons. Caltrops are objects, and they're not made for combat, so they can apparently be used as improvised weapons. Since an improvised weapon is a type of weapon, you can draw caltrops using quick draw. Yes, this also means you can draw anything you have using Quick Draw, including maybe the entire material plane, but that's a topic for someone else to discuss.
Next comes the :smalltongue: part. There isn't a RAW guide for how many caltrops are in a bag of caltrops (It should be noted that Curmudgeon, who is more talented than I at making caltrops, came to the conclusion that there should be up to roughly seven of them, going by real-world metrics). RAW does say, however, that a two-pound bag fills a five-foot square. So, if you have a bag of caltrops, it is possible that that bag contains only two one-pound caltrops, which are enough to fill a five-foot square.
So, using this abomination of RAW and logic abandonment, you can draw two caltrops as a free action (a total of two free actions), drop them as a free action (a total of four free actions), and they'll act just like caltrops that you've spread out on the floor. From there, do whatever.
As with other things on the internet, this has accumulated it's share of :smallmad:, so here's a few aspects of that:
One could say that Quick Draw should be limited to "actual" weapons. While this is a possible solution, I don't really like the idea of declaring things as "weapons" and "not weapons" on the fly. Especially with Drunken Masters about.
One could say that spreading caltrops should be a standard action. This is claimed to reduce their effectiveness in combat. However, the Bag of Endless Caltrops, in Arms and Equipment Guide and again in Magic Item Compendium, creates mundane caltrops which require a standard action to spread. Naturally, whether this applies to the Bag of Caltrops is up for DM interpretation, and I'd lean to say most DMs would say yes. But again, this is a :smalltongue: topic, and I'm going to run this out as far as I can.
You could run into a "reasonable limit of free actions" using this nonoptimal joke of a strategy, but the involved parties, we can safely assume that the limit is somewhere between two to thirty free actions per round. As you only need four free actions to pull this off once, I'm comfortable with that range.
Now, logically, using such a small amount of caltrops to cover a five-foot square should be less effective than using a nice sevenish caltrops. Yes, that's how things work in the real world, and that's probably what a DM is going to say. But the book says it's the weight of caltrops you use, not the number. :smallwink:
It might be a better idea to just avoid all this hoop-jumping and create a new spring-loaded type caltrop, shove it into a weapon sheath, and call it a day. The two things I have against that line of thought is that I like fiddling with the existing rules, and even if I did go that route, I'd rather go all the way and create magic magictrops which magically produce the same effect as caltrops and magically cost the same as a bag of caltrops, they also magically spread themselves and magically regenerate, they magically work in an antimagic field, and they can be enchanted with magic- just that I can't have a familiar when I want to use that item. :smalltongue:
So, all that explained, anywhere else anyone wants to run with this? I'd really like to see some larger shenanigans done with this sort of thinking.