The Basics

[Gale]

It seems whenever I play D&D I inevitably come across some scenario where a specific item would had been really helpful had I actually had it. Even a something as simple as rope can sometimes be immensely useful in the right situation but it always seems like the sort of thing I forget to buy. Recently, I had the urge to start buying these things to make sure I'm never caught without them again.
Basically, I want to know what items you think every adventurer shouldn't leave the house without. If anyone has any basic role-playing advice, like just not splitting the party, I would appreciate that too. Surprisingly, I haven't been able to find a list of these sort of things anywhere.

[hemming]

The scenario changes quite a bit by level - are we talking level 1 gear you shouldn't do without (or) best items in the game to have?

[PaucaTerrorem]

Low levels? Chalk, fishing line and bells, cold weather gear, flint and steel, etc. The stuff your casters can't just take of on the fly.

Higher levels? Any obscure item that helps on obscure tasks.

[Inevitability]

10 ft. pole wins this thread.

[fishyfishyfishy]

Do a google search for bunkos bargain basement and shaxs indespenable haversack. Two excellent guides for this sort of thing. I would post links for you but I'm on my phone. Maybe someone else can help with that.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Take a look at Shax's Indispensible Haversack (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8235865#post8235865). It has pretty much all the items you could ever need, annotated and sorted into 4 packages depending on how much you can afford.

[Stoneback]

Crowbar, tinderbox, extra lamp oil, rope with grappling hook, manacles, iron spikes and a small hammer, air plant, rubber ball, caltrops, ball of twine, small steel mirror, bird call, small empty flasks, 11' pole.

I'm sure I'm missing something.

The best part about it is, almost all of this junk will fit in your backpack, and it's all pretty cheap. So you can leave it if you need more room to haul out treasure.

I have a lvl 8 scout that I bust out on appropriate occasions who has a handy haversack with about 100 small items. He always has what he needs.

[Red Fel]

Thank you for calling ThreadLink, for all your thread locating needs.

Click here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8235865) for Shax's Indispensible Haversack, your list of valuable items indispensable to adventuring.

Click here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187851) for the Lists of Necessary Magic Items, for all forms of vital supernatural protection and utility.

Click here (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=350.0) for Bunko's Bargain Basement, for an assortment of useful and advantageous magical items for myriad purposes.

Thank you for using ThreadLink!

[Alucard2099]

hmm.....................

[Zaq]

10 ft. pole wins this thread.

I hope you have extradimensional storage, because while I'm willing to gloss over a hell of a lot of the encumbrance rules in the name of Fantasy Heroics and Heroic Fantasy, ten-foot poles just rub me the wrong way. Have you ever tried lugging a long-ass stick (and most folks don't deal with any pole-like objects nearly ten feet long on a regular basis; a typical broom is four or five feet, at MOST) of any kind around for an extended period of time? Particularly in close quarters, in close proximity to people you'd rather not whack upside the head? Maneuvering a floor lamp into a new room (and those are rarely more than six feet long) is tricky enough; sure, they have a base and something at the top, but they're still FOUR FEET SHORTER than a ten-foot pole. And I still almost always knock something over when I'm moving a floor lamp around, which is why I don't do it more than I have to. You can't just sling one of those suckers (either a floor lamp or a ten-foot pole) across your back. They get in the way like crazy.

And to say nothing of USING the damn thing! Okay, you're poking something with your pole. That means that you're getting your pole into your hands from wherever you've been holding it, and you're positioning yourself to maintain solid leverage over this thing, and you're trying not to hit anything/anyone behind you or to the side of you as you wave your unnecessarily long stick in front of you, and you're probably next to a wall or something. Because that helps. No, no, no!

I'll let you stuff your encumbrance limit into a nebulously sized backpack and have it fit perfectly, even before we get extradimensional spaces. I won't ask too many questions about how you're retrieving the spell component pouch you hid in your boot. I won't ask where all your gold is being carried. I'll gloss over how you're holding a ready sword and a ready shield and a torch and a giant coil of rope that you're spooling out and a map and pen and ink to make notes at the same time and the lead to the party mule, all in two hands (with heavy gloves, and also gauntlets just because), all ready at once when you get jumped and combat starts. I won't bother with that. But a ten-foot pole is just not something I can ignore. Because those suckers are cumbersome.

Yeah, yeah, collapsible pole, whatever. (Do YOU trust a telescoping pole in the situations most adventurers use ten-foot poles? You sure? And do you have space to extend and retract it in a dungeon?) I still call BS on the ten-foot pole. In general.

Now, a Shapesand'd ten-foot pole is another matter. But then, Shapesand is the greatest semi-mundane item ever.

(Then I see Small-sized adventurers lugging around ten-foot poles, and I facepalm.)