Extrapolate base cost of Stirge Bolt (A&E)

[Jowgen]

Stirge Bolts from A&E p. 119 are +3 Bolts with a special blood drain effect. The price is given at 1007 gp. I would presume that this means just one bolt, but I'm not sure.

Could somebody please suggest how to figure out the price for 20 masterwork Stirge Bolts, without the +3? (or +1 Stirge Bolts, if the blood-drain is magical)

EDIT: The price-extrapolation is done, this thread has segwayed into an optimization discussion.

[Venger]

Stirge Bolts from A&E p. 119 are +3 Bolts with a special blood drain effect. The price is given at 1007 gp. I would presume that this means just one bolt, but I'm not sure.

Could somebody please suggest how to figure out the price for 20 masterwork Stirge Bolts, without the +3? (or +1 Stirge Bolts, if the blood-drain is magical)

what a neat item.

let's assume they're priced as ammunition, since they are ammunition:

a +3 weapon is 18000. so each individual arrow would cost 360.

this seems more like a magic item that they decided to make a +3, so without assuming a +1 bonus (which would be 40gp/bolt) so that leaves us with the blood drain cost as costing 647gp.

a quiver of 20 would cost 12,490. if you rule they need to be magical +1 arrows first, then add 800 on for 13290

assuming this was correct, the price to infuse a bow with this "stirge blood drain" would be 32,350, assuming it's a flat cost, and not a +x property, which is expensive, but it doesn't ruin the item for other magical properties.

[Jowgen]

what a neat item.

let's assume they're priced as ammunition, since they are ammunition:

a +3 weapon is 18000. so each individual arrow would cost 360.

this seems more like a magic item that they decided to make a +3, so without assuming a +1 bonus (which would be 40gp/bolt) so that leaves us with the blood drain cost as costing 647gp.

a quiver of 20 would cost 12,490. if you rule they need to be magical +1 arrows first, then add 800 on for 13290

assuming this was correct, the price to infuse a bow with this "stirge blood drain" would be 32,350, assuming it's a flat cost, and not a +x property, which is expensive, but it doesn't ruin the item for other magical properties.

They are neat. What's actually really neat about them is that, on a hit, they aren't actually destroyed; so if the target doesn't attack them to stop the blood drain (seemingly the only way to stop it), they seem to actually be reusable. Anyways, 647 seems like a strange flat price.

I think the 7 at the end can be gotten rid off by taking off 6 gp for Masterwork, and 1 gp... as the bolt's base price? A single normal bolt is usually just a silver, but I guess they'd round that up?

Beyond that, maybe they didn't price it as a flat cost? Going through some permutations, I think what might make sense is if they counted the Blood-drain as a +2 WSA? That would bring the total to a +5, which is 50.000 on a normal weapon, and if ammunition is priced at 1/50th (for some reason I always thought it was 1/20th), then that would leave us with a flat 1000. Which plus the rounded up 7 for base does seem to add up to the total cost.

[Venger]

They are neat. What's actually really neat about them is that, on a hit, they aren't actually destroyed; so if the target doesn't attack them to stop the blood drain (seemingly the only way to stop it), they seem to actually be reusable. Anyways, 647 seems like a strange flat price.

I think the 7 at the end can be gotten rid off by taking off 6 gp for Masterwork, and 1 gp... as the bolt's base price? A single normal bolt is usually just a silver, but I guess they'd round that up?

Beyond that, maybe they didn't price it as a flat cost? Going through some permutations, I think what might make sense is if they counted the Blood-drain as a +2 WSA? That would bring the total to a +5, which is 50.000 on a normal weapon, and if ammunition is priced at 1/50th (for some reason I always thought it was 1/20th), then that would leave us with a flat 1000. Which plus the rounded up 7 for base does seem to add up to the total cost.

that is a pretty great feature.

it is.

the math in this section's all botched up. if you look carefully, you'll see the cost is 1007, but the price to craft is somehow 507, so they just can't count.

I'm not sure you'll be able to reverse engineer it since I think it's pretty clear they just slapped a random cost onto this.

If you wanted to houserule something that made sense, just use wounding (+2) as a jumping off point, and then since it keeps on dealing damage after the initial, maybe bump it up to +3, but I don't think this is powerfl enough to be a +5

[Jowgen]

the math in this section's all botched up. if you look carefully, you'll see the cost is 1007, but the price to craft is somehow 507, so they just can't count.

I'm not sure you'll be able to reverse engineer it since I think it's pretty clear they just slapped a random cost onto this.

If you wanted to houserule something that made sense, just use wounding (+2) as a jumping off point, and then since it keeps on dealing damage after the initial, maybe bump it up to +3, but I don't think this is powerfl enough to be a +5

Okay, I think what they did in coming up with the price is count the RAW material cost for the bolt as 7 go and just tacked that onto the magical crafting cost of 500 gp.

I had meant that the +3 of the Bolts plus a +2 for the Stirge effect makes for a total effective bonus of +5, which would cost 50.000 for a normal weapon and thus 1000 on a bolt.

Looking at it as a variant of the +2 Wounding actually makes a lot of sense. It's basically the same effect, except the damage is potentially higher and repeats, with the trade-off being a 1 round delay and an easy way for the target creature to stop the effect.

I'm currently looking into things to combo these babies with. One is the Mosquito's Bite skill trick, with which you can effectively ensure that they won't instantly attack the first bolt. Second is Thinaun, which works so long as you consider the bolts (by virtue of the "treated as tiny weapon" clause) as eligible for being made out of it and are indeed allowed to extrapolate the ammunition-appropriate cost. Another, which I made a thread about a while back, was the Force WSA.

[Venger]

Okay, I think what they did in coming up with the price is count the RAW material cost for the bolt as 7 go and just tacked that onto the magical crafting cost of 500 gp.

I had meant that the +3 of the Bolts plus a +2 for the Stirge effect makes for a total effective bonus of +5, which would cost 50.000 for a normal weapon and thus 1000 on a bolt.

Looking at it as a variant of the +2 Wounding actually makes a lot of sense. It's basically the same effect, except the damage is potentially higher and repeats, with the trade-off being a 1 round delay and an easy way for the target creature to stop the effect.

I'm currently looking into things to combo these babies with. One is the Mosquito's Bite skill trick, with which you can effectively ensure that they won't instantly attack the first bolt. Second is Thinaun, which works so long as you consider the bolts (by virtue of the "treated as tiny weapon" clause) as eligible for being made out of it and are indeed allowed to extrapolate the ammunition-appropriate cost. Another, which I made a thread about a while back, was the Force WSA.

As ever, your approach to this game fascinates me.

Mosquito's bite is a good skill trick, but will unfortunately not work, since it only works with light weapons, which to my knowledge, this isn't. Since it's an archery thing, put it on a bow with standard archery goodies (splitting, seeking, etc) thinaun is clearly legal for the reasons you mention.

What else are you looking for? I'd love to help.

Piggy Knowles's archery handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?284283-Piggy-Knowles-Archer-Build-Thread) may have a few useful things in there.

what is force WSA?

[Jowgen]

As ever, your approach to this game fascinates me.

I'll take that as compliment :smallbiggrin:


Mosquito's bite is a good skill trick, but will unfortunately not work, since it only works with light weapons, which to my knowledge, this isn't. Since it's an archery thing, put it on a bow with standard archery goodies (splitting, seeking, etc) thinaun is clearly legal for the reasons you mention.

What else are you looking for? I'd love to help.

Piggy Knowles's archery handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?284283-Piggy-Knowles-Archer-Build-Thread) may have a few useful things in there.

what is force WSA?

As they are crossbow bolts, and the ammunition rules don't differentiate, Mosquito's Bite will work provided you're using a Hand-Crossbow (i.e. a light weapon, and the only crossbow worth optimizing in my book). The target will act as if you missed, and only notice the bolt next turn, which is when the first 1d4 Con-drain happens.

Combining it with Splitting... well, for one you'd have the same endless-ammo cheat as you get with Raptor Arrows (MIC), which no sane DM will let fly (pun intended), but beyond that, it absolutely should allow for double the Con drain.

Now while you can make a hand-crossbow out of Thinaun (thanks to the existence of the Steel mod for crossbows from Dragon 349), the soul-trapping ability wouldn't work if it's not the ammo, as the material explicitly only works if the weapon itself is in contact at the time of death/destruction.

My overall goal here is to use Thinaun Stirge Bolt ammunition to capture enemy souls en masse with minimal chance of failure, and/or optimize the Con-drain to effectively kill with just Con-damage.

The Force WSA from Magic Item Compendium is a +2 that "turns ammunition shot from it into a
force attack", i.e. "force projectiles" that overcome all DR and ignore incorporeal miss-chance while dealing the "same amount of damage as normal ammunition". One first fun part here is that this allows for the Bolt to stick in incorporeal targets, which I find most amusing.

The ambitious reading of this is that a Stirge Bolt fired from a Force weapon becomes indestructable (sans Disintegrate et al), but still does it's Con damage (as it's supposed to deal the same amount of damage); making a single hit with one of these a sure-fire death-sentence by RAW.

What's unclear though is at what point (if any) the bolt reverts to not being a force effect. Still, even if the Indestructableness doesn't work and/or other methods for getting the bolt out are in play, Force still gets past DR that might otherwise prevent the Bolt from Sticking.

Anything that could be used to prevent the enemy from otherwise removing the bolt or boost its effectiveness would be helpful.

[Venger]

I'll take that as compliment :smallbiggrin:

As they are crossbow bolts, and the ammunition rules don't differentiate, Mosquito's Bite will work provided you're using a Hand-Crossbow (i.e. a light weapon, and the only crossbow worth optimizing in my book). The target will act as if you missed, and only notice the bolt next turn, which is when the first 1d4 Con-drain happens.

Combining it with Splitting... well, for one you'd have the same endless-ammo cheat as you get with Raptor Arrows (MIC), which no sane DM will let fly (pun intended), but beyond that, it absolutely should allow for double the Con drain.

Now while you can make a hand-crossbow out of Thinaun (thanks to the existence of the Steel mod for crossbows from Dragon 349), the soul-trapping ability wouldn't work if it's not the ammo, as the material explicitly only works if the weapon itself is in contact at the time of death/destruction.

My overall goal here is to use Thinaun Stirge Bolt ammunition to capture enemy souls en masse with minimal chance of failure, and/or optimize the Con-drain to effectively kill with just Con-damage.

The Force WSA from Magic Item Compendium is a +2 that "turns ammunition shot from it into a
force attack", i.e. "force projectiles" that overcome all DR and ignore incorporeal miss-chance while dealing the "same amount of damage as normal ammunition". One first fun part here is that this allows for the Bolt to stick in incorporeal targets, which I find most amusing.

The ambitious reading of this is that a Stirge Bolt fired from a Force weapon becomes indestructable (sans Disintegrate et al), but still does it's Con damage (as it's supposed to deal the same amount of damage); making a single hit with one of these a sure-fire death-sentence by RAW.

What's unclear though is at what point (if any) the bolt reverts to not being a force effect. Still, even if the Indestructableness doesn't work and/or other methods for getting the bolt out are in play, Force still gets past DR that might otherwise prevent the Bolt from Sticking.

Anything that could be used to prevent the enemy from otherwise removing the bolt or boost its effectiveness would be helpful.

good, that's how it was intended.

oh, ok.

well since it specifies the bolts are wood, you'd need to make them out of the thinaun, which is expensive, but given your goal, it's cheap on a relative scale.

looking at the force property, it doesn't say anything about your bolts morphing back into wood or thinaun

at a cursory glance, your ideal is for the things to be treated as thinaun for initial point of contact, but also be force so they can't be removed or destroyed. I'm not sure force supports that, since at the moment of impact it's force, since it kills ghosts and such. I'm thinking this part needs to be an either/or thing.

ranged pin and ray of dizziness is always a favorite of mine. while the str dc to remove bolts via ranged pin is low, it consumes a standard action. if through whatever means of your choice you can hit with more than one projectile a round, you can lock an enemy down indefinitely. throw ray of dizziness on (in this case probably through umd) and the enemy can't advance on you after unpinning, even if they do manage to remove all the bolts.

this may not kill in one round, but it will incap the enemy until they bleed out

[Jowgen]

well since it specifies the bolts are wood, you'd need to make them out of the thinaun, which is expensive, but given your goal, it's cheap on a relative scale.

looking at the force property, it doesn't say anything about your bolts morphing back into wood or thinaun

at a cursory glance, your ideal is for the things to be treated as thinaun for initial point of contact, but also be force so they can't be removed or destroyed. I'm not sure force supports that, since at the moment of impact it's force, since it kills ghosts and such. I'm thinking this part needs to be an either/or thing.

ranged pin and ray of dizziness is always a favorite of mine. while the str dc to remove bolts via ranged pin is low, it consumes a standard action. if through whatever means of your choice you can hit with more than one projectile a round, you can lock an enemy down indefinitely. throw ray of dizziness on (in this case probably through umd) and the enemy can't advance on you after unpinning, even if they do manage to remove all the bolts.

this may not kill in one round, but it will incap the enemy until they bleed out

Bolts and arrows are weird in that despite being called out as being primarily made of wood, you can make them out of special material metals that explicitly state that they can only be applied to weapons made primarily out of metal. Someting for the Dysfunction thread I guess.

Force is pretty darn unclear on the wider effects of making ammunition into "Force Projectiles" and they deal the same ammount of damage. That's it. They obviously presume that the ammo is destroyed/ignored after the attack, but there are things like the 50% chance of ammo surviving a miss, the snatch arrow feat and so forth that can let ammo survive being shot. If the ammo just turns into objects made of force and stays that one, Force weapons essentially give you access to an endless supply of Force objects. Think Siege engines providing you with force bricks to build your castle out of.

While the above might warrant a thread on abuse potential, I think the saner interpretation is that the ammo stops being a "force projectile" after the actual "force attack" is resolved. In this, I think you can convincingly argue that while the Stirge Bolt's blood drain effect remains active, the attack is still ongoing. Then, when the creature dies, the attack ends and the bolt reverts; at which point I think the "touching at moment of death" condition for soul-trapping is met. But yeah, it's not quite as RAW-certain as I'd like.

Ranged Pin would indeed be another way to do a "fire & forget" with a thinaun bolt (provided that touching the clothing is sufficient, which I think by RAW it is), similar to Harpoons. The Str check here is only 15 though, compared to the 20 for Harpoons (or Marrowcrushing, BoVD, though I'm doubtful you could apply it to ammo). As written, there is no Str check to pull out a Stirge bolt; though a DM could easily set at Str check DC for it.

Happen to know if there is any RAW support for tipping an arrow or bolt with Sovereign Glue (or Titan Gum from Dragon Magazine) so that Stirge Bolt gets some protection against these written or DM-called Str checks?

[Venger]

Bolts and arrows are weird in that despite being called out as being primarily made of wood, you can make them out of special material metals that explicitly state that they can only be applied to weapons made primarily out of metal. Someting for the Dysfunction thread I guess.
fair enough


Force is pretty darn unclear on the wider effects of making ammunition into "Force Projectiles" and they deal the same ammount of damage. That's it. They obviously presume that the ammo is destroyed/ignored after the attack, but there are things like the 50% chance of ammo surviving a miss, the snatch arrow feat and so forth that can let ammo survive being shot. If the ammo just turns into objects made of force and stays that one, Force weapons essentially give you access to an endless supply of Force objects. Think Siege engines providing you with force bricks to build your castle out of.

While the above might warrant a thread on abuse potential, I think the saner interpretation is that the ammo stops being a "force projectile" after the actual "force attack" is resolved. In this, I think you can convincingly argue that while the Stirge Bolt's blood drain effect remains active, the attack is still ongoing. Then, when the creature dies, the attack ends and the bolt reverts; at which point I think the "touching at moment of death" condition for soul-trapping is met. But yeah, it's not quite as RAW-certain as I'd like.
that's pretty great. so force envelops the arrow in a force field of force and then it dissipates after the attack? that makes sense.


Ranged Pin would indeed be another way to do a "fire & forget" with a thinaun bolt (provided that touching the clothing is sufficient, which I think by RAW it is), similar to Harpoons. The Str check here is only 15 though, compared to the 20 for Harpoons (or Marrowcrushing, BoVD, though I'm doubtful you could apply it to ammo). As written, there is no Str check to pull out a Stirge bolt; though a DM could easily set at Str check DC for it.

Happen to know if there is any RAW support for tipping an arrow or bolt with Sovereign Glue (or Titan Gum from Dragon Magazine) so that Stirge Bolt gets some protection against these written or DM-called Str checks?
the advantage of ranged pin over harpoon is that they must waste their standard(s) to pull the things out. they can't just continue to act unmolested if they want to move after making the check like with harpoon.

not off the top of my head, but I'll do some digging

[Jowgen]

I've made a thread (www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?521732-Force-WSA-opinions-on-sane-rulings-and-abuse) about abusing the Force WSA.



that's pretty great. so force envelops the arrow in a force field of force and then it dissipates after the attack? that makes sense.

Well, if you go with the A&E predecessor (see thread above), then it more like "imbues" magical force into the bolt; which is way clearer than the "force projectile" language the MIC version uses. As for whether the force dissipates, I await to see what people say in the relevant threa



the advantage of ranged pin over harpoon is that they must waste their standard(s) to pull the things out. they can't just continue to act unmolested if they want to move after making the check like with harpoon.

True, a Harpoon can be ignored if you don't care about the speed penalty; though for the purposes of boosting the chance of the target being in contact with the Thinaun at the time of death, I actually think that's a plus. Then again, the Harpoon does allow a reflex save to avoid, and multiple thinaun harpoons would get expensive fast.

As for Ranged Pin... the feat seems a tad poorly worded. It doesn't actually specify what penalties the target is under while affected. The name suggests it's pinned (which would be good), but the text itself only says grapple... which would suggest you'd need a second bolt in them to move them from the grappled condition to the the pinned condition?