Custom Immovable Rod help

[Colonel Snazzy]

Hello,

I was trying to make a character build where I attach a bunch of harpoons to an immovable rod, throw harpoons at enemy and activate the rod, but I've met with a major problem in that the enemy can just walk up and deactivate the immovable rod. Does anyone know how much it would cost to make a custom immovable rod that could only be activated by me? (or by a complicated command phrase in an obscure language)

Thanks,
Snazzy out :smallcool:

[Nifft]

Immovable rods have a button which must be pushed by someone touching the rod, and requires both an actor and an action (a Move action in specific). Thus, a standard issue immovable rod can't be activated as part of an attack.


You could probably make a harpoon which paralyzed its target, for example by melding in a certain psionic pearl (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#pearlBrainLock). At that price, it would be a one-use item.


You could alternately just bolt a winch onto an immovable rod, and spool the harpoon's line through the winch. When you hit with the harpoon, use your Move action to activate the immovable rod, and start reeling in the victim.

[Bronk]

Hello,

I was trying to make a character build where I attach a bunch of harpoons to an immovable rod, throw harpoons at enemy and activate the rod, but I've met with a major problem in that the enemy can just walk up and deactivate the immovable rod. Does anyone know how much it would cost to make a custom immovable rod that could only be activated by me? (or by a complicated command phrase in an obscure language)


You could try making harpoon/rope/launcher that had the properties of the immovable rod added to it, maybe making the trigger and the button the same...

You could also get the 'ranged pin' feat, which is pretty similar.

[Elkad]

Throw from the air so your opponent can't reach the rod?

Or variants of the same, like having a sidekick/familiar/unseenservant flying above you with the Rod.



More expensive. Get custom Immovable Rods that can't be turned off (single-use items).

[Malimar]

"Can only be activated by <person with some feature virtually unique to me>" actually makes items cheaper by RAW. Actually using that clause when pricing an item for your own use is pretty gross and cheesy like casu marzu.

But as pointed out above, if you want to combine an Immovable Rod with an attack, you're gonna need to drop that move action down to something like use-activated anyway.

The custom magic item guidelines don't give a price guideline for move-action-activated, only spell completion, use-activated, spell trigger, command word, use-activated, and continuous. The closest is command word, which is a standard action; I'd peg move-action-activated at slightly more expensive than standard-action-activated (though command word does have the benefit that the item doesn't need to be in your possession for you to activate it, so you could argue them to be almost the same in price).

So let's be conservative and say button move activated is the same price as command word standard activated: stuff x 1800. Use-activated is the same stuff x 2000. So you just take a hit of math by dividing the base immovable rod price by 1800 and then multiplying by 2000, for about 5555gp. That'll be a rough price for a use-activated immovable rod. Add the price of a harpoon to make it a combination harpoon-rod. The "use" in this case would be "the harpoon-rod strikes a target". You probably want the deactivation to be command word, so you can retrieve it after battle, but I wouldn't alter the price any for that.

[Fouredged Sword]

No, the real trick is to put a drop of sovern glue on the button. Now not only can they not turn it off their hand gets stuck when they try.

I gave my party one of these once. I called it a irremovable rod.

[Jay R]

I want to back an enemy up to a wall, and then shove my immovable rod into his mouth button end first, as hard as I can. Now the back of his head is held up to the wall by an immovable rod, and the button can't be pushed again until he's not there.

[Anxe]

Attach a telescoping pole spear to your immovable rod and throw that at your foe. The telescoping sections lock into place and then the person can't reach the rod.

Alternatively, put the rod in a locked box that is chained to the harpoon. Now they have to break through the box which you can enchant out the wazoo to be unbreakable.