3.5 - Help Optimizing Horn of Valhalla?

[unseenmage]

I stumbled across the Horn of Valhalla (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#hornofValhalla) way back when I was playing an optimized artificer.

Back then I couldn't think of any cool ways to utilize the fact that the Horn summons Constructs.
And I still can't.

Thoughts Playground?

[Venger]

I'm not really sure there's much to be done with an item that summons a handful of crappy monsters once a week. Them being constructs means their rage will only last 3 rounds, and since each summoning lasts a max of an hour, you can't exploit the constructs not needing to rest by having them build structures or till your fields or what have you, and even then, zombies or skeletons are better for that kind of thing.

[Zaq]

Spitballing here . . . Can we do anything with the fact that they attack you if you don’t meet certain criteria? Would you get XP from that or anything? Anything with a prereq of “must have defeated a Barbarian in single combat” or “must have defeated X foes single-handedly” or anything like that?

[Venger]

Spitballing here . . . Can we do anything with the fact that they attack you if you don’t meet certain criteria? Would you get XP from that or anything? Anything with a prereq of “must have defeated a Barbarian in single combat” or “must have defeated X foes single-handedly” or anything like that?

I know of no prc that has the former as a prereq. The closest I can think of for the latter is ravager, but that requires you get beat up by ravager gang members, not just guys you recruit on your own.

The closest I can come to a use is tricking an enemy (who you don't want to kill yourself) into blowing it when he doesn't meet the reqs. This requires you to have a wimpy enough enemy that a couple low level barbarians can kick him to death while you're high enough level to get this thing as loot (because there's no way you're buying it)

[unseenmage]

There's no way to utilize the fact that thry're summoned creatures is there?

Though I doubt any class abilities or feats interact with summons produced by a wondrous item. :smallannoyed:

[Venger]

There's no way to utilize the fact that thry're summoned creatures is there?

Though I doubt any class abilities or feats interact with summons produced by a wondrous item. :smallannoyed:

I mean, not in any way that makes them more useful than any other summon, not really.

[Arcanist]

Thoughts Playground?

This item makes me very disappointed in WoTC's ability to create magical items that are both clever (which this is) and interesting (which this is not).

As far as optimization goes for this item, you get more out of it by breaking it down, shoving it into your craft reserve and calling it a day. Hypothetically speaking, lets make an item that is not only cheaper than it, but better than it.


Amulet of Summon Monster VI
Price (Item Level): 26,400gp
Body Slot: Neck, I guess
Caster Level: 11th
Aura: Moderate Conjuration (DC 21)
Activation: Standard (Command)
Weight: —

Once per day, by uttering the command word of "Why does the Horn of Valhalla exist?", you may have the Amulet of Summon Monster VI cast Summon Monster VI as an 11th level Wizard. Thats pretty much it.

Unlike the Horn of Valhalla, you do not need to meet any arbitrary prerequisites to activate this item. In addition to this, you may use this item at least 6 more times per week than a single Horn of Valhalla, and also summon monsters instead of Constructs that can only rage for about 3 rounds, and might also attack you if you don't meet their arbitrary requirements for controlling them. Unfortunately, the Summoned Monsters don't last as long, but to be perfectly frank, if you really needed a bunch of (at best) level 5 goons to solve your problem with the Horn of Valhalla, you were doomed from the start. Just use this item to summon a Howler (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/howler.htm) and be done with it.

Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Items, Summon Monster VI.
Cost to Create: 13,200gp, 1,056xp, 13 days; Of which I might add is almost HALF of whatever the Horn of Valhalla costs.

[Bronk]

Maybe if you needed something done underwater or in a vacuum? Or you need some weak flanking buddies. Or you just need to send people to run some errands, since they're presumably of at least average human intelligence... you could send them off to trigger traps, or pull levers, or something, as long as it doesn't require reading.

This is definitely one of those magic items that must have seemed way cooler in first edition or something.

Also, I have no way of checking, but it feels like they screwed up the pricing extra hard by not having a different cost for each level of horn, like the bags of tricks. Speaking of which, the tan bag of tricks only costs 6,300 gold and can pop out an animal of anywhere from 4 to 8 HD once per round, all day. What a mess.

[daremetoidareyo]

Human barbarians from levels 3-5 would have a total of 3 feats each. The optimization potential keys onto what those feats are and whether or not they can have different feat arrays. Also, can they have alternative class features?

[Bronk]

Human barbarians from levels 3-5 would have a total of 3 feats each. The optimization potential keys onto what those feats are and whether or not they can have different feat arrays. Also, can they have alternative class features?

Now that I think about it, since they're constructs, they should have some racial hit dice in there - medium animated objects have 2d10, for example - and since they're intelligent (since they have barbarian levels) those construct dice would offer feats and skill points as well. So, they're really 5-7 HD constructs with a HP bonus, but they're not actually human, so they wouldn't have the human bonus feat. They'd still get 2 to 3 feats though, depending on HD.

Perhaps individual horns could summon barbarian constructs with different ACFs?

How about this though... what language would they speak? They're not golems, which are assumed to at least be able to follow their creator's orders. The horn entry just says that you can command them to attack, though, so at least they know that much. It would be cool to have the barbarians from an old horn show up speaking ancient Netherese...

[AvatarVecna]

By the time you can spend 50000 on a summoning item like this, you have long since passed the point where even the most powerful of these summons are even remotely useful in a fight. Rage only lasting 3 rounds sucks, although it's slightly made up for by how constructs are immune to fatigue (so a Barbarian 4s and 5s could immediately use their second rage, and if you're allowed to pick their feats when you summon them, you could easily have Power Attack/Extra Rage/Extra Rage/etc be their feats to get them even more rage/day, but even then it's pretty bad). Heck, even using this item for XP-grinding is simply a waste of time:

Let's start off assuming you buy this item as soon as possible; the DMG gives two guidelines for how expensive any single item you purchase can be, and they contradict each other, so let's assume the more generous "no more than half your wealth in one item". a 13th lvl PC is expected to have 110000, which is just over twice the cost of this item, so I'll be assuming a lvl 13 PC with limited gear going forward. Now, not only is the kind of horn you possess random, but the number of barbarians they summon is also random. I'll also be assuming the base CR of the summons are equal to their level. Right away, we run into a problem: lvl 13 PCs cannot by RAW earn XP from any opponent lower than CR 6. Buuuuuuuut...let's pretend these barbarians for some reason count as one big monster of equal XP value, instead of a bunch of smaller monsters, because that's not entirely unreasonable. Let' figure out how the average returns (and the maximum returns) compare with XP values at the same level, to get an idea of what a large group of low CR creatures could do for such a high-level PC. After some quick number checks, I've found that (in fractions of CR 6s), CR 2 is 1/4, CR 3 is 1/3, CR 4 is 1/2, and CR 5 is 2/3, or thereabout. After running the averages on what you can expect, it looks like your best bet is to take the Bronze Horn, which (for a lvl 13 PC, the earliest you could get this horn reasonably), would give you 812.5 XP on average, the equivalent of one CR 8.5 encounter...per week.

That's the best this gets, and I'm using the word "best" incredibly generously here.

[daremetoidareyo]

Maybe craft rune circle is the way to go on this one. Build horns of valhalla on various guard towers?

keep in mind that the morale bonus to will saves won't work on raging constructs.

Keep in mind that you're getting +1 skill point per level, so maybe you can summon some barbarians with some teamwork benefits pre-installed.

Any useful skill tricks?

The barbarians can all use aid another and give you like a +10 to a skill check, your AC, or something.

[Bucky]

Aid another abuse doesn't work by RAW - you can't command the constructs to do anything but fight. They might use aid another to boost your attack rolls if they can't otherwise contribute, but that's it.