How did Redcloak get his Spyglass?

[Killersquid]

Its probably in Start of Darkness, but I haven't picked it up yet, and I was just wondering how he got the Spyglass (and why he never takes the tag off).

[Halvormerlinaky]

From the art, I'm guessing Best Buy, only they have crystal balls instead of big screen TVs there. And a Bard in a Box instead of Boom Boxes.

[factotum]

He just bought it, I would assume. The tag was just a joke based around spyglasses costing such a huge amount of money in D&D.

[Killersquid]

He just bought it, I would assume. The tag was just a joke based around spyglasses costing such a huge amount of money in D&D.

I've always wondered that since I bought the PHB. Why DO they cost such an absurd amount of money? I mean, yea lenses are hard to make correctly, but, still, a thousand gold, wow.

[Kato]

Yeah, it's just that... making useful lenses is damn hard work, even today if you don't use high tech machines... they need to be manufactured by specialists and stuff. And they are kinda rare, which boosts the costs as well.

[Kurald Galain]

I've always wondered that since I bought the PHB. Why DO they cost such an absurd amount of money?

That's nothing - look for the water clock!

[Flickerdart]

From the art, I'm guessing Best Buy, only they have crystal balls instead of big screen TVs there. And a Bard in a Box instead of Boom Boxes.
Don't you meant Quest Buy? :smallwink:

[Pandabear]

I guess he got it by pillaging a town with a glassworker somewhere and didn't bother with taking the tag off, which would've been done by the shopkeeper otherwise..
(although you can't be sure it was in Somewhere, might've been Elsewhere)

That, or it cost him a 1000 gp and he wanted to remind his subordinates how much they owe him if they damage it..

[Theodoriph]

I believe the tag is still on the spyglass so he can return it to the store when he's finished with it (and get his money back...since it is an absurd amount of money).

[Chronos]

That, or it cost him a 1000 gp and he wanted to remind his subordinates how much they owe him if they damage it..When I started as an astronomy student back in undergrad, the department head had a meeting with us on proper care and maintenance of the telescopes.

"And what do you call an astronomy major who runs the roof into the telescope? A liberal arts major."

[Pandabear]

When I started as an astronomy student back in undergrad, the department head had a meeting with us on proper care and maintenance of the telescopes.

"And what do you call an astronomy major who runs the roof into the telescope? A liberal arts major."

Ooh! Astronomy! I got myself a small mirror telescope at home, and I know how expensive these things get..
But, don't you mean running a telescope into the roof? *Imagines a mechanised telescope that goes well beyond its set liberty of movement*

[Kami2awa]

A water clock, however, is just 2 vessels with a small spout in one that allows water to pour from one to the other at a fixed rate. How does that become expensive?

[Chronos]

No, I mean running the roof into the telescope. Our primary observatory was a regular rectangular room, with an entire roof that retracted. There was only room for the roof to close if the telescope was completely horizontal, and there wasn't any safety mechanism to stop the roof from trying to close if it weren't.

kami2awa, what you're describing is just a toy. It takes a lot of work to make a calibrated and consistent water clock. For starters, you need at least three vessels, not two: The one direclty above the drip needs to be constantly filled to overflowing, which means you need something feeding into it, too. Then you need some sort of mechanism for counting the drops. Finally, of course, there are very few people with need of a water clock, but those few generally have effectively unlimited resources, so you can get away with charging an arm and a leg for one.

[Pandabear]

That kind of feels like a design flaw.. especially with expensive equipment like that..

Reminds me of the question of why we didn't put a simple fan on top of the solar panels of Spirit and Opportunity to blow the dust off..

But back on topic.. When was the first time we saw RC having the spyglass with him? The siege of AC? Somewhere in SoD?

[Linkavitch]

He got it out of a cereal box, and he put a tag on it to make it look expensive. Furthermore, he got it out of a bargain brand name cereal box!:smalltongue:

[Ironwolf172]

He just bought it, I would assume. The tag was just a joke based around spyglasses costing such a huge amount of money in D&D.

Yeah no kidding. The spyglass is next to things that cost 1 or 2 gp and then as you are readin..BAM... An item that cost 1000 gp. It's pretty funny really.

[ericgrau]

From the art, I'm guessing Best Buy, only they have crystal balls instead of big screen TVs there. And a Bard in a Box instead of Boom Boxes.

Quest Buy, actually. Xykon got a wide screen crystal ball there too.

[Linkavitch]

Furthermore, he buys crocnocs at Wal-Mart!

[HamsterOfTheGod]

I've always wondered that since I bought the PHB. Why DO they cost such an absurd amount of money? I mean, yea lenses are hard to make correctly, but, still, a thousand gold, wow.

The real question is why the spyglass gives no real bonus for cost?

[ZerglingOne]

The real question is why the spyglass gives no real bonus for cost?

It does, It allows you to make spot checks on far away objects as if you were half as far. You can also fold a spyglass up (usually) and use it as a magnifier for making appraise checks on gems.

[HamsterOfTheGod]

It does, It allows you to make spot checks on far away objects as if you were half as far.

With max distances and low light/darkness vision limits in most encounters, what real bonus is that? Anyway, the SRD only says "Objects viewed through a spyglass are magnified to twice their size. ", which might be useful in a certain spot checks, for example to identify something at a distance. It hardly makes sense to have get a bonus to all spot checks, say to notice a hidden rogue in your perifery when when you're vision is focused down a narrow tube.



You can also fold a spyglass up (usually) and use it as a magnifier for making appraise checks on gems.
Well, generally, I would think a folding spyglasses would make poor magnifying glasses and vice versa but I'm not an experts in optics.

But in the SRD a magnifying glass is only 100gp and specifically gives a +2 to appraising small items which is in keeping with the pricing for masterwork tools. So if a spyglass gave a +2 on a specific type of spot check or even if just its current fuzzy guidance but cost 100gp, then it wouldn't be in keeping with a masterwork tool.

But at 1000gp, about the cost of a magic item that gave a blanket +3 bonus to one skill, it's silly. The only thing sillier is overanalyzing how silly the price of a spyglass is in the SRD.

[HamsterOfTheGod]

kami2awa, what you're describing is just a toy. It takes a lot of work to make a calibrated and consistent water clock. For starters, you need at least three vessels, not two: The one direclty above the drip needs to be constantly filled to overflowing, which means you need something feeding into it, too. Then you need some sort of mechanism for counting the drops. Finally, of course, there are very few people with need of a water clock, but those few generally have effectively unlimited resources, so you can get away with charging an arm and a leg for one.

There are simpler, though more limited water clocks, really more like water timers, than you describe A bowl with a small hole (http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Water_clocks.html) could be used to time events and led to the more elaborate water clocks you describe.

I think it was in one of Terry Jones' BBC history documentaries showed some bronze water timers that were found, naturally enough, in what was once a Roman brothel. The smaller bowl with the small whole was placed in a bigger bowl of water and when the smaller bowl finally sunk it would hit the bottom with an audible clang which meant your time was up...

[Halvormerlinaky]

That kind of feels like a design flaw.. especially with expensive equipment like that..

Reminds me of the question of why we didn't put a simple fan on top of the solar panels of Spirit and Opportunity to blow the dust off..

But back on topic.. When was the first time we saw RC having the spyglass with him? The siege of AC? Somewhere in SoD?

Reminds me of a few university libraries I heard about.

The first was built before the engineers realized it couldn't support the weight of the books it was to contain.

The second was built before someone said, "Why's it all made of glass?"

[HamsterOfTheGod]

Reminds me of the question of why we didn't put a simple fan on top of the solar panels of Spirit and Opportunity to blow the dust off..


Because the "we" knew that any device that one could come up with to clean the relatively large solar panels from the annoyingly clingy Martian dust would not do good job and would mostly suck up precious power from the solar cells the device was suppose to be keeping clean...that or obstruct the panels more than the dust would. Anyway I doubt a fan would be better than the Martian wind at blowing Martian dust around...