The Gaming Den

Imban's Link wrote:
[*]Six new magic items such as collar of armor or ring of three limited wishes
{Snip}
[*]A new spell: limited miracle

What the Fuck? One fifth of their advertised selling points is that they have done easy extrapolations of currently existing rules?

Damn, that's lame.

-Desdan

ok, actually I just found a bad feat that beats out Eagle Claw attack.

Hear the Unseen from complete adventurer.

As a move action, it lets you pinpoint the square invisible opponents are in with a DC 25 listen check.

The thing is that you can already pinpoint invisible creatures with a DC 20 listen check as per the DMG, and that's a free action. So you're taking a feat to do sometihng you already can do, the feat just lets you just do it slower and at a +5 to your check DC.

Um... Could you make a set of potions in a single day with Craft Set? Because my brain is trying to - I just... Wow. That is one crappy feat.

Uh... technically you could, I guess... but you can't exactly "wear four potions at once" so that wouldn't do anything.

Hear the Unseen is just dumb. And bad.

Area: Multiple aberrations whose combined total Hit Dice do not exceed twice caster level in a spread emanating from the character to the extreme of the range

...

Man, what? I thought I was misreading the book when I saw this.

It's bad for different reasons, but are we allowed to mention Mongoose books? If so, there's "Horndog" which gives you a +2 to skill checks against someone you've schtuped in the past month.

Imban at [unixtime wrote:1166757587[/unixtime]]Uh... technically you could, I guess... but you can't exactly "wear four potions at once" so that wouldn't do anything.

Erm, I meant crafting them without any set bonus. Currently, potions have a minimum crafting time of 1 day each, so being able to brew a batch in a single day is a benefit, I guess.

Not, you know, anywheres near worth a feat, but this accidental slight usefulness might cost it some points in the running for "worst feat ever."

I nominate Quick Draw.

K wrote:
Quick Draw: For the moment, you can amuse yourself with the fact that technically everyone has Quickdraw for one rank of Sleight of Hand. According to the Sleight of Hand skill, anyone can take a -20 to their Sleight of Hand skill check in order to draw a weapon as a free action. And Sleight of Hand does not have a DC! Your check result (say, getting a 1 rank result of -9) simply sets the Spot DC for other people seeing you do it. So by the rules, everyone can draw weapons as a free action as long as they have a single rank of Sleight of Hand – and people who have many ranks of Sleight of Hand may be able to do this without it being totally obvious to everyone they are fighting.

Technically, you don't even need the single rank of Sleight of Hand...

SRD wrote:Untrained
An untrained Sleight of Hand check is simply a Dexterity check. Without actual training, you can’t succeed on any Sleight of Hand check with a DC higher than 10, except for hiding an object on your body.

Note the emphasis... this most useful aspect of Sleight of Hand is specifically allowed by the RAW, and as there is no DC for the check, you can do it all you want. As a result of this, absolutely everyone in the world can draw (or sheathe) their weapon anytime they want as a free action, without provoking an attack of opportunity.

Naturally, this makes Quick Draw useless.

Doesn't SoH work only on light weapons and small stuff? Quick Draw works on anything.

josephbt at [unixtime wrote:1169018272[/unixtime]]Doesn't SoH work only on light weapons and small stuff? Quick Draw works on anything.

Unclear. It specifies "small objects" which is a game term that includes medium one-handed weaponry. But since apparently using it on larger objects is just a penalty to the check, you can attempt to hide a piano as a free action. You'll fail, but the point is that it's in your hand (unhidden) as a free action.

-Username17

Drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

This is not a use of Sleight of Hand. Thus, you can't reduce its time to a free action by taking -20 on a check. It's mentioned in the Sleight of Hand section of the rules for convenience only.

Any Sleight of Hand check normally is a standard action. However, you may perform a Sleight of Hand check as a free action by taking a -20 penalty on the check.

See, you don't make a check to draw it, thus you can't speed it up. Capish?

Sorry about the thread Necromancy, but I just found another really awful feat, and couldn't resist posting about it... and I decided to post it here, rather then in a new thread.

Heroic Metamagic, from Races of Eberron, does less then nothing. It allows you to spend one action point per level of metamagic increase to apply a single metamagic feat to a spell.

Unfortunately, you can already do that with action points, only better, because it only costs one action point to apply a single metamagic feat worth any number of spell levels.

SRD wrote:Metamagic Feats

You can spend 1 action point to add the effect of any one metamagic feat that you have to a spell you are casting. The spell is cast at its normal level (without any level adjustment because of the feat) and takes no extra time to cast.

Draco_Argentum at [unixtime wrote:1165202528[/unixtime]]Arg, someone has been playing Diablo 2.

Yeah, but seperated or not, some items of sets were amazing.

The best was the belt part of the Orphan's call set; it was this ungodly dual leech belt with a really high leech rate on a max width belt. Which was great since you could then put on other appropriate gear in your other gear slots.

Most sets usually sucked though, and people would seriously sell worse components of a set to the NPCs.

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1169072534[/unixtime]]

Drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

This is not a use of Sleight of Hand. Thus, you can't reduce its time to a free action by taking -20 on a check. It's mentioned in the Sleight of Hand section of the rules for convenience only.

Any Sleight of Hand check normally is a standard action. However, you may perform a Sleight of Hand check as a free action by taking a -20 penalty on the check.

See, you don't make a check to draw it, thus you can't speed it up. Capish?

Anyone want to field this? This argument seems to have brought the CO boards into a flame-frenzy, and I refuse to continue arguing it there.

Anyone want to field this?

Not really. I mean seriously we could go on all day about whether you need to make a check to draw a concealed weapon (signs point to yes by the way because "drawing a weapon" is otherwise a Move Action while "making a sleight f hand check" is a standard action) or whether you need to get a big Sleight of Hand check and draw your weapons from allies and opponents (DC 40 allows you to take any object away from any character as a Free Action - including weapons which you are then holding).

But really the problem here is that Sleigt of Hand is not written in precise language, so you can't make a literal interpretation about what it means. And not just for the question of "free drawing swords" - but for literally anything it does. Andy changed the item and weapon size rules when making the change to 3.5 and there was vital information loss when he did so.

The information loss in the format change was actually in what sizes items counted as - that's no longer in the book. Daggers are no longer Tiny Weapons which count as Diminutive Objects which therefore grant a Pick Pocket bonus to manipulate for Medium creatures - they are a "Light Weapon" that just happens to have arbitrary rules stating that it is smaller than a Shortsword and therefore presents bonuses (but other similarly sized weapons generally don't have that information on them).

So yeah, 3.5 Wepaon Size rules are so bad that Sleight ofHand doesn't work. The fact that it probably also causes you to pop weapons out on an at-will basis is a completely secondary fact to the problem where it doesn't function.

-Username17

Offtopic.

Cielingcat wrote:Anyone want to field this?

Well, I think the rules are pretty clear. Hiding a weapon is a SoH check. Drawing one is a Standard action. There is no DC listed. It's not a check. You can't rush it.

SRD wrote:Drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

How much clearer can the text get?

Any Sleight of Hand check normally is a standard action. However, you may perform a Sleight of Hand check as a free action by taking a -20 penalty on the check.

Again with the clear -- if it's not a check, you can't rush it. Of course, I couldn't care less if people could draw as a free action.

How much clearer can the text get?

Well, for starters it could not be written in the fvcking skill description - where of course the default consideration is that everything described therein requires a skill check. For example, the quote:

PHB, p. 72 wrote:Disabling a simple device takes 1 round and is a full-round action. An intricate or complex device requires 1d4 or 2d4 rounds.

in no way means that Disabling Devices doesn't require a skill check.

In fact, any action defined inside a skill description would normally be assumed to require a check of that skill unless stated otherwise.

The statement

PHB, p. 67 wrote:Appraising an item takes 1 minute (ten consecutive full-round actions).

doesn't mean that you get to avoid the check.

And the statement

Drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

Doesn't mean that you can avoid the check either! It's in the skill description, and it doesn't say that you aren't making a skill check, so you're making a skill check. And the skill also says that you can speed up actions that use that skill check by taking a penalty.

-Username17

I like to hide my monkey-gripped greatswords behind my back when I run around with 24-hour Girallon's blessing and Righteous wrath.

I can then sleight of hand 6 greatswords out at once.

And people told me I was stupid for taking greater multiweapon fighting for my human.





Of course, you know the above is a lie.





I wouldn't burn a feat on monkey grip. The 5 Spikes-empowered bronzewood kukris and the bronzewood scimitar is an other story however.

I'm still off-topic, but at least I'm logged in.

Well, for starters it could not be written in the fvcking skill description - where of course the default consideration is that everything described therein requires a skill check. For example, the quote:

Fair enough, but when you use the word "appraising" in the appraise skill check, it's pretty clear that you're talking about a skill check.

It certainly seems like to me that they put the rules on concealed weapons in the same place it tells you how to conceal weapons. I mean, they could have put it somewhere else, but that would have make them cocks. Why bother cross referencing something that only appears in one place? That would be cocktastic.

So, if it's an action, what's the DC (and/or the penalty for failure, given that it's a free action)?

When you use this skill under close observation, your skill check is opposed by the observer’s Spot check. The observer’s success doesn’t prevent you from performing the action, just from doing it unnoticed.

This pretty much says that there is a DC, and a spot check, which are unrelated things. There is a check DC to do the thing, and then there's a spot check (opposed) to see it if was noticed. I'm fine if there is a DC for this check, but going against just an opposed spot check doesn't cut it.

It certainly seems like to me that they put the rules on concealed weapons in the same place it tells you how to conceal weapons. I mean, they could have put it somewhere else, but that would have make them cocks. Why bother cross referencing something that only appears in one place? That would be cocktastic.

And yet... if it's a described action in a skill description that does not use that skill check, then there's nomenclature available for that that is actually used in other skills - such as the "holding breath" rules that appear in the Swimming section. It specifically tells you to make different checks or no checks as appropriate.

So really you are asking that Sleight of Hand's nomenclature simply not mean what the exact same nomenclature means in every single other skill.

This pretty much says that there is a DC, and a spot check, which are unrelated things.

No, it doesn't. It says that it is an opposed test, but that failing to beat the opposing roll doesn't actually prevent you from moving objects. Kind of like how the exact same wording appears in the Hide skill and it means that if the opposing Skill beats your Hide check you still move they just see you.

Unfortunately, while "moving" is something that you can just do anyway with no skill roll, "drawing a weapon as a free action" is not - meaning that the entire skill is poorly conceived.

---

And I'll grant that. The skill is completely undefined in many key places and doesn't make sense on a first, second, or third read-through. But one of the things it actually does say is that drawing a weapon as a free action is something you can just do whenever yu want and almost everybody is going to see you doing that shit.

-Username17

Does drawing a weapon as a free action trigger an attack of opportunity, if they see you do it?

-Crissa

Drawing a hidden weapon is a standard action and doesn’t provoke an attack of opportunity.

No, but they probably get to roll initiative, if they haven't already.



Ok, fair enough, I still think they put the text there to be convenient, but I'll agree that a literal reading of the rules does say that you can draw as a free action if you have at least one rank in Sleight of Hand. Assuming you hid it first, which you can also do a crappy job of as a free action immediately prior.

Can we combine this with the improvised weapon rules for infinite shenanigans?

Guest (Unregistered) at [unixtime wrote:1174108941[/unixtime]]Can we combine this with the improvised weapon rules for infinite shenanigans?

No. The limitations on Hulking Hurler bullshit is what you can carry (and therefore drop) - which means that the ability to draw this equipment is useless. Now, you can use the shenanigans of RAW Sleight of Hand to increase damage output by using shirpas whose boulders you snag - but this is actually less impressive than just using shrink item on your boulders and stuffing them into Heward's Handy Haversacks (which is likewise a series of free actions to employ and considerably less labor intensive).

-Username17

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1174127090[/unixtime]]
No. The limitations on Hulking Hurler bullshit is what you can carry (and therefore drop) - which means that the ability to draw this equipment is useless. Now, you can use the shenanigans of RAW Sleight of Hand to increase damage output by using shirpas whose boulders you snag - but this is actually less impressive than just using shrink item on your boulders and stuffing them into Heward's Handy Haversacks (which is likewise a series of free actions to employ and considerably less labor intensive).

I'm not even sure the shrink item trick for thrown objects even works. As the trigger for such is tossing it onto a solid surface. This would seem to indicate that the actual impact is done while the object is shrunk, and then it grows after impact.