D&D Quibbles

[ralphmelton]

A few D&D rules quibbles on my mind:

- The bracelet of friends has some potential abuses. You can attune it to anyone you know, and although it only works on 'willing travelers' (according to 3.5), the rules say elsewhere that anyone unconscious counts as 'willing'. Some ways this could be exploited in my campaign:
- The PCs could use a bracelet of friends to grab Therion out of the Caverns of Laryn.
- Once the PCs rescue Prolix and Turok from Garrett, he could use a bracelet of friends to snatch them back whenever they fell asleep.
(To be clear to my players: neither of these is going to work. I'm not sure how I'll patch the loophole, but I will.)
It would make much more sense to me if attuning a charm from the bracelet of friends required the presence of the attunee; this would make it much more of a bracelet of friends and less of a bracelet of summoning friends and abducting sleeping enemies. On the other hand, doing that would complicate the party's use of the bracelet of friends to rescue Prolix.


- I have a new appreciation for why D&D 3.5 nerfed the fly spell. It's not the flying that I mind so much about the 3.5 version, as much as the speed--at 90 feet, the user of the spell is moving faster than most flying creatures, and much faster than land creatures. So even in an underground corridor, someone using fly can escape almost any running pursuit. I haven't decided what to do about this, since we've already been using the 90-foot fly.


- I'm still peeved about the fact that D&D 3.5 doesn't allow awaken to be cast on an animal companion, particularly since my campaign had already involved Liandra's companion being awakened. I've been occasionally pondering how to reconcile that with D&D 3.5's rules for companion enhancement.
I think that I'm going to treat it as a 3.5 animal companion, with intelligence just as a special effect.

Comments

bracelet

[cellio]

I agree that the "bracelet of abduction" is an undesired use of that magic item. One fix would be that the target has to respond positively to a ping ("do you accept a summoning from...?"), but that might pose complications for rescuing dominated Turok. Or maybe that only applies if you didn't attune the charm to the person with that person present -- so attuning the charm to Turok involved him giving that consent, but Prolix would have to answer a ping, as would we if someone tried to do this to us. (Consequence of this approach: a stolen bracelet is dangerous, because your consent is bound up in the charm and now your enemy has that charm.)

Re: bracelet

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

I'm attracted to the idea of a stolen bracelet being dangerous... I might give a save for that case.

abuses

[cellio]

You forgot: Use it to summon Garrett to a point 1000 feet above ground on a bright, sunny day with no shade in sight. :-)

Re: abuses

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

That specific one is less of a problem, because Garrett's unlikely to be willing, and undead don't sleep.

Re: abuses

[cellio]

Mm, you're right. I had forgotten about the "don't sleep" part.

I think the idea that (natural) sleep presumes will is a challenging anyway. Yeah, sleeping people are going to really suck at reflex saves, but the mind is still active even when the body rests (REM and all that), so why should will saves be cancelled?

(I realize that this is bigger issue than the one you posed.)

Re: abuses

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Admittedly, natural sleep isn't quite clear in the rules either; the rules say 'Unconscious creatures are automatically considered willing."

I can see why they put that in--without that, you can't teleport out with your unconscious buddy. But it opens up other holes.

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

Maybe, for unconscious characters, it'd be fair to have 'would be willing if they were conscious'?

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Possibly. I bet the reason that the designers didn't do that is to avoid getting bogged down in 'how much information do they have to decide whether they're willing?'