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View Full Version : Feat: Super-Prepared (AKA, I'm Batman)



Barbarian MD
2010-11-24, 01:41 PM
Wolfgar studied the unclimbable walls for a moment before reaching into his pack and producing a grappling hook and rope. "Where did you get that?" his companions asked. "I'm Batman, he responded simply.

Todd and his fellowship exited the jungle to find a 15 foot wide canyon before them. Todd identified a massive pine behind them, its roots rotten as cancer. A simple shove, and the tree slammed across the canyon, as beautifully as any bridge.

Rosalind found herself naked and tied in the gloomy darkness. Fortunately, a gleam caught her eye in the darkness--a broken and rusty pipe, edges sharp as a dagger--her path to freedom.

Just moments ago seeming helpless and umarmed, Kendall turned, her belt coming off in one smooth motion, as she caught the assassin's blade with it.

Super-Prepared
Pre-requisites: Intelligence 15, _______

Similar to a Kendar's ability to produce an item, a character utilizing the feat Super-Prepared can produce, as a move action, any conceivable non-magical item (for the sake of suspension of belief, non-items that function as items can also be produced, as in the second example, and these items do not actually have to come from the character, as in the third, but represent a characters ingenuity to McGyver situations to their advantage). Likewise, a character may produce and use any item as a standard action.

The item produced does not exact a cost in gp, but there are limits to what may be produced. Any item must cost less than 25gp. At fifth level, the limit improves to 100gp, at tenth to 250gp, at fiftteenth to 1000 gp, and at twentieth level the limit disappears and magical objects up to a limit of 250gp may be produced as well.

Special: this action can be readied (as in the case of the fourth example, the belt being a stand-in for a readied disarm with a sai).

Extra-Special: if you abuse this feat and find a way to defeat the big bad with it, your DM has the right to beat you. (In fact, your DM may veto any item he or she deems an unreasonable abuse of this feat.)





Thoughts? I just sort of pulled the gold values out of the air, and I'm sure there are mechanical aspects that could be cleaned up.

AugustNights
2010-11-24, 04:27 PM
I used to run with a similar feat based off of wisdom, and the limit was 100 gold per day, but as many items as could fill that in one day.
I made the players pay in retrospect, to show they 'just happened to have' exactly what they needed. It wasn't very ground breaking, and in retrospect it would have been fine if they hadn't paid for the mundane objects... magical ones though... More easily abused, and while you have the 'DM Beat Player caveat', I think it'd be better to charge for magical items. Or you may find the party always at full health from the cure minor wounds potions so procured.

AstralFire
2010-11-24, 04:36 PM
If your party wants to spend the time to produce potions out of thin air just to heal up at level 20, go for it.

Dragon Star
2010-11-24, 04:44 PM
I agree with ChumpLump about magic items. maybe make it so that you can only prouduce 5 of any one kind of magic item per day. at first glance, I thought that the unlimited gold limit at 20th level was unbalanced, but nothing non magical is that powerful, and if you made 2000 gp items every action and sold them, it wouldnt make you much more money than an adventure, and the DM/GM would stop you.

Galileo
2010-11-24, 06:42 PM
Sounds like a pretty reasonable and cool feat.
If I get to use it past 15th level, I'm going to use it solely to whip out a water-clock when someone asks what time it is in a dungeon. And then toss it over my shoulder.

Hanuman
2010-11-24, 10:12 PM
So basically this is a feat like Leadership, instead of the actual work behind it you simply buy it off with a feat? Sounds reasonable.

But first the balance aspect for this is that you need to have a few restrictions in place.

First of all, super preparedness comes from extradimension pockets in DnD, so the pre-req would be a wearable pocket dimension item, something like this:

Prereqs: Int 15, Bag of Holding or Handy Haversack or Belt of Many Pockets

You would be able to draw any nonmagical, nonpsionic natured item which includes alchemical (yet not psychoactive or magical potion,shards, ect) or components with complex features at x1.5 their gold cost, which is to account for paying off the surplus of items you probably carry. Returning the item to your bag can either mean you can sell it back for x1.0 the base item cost to account for the wear, x0.5 if it's highly used or x0.1 if it's nearly all gone and nothing if broken or it's uses are gone. Alternatively you can choose to keep the item in your actual inventory either in mundane or exradimentional storage.

More limits would be that the item in question must reasonably fit into the storage device you pull it out from, so anything you could put into your extradimensional pocketing item can be pulled out.

Sound reasonable?



But really, without this feat you can basically do the same thing assuming you have a bit of wisdom and the time to write it out, you'd have to pay for the items up front but at least you'd save money in the long run, probably. Batman was very rich after all.

Hell, a couple chaos flasks and some shapesand usually is enough without needing a feat, as chaos flasks can become marvelous pigments at a discount and theres pretty much nothing shapesand + marvelous pigments can't do that mundane tools can.

Good guides would be....

Shax
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148101

Bargain Basement
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=350.0

Utility Belt
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=4400.0

AugustNights
2010-11-24, 10:42 PM
If your party wants to spend the time to produce potions out of thin air just to heal up at level 20, go for it.

25 gold, if I remember corectly, is enough to buy a potion of cure minor wounds. The way the feat is worded, it is not limited by gold per day, but gold per use. I can use this sucker 10 times a minute, 14400 hp in a day... well factor in drinking time. And retail value. Should specify absolutely no retail value.

A magical item as a prerequisite for a feat seems silly.
Maybe conjuration magic, but that has less to do with being batman, and more to do with being a sorcerer.

Keinnicht
2010-11-24, 11:28 PM
25 gold, if I remember corectly, is enough to buy a potion of cure minor wounds. The way the feat is worded, it is not limited by gold per day, but gold per use. I can use this sucker 10 times a minute, 14400 hp in a day... well factor in drinking time. And retail value. Should specify absolutely no retail value.

A magical item as a prerequisite for a feat seems silly.
Maybe conjuration magic, but that has less to do with being batman, and more to do with being a sorcerer.

I agree. They should be able to use the feat regardless of what they use to carry their stuff, plus it seems reasonable for the DM to put limits on the feat based on the size of the container.

"I just happen to have a ten foot pole in my backpack."
"No, you don't."

AugustNights
2010-11-24, 11:32 PM
"I just happen to have a ten foot pole in my backpack."
"No, you don't."

Keep in mind, its not just stuff your character happens to have its also, MacGyvered things, and stuff on hand.

'This here dead sappling would make a pretty good pole don't you think?'

or

'I found a bunch of a sticks, and then tied them together with a Stick Knot'
'You don't even know how to Use Rope'
'Naw, but back when I was a kid I tied a lot of sticks together.'
'So you know Stick Knots'
'Yup'
'...Right.'

Barbarian MD
2010-11-24, 11:40 PM
What I'm trying to shoot for is a way to allow players to get creative without having certain constraints. No, you don't "just happen" to have a ten foot pole. but a telescoping pole? Or a way to McGyver something in the environment to work for you? Why not. Of course, if you're DMing the "never-ending dungeon crawl" on these boards, you probably don't want to allow it, because the challenges presented as puzzles and traps demand that players respond with more limited resources.

It seems to me like this could 1) encourage more creative storytelling (in the right crowd), and 2) break up the monotony of encounters with interesting batman-style ploys, alchemical devices and such.

I guess what I would encourage DMs to do is encourage creative uses of this feat. If a player wants to spam a hundred cure light wounds, shut him down and tell him he's wasting the potential of the feat. But if he wants to pull out an alchemical spray that causes a creature to regurgitate you, absolutely. The more creative the use, the more likely that a DM will allow it, in my eyes. And, if a player has really done extraordinary story-telling using it, and they get to level twenty, and find a way to produce a warship without it sounding totally contrived and silly, i'd give it to him.


Edit: Oh, and absolutely no resale value. I imagined that would speak or itself. This feat should not be allowed for a player who's going to try to make a fortune profound items. I think (logically) these items represent something that a player has acquired/purchased, and so should have no effect on net worth.

Barbarian MD
2010-11-24, 11:51 PM
Here's a new feat, and possibly a pre-requisite for Super-Prepared:

Wealthy
Pre-requisites: ?

Benefit: You gain an additional 25% WBL.

Special: You may take this feat one additional time, bringing your WBL bonus to a total of 50%.

Approximately each time you level, you garner an additional bonus to your expected WBL. This may come in many forms, such as a deposit of money to a local bank/wiring of money, an additional find during a dungeon crawl, or a bonus from an employer to you specifically for a job well done. The means will vary from campaign to campaign, but the end result is the same--you are wealthier than most.

Havvy
2010-11-25, 01:14 AM
Instead of being discrete values, make it 1% of your CWBL. Which at first level is a bit of silver, but by second level, is always at least 7gp.

Ouranos
2010-11-26, 07:52 AM
Another added caveat: All items created in this way are shoddy in construction at best, working as much by luck as anything else. These items are unnattractive and have zero sale value.

Roderick_BR
2010-11-26, 10:19 AM
I think Gurps Supers had a similar ability, that lets you pull out some special item from your pockets that you "just happens" to have put there, because you felt it would be needed. I can actually see it useful for skillmonkeys that may need some improved tool. We could even add some skill tricks to avoid the -2 for improvised tools.

Hanuman
2011-01-20, 11:06 PM
I found something for you, Dungeon Mag 103 has "campaign cards" which are basically physical rewards in the form of cards that can be handed out by their events. You could use these as feats or award your own reward cards.

The one like what your looking for is called:

I Have That!
1/session you can hand the card in and gain an item worth up to 50g, that weighs less than 8lbs and appears in the equipment guide in the core rulebook.
Alternatively gain a vial of alchemical sleeping gas, a vial of disappearing ink or a scent breaker bag.
You must still spend a move action to retrieve the item.

Prime32
2011-01-21, 05:07 AM
Edit: Oh, and absolutely no resale value. I imagined that would speak or itself. This feat should not be allowed for a player who's going to try to make a fortune profound items. I think (logically) these items represent something that a player has acquired/purchased, and so should have no effect on net worth.Look up the Wish Economy (items within the gp limits of the wish spell have zero value in civilised areas since wizards can create them at will).

Here (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeonomicon_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Economicon)'s some stuff on it.

Hanuman
2011-01-21, 11:22 AM
Look up the Wish Economy (items within the gp limits of the wish spell have zero value in civilised areas since wizards can create them at will).

Here (http://dnd-wiki.org/wiki/Dungeonomicon_%283.5e_Sourcebook%29/Economicon)'s some stuff on it.
One of the problems with DnD economics, this comic's first 2 lines explain (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0677.html).

I don't agree with the economic theories you posted, mostly because they assume that a high level wizard's time is worth nothing, or that he's not wanting to charge anyone for his time, or that the distribution of the objects is not needed or worth nothing.

In fact, I would strongly disagree and would say these items would maintain their worth as a wizard would require items he would not be able to create and therefore would maintain a high rate as to purchase those items with minimal effort. The lack of rarity for those items would inflate the market and perhaps flatten out the rarity factor where any rare object would become only as valuable or rare as any other rare object, but I don't believe that there would be an army of high level wizards who's only desire in life is making you magic items.