Talk:Pavor Nocturnus

Heh. I did a rough calculation on the GP value using the estimates in the SRD. Yowsa. -Slitherrr

What'd you come up with? I'd but this somewhere between a +3 and +4 total enchantment. -gm

+1 weapon enchantment, shocking burst +2, crit special effects (anywhere from +1 to +3, but no good comparison to figure it with) = +4-+6. I calculated it as a +4, which gives 4*4*2000 = 32k (plus 600 for being a masterwork mighty composite longbow with min str 14), as a minimum. I actually calculated rough estimates for everyone's special equipment out of curiosity, but this was the only item that was extremely exceptional in that regard (although the Modular Hammer comes in an easy second place, if you figure it to effectively be two separate magical weapons worth roughly 8k apiece). -Slitherrr

I think the long and the short of the calculation is "32k eh? Might even make up for permanently losing two Con" -Slitherrr

- Well, it's not exactly shocking burst: It's only d4s, not d6s, in both cases. I was figuring it as ~+3, but there are reasons I go off book for making magic items beyond making them interesting. -gm

Good point. Yeah, and I read shocking burst wrong, so it's just over half as effective damage-wise in the dead-average case, with added cursing and stuff, so your evaluation is probably better. -Slitherrr

On a related note, I was thinking about it the other day, and I think I've pinpointed one of D&D's real balance issues--all stats are based on this continuum from 1 to infinity, with 10 being "average human". The problem is that everything is treated as if it's on the same scale, but if you think about it, "human" average varies wildly in capability for certain stats. For example, humans aren't particularly strong or hardy animals, so creatures abound with huge strengths. However, very little (nothing we can compare to in real life, as far as we know) comes close to having an intelligence score comparable with a person, so those same animals with enormous str and whatever have tiny intelligences, and similarly, very few creatures have intelligence scores that anywhere approach strength scores. In other words, a 10 in intelligence is probably much higher on the "ability" scale in some cosmic sense than a 10 in strength, and each of those ten points encompasses a greater amount of ability than any particular point of strength. The problem comes in in the fact that stats are all affected in the same (linear) scale, meaning these two very different things (for example) are treated as if the quantities being added to them have the same effect.

Anyway, I'm not going anywhere with that spiel, I had just spent some idle brain cycles on it and found it an intriguing concept. -Slitherrr

To offer a (nearly) non-sequitor, you reminded me about the unrealistic spread of attributes/rolls in D&D. I was reading about this variant yesterday: Boring Rolls. That kind of game is the opposite of one of my favorite games, EARS, which is a 1d6 game with constant wild extremes for results. -Mattie

Crazy extremes can be fun in the right kind of campaign and with an understanding among the players--some of my favorite Rolemaster games involved ridiculous open-ended results--but you have to be prepared to basically die at any time in that sort of environment. In d20, without some explicit setup, I'm always more about evening out the fickleness of fate, and bell curve is totally up my alley.-Slitherrr

That's funny--I have similar fond memories about the few times I played rolemaster, but also I remember that character generation was a grueling, long-term affair. Funny how those two issues should play so poorly with each other. Maybe its Stockholm syndrome. --Msallen

We had it pretty streamlined, and could buy skills and whatnot very quickly. Also, we just had a lot of fun creating characters, I think. -Slitherrr