Talk:Field Equipment Pack (3.5e Equipment)

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Dissonance[edit]

Was reading over some of the items in the Journeyman's pack and have some comments. Just going down the list as they come up. So, the tent. Standard SRD tent holds 2 Medium creatures, weighs 20 lbs and costs 10 gp (gotta assume for like poles and treated hides or waxed canvas or whatever, there's not a lot of detail given for it). The Journeyman's tent holds 4 Medium creatures, weighs 10 lbs and costs 25 gp. It's lighter than a modern tent at about half the weight, and also protects against the weather better than a regular SRD tent. It's just too good for the price. Weight reduction, for whatever reason, in 3.5e is generally ludicrously expensive I'm not really sure why (somewhere around five times the cost of the item just for the weight reduction), and figuring out reasonable costs for this kind of stuff is hard, but this one went too far. Given that it holds more people for less weight (2.5 lbs per person instead of 10 lbs per person), by standard economy stuff in, it should be costly and now I'm repeating myself and rambling. Short version; it's cheesy.

Now, that super granola. This is a weird one too. One ounce of food a day, sure it's magical food or whatever, but dang that's meager. Again, the weight comes out to be something... Okay, I know a lot of people don't like managing weight on characters very much and it can be a pain, but just because that's the case (I generally don't care too much about it), at low levels, managing these little things is important and it removes survival aspects of adventuring in caves and such. Not a big deal in the end, but dang, I lost my train of thought again on this one. The math is weird on it.

Basically a Masterwork Knowledge (Geography) skill tool for 1/5th the price and would stack.

Better Healer's Kit at the half the cost.

That all said, it really saves time for character building grabbing these, having them all spelled out and knowing you've got what you need. Guess I'm just grumpy because while I'd like to, as is currently, I'd have to disallow the Journeyman's pack in game. It turns the SRD items into item purchase/money sink traps when these better options exist for the costs. Which, oddly, punishes someone for carefully picking and customizing their gear and not getting one of these in a game where these are allowed. --Ganteka Future (talk) 09:34, 24 September 2017 (MDT)

Indeed, the reason why I made the field equipment packs is simply to streamline the character building process. The individual value of each object of the pack is not of any real significance in my mind; the idea was simply to provide adventurers with a set of tools and a clear outline of what they have and how to use it. The only thing the core PHb says about tents, aside from value and weight, is that they house two people. And frankly, you can get a 3-to-5-pound tent suited for two in any decent outdoor gear store nowadays, and I've seen (and owned) 8-person tents whose packed weight is less than 20 pounds. In a world advanced enough for lightweight canvas to exist, tents for two have no business being 20 pounds (they're also tiny; like, a Sierra trading post two man tent suited for two covers like one 5-foot square or so). Also, the fact that a tent offers some minor climate protection should be a given at that point. That's hardly cheese on my part; that's omission on the part of the PHb.
Similarly, rations. The most basic civilian and military MREs are roughly 1 pound; same as the trail rations in core. Add a tiny hint of magic to it, and sure you can cram that into an ounce. Core says one ration pack is 5 sp, the same as 5 square yards of canvas, or 50 candles; you could say it has some very interesting ideas about what things are worth.
A field equipment pack is a convenience. It requires the existence of a specific organization for players to be able to get the discounted version; otherwise, they'd at least have to pay full price. In other words, it's up to the DM to make them available if they want them to be. If you don't want your players to have that convenience, then disallow them. If your campaign has a setting where resources are scarce or your game is centered around survival, then definitely disallow them. There's a reason why survival games start you with nothing. --Sulacu (talk) 00:59, 26 September 2017 (MDT)