Ammunition ideas

[Egon the Monkey]

Leading on from that arrows thread, I was thinking "what would be cool to have on arrows?"

In the UD, there were a good selection of reasonably common svirf-made crossbow rounds with AoEs that made crossbow users very handy if they placed their shots correctly. Balagarn's Iron Horn, Eletric Loop, even Slay Goblinoid (handy for splattering Goblin Assassins or bosses)

So, suggestions:
Dispellant Arrows: Lesser Dispel on hit
Paralysis Venom Arrow: Ghoul Touch on hit.
Concussive Bolts: On hit Thunderstone effect
Dust Canisters (Darts): On hit Invisibility Purge
Minature Firebombs (darts): Onhit Alchemist's Fire. Not that powerful per hit, but big AoE and general fun explosiveness.
Ratcatcher Rounds: Onhit DC15 Slay Vermin.

[Letsplayforfun]

:(

Although it sounds cool, i'm not so much in favor of making yet another series of abilities available to every pc.

I know i'm biaised on such suggestions because i enjoy playing mages, and all these trinkets take away little use low lvl mages have on the server; but, basically, it's always going to end up favoring warrior classes, who's only weakness is not to have access to special abilities outside combat. It will also render UMD pointless, let alone spells.

My usual 2c.

[Semli]

Even when spell and special ability ammunition was present in the UD, the better things were generally few and far between.  LPFF brings up a good point on how spell reliant PCs might be underpowered by an influx of magical status inducing items, but adding some variety to the loot tables shouldn't change play a whole lot unless the rate of spawn varies grossly from the old system.

That said, while Dispel and Ghoul Touch arrows are fairly powerful items even in small amounts, the rest look like good fun for the most part.  I am already of the opinion that archery as a character's focus is a little underpowered given the high amounts of opponents with DR and inability to enchant ranged weapons.  There are items available to counter this but more often than not they make common archer feats useless.  As way of an analogy, consider if the magic weapon spell was removed but the odd +1 dagger appeared as loot.  When it came time to do Nightriser Barracks, everyone would pull out their light crossbows and daggers.