Abusing "Free Action: drop item"

[Phirsole]

To drop an item in your or a neighboringsquare is a free action. If I have the quick draw feat, I could drop as many items as the DM or my inventory allows.

If I have a bag of delicate glass vials with acid, which shatter from a 4' drop to the ground, I deal splash damage to close squares without attacking. Same with holy water or alchimist fire. I can see magical dust vials (i.e. sneezing and choking), too. I need to be immune/resistant to the stuff, of course.

More of these ideas?

[Mixster]

Okay, so let me get this straight, you are drawing and dropping an unlimited amount of items in a neighbouring square?

Can't free actions be taken during any other action? Meaning you could use a move action to move past an opponent, drop a lot of dangeorus things, and then move on, without taking hits from the splashes?

[Agita]

This trick is sometimes used by Iaijutsu Focus-abusing characters who don't want to or cannot use a Gnomish Quickrazor instead. They carry an arbitrarily high amount of weapons of choice (however many they need), quickdraw them, and then drop them to draw another one as part of the same full attack action for Iaijutsu Focus damage on another attack.

[RobbyPants]

Of course, as you've already noted, it's limited by DM fiat, so, good luck finding a DM that will let you do eleventy billion damage for a free action.

[veekie]

This trick is sometimes used by Iaijutsu Focus-abusing characters who don't want to or cannot use a Gnomish Quickrazor instead. They carry an arbitrarily high amount of weapons of choice (however many they need), quickdraw them, and then drop them to draw another one as part of the same full attack action for Iaijutsu Focus damage on another attack.

The imagery for this one is awesome though, so it might get past.

[Cuindless]

To drop an item in your or a neighboringsquare is a free action. If I have the quick draw feat, I could drop as many items as the DM or my inventory allows.

If I have a bag of delicate glass vials with acid, which shatter from a 4' drop to the ground, I deal splash damage to close squares without attacking. Same with holy water or alchimist fire. I can see magical dust vials (i.e. sneezing and choking), too. I need to be immune/resistant to the stuff, of course.

More of these ideas?

That's a great one! The closest I've ever seen to that was when a group with optimized UMD used a magical staff with Power Word Kill in it to try and kill a BBEG. It went something like this: The one with the highest initiative uses the staff then drops it into the square of the one with the next lowest initiative. On his turn, he picks up the staff as a move action, uses it as a standard action and drops it into the next lowest initiative as a free action. Rinse and repeat. Their rationale: "Eventually he going to fail his saving throw." It isn't quite as cool as your scenario, but I still thought it was pretty cheesy.

[Agita]

To drop an item in your or a neighboringsquare is a free action. If I have the quick draw feat, I could drop as many items as the DM or my inventory allows.

If I have a bag of delicate glass vials with acid, which shatter from a 4' drop to the ground, I deal splash damage to close squares without attacking. Same with holy water or alchimist fire. I can see magical dust vials (i.e. sneezing and choking), too. I need to be immune/resistant to the stuff, of course.

More of these ideas?

That's a great one! The closest I've ever seen to that was when a group with optimized UMD used a magical staff with Power Word Kill in it to try and kill a BBEG did something like this: The one with the highest initiative uses the staff then drops it into the square of the one with the next lowest initiative. On his turn, he picks up the staff as a move action, uses it as a standard action and drops it into the next lowest initiative as a free action. Rinse and repeat. Their rationale: "Eventually he going to fail his saving throw." It isn't quite as cool as your scenario, but I still thought it was pretty cheesy.

Power Word: Kill doesn't offer a save, it just kills someone with 100 hp or less. Were they perhaps using Destruction or Finger of Death?

[Cuindless]

Power Word: Kill doesn't offer a save, it just kills someone with 100 hp or less. Were they perhaps using Destruction or Finger of Death?

*Wipes egg off face* Yes... it was Finger of Death.

[veekie]

The chief issue with this(when not using the iaijutsu) is most items dropped this way don't have much of an impact, weigh quite a bit and can't be quick drawn from extradimensional storage.
Ditherbombs would be interesting(they start counting down when violently agitated, then explode at random), but you'd probably get more mileage out of faceplanting.

Might be handy if you can get persistent flight while those items last though. Aerial bombardment

[Zaxter]

I think I remember someone playing around with this idea some time ago. The character was a commoner with the chicken-infested flaw (some dragon magazine) and pockets full of sand. He'd use quick-draw to draw one grain of sand at a time -- chicken-infested meant that half of the time he'd pull out a chicken instead. Then he'd use a free action to drop the chicken/sand, and repeat until the room was full of chickens. Then when your opponent is bewildered by all the chickens, you use whirlwind attack + great cleave + spiked chain to put some serious hurt on him.

[Solo]

Use a spell component pouch instead.

[carnivore]

2 things to consider ... look at the feat:


QUICK DRAW [GENERAL]
Prerequisite: Base attack bonus +1.

Benefit: You can draw a weapon as a free action instead of as a move action. You can draw a hidden weapon (see the Sleight of Hand skill) as a move action.A character who has selected this feat may throw weapons at his full normal rate of attacks (much like a character with a bow).
Normal: Without this feat, you may draw a weapon as a move action, or (if your base attack bonus is +1 or higher) as a free action as part of movement. Without this feat, you can draw a hidden weapon as a standard action.
Special: A fighter may select Quick Draw as one of his fighter bonus feats.



1)items that you want to drop must be weapons
2)you would be required to carry the items that you drop .... limiting the number of weapons to what you could carry

 

[SorO_Lost]

Also, unless you roll an attack you cannot use Sneak Attack or Iaijitsu Focus.

[veekie]

Yeah, but you can draw improvised weapons right? Which lets the chickens work. Sorta.

[Rebel7284]

1)items that you want to drop must be weapons

Can't you treat virtually anything as an improvised weapon?

[skydragonknight]

Drop explosive rune toilet paper over the boss and have your raven familiar use a wand of Dispel Magic...

[Lycanthromancer]

Use shrink item on a series of 10 cu ft pillar of granite in the vague shape of a club, and later on, cast alter self to get wings (and therefore, a fly speed). When you're flying over, say, an adamantine golem, Quickdraw and drop a (literal) ton of these things as free actions, and then use your standard to call out the shared command word for the shrink item effects.

Congratulations; a single standard action likely just killed an adamantine golem. At or after level 5.

[SorO_Lost]

Either The second one lands on the first, the third on the second, etc. preventing you from dropping sub-infinite blocks, or like any other area attack the target gets a reflex save.

Dropping 1 damage items sucks, dropping large rocks sucks. I'd go with contact based poison, Major Creation can generate large quantities too.

[veekie]

Use shrink item on a series of 10 cu ft pillar of granite in the vague shape of a club, and later on, cast alter self to get wings (and therefore, a fly speed). When you're flying over, say, an adamantine golem, Quickdraw and drop a (literal) ton of these things as free actions, and then use your standard to call out the shared command word for the shrink item effects.

Congratulations; a single standard action likely just killed an adamantine golem. At or after level 5.

I swear I've seen that somewhere...

[wotmaniac]

Use shrink item on a series of 10 cu ft pillar of granite in the vague shape of a club, and later on, cast alter self to get wings (and therefore, a fly speed). When you're flying over, say, an adamantine golem, Quickdraw and drop a (literal) ton of these things as free actions, and then use your standard to call out the shared command word for the shrink item effects.

Congratulations; a single standard action likely just killed an adamantine golem. At or after level 5.

one of my players proposed using the same concept to carpet-bomb a city. 
itemize 200-lb boulders as pieces of cloth; load up as many as your flying weight capacity will allow (and at 20 per pound, that's a LOT); destruction ensues.

I can attest to the fact that thrown dice can indeed draw blood.     (not much, mind you; but, hey, I'm not trying to kill anybody)