Starting gear

A couple questions re: starting gear.

  1. Is it reasonable for a character starting with armor to decline it?

  2. Mallet & stakes: any reason they can’t be a (shoddy) substitute for iron spikes and hammer? My gut reaction was that it’d be a factor in whatever you were doing, plus another factor based on whether you had enough (per the Iron Spikes use/recovery die roll).

  3. I don’t get the feeling that anything prevents taking two small sacks, removing one from its slot, filling it with (whatever), and carrying that in your off hand. Correct? “You may choose to take as much gear as your character can carry” being my rationale for the above.

~Gary

  1. yes
  2. Up to GM and circumstances
  3. yes, I think you can do that, though if you go into the first adventure with too much gear you’ll probably end up dumping or losing most of it anyway, and you can’t sell most of the cheap starter items.

I agree with all that. The other thing to keep in mind with #3, is that the player will quickly realize what’s important to their character. The stuff they don’t end up needing, they’ll pass to someone else or just trash it.