Getting the most out of a sword?

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

You could go with Sure Striking. That would let you hurt any +5/magic DR creature, and give you +9 slots to work with. Also, have the sword made of either adamantin, silver, or cold iron. That would allow it to bypass two forms of DR on the same weapon. My money would be on silver being the more useful of the three.

 

[Darklone]

Is there any info on Sure Striking? I mean, does it only hit all magic DR or ALL DR/material?

 

[green slime]

You could go with Sure Striking. That would let you hurt any +5/magic DR creature, and give you +9 slots to work with. Also, have the sword made of either adamantin, silver, or cold iron. That would allow it to bypass two forms of DR on the same weapon. My money would be on silver being the more useful of the three.

Nope, You only have +8 "slots" to work with, as the weapon must be at least +1 to be enchanted in the first place.

Secondly, without access to the 3.5E rules, I'd hazard a guess and go for adamantine as the most useful. Because it increases the resistance to breakage, and it functions to a degree in AMF.

So assuming +1 Adamantine Sure Striking Katana, what else can I add to it?

As a spereate attack, to gain more attacks per round you can't beat Dancing!:

Bodyfeeder from PsiHB (+2) gain damage in temp hp.
Dancing (+4)
Corrosive (+1) from MoF (+1d6 Acid)
Ghost Touch (+1)

For your off-hand you want
+5 Katana
Parrying (+1), PsiHB (+1 to insight bonus AC, always)
Defending (+1) DMG
Elemental Aura (+3) MoF (choose once per round which element)
Probably in a different material. Cold Iron or Silver. Perhaps replace Elemental Aura with Ghost Touch and Holy (for those pesky Outsiders)

For your main hand perhaps a:
+5 Katana
Brilliant Energy (+4) DMG
Charged (+1) PsiHB (+1d4 extra damage per round Psionic energy, ignores all elemental resistances)

These three weapons give you a lot of choices, as to tactical disposition. OF course they'll set you back a mere 600,000 gp for all three...

I'll hazard a guess and say sure striking only penetrates magic DR. I feel fairly confident about this.

 

[Thresher]

Maybe a magical effect on the weapon itself could be the easier route.

Threshers Wonderous Morphing hurty weapon

+1 change the weapon as an action to being an equivalent type/same damage/same size
(ie: Longsword-Scimitar-Bastard Sword)

+2 change the weapon to being an equivalent type/different damage type/same size
(ie: longsword-Heavy mace)

+3 change the weapon to being anything within one size catorgory smaller or larger.
(longsword-Dagger-Greatsword)

With Poly any object you could do something like this though you might want to adjust the costs as applicable. Dunno about changing the weapons materials though, guess its possible with magic.

 

[Arc]

Hmmm... good ideas all. I'm using the katana 2handed, and I'm going for a dancing wakazashi, and an animated shield. The current plan is to make the wakazashi +5 dancing, sure striking and adamantine, whereas the katana itself is +3 keen of sharpness with acidic burst thrown in. My ideas were more along the lines of getting extra benifits without going into epic costs, for example: using blade dancer to add elemental effects to the katana, and then having the wakazashi in a scabbard of keen edges.

Come to think of it, those bracers of blinding strike were actually exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.

 

[Destil]

Is there any info on Sure Striking? I mean, does it only hit all magic DR or ALL DR/material?

Andy Collins mentioned on his boards that it really dosn't have a place in the new DR system, and if he were to re-do sure striking it would most likely be something completely different.

 

[hong]

Andy Collins mentioned on his boards that it really dosn't have a place in the new DR system, and if he were to re-do sure striking it would most likely be something completely different.

If it were me, I'd have it negate the first 5 points of DR regardless of what type.

 

[DM_Matt]

GMW will still last 1hour/level in 3.5e, altohugh its now +level/4. At high levels, just have the party mage cast it everyday on yout sword, which would otherwise be a +1 with lots of abilities.

 

[FANGO]

All kinds of cheesy ways to make weapons more effective

Petition your DM to allow greater-than-+2 adamantine (epic adamantine, perhaps...going up to +7 or something, but costing 10x as much)

Become evil, get a fiend of possession (from Fiend Folio) cohort with the leadership feat, and make it stay in your sword at all times...allows you to add +6 of any abilities, nonmagically, to your sword, bypassing all limitations on what amount of magic can be on your sword.

Get two levels in Warrior of Darkness (from Book of Vile Darkness), allows you to spend 3 rounds and 50gp to add any +1 ability to your weapon.

Ask your DM if you can have custom weapons...for example, the 'specific magic items' in books don't have +X costs for their abilities, so it could be considered as a flat price to get those abilities (for example, if theres a sword thats +2 but also has unique special abilities, and costs 15,300 gold, you can reverse-engineer that price and add other enchantments to it, treating the unique abilities as costing a flat 7k, and then just adding more pluses onto the item in the regular plus-squared-times-1000 manner). You could add just one of those, or add a whole bunch of them, perhaps, depending on how permissive your DM is.

Bane enchantments actually raise the effective enhancement bonus of your weapon against the chosen type of creature, so you could look into those.

If you wanted to use a shield, instead, you could look into the divine shield feat from Defenders of the Faith. I have a shield-using Soldier of Light in one campaign right now who has a shield that he can pump up to +10 enhancement bonus, counting both for offense and defense, which also has the defending and command enchantments on it. The great thing about this path is that you can get huge actual enhancement bonuses, but still have other types of enchantments on the shield (like defending and such) for a low cost, because the enhancement bonus of the shield isn't taking up space when it comes to the maximum amount of enchantment you can have on the item. You could also perhaps design a feat which lets you use this sort of ability on your sword, if your DM went for it.

Definitely take a look at the arcane duelist mentioned above, it's another way you can do something like this.

I'm sure there's some things I'm forgetting, but those are all nice things to look into.

 

[Darklone]

If it were me, I'd have it negate the first 5 points of DR regardless of what type.

This is probably another one of the "hong" rules which we will see again in 4.5 as official...