Keen scimitar

[G.A. Donis]

Seems like I've seen this before, buy I couldn't find it. A keen scimitar being used by someone with improved critical has a threat range of 13-20? That seems out of whack. I don't have access to any of my books right now, but I would have thought it was more like 15-20?

 

[Ywain]

Actually, it's worse than you think. The range would be 12-20.

Base: 18-20 (3 units)
Keen: 15-20 (6 units)
Imp. Cr.: 12-20 (9 units)

It isn't really unbalanced. The scimitar (and rapier) only do d6 damage so this only helps to level the playing field with the longsword or the bastard sword. And it takes a feat and a magical ability to pull off. Whereas the guy with the longsword can improve his weapon in other ways.

 

[skunian]

Actually it's 12-20 for a Keen/improved crit scimitar. 18-20 is the base, Keen and Imp Crit improves the threat range by the same amout as the base (in this case 3 (18,19,20)) So with just Imp Crit it would become 3 better for 15-20 then with Keen 3 more better for 12-20.

 

[G.A. Donis]

Thanks

Thanks for the help.

 

[Phoenix8008]

The scimitar (and rapier)...*snip*

Okay, I thought that a rapier couldn't be made Keen because its a piercing weapon, not a slashing weapon?! Help please?

p.s. Sorry for the highjack, but as the original question has been answered already I trust it's not too painful.

 

[Zhure]

Keen has been errataed to include both piercing and slashing weapons.

Hope that helps,
Greg

 

[Phoenix8008]

Thanks Zhure! I had not seen that eratta yet!

 

[Sir Pentor]

keen scimitars and abuse

The real abuse starts when a character takes 7 levels of Weapon Master from Sword and Fist, gaining the Ki Critical. Now they crit on a 10 and Higher:
18-20 base (3 slots)
15-20 with keen (6 slots)
12-20 with improved crit (9 slots)
10-20 with Ki Crit (11 slots)

As others have said, this isn't that bad since it only does 1d6 damage.

However, since you can't have this until 12th level, let's consider a a 15th level character (starting gold 200,000). He'd get a scimitar, +1, sure striking (S&F, +1 equiv., treat as +5 for purposes of damage reduction), keen (+1 equiv.), vorpal (+5 equiv.) for a total of +8, which costs 128,00gp, giving plenty of money for some magic armor and stuff like that.

Now he straight-up kills any humanoid he hits (assuming he needs a 10 or higher to hit). It is seriously whacked out.

That said, if one of my players did this, they'd run into an aweful lot of undead

 

[Voadam]

good enchantments for keen scimitar

If vorpal gets banned then go with burst weapons, more crit range means more times the burst comes into effect.

 

[Orco42]

If your DM doest have the errata take the weapon master with keen vorpal bladed gauntlets. One level of ranger for 2 weapon fighting, improved 2 weapon fighting and greater 2 weapon fighting.

7+ Critical and 8 attacks is sweet.

All hail Mr. Ginsu.