I think you peeps are not thinking about+n swords properly!

[Sunseeker]

Math is often involved in magic, sure. You don't have to give out the blandest possible math-fix junk, and you don't have to attach a tag making it sound better than it actually use (seriously, a +1 ancestral sword in D&D basically means your ancestors were lame). Even then, the big issue with the math tax weapon is the to-hit bonus. Remove that and you still have a boring item, but it doesn't warp the game.

Remove that to-hit bonus, and you can stop dropping swords of math and start dropping low-level items that do stuff like "Weapon attacks made with this weapon ignore 3 points of damage resistance. The weapon emits bright light within a 10 foot radius if goblinoids are within a 50 foot radius of the weapon. Goblinoids within the light created by this weapon suffer a -1 penalty to saving throws versus fear."

Problematically, situational bonuses are always much less useful than non-situational ones.

Great my sword glows when there's goblinoids about...well unless I'm playing a LOTR-esque campaign where the enemies are always orcs and goblins, that's gonna come in handy what...once? Damage resistance is so rarely used, and most of the things with it have like 5+ points of it, we're still on the losing end.

But +hit always matters. +damage always matters. The list of things upn which these won't be beneficial are so infintessimally small they're not even worth considering.

If we're trying to make magic weapons appealing without making them Weapons of +Math, then they ought to enable the character wielding them to do something they previously couldn't. What can't a fighter do? Shoot fireballs and hit things at range real well. What can't a wizard do? Hit stuff up close. So on, so forth. Strangely enough, this theory has been applied to non-weapon magic items since the beginning. Boots of speed for your slow dwarf, boots of flight for your non-casters, ect...

 

[Incenjucar]

Why should your weapon property ALWAYS matter? Why should ANY magic item ALWAYS matter? That's where the magic tax COMES from!

 

[GreyICE]

Problematically, situational bonuses are always much less useful than non-situational ones.

Great my sword glows when there's goblinoids about...well unless I'm playing a LOTR-esque campaign where the enemies are always orcs and goblins, that's gonna come in handy what...once? Damage resistance is so rarely used, and most of the things with it have like 5+ points of it, we're still on the losing end.

But +hit always matters. +damage always matters. The list of things upn which these won't be beneficial are so infintessimally small they're not even worth considering.

The thing is, +1 damage matters so very little. So very, very little. Imagine for a second that you hit a monster 3 times before it dies. The ONLY way your +1 damage matter was if it died by 2 or less HP.

Now how often do you overkill monsters? Fairly often? Yep. +1 damage is a highly situational modifier cleverly disguised as a broadly useful one (the situation is that the monster is alive by hp < the amount of extra damage your weapon would have caused).

The + to hit, on the other hand, is entirely NON situational, since missing is always a miss.

 

[kevtar]

seriously, a +1 ancestral sword in D&D basically means your ancestors were lame

That depends on the game. In some games, a first level character might think that a +1 ancestral sword at the end of an adventure is cool, or even just appropriate. Not all "ancestral swords" have to be Anduril or Stormbringer.

math tax... swords of math...

Gaming rhetoric aside, the in-game expectation of a magical sword and the assumption that static "to hit/dmg" bonuses are math "fixes" are where a lot of the problem lies. Are +n swords boring? Maybe. Are they useless or break the game? Not really. Ultimately, the next iteration of D&D should be about choices and if players decide they don't want +n weapons, they should be able to leave them out without having that choice detract from their gaming experience. The same goes for those who see a purpose or fit with +n swords.

Remove that to-hit bonus, and you can stop dropping swords of math and start dropping low-level items that do stuff like "Weapon attacks made with this weapon ignore 3 points of damage resistance. The weapon emits bright light within a 10 foot radius if goblinoids are within a 50 foot radius of the weapon. Goblinoids within the light created by this weapon suffer a -1 penalty to saving throws versus fear."

+1 sword emits light, a DM could make +1 swords emit light if a particular creature is in range without 'warping' the game. These other features you're adding can be added to a +n sword. So how is "ignore 3 points of energy resistance" any different from +n? You've replaced one static bonus with another. In this scenario, resist n will become the new +n.

 

[Incenjucar]

When quoting someone and responding to them it really helps if you don't change things around. It gets very confusing to respond to.

A +1 sword is special if it's the first time you've played D&D, sure. So is a potion of healing. However, it's a game that many people play for decades. It gets dull quickly.

An ancestral sword, ideally, aside from looking snazzy, does something snazzy, even if that snazzy thing isn't a part of combat. Maybe the sword displays the story of the family in the reflection of its surface, giving a history bonus. Maybe the sword can light a smokeless campfire fire or melt things like a blazing summer day because it was used to slay a fire drake, granting a utility power. Maybe the sword is actually combat-oriented, and the spirit of its bearer grants you a free shift the first time in an encounter someone misses you with an OA attack. Maybe the sword just HATES, and deals bonus damage on a crit. Sword of accuracy? Once per encounter target Reflex instead of AC or something.

To-Hit bonuses, again, are a big freaking deal, unless the classes that have to roll the hit don't count or always hit anyway, so if they are included, they must be sought. They become a resource tax as surely as the feat taxes of 4E, and taxes are not especially fun.

Damage resistance is a fairly niche ability. Its primary purpose is dealing with creatures with a handful of guardian-type creatures and, more regularly, objects. That item I wrote was Sting, from LotR. It was noted for being able to pierce the tough shell of that big spider, and for being good at slicing through its webs. On the vast majority of targets, the bonus is meaningless. On objects and targets that do actually have damage resistance, it will give you a slight edge, but not something that goes beyond your usual expected damage.

 

[Sunseeker]

When quoting someone and responding to them it really helps if you don't change things around. It gets very confusing to respond to.

A +1 sword is special if it's the first time you've played D&D, sure. So is a potion of healing. However, it's a game that many people play for decades. It gets dull quickly.

I disagree, as evidenced by the hundreds of people who think the game would be A-OKAY if you could only ever renact the LOTR cast. What is or isn't special depends partially on how it's presented in the books and how the campaign is structured. In a low-magic setting, +1 magic items are awesome, because otherwise you're walking around in mundane mundanity. If by 15th level only 2 people in the party have magic items and they're a +1 sword and a +1 Amulet of Protection, +1 items are a big deal.

But again, this depends largely on presentation. Normally boring stuff can be overlooked if the presentation of said stuff is really good.

 

[Incenjucar]

If presentation was the only issue we wouldn't have to worry about the Christmas tree effect. The behavioral patterns of a minority of the gaming population do not dominate the apparent trend. +X weapons will remain in the game because people will cling to things even while they complain about them, but they're getting in the way of a game that can more effectively satisfy a sense of "magic" without presentation being a needed to gussy it up.

 

[kevtar]

Editing quotes for brevity is a fairly common practice on these boards and it's not against the code of conduct. However, I apologize if you had difficulty understanding the reply. I agree that +1 swords may be boring (I'm not going to assume they are always boring to all people), but I don't agree that they should be removed from the game in that some people may want to use them. Essentially, +n swords can be thought of as "Accuracy swords," with each "+ to hit" representing a marginal increase in one's percentage "to hit." Is that so bad? Not really. Is that the coolest sword ever? No, but does every sword an adventurer gets have to be the coolest sword ever?

As I'm writing this, maybe the problem doesn't lie in +n swords, but rather in how treasure is managed in the game. +n swords and the like are definitely a product of the historical/cultural inertia of the game. They've lasted this long because of a combination of utility (+n to hit is useful, if even only marginally so) and because it's tradition, it's a default treasure type, and it "feels" D&D. None of those are particularly good reasons, and individually they don't really stand up to scrutiny, but collectively they present a commonsensical approach to treasure in the game. In 4e designers started to question the broader concept of treasure allotment by redesigning some types of treasure and, more importantly, redesigning it's distribution. "Wish lists," parcels, all those things in D&D that helped treasure distribution become more meaningful to players was a step in rethinking the purpose of +n swords.

By adopting a flexible, customizable approach to treasure distribution similar to 4th edition in the new iteration of 5e, I think designers will solve the "problem" of +n swords. It stands to reason that if DMs and players are given a system that allows for more articulation in providing PCs with the weapons players & DMs want, then those who don't want "swords of math" will get what they want, and those who simply want a +n "sword of math" will get what they want. The important thing is that the basic design of the core game must accommodate player choice either through the basic rules or in a modular approach.

 

[Incenjucar]

4th Edition didn't do anything to solve the problem of +X weapons until it provided an option that mostly eliminated them. Suddenly characters were free to improvise and use a variety of pieces of equipment, or to hold on to a favorite, instead of always having to trade up to the next +X item that fell into their hands in order to keep up with the expected math. 5% of the time, a +1 bonus to hit is the difference between landing a daily power, and not. Passing that bonus up once is iffy. Passing it up more than once puts you at an increasing disadvantage.

 

[Tovec]

I've had a thought. What if +1 to say... +3 were the max a sword could have, preferably in my system it would resemble +2, +4 and +6 but the general idea is there.

THEN, in addition to having +1 to attack and damage, it acts as a prerequisite for other enchantments. You need a +2 to get flaming, frost, or whatever - your general basic (+1-+2 level) enchantments. BUT then if you want to get a more powerful weapon (a +3-+4) you need the next step, a +2 weapon. These next steps could be either the Burst forms, or speed or ghost touch or anything you feel fits. Then to get vorpal or brilliant energy you need a +3 (for +4-+5)?

It is a way to have the flashy mechanics attached to the +X mechanics. So that the cool sword named excalibur, is actually a +3 with ghost touched and vorpal. But you know that the +1 ancestral sword won't have those same qualities, but perhaps it has demon bane and frost damage attached.

This would require a reformat for how the bonuses work, but it is the best I could come up with with existing structure. It is based on 3.5 but I'm assuming the 4e base would work equally well.