[3.5e] Change to Greater Magic Weapon?

[FireLance]

WotC has a new PrC, the Arcane Duelist, up on its website. Its class ability "Enchant Chosen Weapon", may be indicative of how Greater Magic Weapon will work in 3.5e. Essentially, no weapon can have an effective bonus of more than +10.

Enchant Chosen Weapon (Ex): The arcane duelist's chosen melee weapon acts as if it has an enhancement bonus, even if it does not. If it does have an enhancement bonus, the arcane duelist adds this bonus to the weapon as an effective bonus. This can bring a weapon's effective enhancement bonus above +5. However, no weapon can have more than a +10 total effective bonus, so this class-granted effective bonus cannot be added to a weapon if the addition would increase the weapon's total effective bonus above +10. This class-granted bonus works only for the arcane duelist when wielding her chosen melee weapon. The enhancement bonus is +1 at 1st level, and rises to +2 at 4th level, +3 at 6th level, and +4 at 8th level.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Essentially, no weapon can have an effective bonus of more than +10.

Ummm....that's how it works now. No weapon can have greater than a +5 enhancement bonus, and no weapon can have a greater than +10 effective bonus (with bonus-equivalent abilities such as shocking, flaming, etc. factored in.) The advantage of the class-ability is that it can overcome the +5 enhancement bonus limit, so that an Arcane Duelist with a +5 longsword could use Enchant Chosen Weapon (Ex) to make it into, effectively, a +9 longsword.

Hmmm.

Unless you mean that you believe the 3.5e Greater Magic Weapon will also be able to add to a weapon's enhancement bonus. If so, I strongly doubt it. GMW is considered by many to be too strong as it is.

 

[Alzrius]

I thought that's the way things were now, that no (non-epic) magic weapon/armor can have a bonus higher than +10, only up to +5 of which may be an enhancement bonus (the rest of it being abilities calculated as enhancements, such as flaming, flaming burst, etc).

Don't feel bad FireLance. I recently saw something about a Monk's "Tongue of the Sun and Moon" ability, and thought it was something from 3.5E! We all make these embarrassing follies. It's cool.

 

[hong]

Unless you mean that you believe the 3.5e Greater Magic Weapon will also be able to add to a weapon's enhancement bonus. If so, I strongly doubt it. GMW is considered by many to be too strong as it is.

Right now, GMW effectively lets you break that +10 limit on a weapon's overall bonus. For example, I can have a +1 holy, shock, flaming burst, speed weapon (+10 overall), and stick a GMW at 15th caster level on it to make it a +5 holy, shock, flaming burst, speed weapon. That's +14 overall.

What he means is that GMW may be changed so that a weapon's overall bonus can never exceed +10, regardless of the spell's caster level. To take the previous example, since the weapon is already +10, casting GMW on it would have no effect. IMO, this would be a Good Thing.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Ah. *sigh* I need to go to bed. Thanks for the explanation, Hong. I agree that it would be a Good Thing. It'd make that enhancement bonus something to consider, seriously.

FireLance, sorry about the mix-up. I'm with you, and hope that you're right. Either way, I feel a house rule coming on just in case!

 

[FireLance]

Thanks for clearing it up, Hong .

Lord Pendragon, no biggie. I did miss the point that the enhancement bonus might add. If so, Greater Magic Weapon would gain some power (stacking enhancement bonuses) and lose some (cap on total effective bonus). That's one way of "balancing" it, I guess.

 

[Morgenstern]

What that mechanics string in the class ability seems to be indicating to me is that if you had a +3 to hit and damage weapon with an effective plus of say +5, this ability would allow you to bring the pluses to hit and damage up to +5. It doesn't say anything about increasing the hit and damage bonuses above the usuall +5 limit, only that the effective level can go above +5 (but not more than +10). In other words, it will increase the enhancement bonus as high as +5 even if the weapon has an effective bonus greater than +5 already do to other special proprties. It's a fine nuance, but a usefull distintion to make. The +10 total limit only comves into play on a weapon that has more than 5 pluses associated with non-enhancement bonuses. A sword with 6 pluses of non-enhancement stuff would be capped at +4 enhancement because of the +10 limit.