Abilties from "Specific Weapons"?

[meankanin]

There are several "Specific Weapons" (e.g. DMG p226) that have abilities that aren't available as a regular weapon special abilities.

Is it possible to add other abilities to these weapons, or add the unique abilities to already existing weapons?

Is there anything in the rules about this? I haven't found anything.

 

[Arkhandus]

You can add enhancement bonuses and standard special abilities to specific weapons, armors, and shields just like any other magic weapon, shield, or armor. Just factor in their existing enhancement bonus and standard special abilities for their total enhancement equivalent as normal when determining cost and such. So a Flame Tongue already has flaming and flaming burst, for instance, but its unique properties would not factor into the cost of the new enhancements.

But there are no rules for adding those unique qualities to other items.

 

[Starbuck_II]

There are several "Specific Weapons" (e.g. DMG p226) that have abilities that aren't available as a regular weapon special abilities.

Is it possible to add other abilities to these weapons, or add the unique abilities to already existing weapons?

Is there anything in the rules about this? I haven't found anything.

No specific rules, but they could work off a cost increase instead of a enhancement bonus.
So to add Flame tongue to a +1 Flaming burst dagger would cost:
2000 for 1/day, 1 ray of 4d6.

20K -18K=2K.

 

[Shin Okada]

Adding + X gp abilities, such as "Everbright" in Magic Item Compendium, to an existing Specific Weapons will not cause that much problem I guess.

But adding abilities with "+X bonus" base price modifier or increasing existing enhancement bonus may cause game-balance issues.

Basically, there is no clear rule written in DMG.

But IMHO, It is really a bad idea to consider specific weapon's unique abilities to be +X gp abilities. If you treat Sword of Subtlety as a +1 weapon with +X gp ability for the purpose of improving it, it well easily become a no-brainer cheese to increase it's enhancement bonus.

If I were a DM, I will basically treat all the abilities of a specific weapons to be counted as if "+X bonus" properties. Many of the specific weapons do not have cost matches to the value of +X weapons. In those cases, I will treat that as a next higher +X weapon.

I mean,

Specific weapon cost (minus the cost of a non-magic weapon)
up to 2,000gp .... +1
up to 8,000gp .... +2
up to 18,000gp .... +3
up to 32,000gp .... +4
up to 50,000gp .... +5
up to 72,000gp .... +6
up to 98,000gp .... +7
up to 128,000gp .... +8
up to 162,000gp .... +9
up to 200,000gp .... +10

and so on.

For example, Sword of Subtlety costs 22,310gp. So I consider it to be a +4 weapon when adding more abilities or raising it's enhancement bonus. So, if you tries to increase it's enhancement bonus by 1 (to +2), the cost will be 50,000 - 32,000 = 18,000gp.

I am not sure this is enough to prevent cheeses for all the specific weapons. But it could be a good start.