Augmenting Whetstones - AV - fair game ?

[Istar]

Is it just me or does it seem a bit unfair to stack up on a whole bunch of these Whetstones, which are pretty cheap.

And add +2 to both damage and TH for a whole encounter ??

You dont need to buy that many really.

p.s. Its actually pretty good for a Dagger Rogue, as he only needs 1 weapon to put them on.

 

[Ferghis]

The enhancement bonus doesn't stack with your normal magic items, so it's only worth it if you have underpowered magic items or if the players get their hands on an overpowered whetstone. Both these situations can occasionally happen, but are probably not common.

Otherwise, the Tempest stone is good for clearing minions.

 

[Colmarr]

They can also be useful for giving your melee combatant a viable ranged attack (by using them on a mundane javelin or bow) for an encounter of two instead of ponying up the cash for a magical ranged weapon.

 

[Ryujin]

The enhancement bonus doesn't stack with your normal magic items, so it's only worth it if you have underpowered magic items or if the players get their hands on an overpowered whetstone. Both these situations can occasionally happen, but are probably not common.

Otherwise, the Tempest stone is good for clearing minions.

They're also daily use items, and so of limited use. I had one player load his character up with them for Frost Cheese, when I made them available to the party through an NPC, but he found that they were of limited usefulness. At Paragon he could get two encounters out of them, in a 4 to 5 encounter day.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, the daily item use limitation only applies if your group is using the pre-essentials magic item rules (or a version thereof), as essentials removed the daily magic item use restrictions in return for imposing the common/uncommon/rare categorization of magic items.

That said, if your group is using the daily item use limitations rules, then yes whetstones will be less powerful (or atleast less spamable, which seems to be at the heart of the OP's concerns).

 

[Ryujin]

Well, the daily item use limitation only applies if your group is using the pre-essentials magic item rules (or a version thereof), as essentials removed the daily magic item use restrictions in return for imposing the common/uncommon/rare categorization of magic items.

That said, if your group is using the daily item use limitations rules, then yes whetstones will be less powerful (or atleast less spamable, which seems to be at the heart of the OP's concerns).

My understanding was that Essentials simply stopped creating items that followed those rules, not that it rewrote pre-existing items. Can you cite the applicable rule for me?

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Well, [MENTION=27897]Ryujin[/MENTION], what essentials did was basically republish the magic item rules and pages 275-284 of the Rules Compendium. These rules are basically the same as those in PH1, except:
1. They introduce item rarity; and
2. They make no mention of item use limitations.

While they do not explicitly state they get rid the daily item use rules, they don't need to - its what I call "repeal by removal". Basically, by introducing a new and comprehensive rule set which doesn't include a previous rule, the previous rule no longer applies and is "repealed".

I think we may have differing philosophies on rules interpretation - it appears you see the general item rules that exist at the time as being "read into" the items themselves, such as that a future change of the general rules only effects items released after that change.

I, on the other hand, interpret the general item rules as being rules that "sit on top of" all the items, regardless of when they are released. So, if you change the general rules, that change applies to all magic items in the game, even those that predate the change.

 

[Ferghis]

While they do not explicitly state they get rid the daily item use rules...

But they did. I don't know if it was also done in a published "manual," but it certainly was done in Dragon, which counts as official content, and the article itself was publicly accessible (meaning that it's not behind a paywall):

... the limits on using daily magic item powers are no longer part of the game.

Source: Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Magic Item Rarity)

This isn't to say that you can't use the old limits, and I'm pretty sure that even Wizards suggested doing so until they did a better job cataloging the different item rarities. However, it appears that the rarity of many, many items has been updated, particularly a few months after the big wizards thread that basically crowd-sourced the heavy lifting part of the job.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Fair enough - I didn't search through ancilliary materials to see if they had made supporting statement elsewhere. Additionally, they may have addressed the issue in the slue of eratta that came out when essentials was released... I didn't check.

I will note that a hard core rules lawyer would likely argue that the linked article isn't a rules source and it sounded like Ryujin wanted a rules citation, not a policy statement. As merely a soft core rules lawyer, the article demonstrates WotC's intention, which is good enough for me.

And its a valid point that a DM can apply the daily item use limitation if he/she wants to - my point was simply that for most groups that limitation likely doesn't apply. As an aside, in my own campaign I've ditched the daily use restrictions (the problem it was implemented to solve isn't an issue with my PCs) but, aside from restricting rare items as "GM handouts only" I haven't applied the item rarity rules, as I don't feel they add anything.

 

[Ryujin]

I feel much more comfortable maintaining the daily use rules, for such items, as making many of them freely usable can result in "golf bag o' staves" syndrome.