Can bows be Keen?

[Deset Gled]

As for the tables - they can't even generate all the weapons - are you telling me that you can't enchant whip daggers?

Interestingly enough, you can't enchant a whip dagger using the core rules.

 

[Rackhir]

Setting aside the anti-keen reading of the rules for the moment. Can anyone give me a logical reason why a "keen bow" should not be able to bestow that power on arrows?

It's hardly unbalancing, even with keen and Imp Crit, you still only have a 18-20 crit range which isn't exactly going to effortlessly slay everything you run across. In fact it isn't even as nasty as Keen/Imp Crit with a scythe (2d4, 20, x4)

I also don't see how making the points on arrows sharper is inherantly sillier than the bow making them burst into flames or be filled with Holy/Unholy/Chaotic etc... energies? Keen certainly makes sense as an ability to have on arrows.

That about sums it up for me. I can't see any reason why a bow shouldn't have the ability and it certainly makes sense that it could.

 

[FrankTrollman]

If you are talking 3rd edition, there is no reading of the rules that prevents Keen from applying to bows as the table is not even referenced by the Magic Weapon rules.

If you are talking about 3.5, Keen no longer stacks with Improved Critical and is thusly horrendously underpowered.

In either case, there is no compelling game balance reason to forbid Keening of arrows. The only thing close is that some people are attempting to come up with a universal argument that forbids the creation of Spell Storing Arrows (which are themselves legal as well). The only thing approaching such an argument is the tabular one - that Spell Storing Arrows are vacant from the random treasure lists and thus cannot be made despite being a really simple example of "one from column A one from column B" construction that the Dim Sum model of weapon forging explicitly allows.

That's it. It's not an argument based on the power of the item, or on the actual text of the rule book - it's about changing the ruls so that other items that some people think are too powerful cannot be made.

It's like how some people tried to forbid Keen Bows in 3rd edition in order to keep people from making Keen Vorpal weapons (which are also legal).

-Frank

 

[Thanee]

Dunno about you, but in my book and the SRD there are three references to a TABLE (weapons, melee enchantments and ranged enchantments) and not a single reference to any other source for special abilities. (EDIT: speaking of the magic weapon creation rules, in case you wonder. )

These tables CAN be expanded as I said numerous times, even with the keen ability for a ranged weapon, but that's DM's discretion and not covered in the core rules.

So again, the direct answer to the initial question is no (or DM's discretion, but that's a given anyways).

Bye
Thanee