Enhancements, Enchantments, Racism.

[MetalWingedWolf]

I'm curious on a couple things I'm unclear about that I NEED some answers for.Enhancing a Masterwork Weapon to +1 is a magical enhancement, right? From regular to MW requires a new weapon to be forged but all the +1->+5 enhancements will not require forging a new weapon. Reading about it in the books got me to a line about how the cost of adding a +4 enchantment to a +3 weapon would be equal to making a +7 weapon in the table and that has me believing that any number of enchantments can be added once a weapon is at least carrying a +1 enhancement?


Also Bane, is driving me insane. I dislike that it's always associated with a characters hatred for a race, and I assume in the situations given there's always a reasonable history to that level of hatred/bigotry. Hating a chaotic evil race of monsters is great when 99% of the time they can very well be responsible for killing you or your friends and family, I just don't like that the practical aspect of a +2 enhancement equivalent plus a 2d6 damage buff aren't factored in with lore. If I'm in a realm filled with mainly just the human race and I am a human, it sounds like it's crazy for me to want a human bane weapon when it's easily one of the cheapest and most fun looking enchants for an early weapon. So long as I can give it to a +1 greatsword and still later make it a +5 Greatsword with Bane Human on it.. like, is that not just practical?The added bonus' attached to fiercebane obviously imply that it isn't meant to be used by the same race, that it's a racism based enchant working best for a genocidal warpath. I hate that.One more on just bane, Lore wise, should making a bane enchant require the enchanter to hold that hatred inside for the targeted race? Should there be a way to attune the glow of Fiercebane to ignore the person using the weapon if they happen to be the same race. I know holy weapons and unholy etc have a system that lowers the user by one level if they aren't the correct alignment, no such description for a bane weapon.I want the enchants, without the hate and hopefully with some feasible means of avoiding the uselessness of a weapon that will never stop glowing with Fiercebane, never mind the implications of a sentient Human Fiercebane weapon being used by a human... It's a can of worms that I'm asking you guys for help in opening with me.

 

[Empirate]

Enchanting a weapon can only be done with a masterwork weapon, which must be forged as masterwork - correct. You can pile on as much as a +10 equivalent in enchantments, and every single enchantment can be at most +5 equivalent pre-epic. That means you can get yourself a +1 Human Bane Flaming Burst Defending Brilliant Energy Longsword (total of +10), or a +5 Vorpal Longsword (total +10, again).

You can subsequently enchant a weapon to become more powerful. For example, you can take a +1 Flaming Longsword (total bonus equivalent of +2) and enchant it to become +3, and Human Bane on top of Flaming (total bonus equivalent of +7). You pay the difference in cost: a +2 equivalent weapon costs 8,000 gp, while a +7 equivalent weapon costs 98,000 gp, so powering up your weapon will cost 90,000 gp in this case.


As for the Bane thing... I'd simply ignore the racism and racial hatred thing, honestly. I also allowed the NG Human Ranger in my group to pick Humans as his Favored Enemy. Being trained, motivated and competent against certain foes has nothing to do with hating them, as far as I'm concerned.

As always: use fluff where useful, ignore where it stands in the way of your imagination.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

You are correct in that only masterwork weapons can be enchanted. The average, run-of-the-mill weapon cannot be enhanced. You may add an enchantment and then add another later. The math for the cost of the enchantment always totals the combined number of enchantments, so a sword with a +1 +2 +1 +1 enchantment costs you the same as a sword with a +5. To go from a +3 to a +5 means you pay the difference.

I hear ya with the racist issue and I have seen that included in weapon descriptions, but that part is fluff, not mechanics. As Empirate has already stated, the DM and players (mostly the DM) get to agree on the way your campaign works. As rules of the game go, it's the mechanics that matter, fluff is kept or thrown away depending on how it applies to your world.

As for your observation that a mostly human realm would benefit from a human-bane weapon, you're right. The utility of any Bane weapon is connected to the frequency at which that enemy is present. It comes down to the DM to decide the availability of such weapons, and the player to decide if his/her character is capable of making them, be sure the DM is ok with this.

The game is always about what everyone can have fun with. Keep that in mind and use what works for you and yours.

 

[Jackinthegreen]

A Bane weapon doesn't necessarily mean there's any racism or hatred going on any more than a ranger's Favored Enemy would show. For example, a hunter type character might choose animals is one of his favored enemies because that's the most practical thing to do. Likewise, a constable type character in a city of pretty much all humans would probably be best served choosing a human as a favored enemy since that character needs to have an edge against that type to do his job and keep order.

That's not to say there couldn't be some hatreds or something going on with certain characters. A child orphaned thanks to a dragon killing everyone else in a village might grow up and swear a blood oath to kill that dragon and thus become a specialist dragon hunter. Or, fr a much less righteous example, an evil giant might just decide it wants to live up to the racial bias dwarves have against it and start specializing against them and then bashing their skulls in.

Basically it'll come down to what's acceptable and interesting for the players and campaign. If you play with alignment, take a look at what the alignment would entail. An evil character could certainly have hatred guiding the choice of a bane weapon or Favored Enemy, but turn things around and you might find a paladin of Pelor who in his own way hates undead will use a Bane weapon set to work against undead.

So perhaps the can of worms being opened is: Is it okay to hate something inherently evil? Is it okay for a good character to feel hatred, even if that hate is directed towards something that isn't bad in and of itself? Or would you guys rather just play the game and not worry about philosophy? That's something you'll have to answer on your own.

 

[nijineko]

i think the racist feel comes from the half-baked rules and fluff that they put in with it. you aren't allowed to take your own race, cause that's EVIL-or at least that's the justification given. and players are generally assumed to not be evil. i think it was mostly developed the way it was as a block/ban to prevent players from using it against BBEGs who somehow mostly wind up being their own race, but allow some bonuses against other kinds of BBEGs.

i guess there is also some sort of assumption that a bane weapon hates the race it is designed to be effective against, or at least the creator of such a weapon would have to hate said race. i think the intelligent items rules mention something to that effect.

in the end, this gets into the cosmology behind it. it made sense to gygax and/or arneson, and nobody's bothered to think it out or question it who actually worked for tsr/wotc/hasbro... so we have it now.

if you want a fix, then you need to understand why or why not your cosmology supports such a thing, and how such a thing would have to be created and why. go from there.