Improving specific weapons - what's the cost?

[Olive]

Say I have a flametongue, and I want to make it a holy flametounge, how much does that cost?

 

[Darklone]

Hmm, it's a flaming burst +1 with additional spellthingie... 20715 gp as compared to 18K gp for a +3 weapon.

I'd simply charge 32K gp for upgrading a +3 equivalent weapon to a +5 one...

 

[James McMurray]

I'm not sure if its in 3.5 anywhere, but in 3.0 the specific weapons were treated as whichever plus value they were closest to without going over. Thus a flametongue would be upgraded as if it were a +4 weapon, a Holy Avenger would be upgraded as if it were a +9 weapon, etc.

 

[Olive]

Hmm, it's a flaming burst +1 with additional spellthingie... 20715 gp as compared to 18K gp for a +3 weapon.

I'd simply charge 32K gp for upgrading a +3 equivalent weapon to a +5 one...

That's what I was thinking...

 

[Darklone]

I didn't find what James was referring to in 3.5... Anyone else got more luck?

 

[UltimaGabe]

In our games, we treat the specific special abilities of a weapon as separate when determining the + costs. Thus, let's say you've got a specific magic weapon that is a +1 Keen Dagger with the ability to summon a Balor 1/day, and it costs 12,345 gp. (It's just an example.) Well, without the Balor-summoning ability, it would cost 8,000 (the cost of an effective +2 weapon). Let's say you want to make it +2 Keen instead of just +1 Keen. Well, find out the cost of an effective +3 weapon (18,000), and subtract the 8,000 from before- resulting in an extra 10,000 you have to pay.