Is there a "material altering" weapon enchantment?

[thundershot]

I've been digging through my various d20 books, and am trying to find a weapon special ability that can change it's material on command, or a move equiv. action, or something.

Say a character has a quarterstaff +1. It's magical, which is fine against certain creatures. Uh-oh, there's a Fey trying to put a curse on me. Change the staff to cold iron and WHACK. Crap, there's a golem behind me. Change it to adamantine. SMACK!

...

Okay, I don't know what got into me with the onomatopoeia... but you get the point.



Thanks!
Chris

 

[Brown Jenkin]

3.0 had a cantrip on the WotC website called silvered weapon. However Andy said he didn't want any material altering spells for 3.5 so thier arn't any. Be paitient however and I'm sure some d20 publisher will provide some fairly soon.

 

[Voadam]

I think Bastion Press' Egyptian Gods pdf had a silvered weapon spell, but I'm not aware of a published magical weapon quality.

 

[Anubis the Doomseer]

Did Andy give any reason for his decision? Seems strange (well, that and a lack of size-changing enchantments for magic armor and swords), such a thing would be a natural extention of the setting impact caused by a rules change.

OTOH, far be it from D&D to actually take into account such implications in a setting.

- Ma'at

 

[apocalypstick]

Did Andy give any reason for his decision? Seems strange (well, that and a lack of size-changing enchantments for magic armor and swords), such a thing would be a natural extention of the setting impact caused by a rules change.

OTOH, far be it from D&D to actually take into account such implications in a setting.

Q: What's the reason for having specific-material DRs?

A: So that PCs will need specific-type weapons to bypass the DR.

so...

Q: What does having a material-altering spell do to that?

A: Remove that need.

 

[Brown Jenkin]

Did Andy give any reason for his decision? Seems strange (well, that and a lack of size-changing enchantments for magic armor and swords), such a thing would be a natural extention of the setting impact caused by a rules change.

OTOH, far be it from D&D to actually take into account such implications in a setting.

- Ma'at

The reason as best I can tell is that he wanted materials to be special. If you have a transmute material spell it becomes like greater magic weapon in 3.0 and makes material DRs pointless.

 

[magnas_veritas]

Sadly, Polymorph Any Object doesn't do special materials; otherwise, that'd be an interesting way of breaching material DRs. Sure, it requires a 15th-level wizard or sorcerer, and it's permanent, and the spell description specifically disallows it, but hey.

The only existing in-game weapon enhancement that does anything like this is Truesilver, from Ghostwalk; for a +1 enhancement bonus, it treats the weapon as silver, and also allows you to crit the "ghosts" of the setting.

Brad

 

[Sejs]

Sadly, Polymorph Any Object doesn't do special materials;...

Well... sort of. It says it can't -create- materials with great intrinsic value, but depending on DM interpritation it may be possible to turn one material of great intrinsic value into another material of great intrinsic value.

I personally think the "can't make cool stuff" clause is bunk anyway. Why does the magic care if people value one substance over another. Why can you turn a block of clay into a block of lead, but not a block of gold when the two substances are oh so similar, except that one is thought of as pretty.

What if you're on Krynn, where Steel is the coin of the realm and gold isn't thought highly of. Can PAO not make steel then?
~~~~
Oh right, the original question: two thoughts -

a) a +2 or so enchantment that lets you change the substance of the weapon as a move equavelant action (similar to a ready weapon action). Call it Shifting or the like.

b) an exotic material that is essentially matter from the plane of Limbo - you know.. shapeable and transmuteable by force of will. Maybe have it require a Concentration or Knowledge(Arcana or the Planes) check to shift; DC 10 for basic materials like iron or silver, DC 15 for more exotic things like adamantine and whatnot. Standard action to perform, say. No penalty for failure other than it doesn't shift that round.

 

[Maerdwyn]

What I would like to see are some guidelines for the craft (alchemy) skill for transmuting on material to another, so that with the right materials, and a high rank in the skill, you could permanently change a weapon or other object into a different material. Is there any such information, plus other stuff on alchemy and/or other fantasy-sciences yet published ?

 

[dok]

I would vote against such an enhancement, both in general & in this specific instance.

First, take the Quarterstaff. It's a metal-shod staff, and a double weapon. Which means you can have one end be cold iron, & the other be adamantine. Which, if you're a wizard and/or not into TWF with your staff, will work just fine. Buy a vial of Silversheen and all your bases are covered. So an enhancement isn't really necessary.

Second, consider the other types of DR. Would you allow a "damage type mophing" enhancement to change your weapon damage between piercing, slashing & bludgeoning? I use this as an example to show the motive for the request: it's purely to always be able bypass DR with a single weapon, which runs completely counter to the whole point of restructuring DR.

Lastly, think about what it means to not be able to breach DR now. It means your wizard with a +1 Quarterstaff will probably only do one or two points of damage with his staff, if that; rather than dump two points of enhancement into "polyweapon shifting", why not pick up two energy types? That's an extra 7 damage on average, which more than makes up for the 5 points lost to most DR.