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Message: <blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 830305" data-attributes="member: 554">So my first change isn't nearly as popular as the second one; perhaps it can use a bit of explanation.The "only one piece of ammunition" rule was motivated by all of those threads about archers a while back. I tended to agree with people that archers were way too powerful -- a good archer could outdamage a melee character pretty consistently (assuming the melee character wasn't a twinked frenzied berserker or the like), and could do that damage from a considerable range, and make a full attack every round, and so forth.A bit of math revealed two things. First, much of an archer's impressive damage output had to do with the fact that they benefited from two enhancement bonuses (the bow and arrows), rather than just one (a melee weapon). It also revealed that magical arrows were surprisingly expensive -- fifty +5 arrows cost 50,000 gp and change, for about 1k per arrow.At that point, things made sense -- 3e was balanced under the assumption archers may be powerful, but they'd have to pay through the nose for it (hence the appeal the arcane archer, but that's a digression). A high-level archer using rapid shot on a full attack with +5 arrows spends 5k per round -- a major balancing factor. If a melee character got to spend 5k per round on powerful expendable magical items, he'd be pretty sick, too.And hence the problem with greater magic weapon affecting ammunition -- it allowed archers to save incredible amounts of money and made them disproportionately powerful. Since arrows are consumed upon being fired, if you're going to fire 50 +5 arrows in a day of adventuring (which you will, in ten to fifteen rounds of combat), a set of masterwork arrows affected by greater magic weapon is for practically all intents and purposes just as good as that 50k quiver of +5 arrows -- that is, one third-level spell in effect creates a 50,000 gold piece magical item. Wish can't do that!Hence the house rule. Note that I don't think this unfairly nerfs archers, or makes greater magic weapon any less useful to them: they can still benefit from it cast on their bow in the same way a melee character can benefit from it cast on his weapon. And that seems fair to me.</blockquote>

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