Magic Armor/Weapon guidelines

[yipwyg42]

I was wondering if there was a level 1 to 20 class that was given a weapon, and the weapon increased in power as the character went up.

I'm thinking of doing this for my next campaign, due to how my potential players tend to like their games.

All stats start at 11 and they roll 2d6 and add it to the base, yep this makes an average of all 18's down the line. This is due to the fact that recently all of the characters in the last 3 games someone ran, the DM gave about 12th level treasure to begining characters. I would rather just get the ability scores out of the way from the get go.

Everyone gets a masterwork weapon and one suit of masterwork armor at 1st level. As you gain levels the masterwork weapon and armor will raise in power to cap at a +5 weapon enhancement. The only things armor and weapons can be enchanted with is those that have a cost value not a bonus value. IE no flaming, good alignned, holy etc.. weapons.

I will bring in the Augment Crystals from Magic Item copendium as a way to modify the weapons.

For those who don't know where I am coming from see my Monty Haul campaign Thread. In my opinion I believe it is better to have high ability scores than give 1-3rd level characters weapons like +5 holy, bane, flaming Burst, weapons or +5 suits of armor with 3-4 abilities.

This way say at 15th level the fighter would have a weapon with a +5 enchancement bonus and perhaps have a 26 strength. So say he had a great sword he would be doing 2d6 + 13 points of damage.

How will these characters bypass DR you may ask. Align Weapon and the amount of damage they do will handle that. I don't think we have cast any spells along that line in at least a year perhaps a lot more. No real point when you have weapons and armor with bonuses in the +8 to +10, when you are below 10th level.

What do you think. BTW this is not a troll, I am seriously thinking of a way to give what my group wants, without resorting to giving them tons of treasure. The way above will still give them their armor and weapons (albiet in a different light), and I can give them other things than the big six items. At least with the above stat modifiers along with their feats they can say it is their characters that are more important than the items they are carrying.

 

[Woas]

Yep. In Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved (or Arcana Unearthed) there is a class called Mageblade that does this.
The flavor bits of the class are gone, but you can read about it here: http://aewiki.criticalhit.dk/OpenContent/Classes/Mageblade?highlight=%28Classes/%29%7C%28Prestige%29%7C%28CategoryClasses%29

 

[Arkhandus]

As Woas said, the Mage Blade from AU/AE gets a weapon that gradually acquires a greater enhancement bonus, and the MB gets one or two other minor benefits with it over time (it's their key weapon for casting spells; they can use motions of it to replace somatic spell components, for example). The Mage Blade has no cost for imbuing his key weapon with these enhancements, but they are limited.

Oriental Adventures has the Samurai, which gets a free masterwork bastard sword (katana) and masterwork short sword (wakizashi) at 1st-level..... As they go up in character level, they can imbue these Ancestral Daisho with magical enhancements, each time visiting a shrine and sacrificing an offering worth a certain amount (basically the same as the cost for the magic weapon, but without having to buy it exactly, and without having to 'shop around' for the exact magic weapon they want; they just choose which abilities to imbue their daisho with).

This is a different class from the one later put into Complete Warrior, more a 'fighter of the nobility' than anything else (they don't get mystical powers, just their daisho's capacity to be enhanced through prayer and sacrifice to the ancestors). The Samurai is limited in how much he can enhance either of his daisho, but only by character level; they are eventually able to imbue the weapons with a full +10 worth of equivalent enhancements and special abilities (one Samurai might choose to make his katana +5 vorpal; another might choose for his katana to be +3 keen honorable wounding flaming burst, while also imbuing his wakizashi as a +3 keen wounding weapon of speed). The Samurai pays no XP cost, just ritually sacrificing wealth/valuables/items at a shrine.

He has much more flexibility and power available to his daisho than a Mage Blade has with his key weapon. The Samurai also, naturally, is better suited to two-weapon fighting since he can enhance both daisho weapons, whereas a Mage Blade only has one key weapon at a time. However, the Samurai still has to pay something, while the Mage Blade gets his simple enhancement bonus to attack and damage with the key weapon for free. Though on the other hand, the Samurai can enhance his daisho sooner/faster at some points; the Samurai has to wait until 4th level to start, whereas the MB gets a +1 at 1st-level, but the Samurai can further enhance his daisho again every 2-3 levels.

Also, strangely enough, the Samurai doesn't have to stay single-class for this; his daisho enhancement prerequisite is purely character-level based, not Samurai-class-level based. A 1st-level Samurai/X-level Something Else has the same enhancement capabilities as an X-level Samurai.

Which one you might like best would be entirely dependant on your own preferences. The MB has none of the ingrained, hard-to-ignore flavor/baggage of the Samurai, and can better represent a range of archetypes. The Samurai must stay lawful and follow his code if he wants to retain his advancement (though I forget if he loses the daisho advancement in the event of an alignment change). The MB is more of a nimble, charismatic, spell-slinging warrior whereas the Samurai is inclined to be a little more like heavy infantry or cavalry (though they lack heavy armor and shield proficiency, so they're still inclined to be somewhat nimble).

The MB has what's probably a better selection of bonus feats; the Samurai has to choose one school of combat to learn from, and chooses his bonus feats from that smaller list (though he gets more feats than a Mage Blade, IIRC). The Samurai is also forced (unless you houserule) to use the katana and wakizashi as his Ancestral Daisho, whereas a Mage Blade can choose any type of melee weapon to be his key weapon (I don't recall if they're actually restricted to bladed weapons or not for this choice). The MB also has some other class features for fighting on the move and using magic; but then, the MB is as much a spellcaster as it is a warrior, while the Samurai is all warrior (but with good Will saves and decent skills).

 

[GreatLemur]

I was wondering if there was a level 1 to 20 class that was given a weapon, and the weapon increased in power as the character went up.

Well, there's Swords of Our Fathers from The Game Mechanics. It revolves around prestige classes that do pretty much exactly that. The idea is that a character finds some kind of legendary weapon, and then spends levels in a class specific to that individual weapon to gradually unlock greater and greater powers. There are actually a whole bunch of books in the same series, also detailing magic staves, rings, and other things with the same kind of prestige class rules. It's a pretty cool idea, really.