Magic item pricing (Facile Bow)

[Damon Griffin]

How would this magic item be priced?

Take a Mighty Bow +4, and enchant it -- via Bull's Strenth, presumably -- to grant its wielder sufficient STR to use the full Mighty bonus. It's going to be worth less than a Belt of Giant Strength or Gauntlets of Ogre Power, because the Facile Bow only grants extra STR for one purpose: making the bow itself easier to use at its full capacity. Obviously a character using a Facile Bow would not do extra damage with a melee weapon, or have his lifting/carrying capacity increased, nor would the increase have any effect on STR-based skills (ever try to climb or swim while holding a bow with arrow nocked?)

The bow is otherwise non-magical, so it grants no attack bonus and doesn't count as magical for purposes of determining what it will hit. So, what, treat it as a half-price bow +4?

Or should 'facile' be a weapon quality, applicable only to bows, and if so what's it worth? +2?

 

[Rackhir]

How would this magic item be priced?

Take a Mighty Bow +4, and enchant it -- via Bull's Strenth, presumably -- to grant its wielder sufficient STR to use the full Mighty bonus. It's going to be worth less than a Belt of Giant Strength or Gauntlets of Ogre Power, because the Facile Bow only grants extra STR for one purpose: making the bow itself easier to use at its full capacity. Obviously a character using a Facile Bow would not do extra damage with a melee weapon, or have his lifting/carrying capacity increased, nor would the increase have any effect on STR-based skills (ever try to climb or swim while holding a bow with arrow nocked?)

The bow is otherwise non-magical, so it grants no attack bonus and doesn't count as magical for purposes of determining what it will hit. So, what, treat it as a half-price bow +4?

Or should 'facile' be a weapon quality, applicable only to bows, and if so what's it worth? +2?

Well the most straight forward method would be to speck out the bow under the DMG rules as a stat enhancement item and then say halve the price because it's only for using the bow (16k for +4 to stat or 8k for the "Bow Only". I don't think making it a weapon quality is a good idea, it really doesn't serve any purpose.

It does seem like a pretty useless weapon though, especially if it doesn't have any other magical characteristics. Most dedicated archers are going to have a str in the 14-16 range which means they can hit an 18 with a decent bulls strength. So the advantage of the bow is realtively nill in that respect. It is also going to be relatively expensive for a (Presumably) low level character who could clearly benefit more from other items. 8k covers a +2 bow or a +1 bow with say flaming or something similar.

 

[Damon Griffin]

The character in question has a 14 STR and is currently using a bow which is Mighty +2 and magically enchanted to +1. So, +1 to attack, +3 to damage. Unless a STR-boosting magic item drops into his lap, he's not likely to have a permanent STR boost. He's more likely to use his next two stat increases (which are two levels and six levels away, respectively) to bump up his DEX.

At present, there is no [ranged combat] benefit to casting Bull's Strength on the character; he could take some time and craft himself a new masterwork bow, making it Mighty +4, and would then benefit from Bull's Strength whenever the party mage could cast it...but the mage isn't always there, sometimes acts after the archer, doesn't always memorize Bull's Strength, etc. And of course, the +1 enchantment on the current bow would be lost if he crafted a new, more Mighty version.

One way around this seemed to be to upgrade the damage of the existing bow, making it as Mighty as possible and giving the character the STR to exploit that fully. He's already pretty good at hitting things, but the damage is not all it could be.

 

[Rackhir]

A +1 item is not exactly irreplaceable in the near term future. His big mistake though was getting the bow as only a +2 mighty. You should ALWAYS get the +4 mighty since the stat buff spells are so common. By the way, I sunk my archer's stat increases into strength specifically for the reason that, while Dex was perhaps more useful by its self. There were way more ways to increase my to hit bonus than there were ways to increase my damage.

Crafting stuff, unless your campaign has lots of in game down time is a pointless activity. In a previous campaign, I can a character with about 14 ranks in bow making and it took him something like a year game time to actually have enough time to finish the bow. Straight through it would have been about 3mo IIRC. Unless money is really tight, you are better off just paying an NPC to do the work.

 

[Glen]

You stated

"The bow is otherwise non-magical, so it grants no attack bonus and doesn't count as magical for purposes of determining what it will hit. "

It was my understaning that any magic weapon has to have at least a +1 bonus.

 

[Damon Griffin]

It was my understaning that any magic weapon has to have at least a +1 bonus.
[/B]

I could be wrong, but as far as I know it's not necessary for a magic weapon to have a magical enhancement bonus. What may be causing confusion (mine or yours, I can't be sure) on this point is that all magic weapons must first be Masterwork, and all Masterwork weapons have a +1 attack bonus, before being magically enhanced.

The subsequent magical enhancement doesn't stack with this existing bonus, so when you magically boost the weapon (to +1), you are paying for +1 to damage, and the ability to hit things only hit by magical weapons).

Anyway, it's my understanding that a 'keen' sword (market value 2315gp) would be perfectly legal; but if you are correct, I'd have to make it a +1 'keen' sword (market value 8315gp).

Frankly, if you are correct, I'm just going to ignore that requirement for my game, because I think it's idiotic of the designers to require a 6000gp surcharge on the creation of any magic weapon. In the heat of battle, I can have 'keen edge' cast on an ordinary longsword and it has the desired effect; if I want this effect to be permanent, I must use a Masterwork weapon to hold the magical enhancement. Okay, I have no problem with that. But in addition, before I can apply a permanent keen edge, I must enable the weapon to hit creatures only hit by magical weapons, and also grant it a damage bonus?!?

Neither of those things is related to keen edge. Neither of those things is related to defending, or flaming, or throwing, or any of the other common weapon qualities. It doesn't make any sense that they should be required for all magical weapons. It's nothing more than a requirement to spend another 6000gp. No thanks.

 

[kreynolds]

I could be wrong, but as far as I know it's not necessary for a magic weapon to have a magical enhancement bonus.

That certainly applies to weapon enhancements (see page 183 of the DMG, Weapons, third paragraph, last sentence), so you don't want to make your "facile" a weapon quality.

What may be causing confusion (mine or yours, I can't be sure) on this point is that all magic weapons must first be Masterwork, and all Masterwork weapons have a +1 attack bonus, before being magically enhanced.

This is also a requirement, but not always the only one.

Anyway, it's my understanding that a 'keen' sword (market value 2315gp) would be perfectly legal...

Not in the slightest. Sorry.

Frankly, if you are correct, I'm just going to ignore that requirement for my game....

Looks like its about your only recourse.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

It is true that you must put a magical +1 enhancement bonus on a weapon before you can put other abilities on it.

To the bow in question: will it give a flat +2 (or +4 or +6) enhancement bonus to Str (like gauntlets of ogre power or the belts of giant strenght) or will it give a sufficient enhancement bonus so you have Str 18 (to use the full capability of the bow) ? The latter could be much more than +6 (imagine a weak character with Str 8 taking that bow - she would get +10 Str!).

The Arms and Equipments guide has something similar: the Gnome Steam Bow. It can (among other things) eleminate the STR penalty, but the powers it has must be activated with a move-equivalent action.

 

[Damon Griffin]

To the bow in question: will it give a flat +2 (or +4 or +6) enhancement bonus to Str (like gauntlets of ogre power or the belts of giant strenght) or will it give a sufficient enhancement bonus so you have Str 18 (to use the full capability of the bow) ?

It could just give a flat +4 bonus. The character in question has a 14 STR and there was never any intention of passing the bow around from character to character; it's one he crafted himself, which was later enchanted as a reward from his mage employer.

The Arms and Equipments guide has something similar: the Gnome Steam Bow. It can (among other things) eleminate the STR penalty, but the powers it has must be activated with a move-equivalent action. [/B]

Yeah, I think this item would have to be activated using an action as well, at least during the first round of use. I'm undecided about subsequent rounds, but really, requiring a move equivalent action to activate the magical STR boost each round would make the thing useless, since it would limit the character to one shot per round. To gain any benefit from it, he needs to be able to activate the magic during his first round (so, perhaps a move action to get into position and a standard action to activate his magic bow), after which he could use the STR-boosting bow during a Full Attack round.

Currently, he enjoys 3 shots per round thanks to Rapid Shot and his level, and statistically speaking, he's going to do more damage per round firing 3 arrows at -2 to hit and +3 to damage, than he'd do firing 1 arrow at +0 to hit and +5 to damage. (Those attack and damage modifiers only consider the bow, which is currently a +1 shortbow/mighty[+2] and would be +1/mighty[+4] when the STR boost is activated) and the use of Rapid Shot, not all the other factors that would be in play at the time.)

 

[drnuncheon]

"Those attack and damage modifiers only consider the bow, which is currently a +1 shortbow/mighty[+2] and would be +1/mighty[+4] when the STR boost is activated"

I'll note that shortbows don't go any higher than Mighty+2 - by the rules, you need a longbow to get to Mighty+4.

J