[Magic Items Compendium] Weapon balance?

[Jeff Wilder]

Several of the weapon special abilities in the Magic Item Compendium consist of special functions triggered on a critical hit (e.g., paralytic burst). The thing that's odd to me is that some of these don't account for higher critical multipliers the way the energy burst weapon abilities do.

So are these abilities balanced? Isn't a +1 paralytic burst scimitar more powerful than a +1 paralytic burst warhammer?

Is the difference enough to matter?

 

[Seeten]

I think the "Happens on a crit" abilities are worthless unless you are optimizing your crit. Obviously rapiers and scimitars which are keen get way more mileage out of on crit abilities.

 

[BryonD]

There is a difference. At the cost of a +2 bonus I'm not sure it is enough to matter.
It may simply be that a scimitar is fine and a warhammer is a really poor choice for this enhancement. Or the scimitar may be out of whack. Try it and find out.

As a non-rules comment, I dislike when special effects that don't really have anything to do with the weapon's effect ride on the crit mechanic. I'd prefer a simultaneous effect where, for example, regardless of the weapon, this power activites on a natural 20. Thus the scimitar would could score on non-paralyzing crit on a 17 and could cause paralysis on a non-confirmed (or even crit non-eligible) natural 20. That keeps the weapon from making a difference.

 

[Ahrimon]

I don't have the book handy, but I was looking through the weapons just last night. As I recall, all of the burst abilities that happened on a crit included the tables to adjust the damage based on the weapons crit multiplier.

Where it gets confusing is that there are "Burst" ablities that don't happen automatically. They are activated effects. For example, when you hit (or crit, I can't remember if there was a restriction) you can activate the burst ability for a flat 3d6 damage. The activated burst abilities had a limit to the number of times per day you could activate them. I recall one being 1+con modifier per day and another was 1+chr modifier per day.

It would have been nice if they would have named these new weapon abilities something else. Burst fits, but it gets confusing when mixed with the classic burst abilities.