Magic Ranged Weapons & Ammo... Why?

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Just out of curiousity, why do you think D&D allows the magic bonus of ranged weapons to apply to the ammo? Doesn't that make magical ammo a whole lot less attractive? Magic ammo seemed so much more important in previous editions of the game...

 

[Jhulae]

Because, when weapons and ammo were allowed to stack, archers became the kings of the to-hit field. With a couple of greater magic weapons, you could easily get +10 to hit, along with whatever other bonuses were on both ammo and weapon (such as flaming, acid, whatever).

Now, if you're equipping one person, having the weapon magic is the way to go.

If you want to equip a lot of people (or even just more than one person), enchanting the ammo gives each person a bonus.

Normally, though, there's no reason to enchant ammunition anymore.

 

[Shin Okada]

Simple +x ammunitions have never been that useful even in 3.0e. It was so easy to create them via Greater Magic Weapon spells.

You would better give various special abilities to ammos instead. For example, you can give generic abilities, such as Holy, to your bow. Then if you shoot +1 Flaming arrow from it, now the arrow works as a +1 Holy Flaming arrow. Or, you can have various "Bane" arrows. When you see Dragons, shoot +1 Dragon Bane arrows with your +1 Holy bow. When you see Giants, shoot +1 Giant Bane arrows instead. When you see Golems, shoot +1 Construct Bane Adamantine Arrow instead. When you see Demons, shoot +1 Evil Outsider Bane Cold Iron arrows instead. Very strong.

 

[green slime]

The real problem in 3.0 was the Greater Magical Weapon spell....

It still is a problem, in that, with the new DR rules, there is really no incentive to aquire a +4 sword, but instead to pile on all the special abilities and rely on the cleric to cast Greater Magical Weapon.

As long as the only way to acquire magical ammunition was to purchase it or make permanent magical arrows, the exhorbitant cost of creating 50 +5 arrows to go with the +5 Bow, combined with the fact that they were one-use items, made the issue of stacking bonuses a non-issue.

Greater Magical Weaponshould be reduced in duration, IMO, to minutes per level. And probably not affect 50 missiles to start with.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

The way it was handled before was too good and not good enough for archers, both at the same time:

Archers had to carry magical ammunition, since they needed it to overcome damage reduction (which was so high in 3.0 that without the proper weapon, you could as well give up trying to hurt the enemy in many cases). This could be really expensive.

On the other hand, they could just arrange for the cleric or wizard to cast one or two greater magic weapon spells on their ammo, and have 50, or 100 magical arrows per day. Now, this would mean that they had twice the enhancement bonus to attack and damage than others. This would make archers too damn powerful.


Back in 3.0 days, I played a cleric specialized in archery. He would use three extended GMW spells to enhance his bow and ammo, and would have an insane bonus to attack and damage. (Couple that with divine power, righteous might and divine favour, and you had death from afar, but that's another matter). The DM was concerned about his, and said that he didn't like the way this was, and when I told him that I need the magic ammo because of DR, we agreed to let bows bestow their magic on the arrows, but no longer stack the two bonuses. We had that rule as a house rule before it went official.


Now, magical arrows are still useful. Like having +1 fiery arrows or +1 dragon bane arrows or whatever.

 

[green slime]

I never had a problem with stacking arrows and bows, just with the 3.0 cheap access to magical arrows. It is a problem that didn't exist prior to 3.0

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I love giving out funky magic ammo as treasure. A half-quiver of +1 arrows of exploding is just so cool!

 

[Arbiter of Wyrms]

arrows of exploding? don't you mean explosiondog bane?
The problem with letting them stack is this:
+5 bow
+5 arrow
+20 BAB
+10 Dex
+20 True Stirke
+60 to attack! That's just too much! It's broken. Now, with the refinment of 3.5 rules, you'll only get +55, and that's completely reasonable.

 

[Snowy]

arrows of exploding? don't you mean explosiondog bane?
The problem with letting them stack is this:
+5 bow
+5 arrow
+20 BAB
+10 Dex
+20 True Stirke
+60 to attack! That's just too much! It's broken. Now, with the refinment of 3.5 rules, you'll only get +55, and that's completely reasonable.

So thats a 20 something level archer twink with first level spells and a 30 dex and maxed out gear, you'd better hope they'll hit! If you look at lower levels the problem gets more pronounced.

but if you rule out the true strike and make them about 10th level with say +3 gear and a 20 dex,

+3 bow
+3 arrow
+10 BAB
+5 dex

+21 to hit or +18 a small but significant decrease in attack bonus.

But still a good example very informative.

 

[green slime]

You two both forgot to add weapon focus (+1) and Point blank shot (+1 within 30 ft).