Max Damage Weapon Enhancement

[Garnet Schist]

Is this feasible?

Even if it was a +5 enhancement?

Or is +5 a little too much? Since a +1 enhancement (like a sword of frost) can make a sword do double damage anyhow.


This would just maximize the base weapon damage. So a longsword always does 8, arrow always does 8, so on and so forth.



Just a thought, but it'd be pretty nice with a Scythe that criticals

 

[Crothian]

YA, I think it's doible. It would be +4 or +5, especially if it worked on criticals.

 

[Saeviomagy]

The problem is that it would be far, far more effective on a highly variable weapon (like a battleaxe, or , heaven forbid, a high-level monk's enchanted bracers (the ones from MoF?)) than on something like (just to be extreme) a shuriken.

For a +5, you'd be getting (assuming a battleaxe) a +6.5 to damage which would stack with everything. To me, that's a little bit too good.

 

[FireLance]

The problem is that it would be far, far more effective on a highly variable weapon (like a battleaxe, or , heaven forbid, a high-level monk's enchanted bracers (the ones from MoF?)) than on something like (just to be extreme) a shuriken.

For a +5, you'd be getting (assuming a battleaxe) a +6.5 to damage which would stack with everything. To me, that's a little bit too good.

Consider that Holy is only +2 and does on average +7 more points of damage, albeit to Evil opponents. Admittedly, it doesn't scale with crits. However, the various energy burst properties do (kind of) scale with crits, at a +1 premium over the basic energy weapon. Add another +1 for it apply to everything, and it works out to about +4.

I do agree, however, that it would be a very good enhancement to apply to highly variable weapons like monks' unarmed attacks and larger versions of ordinary weapons. Perhaps it would be best as a straight +1d6 damage bonus, +1d10 to 3d10 on a crit (depending on weapon, as energy burst). It would probably be balanced at +3.

 

[Stalker0]

Go with a similar system to admantite. On small weapons it might be a +2 or something, on large weapons maybe a +3. I think its a cool idea, the main idea to balancing it is to consider how much your increasing the avg damage by.

For example, a longsword. Avg Dmg now: 4.5 with enhancement: avg damage 8- or 3.5 increase. Now consider flaming which adds 3.5 avg damage as well. Then take into elemental resistances and that's probably a +1 over flaming or a +2 total. Considering having flaming and shocking on a weapon would do an avg of 7 extra- but then considering elemental resistances, +2 sounds like a good bonus.

Now a greatsword: 2d6 or 7 damage on avg. With enhancement: 12 or +5. Definately better than flaming, and right up there flaming, shocking. You could still go with a +2, or maybe a +3 at this point. Then again there's always DR, so maybe staying with +2 would be a good idea.

Finally another way of looking at it, is basically you get a +5 to damage, which is half of a +5 enhancement bonus (actually a little less considering no effect on DR and sundering) which would be +2.5 or +2 if we go with the considerations in parenthesis.

 

[Stalker0]

Btw, "Constant" sounds like a good name for this enhancement

 

[Stalker0]

While we're on the subject, what would you guys think of a +1 enhancement that did this:

"Stable": Weapons with this effect always do half of their maximum base damage (rounded up). For example, a longsword would always do 5 points of damage per attack.

 

[seasong]

For the constant enhancement, if you wanted something a bit more complicated, you could have it in levels; each level reduces the die type by one step, and adds +2 to the damage. Each level costs +1. Can not exceed the die type.

So a 1d10 sword would stage like this:
1d8+2 (+1 enhancement)
1d6+4 (+2 enhancement)
1d4+6 (+3 enhancement)
1d2+8 (+4 enhancement)
1d0+10 (+5 enhancement)

A 2d6 sword would treat each die separately:
1d6+1d4+2 (+1 enhancement)
2d4+4 (+2 enhancement)
1d4+1d2+6 (+3 enhancement)
2d2+8 (+4 enhancement)
1d2+10 (+5 enhancement)
1d0+12 (+6 enhancement, and epic)

 

[Stalker0]

I just ran some stastics using the melee combat calculator. This is by no means comprehensive, since I don't have a lot of stastical knowledge, but enough to get a feeling for how much better this enhancement gives with crits included.

I ran numbers on a longsword, considering two scenarios: a virtual hit or 95% chance of hitting, and virtual miss, or 5% chance of hitting. The chances were only included to see the effect of crits on the overall damage. Here are the results:

Longsword 19-20:
VH: 4.9275
VM: 4.51125
Avg: 4.719

using enhancement:
VH: 8.76
VM: 8.02
Avg: 8.39

difference of averages: 3.67

17-20:
VH: 5.355
VM: 4.51125
Avg: 4.933

enhancement:
VH: 9.52
VM: 8.02
Avg: 8.77

difference: 3.84

15-20:
VH: 5.7825
VM: 4.51125
Avg: 5.147

enhancement:
VH: 10.28
VM: 8.02
Avg: 9.15

differenence: 4.003


These results don't take into account creatures that are immune to crits. These numbers are preety rough, but they show that the enhancement is not that crazy powerful, and looks to be right in the +2 range is you considering it half of a +4 enhancement bonus.

 

[comrade raoul]

For a +5, you'd be getting (assuming a battleaxe) a +6.5 to damage which would stack with everything. To me, that's a little bit too good.

Personally, I'm a big fan of enhancement bonuses, although they might be broken. For a +5, you'd be getting (assuming any weapon) a +5 to attack and damage which would stack with everything. You can even use the Power Attack feat to change it to a total +10 to damage. To me, that's a little bit too good.