Play on dissipater

[Scion]

Someone brought up the dissipater in a different thread and it got me to thinking.

Dissipater: This kind of weapon is devastating to creatures and objects composed of or originally formed from ectoplasm (such as astral constructs, walls of ectoplasm, creatures in ectoplasmic form, and items created using the metacreativity discipline). Against qualifying targets, a dissipater weapon ignores damage reduction and hardness, and treats all successful hits as critical hits.
Strong metacreativity; ML 12th; Craft Psionic Arms and Armor, dismiss ectoplasm; Price +1 bonus.

What if there was a weapon enhancement that was similar, but for summoned/called/etc type beings.

Going off of this I thought of the following:
Desorber: This kind of weapon is devastating to creatures and objects that have been called, summoned, or have teleported in the past 10 rounds (such as creatures from summon monster, or a demons summon ability, or a creature who has been effected by the teleportation, called, or summoned subschools of magic). Against qualifying targets, a desorber weapon ignores damage reduction and hardness, and treats all successful hits as critical hits.
Strong conjuration; CL 12th; Craft Arms and Armor, ?; Price +1 bonus.


I thought it was interesting at least It could even help hinder certain 'buff and teleport in' tactics.

It might be too strong for a +1, but it seems too weak for a +2 ;/

Thoughts?

 

[the Jester]

It actually seems to me to be more like a +3 bonus, maybe +4 (after all, all bonuses double too except for extra dice).

It's better by far than the one it's based on; it applies against tons and tons of creatures, rather than being limited to a specific type of creature (more or less).

 

[Scion]

+3 or +4?

I could kindof see it as a +2, but you feel that it is on the same power level as speed?

+1 attack at highest bonus when making a full attack. Good against anything.

vs. DR mitigation (the weapon is already magical and of some material so DR may be bypassed anyway), hardness mitigation (few creatures have this, I can only think of 2), and auto crit (the big one really, although a certain first level spells give autocrit on threat against evil foes along with going through good DR) which is limited to creatures recently effected by a few subschools of magic.

vs. +3 to attack and damage along with 30 extra hp and 6 hardness for the weapon. good against anything.

or even vs. Bane: magical beast which is +1 and gives +2 enhancement and +2d6 damage against that type and covers nearly all of the summon monster table plus much more besides. Toss on a couple of others to taste.

I suppose that if summon monster is used a lot in a game it could warrant a +3.. But then in the same vein if it is a heavily psionic game with lots of astral constructs and created objects the first would be worth more than +1 as well. Being able to cut through the psionic version of wall of force easily is pretty nice



Assuming that it is equivalent in power to +3 what changes could you see to knock it down to +1?

The dissipater strikes me as a continuation of the 'bane' series in a way, it works against most of a whole discipline.

That is the flavor I was trying to go for with this guy. Summonings and callings are roughly equivalent to astral constructs, the other subschool just seemed to fit with the flavor. It doesnt work against the various walls and such but it does work against teleport, for a short time.

 

[Evilhalfling]

I think removing the bonus vs teleporters would strip it to a +1 equiv. but that may reflect the commonalty of demons and dimension door/teleport attack runs IMC. There are summoned creatures, but found less often.
YMMV

 

[Scion]

In your campaign having this boost may be a bit much then?

I am hopeing to get a baseline feel, it seems to be comparable with bane, but may work too well for its cost.

Obviously a tough call ;/

I'll have to do some more thinking.. thanks for the thoughts guys.

 

[the Jester]

The "automatic critical hit" clause means, in the hands of a high-level fighter-type, massive amounts of bonus damage. Bane remains +2d6+2. Why not just make it bane vs. conjured creatures? Seems simpler to me, and more balanced.

Any weapon property that potentially adds +50 damage is pretty darn powerful imho. Comparing it to the Speed weapon quality, it is the equivalent of an extra attack, but one that always hits against its chosen targets. Against creatures outside of its special targets, it doesn't do anything, but neither does bane.

(In fact, isn't there an epic property that is like a +4d6 bane type of thing? I would suggest that this is far superior.)

The thing about blowing up astral constructs is that there are far, far less of them in a typical campaign than there are teleporters, summoned and called creatures, etc.

 

[Scion]

hmm..

compare Bane (magical beasts).

it is +1 and works on nearly everything on the summon list plus it works on a bunch of other stuff.

It gives +2 to hit and +2d6+2 damage. It could even make the weapon able to penetrate epic DR in the proper circumstance.

With a high level fighter type they would go from:

(base weapon damage + standard bonuses)*chance to hit*(1+critmultiplier*crit chance)

to something like

(base weapon damage + standard bonuses + 2d6 +2)*(chance to hit +10%)*(1+critmultiplier*crit chance)

or, with Desorber

(base weapon damage + standard bonuses)*chance to hit*crit multiplier

Assuming that 2d6 is 7 and setting the bane equation equal to the equation for Desorber we get: (D = weapon damage + other normal bonuses which multiply on a crit, C = chance to hit in decimal, R = chance to crit in decimal, M = multiplier of weapon being used)

D = [9(C+0.1)+9(C+0.1)RM]/[CM-(C+0.1)-(C+0.1)RM]

So, if we have, say, M = 4, C = 0.5, R = 0.05 (heavy pick d6 or scythe 2d4)
D = 5.0625

Which means that if the weapon damage + other normal bonuses which multiply on a crit totaling greater than 5.06 Desorber will be better than bane. Less than this and bane is better.

If, instead, we have M = 2, C = 0.5, R = 0.1 (longsword d8, shortsword d6, greatsword 2d6)
D = 23.1429

Or, for the crit junkies, M = 2, C = 0.5, R = 0.15
D = 31.9091

So if you have average damage greater than this with just weapon damage and other normal bonuses which multiply on a crit then Desorber is better, less than and bane is better.

Increasing the chance to hit lowers these numbers somewhat (until gaining to hit no longer gives any benefit where D = 3.8571 for the M = 4, R = 0.05, and D = 13.5 for M = 2, R = 0.1, and D = 16.7413 for M = 2, R = 0.15).

Lowering the chance to hit increases these numbers until the other end of the spectrum is hit where again they plummit because chance to hit doesnt matter.

Since a full attack usually goes through most of these ranges I would imagine that the 50% line above tends to hold true overall.

If you have keen or improved crit then the bane will improve while desorber will not. If you have other noncrit effected damage then it will give slightly more average damage to bane.

Burst type weapons will add more damage on the desorber weapon, although this type of enchantment is generally useless enough that I have ignored it here.

This would mean that for lower damage dealing characters and/or those useing lower multiplier weapons bane would tend to be stronger since it not only increases your damage but also ups your chance to hit.


It is true that in a nonprimarily psionic game dissipater is pretty weak, likely it is pretty weak even in a primarily psionic game, but comparing with the bane weapon shows some interesting choices.

Sometimes one is clearly better than the other, sometimes they are fairly similar. It depends heavily on your weapon choice and choice of enhancements for said weapon.


I think that comparing it to bane is a much better comparison than speed. Speed works against anything that you can get a full attack against, which isnt much of a restriction. At least when compared to something that needs to be a specific creature type to even work against.


Bane works against a whole creature type, and gives some pretty nice bonuses.
Desorber works against creatures who have been summoned, called, or have teleported very recently and has some nice effects vs those creatures.

Given the above, is desorber so much stronger than bane to make desorber +2 vs banes +1?

It very well could be.. I am still trying to get a firm grip on the entire picture


Hmm.. thinking of this at +2 how would a bane with an extra +1 compare?

This would change the equation to:
D = [10(C+0.15)+10(C+0.15)RM]/[CM-(C+0.15)-(C+0.15)RM]

For M = 4, R = 0.05, C = 0.5
D = 6.3934
For M = 2, R = 0.1, C = 0.5
D = 35.4545
For M = 2, R = 0.15, C = 0.5
D = 54.5161

Plus the bane weapon would do a good amount more damage to creatures who didnt fall under the specific type.

Again, desorber is pretty much always better with a x4 weapon, but for the others bane will usually be better.

Well, it was fun to run the numbers, but still a hard choice for which + to use.