Spell on a weapon

[czak808]

If you don't want to allow extrapolation, don't insert what isn't there, either. If costs for all other durations are listed, the absence of one should interpret that it is not available.
Making it obscene is to prevent Uber-builds from crafting weapons with True Strike; otherwise everybody is a glass canon and fights are resolved by who wins initiative.

Aboyd listed some very good ways to achieve multi-dice damage effects for a weapon. But at the cost, the party is of a level facing things with resistances to help balance the increased damage output. And the multiple energy attacks are more likely to have some effect; the Weapon/ Jack-of-all-trades, something is going to get through. The ISW weapon would give no bonus damage vs constructs, undead, et al.

In general I'm more of the mind to not allow instantaneous effects on a continuous basis.

The 'comparative damage' allows a guideline for the effect, sidestepping the difficulties of the process. If it stops there, fine. But if used to gauge the cost of similar effects...
Substitute the Inflict Serious Wounds for a nice Vampiric Touch... Two very similar spells; level (spell & caster), duration, effect, and damage (5d6 vs 3d8+7 is pretty close). But healing the wielder on EACH hit; Nightmares for DM's with monks and multi-attack melee apes in a party.

 

[aboyd]

If you don't want to allow extrapolation, don't insert what isn't there, either. If costs for all other durations are listed, the absence of one should interpret that it is not available.

But the costs for all other durations are not listed. Only a few are. Many are ignored. The idea that because they have no multiplier they are simply unavailable is bizarre to me. It forces us to omit huge numbers of spells that have durations that need no multiplier. Besides, if that's really the approach we have to take, then we can side-step it entirely by using the DMG rules for adding a spell effect as "use activated" instead of "continuous." The "use" being, swing the sword. Thus, we have added the Inflict spell without crazy costs (it's still expensive, but it is in the tens of thousands rather than near-millions).

I'm not suggesting that such a sword couldn't cost a million if a DM decided to make it so. I took heat here in the forums a while back because I decided to make a Healing Belt cost about 3x what it is listed for in the MIC -- and although I had justifications, I was perfectly willing to just impose the price in my campaign because I was DM and willing to rule by fiat in that area. So hey, if pricing it at 900,000 is what you want, go for it. I just think we're reaching when we try to suggest that the DMG is leading us toward a near-million gold piece weapon. For example, if you were to build the item in PCGen, what you'd find is that it costs somewhere around 32,000 gold for the 3rd level Inflict as use-activated, and about 58,000 for the 4th level inflict as use-activated. Of course, PCGen isn't the equivalent of an official ruling, but it is an engine that attempts to apply the SRD faithfully. I'd probably house-rule it to cost more in the range of what StreamOfTheSky was suggesting, but still, nowhere near a million.

 

[aboyd]

Aboyd, would the Inflict Serious(or critical w/e) WOunds on weapon have a small mitigation to their price, due to it having the "Save for 1/2 damage" property as well? If I recall correctly, the flaming/icy/shocking weapons don't have such a clause.

The flame/frost properties allow for energy resistance, so that's a (very) fuzzy match for the Inflict spells allowing a save for 1/2 damage. So I'd probably leave the pricing as roughly matched. However, the DMG & MIC make it clear that pricing is less science and more art, so the DM should play with the numbers until they feel right. You could really mitigate the price downward, depending upon how you wanted to apply some effects.

For example, consider the "use activated" effect that I mentioned in my previous post. The flavor text for that says that the spell effect gets activated on use -- swing a sword, drink a potion, etc. Right? Well, it also says that in "many" cases, activation takes a standard action. So how can that work with a sword getting swung 5x in a round? None of the swings are standard actions, yet "use activated" specifically mentions swinging a sword as an activation method. OK, well, there is no mechanic. So the DM gets to decide. So watch this:

1. Using "use activated" effects you could rule that the effect only occurs on a standard action swing, not on a full attack. You keep the price low because of this -- take the "use activated" price and add nothing to it, maybe even lower it a little bit since this is a very harsh reading of the rules.
2. Using "continuous" effects and the high-end pricing that goes with it, you could create a sword that will dish out the Inflict damage on every swing every time.

That would be one way to sorta use the rules to justify variations in price. There's a lotta hand-waving going on here, though.