The problem of sundering

[Slife]

Where is the reforging cost?

Repairing Magic Items

Some magic items take damage over the course of an adventure. It costs no more to repair a magic item with the Craft skill than it does to repair its nonmagical counterpart. The make whole spell also repairs a damaged—but not completely broken—magic item.



Repairing Items

Generally, you can repair an item by making checks against the same DC that it took to make the item in the first place. The cost of repairing an item is one-fifth of the item’s price.

When you use the Craft skill to make a particular sort of item, the DC for checks involving the creation of that item are typically as given on the following table.

 

[Raven Crowking]

The player sucks it up and gets back to adventuring.

QFT

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I don't need to know exactly what they have or the total worth of it and neither is what is being talked about. What is being talked about is after seeing the fighter's main weapon get destroyed and expecting the fighter to be unhindered by it would make a bad DM.

But is a DM then expected to compensate for the fighter's weakened state? I wouldn't expect the fighter to be unhindered, but I also would expect the PC and party to try to compensate on their own, whether that means changing tactics or running away from some fights. I would not expect the group to think, "well he took out the fighter's main weapon, so he'll either give us something else or he'll play a little soft for a while."

I guess this depends some upon the style of play of each individual group.

I would say it is only a bad DM if the weapon was sundered in an effort to beat the party and "win the game."

 

[James McMurray]

One of the only things that I like about the abundance of magic items in 3.x dnd is that losing the magic sword isn't a huge blow that takes twenty sessions to recover from, as it might have in 1e or 2e.

I'm guessing you didn't play a lot of published adventures in 1e and 2e? Magic flowed like water in a lot of those.

A question for those of you with the so-called 'gentlemens agreement' with your players not to sunder: when they encounter creatures that normally (off the shelf) have Improved Sunder, do you swap the feat out?

I swap it out when I remember.

 

[Kestrel]

If you don't want to be sundered, play an oathsworn.

(Or alternatively, if you want to make your party angry, play a PC oathsworn with imp sunder)

 

[Doug McCrae]

My feeling is that the loss of a magic item should be treated like essential healing such as remove curse, raise dead and so forth - it should come out of party funds. 'Suck it up' is wrong and sounds a little callous. The fighter doesn't have to suck it up - he gets helped by his friends until he can get back to where he was.

This is very much a team-oriented approach, rather than individualistic. Lawful rather than chaotic.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Not only will my NPCs sunder weapons, but they'll also sunder potions, scrolls and other such items if a) it fits with their characters and b) they get the opportunity.

Why, in our last Eberron session, an Emerald Claw soldier sundered our dwarven cleric's longsword. It made the fight way more tense for a couple of rounds, 'til the cleric could get one of the other (dead) Claw soldiers' weapons to use.

Sunder is a viable tactic. Why wouldn't you use it? Same with bull rush, trip and all the other "special moves." It's certainly more thrilling than "I hit him. I hit him. I hit him."

Disram, OTOH, is virtually useless...

 

[Quartz]

If a PC's sword or staff or whatever gets Sundered, Rusted, Disjoined, or whatever, he simply takes a 5' step back and pulls out his backup sword (or staff or whatever).

But under the RAW the loss of the magic of a magic item is only really bad if you're fighting creatures that can only be hit by weapons with certain qualities.

Consider a 9th level fighter, BAB +9, with a +3 weapon fighting a normal opponent. He's got Str 18, buffed to Str 22. He's got Weapon Focus, Specialisation, Greater Focus, and Weapon Mastery for a total AB of +22 and +13 to damage. That +3 doesn't make much difference, does it? Without the +3, he's 'only' +19 and +10. Big deal. Now if it were a Holy sword +1, and he were fighting something that had DR/Holy and didn't have a backup holy weapon, then that's a far bigger deal.

 

[James McMurray]

Consider that same fighter but make it a +1 Keen Shock* Falchion. Losing it is a big hit to his combat capabilties no matter what DR the opponent has (or doesn't have). It's a much larger hit than losing a +3 weapon would be. IMX most peoples' weapons are +1 with a bunch of special properties unless they found the weapon or it's a specific item instead of one made piecemeal.

Also, you don't have to 5' step back. Readying a weapon doesn't provoke.

* All I've got handy is the SRD. There's probably something much more universally useful than shock available.

 

[3d6]

So the party fighter's magic sword, that he's spent about half his gold on, gets destroyed. Maybe by a blackguard, or a rust monster or a nightwalker or some such.

What happens after that? The PC's effectiveness has been greatly diminished. Does he get a new sword out of party funds? Do the other PCs give him a bigger share of loot until they all have similar magic item values again? Does the GM give him a shiny new sword? Or should he have relied on Greater Magic Weapon like the gish and the cleric?

He should suck it up, and also he should learn that spending half your cash on your weapon is extremely foolish, as there are many effects that instantly destroy weapons, such as rust monsters and black puddings.