Unusual Weapon Abilities vs. the DMG

[Clay_More]

We had a rather unusual twist in a conversation in House Rules forum, so that the questions in fact border on D&D Rules more than House Rules.

I asked a question regarding inputs on weapon abilities and the thread evolved somewhat from there.

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=796042#post796042

Off course, since the title of the thread doesn't reflect the discussion on weapon abilities, few of those that are otherwise interested and/or experienced in handling these abilities can have noticed it

 

[Clay_More]

The basic discussion takes place a little further down. The basic things I am wondering are....

1: About having weapon abilities that have a negative influence on the market price.

2: About fixed-priced abilities that are not affected by the normal + system for evaluating item prices.

3: About variable abilities that increase as the weapon gains additional powers / plusses

4: About having abilities in weapons that do not affect their combat ability...

 

[dcollins]

Apparently you're looking for precedents or use of the topics you mention in previously-published items.

The overall scope, short answer to those questions is, "no". Such things basically don't exist in the core rules. I would recommend not generally going so far outside the weapon design structure as that. As an example, the idea of "-1 market price for a weapon whose magic only affects living creatures" would be very broken indeed.

Now a few things that might be taken as near-examples:

- "Non-combat" can be pretty broad. There as special weapons that give water breathing or speak-languages languages abilities, for example (that trident in the DMG). But I would recommend weapons retaining mostly offensive-based magics.

- The Defending property, which offloads enhancement bonus to AC, gets a bit more flexible as the enhancement goes up. But that example specifically loses the appropriate enhancement when you trigger the power.

- I did use the idea of a -1 Market modifier in my conversion of module G3 for drow weapons (see here at the ENWorld site) -- it did sort of make sense to include a cursed restriction in the structure of weapon costs as a market price subtraction. But I've never seen that in anything formally published, and I only came to it as a desperate bid to convert that classic module.

Since all new items are house-rules, there's big variety of opinions on these matters. Some people are totally happy to convert special item abilities to constant (non-scaling) bonus modifiers. Personally, I really, really don't like that, and feel it breaks the weapon pricing system. However, I have taken those special items and used their abilities/prices as a percentage ratio to the overall cost (i.e., "hmmm, this ability is about 75% of a +2 bonus, so +2 more would be 75% of +4..."). That I'd be comfortable with.

 

[Geoff Watson]

The basic discussion takes place a little further down. The basic things I am wondering are....

1: About having weapon abilities that have a negative influence on the market price.

2: About fixed-priced abilities that are not affected by the normal + system for evaluating item prices.

3: About variable abilities that increase as the weapon gains additional powers / plusses

4: About having abilities in weapons that do not affect their combat ability...

Both 2 and 4 are in Oriental Adventures. No problems with that.

1 usually ends up with munchkin players trying to find limitations that don't limit them to save lots of money on the price. (Like "it only works for blonde (-20% on cost) male (-20%) elf (-20%) fighters (-20%) named Elrond (-20%)" when the PC happens to be Elrond, a blonde male elf fighter).

3 sounds a bit vague. What did you have in mind?

Geoff.

 

[Firzair]

As I already said in a recent thread about magic items, there should be hard rules for magic item creation and the cost thereof. BUT there should be only given the cost to create not the market price! Market price is determined by the sellers!
I also suggested that we should go and create these rules. I will make that suggestion once more in the house rules forum!

Greetings
Firzair

 

[Clay_More]

1 usually ends up with munchkin players trying to find limitations that don't limit them to save lots of money on the price. (Like "it only works for blonde (-20% on cost) male (-20%) elf (-20%) fighters (-20%) named Elrond (-20%)" when the PC happens to be Elrond, a blonde male elf fighter).

Well, I was thinking more in the line of having a weapon that only affects living targets and thus equals a -1 effect on market price. The weapon needs to be at least +2 (no magical weapons for free here), so the largest abuse would be a +2 weapon that only works vs. living (not undeads, constructs & outsiders). I was thinking, that only one such effect should be allowed pr. weapon and I was even thinking that it should be used for buying from a special list of abilities (like, Life-Slaying which affects prices as -1 would only work if it was used to buy evil abilities, like Unholy and such).

3 sounds a bit vague. What did you have in mind?

The example in the above-mentioned thread is a weapon that animates the dead of those slain by the weapon as a Zombie or greater. Someone suggested that it would be influenced by the total plus of the weapon, meaning that the sword would allow the wielder to control an amount of HD equal to the swords total + times 6HD or something like that.

- "Non-combat" can be pretty broad. There as special weapons that give water breathing or speak-languages languages abilities, for example (that trident in the DMG). But I would recommend weapons retaining mostly offensive-based magics.

I have seen a few examples of weapon with non-combat abilities, but they seem far between and not really "benchmark"..

Dcollins, ill take a look at the module to see exactly what you done with the -1 market price thingy.

In the line of abilities which should provide a fixed market price modifier, was the ability of "Imposing" which grants the wielder a +2 bonus to Intimidate checks when wielding the weapon. This ability is not worth even half a plus, mainly there for roleplaying purposes. The problem is, with item pricing, that few people can afford a weapon that has abilities that go well with their personality more than pure combat prowess. This is a little attempt to bring a little RPG aspect into weapon designing.

 

[dcollins]

Well, I can save you a few clicks and summarize it here if you're not familiar with how drow were originally depicted in module G3 (that's the first time drow ever appeared in D&D):

Drow Imbued: An ability applicable to drow weapons and armor (and some other items). The item must be adamantine. It must be enchanted by a drow in the Vault of the Drow (Greyhawk drow homeland). If it encounters sunlight, it rots away permanently. After 30 days outside the Vault of the Drow, it loses its enchantment. However, it radiates no magic aura (as nystul's undetectable aura). Market price modifier: -1.

Note it's perfectly allowed with a +1 bonus, for a free enchantment, but that does little good since the item was already adamantine. Drow in G3, D1-D3 are almost all using light weapons and armor (masterwork adamantine daggers, short swords, and chain shirts) with various enchantments (+1 to +3) that act like these. Partly, it was a way for a whole racial culture to be using enchanted weapons against PCs that the PCs couldn't cart away by the wagonload for later use (with some basis in fantasy literature).

I'll reiterate that in my opinion the -1 modifier for "only works against living" would be very, very broken. That's barely any limitation at all. At most that seems like a -10% market price modifier.

 

[Clay_More]

Well, perhaps the concept of making it a percentage reduction in price isn't bad, even though the reason I was contemplating a simple -1 was for easiness. A percentage reduction might be better, taking into consideration that it will be equally useful for all magical weapons instead of being mostly useful in low levels (after all, if I construct a +6, would I risk making it +7 with Life-Slaying ability, merely to see it rendered useless against the Golem or Undead creature).

The thing it, it might vary a great deal just how much effect it will have, depending upon the campaign the DM is running. A game taking place in a big city with plots and sneaky rogues, will most likely have all the players choosing the ability for their weapon. In a game of Crypt-Crawling, it will never get chosen. Off course, a DM could always house rule that its not usable in his city-game, but I would prefer if it was equally usable for all (which is, I know, hard).

 

[Saeviomagy]

First off - I think 'life slaying' is too broad a category.

Second off - what if you merely said that such a restriction lowered the effective plus of whatever ability it was linked to? Perhaps you could make a weapon which was +1, +3 vs undead, where each + that only affects undead is worth 50% of normal. So for enchanting purposes, it would be a +2 weapon (+1, +0.5, +0.5). +0.5 enchantments would be entirely possible on their own - the formulas lend themselves to extrapolation quite easily.

Naturally, any special ability which already has a restriction built in could not be subject to that restriction a second time (no living-target only vorpal, no living-target only brilliant energy etc.)

In fact, by doubling the value of vorpal and brilliant energy, you'd get nonrestricted version of both powers. Of course a "slay anything on a crit" weapon immediately becomes +10... But altered versions of "slay X" become available at +5.

Of course to prevent abuse, the categories should be narrower than "living, undead" etc. They should also be somewhat campaign specific : The reduction should be on the order of the percentage of encounters in the campaign which contain the targeted creature. ie - in a world of lizardfolk, an item targeting solely lizardfolk might be only a 25% reduction.