D&D 3E/3.5 What to do with "Sure Strike" in 3.5E?

[chengarino]

Sure Strike was supposed to give a weapon the ability to 'hit everything' (other than miss chance). In 3.0E, it did that by treating the weapon as +5. What to do in 3.5E? Any word from Wizard on these broken constructs?

Wizards only updated the Accessories, but not the Supplements.

Guess, it's time to House Rule v3.0E baggage into v3.5E

 

[kreynolds]

What to do in 3.5E?

Nothing. There's no such thing as varying degress of magical DR anymore. It's all just X/magic, so any enhancement value will bypass such DR. There's no point to Sure Striking anymore. However, if such a thing did exhist, it would be artifact level, as DR is much harder to get around than it used to be in regards to a single weapon enhancement.

 

[Spatzimaus]

Re: Re: What to do with "Sure Strike" in 3.5E?

Nothing. There's no such thing as varying degress of magical DR anymore. It's all just X/magic, so any enhancement value will bypass such DR. There's no point to Sure Striking anymore.

Not quite true. A +5 weapon used to bypass DR 5/silver, too, but now a weapon with only an straight Enhancement bonus won't. Then there's the Pit Fiend; a +5 weapon used to defeat his DR, now you need both Holy AND Silver. There's still a niche to Sure Striking if you allow it to defeat material- or alignment-based DRs like it did in 3E.

There were two main types of DR that the old 3E Sure Striking ability never bypassed: DR 1/- (or object hardness), and Epic DR. Well, technically there's a third type: the piercing DR that skeletons and such had. So, just saying "bypasses all DR" is way too good.

There have been suggestions for this over in the House Rules forum. Here's a good one:
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55044
The thread's a month old, when we weren't completely sure about how 3.5E would do some things, but the ideas are there.

 

[kreynolds]

Re: Re: Re: What to do with "Sure Strike" in 3.5E?

Not quite true.

It is when you take my entire post into account, such as...

There's still a niche to Sure Striking if you allow it to defeat material- or alignment-based DRs like it did in 3E.

This is covered by the last sentence in my post.

 

[Camarath]

This is how I think I will House Rule Sure Striking in 3.5. I will allow Sure Striking to bypass the material requirements (adamantine, silver, or cold iron) of the traget's DR.

 

[Wish]

I haven't quite decided how to do it yet, but I currently like five options for converting sure striking:

1) Let my player replace it with a different +1 power (or upgrade the weapon by +1)
2) Let my player replace it with any special material of his choice (probably adamantine)
3) Keep it, and cause it to bypass special materials DR
4) Keep it, and cause it to reduce the DR of the target by 5 points (so, for example, 15/holy silver would become 10/holy silver)
5) Keep it, and allow the player to designate a single quality for it as a standard action (so, today it's "holy", run into a golem and he can take an action to make it "adamantine" or run into a lycanthrope and take an action to make it "silver").

I'm leaning toward #3, but I won't run my game in 3.5 for a while yet, so I've got time to consider it.

 

[James McMurray]

I like #4.

 

[youspoonybard]

I like either #1 or #2, depending on your player.

 

[DMauricio]

same here.
I like #4 too.

Which is what I think I'll make it in my campaign...

Sure Striking: This weapon ability will negate 5 points of damage reduction. But only if the damage reduction can be bypassed by one of the following special materials (silver, cold-iron, adamantine) It has no effect on any other form of damage reduction.


Does that make sense?


Dom

 

[chengarino]

Re: Re: Re: What to do with "Sure Strike" in 3.5E?

There have been suggestions for this over in the House Rules forum. Here's a good one:
http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55044
The thread's a month old, when we weren't completely sure about how 3.5E would do some things, but the ideas are there.

Good links! Thanks. Those links led to Andy's and Monte's comments as well. Again, thanks.