Why ever make an elemental burst weapon?

[Dinkeldog]

My level of frustration being what it is in this forum, I regularly report my own posts for review. Thanks for caring, Dr. Awkward.

 

[Nifft]

Yay! Group hug time!

There are some fun non-Core ways to boost your crit range and/or multiplier, my favorite being the Disciple of Dispater. A tasteful iron weapon goes so well with a PC's flank.

"Burst" weapons are underpowered, unless you find a critical niche.

-- N

 

[Dinkeldog]

On review, I'll edit the above.

Edit: Better now?

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Better. Planning any more edits that I should take into account?

 

[Dinkeldog]

Nope, that's it. Feel free to report away now. (Not that you need to--I've already reported the thread so other mods can chime in at will.)

 

[Eridanis]

The reported post has been noted, discussed by the mods, and edited. Back to the topic, all?

 

[KarinsDad]

But on 100% of the hits that you achieve, you gain +3.5 bonus damage. Since the chance to hit and the chance to confirm the critical are the same, I wonder if they two terms would cancel out once the maths is done...

If you think about it some more though, I'm actually *deflating* it with 10d6. As you say, a critical hit normally occurs on less than 10% of your attacks with the sword. If you roll a threat and confirm on 50% of the confirm rolls, you have a 5% total chance of scoring a crit... thus you need 70(!) damage to match the +3.5 average!!!

Let's get this thread back on topic.

This all depends on threat range and damage multiplier.

Examples:

1) Scythe with 40% chance to hit, 5% chance to threat, and damage multiplier x4.

This does +3.5 damage 40% of the time.
It does +16.5 damage 2% of the time (or 0.825 extra damage on average per successful hit)

2) Keen Scythe with 40% chance to hit, 10% chance to threat, and damage multiplier x4.

This does +3.5 damage 40% of the time.
It does +16.5 damage 4% of the time (or 1.65 extra damage on average per successful hit)

3) Longsword with 40% chance to hit, 10% chance to threat, and damage multiplier x2.

This does +3.5 damage 40% of the time.
It does +5.5 damage 4% of the time (or 0.55 extra damage on average per successful hit)

4) Keen Longsword with 40% chance to hit, 20% chance to threat, and damage multiplier x2.

This does +3.5 damage 40% of the time.
It does +5.5 damage 8% of the time (or 1.1 extra damage on average per successful hit)


As can be seen, none of these examples show that the extra burst damage is that worthwhile. And Keen does not help the average Burst damage that much either (although Keen helps the other normal damage a lot).

The Flaming portion does (in these examples) 4 to 7 times as much damage (without Keen) as the Burst portion. So, upping it to 10D6 is actually enflating, not deflating it.


So, what does Burst really give you?

It stacks with the normal energy portion of the weapon to allow some energy damage to get through in cases of Resist Energy 5 or Resist Energy 10 situations.

And, it boosts damage a little bit on a critical.

That's not that big of a deal.

 

[Artoomis]

...So, what does Burst really give you?

It stacks with the normal energy portion of the weapon to allow some energy damage to get through in cases of Resist Energy 5 or Resist Energy 10 situations.

And, it boosts damage a little bit on a critical.

That's not that big of a deal.

Without going into an analysis of the quality of the provided data (because I am too lazy to do it), the main thing burst gives you is some extra damage that does NOT require a standard action to activate. Fighter do NOT have standard actions to spare.

I think Thundering is generally better - especially as the deafening effect is permanent.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Let's get this thread back on topic.

This all depends on threat range and damage multiplier.

Examples:

<..snip...>

The Flaming portion does (in these examples) 4 to 7 times as much damage (without Keen) as the Burst portion. So, upping it to 10D6 is actually enflating, not deflating it.

Thanks for coming in with some maths, I was too lazy to do any real maths earlier.

So best case (keen scythe) could have the scythe burst damage upped by a factor of 2 (to get average +3.3) by doubling its damage to +6d10? worst case the standard longsword could have the burst damage upped by a factor of 6 (to get average +3.3) to... 6d10 again?

Is that a correct extrapolation of the maths?

Makes my idea of a fixed burst damage sound more reasonable if so

Cheers

 

[Fieari]

To those noting that burst weapons deal that burst damage even without activation, might I note that thundering, too, inflicts that damage on a critical without having to be activated?

Remember, I'm not the comparing the critical part of burst to the +1 equivelent elemental property, I'm comparing it to thundering (since the non-critical part can be easily obtained just by sticking on the +1 property).

For comparison. On the one side, d10 lightning, cold, or fire damage. On the other side, DC 14 deafening, d8 sonic. The sonic type is almost worth the drop in damage alone, and then the deafening thing is added in.