Why would you ever get Burst weapons?

[Orm]

Most of the time there is little reason to turn the abilities off.

As soon as you put down your sword the flaming -or whatever- stops. Or am I missing something? The burst is always on.

Burst weapons on a 3.0 ranger/Deepwood Sniper using a Longbow and Hunter's mercy were pretty scary to see as a DM.

That rocks. We have two of those in our group. Scary

 

[shilsen]

As soon as you put down your sword the flaming -or whatever- stops. Or am I missing something?

There's nothing in the description that says you need to be in contact with the weapon in order for it to remain aflame. Once you've commanded it to ... er, flame on ... it'll stay that way whether you're handling it or not.

 

[JimAde]

There's nothing in the description that says you need to be in contact with the weapon in order for it to remain aflame. Once you've commanded it to ... er, flame on ... it'll stay that way whether you're handling it or not.

Correct, but burst weapons do still burst on a crit even if you don't know or use the command word.

 

[Wolf72]

Actually, if I'm not mistaken, a flaming burst weapon doesn't deal the 1d6 on a crit, the 1d6 becomes 1d10 (or more).

what Doc Rictus said ... what you wrote was one of the major rules discussions for 3.0 though (up there with mithral armor and if you really did need Heavy armor proficiency to wear a suit of mithral full plate without suffering from the armor check penalty.)

 

[Aesnath]

Alright, a couple of things. It takes one standard action to activate all energy enhancements on a weapon, regardless of number, assuming the weapons creator wasn't being odd. The "burst" effect of an energy burst weapon is always on--that is, no matter what preparation you've done, roll a critical hit get the extra damage. The damage from the "burst" is in addition to the regular energy damage, assuming you activated the regular energy damage prior to the crit--this is a distinct change from 3.0. Finally, in most cases, energy burst weapons suck. You generally get more for your money with plain enhancement (+2 gives you a +4 damage on a crit, always +2 on attack, no resistance applys; energy burst weapons give you an average 9 damage on a crit, no bonus to hit, low bottom roll of 2, and they don't effect all creatures). It is fun on my Falchion, where I have Improved crit and Power crit, but not great.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That's true, but an awful lot of opponents will have some kind of energy resistance. When you're fighting a monster with cold resistance 5, a shocking burst weapon will average more damage than a shocking frost weapon.

And of course the reverse is true when facing anything with electricity resistance, so that argument doesn't make much difference IMO.

The fact is that a burst weapon adds an average of +4.05 (3.5+ 10% of 5.5) to your damage output per attack over your characters life. For the same cost you could have two different energy forms (or holy) and get an average of +7 or enjoy the many benefits of a straight +2 enhancement.

Cheers

 

[Corlon]

yeah, burst weapons are cool...but they suck.

Generally it's when you find a cool weapon that it just happens to have the enhancement, or if your character has a thing for one element.

Also the hunting creatures with a weapon is cool, but generally spending multiple thousands of gold (at least 18000) on a weapon for just killing a certain kind of creature is a waste of money :\ .


I think all in all it's pretty much the HOLY CRAP factor when it's put on a scythe and such.

 

[shilsen]

Correct, but burst weapons do still burst on a crit even if you don't know or use the command word.

I never said it didn't. I was responding to the bit in Orm's post where he said that "As soon as you put down your sword the flaming -or whatever- stops", which is wrong. That's why I only quoted that section.

 

[Trainz]

Never once did my players comission or seek out a burst weapon. They found some in treasure, and were happy that it was there (if only for the resale value), but a player of mine once had a +1 falchion adamantine flaming/frost/lightning/holy weapon. When he was rolling his damage, he used the six-siders colored as follows:

red d6: fire
blue d6: frost
yellow d6: lightning
white 2d6: holy
2d4: weapon damage

So when my critters had some type of resistance, I looked at what he rolled, and secretly took note of the color of the element resisted.

Needless to say, he was quite potent. And that's only a weapon worth +6 enchantment (72,000 gp).

 

[JimAde]

I never said it didn't. I was responding to the bit in Orm's post where he said that "As soon as you put down your sword the flaming -or whatever- stops", which is wrong. That's why I only quoted that section.

Sorry, didn't mean to seem like I was disagreeing with you. I was just trying to clarify the point. I have a character in my current game who was carrying around a shocking burst weapon for the longest time and assumed the "burst" part was the only enhancement (other than the +1) since it just worked without any command word. She just recently found out how to activate the "shocking" part and is very happy.