Wounding weapon ability

[psyronin]

What's the general consensus regarding the Wounding weapon ability, balanced or not? I've been comparing it with Weakening from Shining South and it seems a bit too good:

Wounding : -1 Con on hit, +2 cost, no effect on creatures immune to crits
Weakening : -1 Str on hit, +3 cost, lasts 10 mins, cannot lower target to 0 Str

Sure, when running into undead or plants Wounding does you no good, but otherwise it's great. Unlike Weakening you can reduce an enemy to 0 in a stat. Better yet, Wounding scales with level. Every hit on a level 10 enemy is about equal to 5 extra damage. Fight a level 20 enemy and now every hit is about equal to 10 extra damage.

Is Wounding balanced at +2 or should it be bumped to +3?

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I don't like the wounding enhancement at all. I generally substitute keen weapons. Not sure if it's balanced or not, so not really useful. You might replace it with something like

Collision

Collision weapons psionically increase their own mass at the end point of each swing or shot. Such weapons deal an extra 5 points of damage on each successful strike, in addition to the weapon’s enhancement bonus. Bows, crossbows, and slings bestow the extra damage upon their ammunition.

Moderate metacreativity; ML 10th; Craft Psionic Arms and Armor, matter manipulation; Price +2 bonus.

Just call it wounding, and keep the effects the same as collision.

 

[Bront]

Personaly, I never liked wounding. I'd rather have the extra elemental damage from flaming or frost, or both at a +2 mod.

 

[Infiniti2000]

In my experience, wounding is too good at +2 and should be +3. I put it in my game when the PCs were around 12-13th level and now that they are 15th or so, I can say it's too good for the cost. An extra +HD worth of hit points every two hits and -1 Fort save (and possibly minuses on special ability DCs, etc.) stacks up pretty quickly at 3-4 attacks per round.

 

[Bront]

It's nasty against big creatures, if you're fighting a larger number of lesser creatures, it won't help much as they might be down in 2-3 hits anyway.