Alternate Rules for Weapons

[Captnq]

I've been thinking of rewriting the WSAs for all weapons.

Something that always bothered me was that there are 272 WSAs, but only about 30 of them get used. Also, EBs are almost universally +1. There is very little reason to ever get your EB over +1. (BTW, I have discussed with with some of my players, and the results have been in Theory, they look good, but we won't be doing hard core in game play testing until we start a new campaign. So, before I introduce the new rules...

Here's the basic concept:

All flat cost WSAs become Weapon Augment crystals. The max number of augment crystals you can have on a weapon are dependant on the weapon's INTERNAL Enhancement Bonus.

Many of the WSAs are rewritten to be scalable with DCs and number of damage dice increasing with the number of Internal Enhancement Bonuses.

External Enhancement Bonuses, like Greater Magic Weapon and other buffs still work, but they have no effect on a weapons secondary features. GMW no longer works with Defending, for example.

Also, a number of powers require you to "spend" your EB, but the EB comes back over time. Spending EB doesn't effect calculated secondary effects. Once you figure out a +3 Flaming sword does 2d6, decreasing the EB to +1, doesn't decrease the damage. A weapon that has a Fear effect at DC 15, goes up to DC 19 in a +4 sword. Spend the EB down to +2, and the DC remains at 19.

However, primary effects of EB, like to hit and damage still are reduced when you spend EB down to activate various Powers.

For example: Defending regenerates your EB every round after being spent. But if you spend your EB on a WSA like Drain Level, it takes maybe 8 hours to regenerate.

Ive got mroe written up, but I'm not looking for details or suggestions on the rules, I'm more looking for an over all opinion on the idea. Would this encourage you to have weapons with a higher EB? Would the scalablity of your weapons when you advance in level make things better?

(GTG. Post if you think this has possibility or if I'm way off base.)

[Raineh Daze]

Depends on how they scale. If going from +1 to +4 (I'd presume +5 otherwise odd fractions) increases a DC from 15 to 19? Then... not really. The vast gulf in value between the two makes the increase moot.

[Unbeliever]

First off, don't use so many abbreviations without defining them.  It takes way too long for a reader to figure out what's going on.

Scaling is good, though the devil might be in the details, as Raineh Daze points out.  I kind of like the level-based scaling introduced by the X Surge abilities at the end of 3E's product cycle. 

But, now that I'm thinking about it more, what's the problem you're actually trying to solve?  Is it a bad thing that at high levels people use their wealth to get a weapon with a bunch of wacky abilities and then use Greater Magic Weapon to keep their numbers in line with what they need to be?  That seems to be a feature, not a bug.  A separate problem, how to keep flavorful abilities competitive b/c their DCs are flat, is separate, and I think should be addressed. 

Finally, the proposals in the OP seem needlessly complicated to me.  They seem like a lot to keep track of.  There are some really interesting (if suboptimal) classes that can change their weapon abilities and mods on the fly, and those are cool.  But, to ask a player to keep track of all of this, in addition to everything that is going on, seems like a headache to me.

In sum: 

- fixing scaling DCs on weapon abilities might be really nice
- not quite sure what the goal is here, everyone walking around with +1 swords with lots of cool abilities seems good, not bad
- there's probably an easier fix than the OP proposes, perhaps simply changing the scaling on the way weapon +'s go, or making two separate tracks, one for raw power and one for abilities (kind of like some abilities are a flat cost) would probably be simpler and maybe achieve whatever the goal is.

[Soft Insanity]

either this is going to make the artificer's weapon infusions extremely powerful, or extremely weak.

If my infusion lasts, say, an hour, and the effect I'm using has a "recharge" time of 8hrs, then I'm going to reinfuse after using it.  Meanwhile, the guy with the crafted sword has to wait.  This is the same concept as using doomwarding to get 7 rerolls for a simple oil cost.  For that, the next comparable thing is lucky cape infusion, which is just a single saving throw reroll.  The difference being the lucky cape doesn't have an oil cost and comes in at a level lower.

Unfortunately, by instituting that the weapon must already be magical and not by spell, you shut down the weapon infuses completely before level 5, when the artificer can craft their own weapons.