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View Full Version : Is this an overpowered item [3.5]?



Incompleat
2009-11-20, 01:48 PM
So, I am preparing an adventure for a third level party composed by a druid, a sorcerer, a cleric and a paladin.

In order to mitigate a little the huge power disparity between the paladin and the others, I decided to give the paladin the following weapon:

Merciful Holy Light Crossbow [1d8+1d6. crit 19-20/x2, range inc 80 ft., 4 lb, piercing, +2d6 versus Evil, nonlethal damage only]

The idea was that in this way the paladin will be one of the main damage dealers for a few encounters, and he will have something to do against flying opponents or baddies which are better not taken in melee.

He'd still lack all the nifty control and buff/debuff options of the others, but at least he'll not have to just sit down and wait while the other players fight the monster.

However, now I am wondering: have I gone overboard, and does the paladin now risk stealing the spotlight from the others?

I do not expect CoDzillas, and the sorcerer wants to take Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus (Evocation) - actually, I have wondered whether I should warn him against it, but I decided not to: it is a suboptimal choice, I think, but it's not terrible, and if he wants to play Blasty McBlast I don't see why I should force him to play Batsorc.

So, what do you think? Is this party reasonably balanced, or is the equipment disparity too big?

Thanks!

Cieyrin
2009-11-20, 01:56 PM
Pallys aren't particularly adept at ranged combat, especially since they can't smite at range without trickery, so giving him a +4 weapon for what he's not good at may end up as either a waste or a huge boost for breaking WBL for him. It's certainly not going to overpower him, as he probably lacks Rapid Reload(Light Crossbow) to run and gun, anyways.

AtwasAwamps
2009-11-20, 02:06 PM
Pallys aren't particularly adept at ranged combat, especially since they can't smite at range without trickery, so giving him a +4 weapon for what he's not good at may end up as either a waste or a huge boost for breaking WBL for him. It's certainly not going to overpower him, as he probably lacks Rapid Reload(Light Crossbow) to run and gun, anyways.

By trickery do you mean "a feat"?

Tyndmyr
2009-11-20, 02:14 PM
Seems thematically appropriate, and I doubt it will invalidate any of the other players unless they are particularily blasty, and bad at it.

t_catt11
2009-11-20, 02:26 PM
I concur with the above. I don't see this as game breaking. You can always confer with the player ahead of time and let him know your reasoning. If it gets out of whack, you then have a possible way to power it down a bit if you feel such needs to be done.

Defiant
2009-11-20, 02:26 PM
Bear in mind that the weapon you just created cannot exist in the D&D world. An item must have at least a +1 enchantment on it before you can place other enchantments.

Keld Denar
2009-11-20, 02:30 PM
By trickery do you mean "a feat"?

More like a racial sub level. Elven Paladin from Races of the Wild, in particular.

Douglas
2009-11-20, 02:33 PM
It is sufficiently far outside of what his character is likely to be good at that I don't think it would unbalance things as an item. Depending on the other characters' builds it might put him a bit above them in usefulness even without any character traits to support the item, but it won't scale well so even the possibility of that will be as temporary as the party's stay at very low levels.

As a source of wealth, it's a bit much. A +1 Merciful Holy weapon sells for 16000 gp, and he could get seriously overequipped for his level with that much money. Note that the +1 basic enhancement bonus is required for the weapon to be RAW legal, so it's a total +4 weapon for cost purposes.

So, go ahead and give it to him, but don't let him sell it to buy more appropriate equipment until several levels have passed.


More like a racial sub level. Elven Paladin from Races of the Wild, in particular.
There's a feat in BoED that does it too. Ranged Smite Evil, specifically.

Burley
2009-11-20, 02:41 PM
Mildly off-topic:
If the PCs have been made, look at the sorceror's spell list. If it is mostly evocation/damaging spells, maybe point out the Warlock or Warmage from Complete Arcane.
They get more blasty-spell, at the expense of utility. If he isn't taking any utility spells anyway, he'd probably benefit from the Warlock/Warmage's focus on damage. Plus, a lot less book keeping.
(Actually, the warlock has a few really great utility powers. Just sayin...)

Claudius Maximus
2009-11-20, 02:47 PM
As a source of wealth, it's a bit much. A +1 Merciful Holy weapon sells for 16000 gp, and he could get seriously overequipped for his level with that much money. Note that the +1 basic enhancement bonus is required for the weapon to be RAW legal, so it's a total +4 weapon for cost purposes.

It would actually cost 32000 and change gp, since weapon enhancements are doubled in price.

It *could* be holy/merciful without being a +1 weapon. I believe BoED has a few items like that, not to mention you can do whatever you want as DM. It's just that if it's a typical magic item, it has to already be +1.

Douglas
2009-11-20, 02:53 PM
It would actually cost 32000 and change gp, since weapon enhancements are doubled in price.
Yes, but items sell for half price and I was stating the sell price.

Krow
2009-11-20, 03:02 PM
I second statting it out as a 'Relic' from BoED. That way you wouldn't need the extra "+1". But from my POV, it wouldn't be unbalancing. :smallsmile:

Another_Poet
2009-11-20, 03:17 PM
Agreed, no problem here.

And if the player isn't the sort to turn around and sell it right away to min-max then don't worry about the +1.

Augmented Lurk
2009-11-20, 04:08 PM
At level 3 there's probably not going to be much of a power disparity between the paladin and the rest of the group, and at higher levels when the paladin starts to fall behind I think it will take a lot more than a holy merciful crossbow to bridge the power gap.

AtwasAwamps
2009-11-20, 04:25 PM
There's a feat in BoED that does it too. Ranged Smite Evil, specifically.

Yep. I've seen vaguely interesting paladin builds using it.

For the item itself...it really depends. If the rest of the crew is all wacky optimizing, yeah, go for it. If they aren't, then if the paladin is played decently, you'll overpower him. So it's based on your players.

In my game right now, our best damage dealer is the monk because the player a) has good rolls and b) has a DM created item that lets him do some extra damage with melee attacks. The monk is played well, so now the DM is slowly pulling the rest of us up, since we're not that great. It happens. Balance is hard.

Incompleat
2009-11-20, 04:29 PM
Thanks for the advice!

I don't think the player is going to sell it, but I like very much the relic concept anyways.

It also gives me an idea for a possible subplot, which I may or may not use:


Once upon a time, there was an exceptionally bloodthirsty Champion of Erythnul, who cut a bloody swath across the land the likes of which have rarely been seen. She also held the belief that ranged weaponry was a coward's tool, and went out of her way to kill, in as gruesome a manner as she could devise, whoever used or built these weapons.

Eventually, she fell to a Cleric of Garl Glittergold who decided to punish her in a suitably humorous way: he bound her soul to a crossbow, turned it into a Holy weapon particularly harmful to all forms of Evil, and enchanted it so that it could never kill any being (that is, all damage is nonlethal, always - you cannot suppress the enchantment as in the usual Merciful items).

Then the cleric gave the crossbow to his Paladin friend, who did not know anything about its nature and who of course would have refused a weapon with a soul trapped within it.

So, for centuries, the Champion of Erythnul has been confined within a weapon she despises, in constant pain because of the Holy enchantment, and incapable of taking joy in the slaughter because it is literally impossible to kill anyone with it - in fact, during most of this time the crossbow has been assigned to "trigger-happy" junior paladins, so that errors of judgment on their part would be less likely to have lethal consequencies.

Needless to say, the Champion is not happy about this.

And did I mention that a deity may have only a Champion on the material plane at a time (I'm not sure if this is the official rule, but I can certainly say that it is so in my campaign)?

At the moment, neither Erythnul nor the few followers he has left have any idea about where the Champion is, but if they were to learn about the crossbow they would be willing to go to extreme lengths to get it.

In the words of Elan: Dun dun dun dunnnn.... :smallbiggrin:


As for the balance issue, I guess I will see how the first fights go: if the other players are a bit overshadowed, I'll try to come up with similarly powerful magical items for them too and I will up the CR of the next encounters.

Cieyrin
2009-11-20, 04:36 PM
So the crossbow is an Intelligent Item on top of being a +1 holy merciful light crossbow?

Incompleat
2009-11-20, 04:39 PM
No, it cannot talk or do anything. The Champion's soul can only see, and hate. It is just a possible plot hook, nothing more.

At least, this is what I'm thinking at the moment: do you think it is too cheesy? I'm a bit new to DMing, to tell the truth...

Cieyrin
2009-11-20, 04:44 PM
No, it cannot talk or do anything. The Champion's soul can only see, and hate.

At least, this is what I'm thinking at the moment: do you think it is too cheesy? I'm a bit new to DMing, to tell the truth...

I don't think it's cheesy for it to be holding a soul. You could have it eventually awake into an intelligent item as the players progress. Perhaps you could have the Pally try to redeem the Champion and truly turn it into a weapon for good, perhaps making it a Legacy Weapon, as per Weapons of Legacy. That would be neat.:smallbiggrin:

RandomNPC
2009-11-20, 05:39 PM
i like it.

A friend of mine was moving to california, so i gave him an inteligent axe and let him take the spotlight, then he never moved. I ended up giving everyone magic weapons trying to balance the game, in the end they killed the dragon that trapped the souls in the weapons (thats where the smarts came from) and the weapons broke so the spirits could go on to rest. As a token of thanks the spirits gave the party non-inteligent, and less powerfull items. Thus the party was balanced again!

feel free to take that plot and alter it as needed if the crossbow ends up being more famous than the rest of the party.