Magic Weapon Enhancement Minimums

[Merk]

In my pathfinder group, one of the most frequently forgotten rules is that magic weapons must have a +1 enhancement before adding special abilities. Has anyone else encountered this? What changes if you remove that restriction? (ex: allow a Flaming Longsword for ~2315 gp).

[Sucrose]

In my pathfinder group, one of the most frequently forgotten rules is that magic weapons must have a +1 enhancement before adding special abilities. Has anyone else encountered this? What changes if you remove that restriction? (ex: allow a Flaming Longsword for ~2315 gp).

Holy becomes available sooner than it otherwise would. Two weapon fighting gets a minor boost at low levels, since they can get Masterwork Flaming weapons (or shock, or frost) relatively cheaply. Really, nothing to dramatic, in most cases.

[subject42]

I let a player do this once. The real question for us was how to handle DR/Magic. I ended up ruling that since he took the trade-off for more damage in the short term, DR/Magic explicitly required the +1.

[Sucrose]

Thinking on it a bit more, the player with only enhancements could get a one-up on his party members if there is a Wizard to cast Greater Magic Weapon, since part of their bonus is overwritten by the spell. One more thing to keep in mind.

[FMArthur]

Thinking on it a bit more, the player with only enhancements could get a one-up on his party members if there is a Wizard to cast Greater Magic Weapon, since part of their bonus is overwritten by the spell. One more thing to keep in mind.

Eh, that's something already in place. It's the whole melee party's gain. Maybe it will feel less wasteful to not have the overlapping bonuses if you cast it on the guy with a shocking flaming longsword instead of the guy with the +1 flaming longsword, but at the end of the day it's the friendly wizard making the choice (and making the choice to only give it to one of them).

[Sucrose]

Eh, that's something already in place. It's the whole melee party's gain. Maybe it will feel less wasteful to not have the overlapping bonuses if you cast it on the guy with a shocking flaming longsword instead of the guy with the +1 flaming longsword, but at the end of the day it's the friendly wizard making the choice (and making the choice to only give it to one of them).

It's true that this drawback to heavily enchanting one's weapon has always been there. I suppose that it's just that now there's a way for someone to completely bypass the need for + enchantments, so the possible difference is greater (from +5 vs. +1 to +5 vs. +0)

[ericgrau]

Well GMW would be useful earlier since early on it's a +2 on a +1 weapon where you gotta say, "Eh, I want a different 3rd level slot I don't have that many yet."

An enchantment is certainly better than a +1, so this is a power upgrade to be sure. Not letting it through DR/magic was a good idea, since that's about all the +1 is good for anyway. I mean it's already masterwork for +1 to hit.

[Godskook]

It also boosts archers by a good deal, since they no longer have to buy +1 specialty arrows, but rather simply bane, holy, flaming, shocking, or otherwise arrows. I see archers getting the most benefit, since they can double dip the 'discount' on both the arrow and bow side. On the other hand, archers are probably the most expensive weapon route, and are rarely built out of anything higher than a tier 3, so this seems to be a benefit to a weaker build archetype.

[Squally!]

That is how it is in all of my games, you can choose to ignore the +1 and go right for enchants, but it does not bypass DR/Magic then.

Makes for interesting choices.