[3.5] Most bang for your buck from a +2 weapon enhancement?

[Laniius]

I'm playing in a campaign right now and have decided to go after a crit fishing build.

I'm dual wielding kukris, and my build is Spritual Totem Barbarian 1 (For pounce)/Sneak attack variant Fighter 1 (for craven)/Warblade 6/Bloodclaw Mastesr 2 (For superior two-weapon fighting and claws of the beast, allowing me to negate the penalties for two weapon fighting and letting me add my entire strength bonus to my offhand weapon). Sadly my GM has ruled that the damage from craven doesn't double on a crit as it is keyed off of sneak attack (even though it is expressed as a number rather than dice; RAW or not that is the rule I am operating under).

I don't want to change my build, but when it comes to weapons I am currently wiedling two +1 collision kukris, for +5 extra damage that doubles on a crit.

Would I be better off with 2 +1 holy kukris for 2d6 extra damage that does not change on a crit (we're fighting primarily evil things, lots of evil outsiders).

Or would I be better off with 2 +1 wounding kukris for up to 4 con damage a round? (we're fighting mainly living things, and I have improved two-weapon fighting)

Or finally would I be better off with 2 whatever-burst kukris, for 1d6 extra damage a round and an extra 1d10 damage on a crit.

I am also considering 2 fiercebane kukris for a +2 to hit and extra 2d6 damage against evil outsiders, and extra 1d10 on crit; but I don't know if we're fighting EXCLUSIVELY evil outsiders and that's a lot of investment for the chance of being useless.

[Varil]

Isn't collision a +2 enchantment? A straight +5 damage, and I think it'll multiply like standard damage on a crit, if I recall correctly.

[DracoDei]

"feircebane"? Do you mean fiendbane = bane(Outsider[Evil])?

The average of 2d6 is 7 which you probably already knew. I think that Bane also gives a +2 to hit(which helps with confirmation rolls as well).

If you are taking Cleave/Great Cleave (eventually?) then the greater random chance always helps because dropping an opponent on a single lucky hit gives you another attack if something is within reach.

This is all pretty basic, but it is the best I can do. Trying to make things simpler to explain for those who know more than me.

[Laniius]

You're right, it is a +2 enhancement, I just have the notation as +1 collision kukri to signify that you need a +1 enhancement on a weapon before adding the fancy stuff.

[Laniius]

"feircebane"? Do you mean fiendbane = bane(Outsider[Evil])?

The average of 2d6 is 7 which you probably already knew. I think that Bane also gives a +2 to hit(which helps with confirmation rolls as well).

If you are taking Cleave/Great Cleave (eventually?) then the greater random chance always helps because dropping an opponent on a single lucky hit gives you another attack if something is within reach.

This is all pretty basic, but it is the best I can do. Trying to make things simpler to explain for those who know more than me.

No, I mean fiercebane from the Magic Item Compendium. A +1 [Synergy] weapon synergizing with bane weapons; meaning it can only be added to a bane weapon, so a Bane + fiercebane weapon will be a total of a +2 weapon. Bane is where the +2 to hit and +2d6 to damage is coming from, and fiercebane adds +1d10 to damage on a crit (for a x2 crit weapon) and glows within 60 feet of the thing it is keyed to.

I don't plan on getting cleave or great cleave for this build.

[Ravens_cry]

Not doing the math, I would think Keen would give the best bang for ones buck. Top that off with something else, maybe one of the ones that does extra damage on criticles, and you got something nasty.
By the way, how do those Synergy weapons properties work?
I got to use them in a campaign we were allowed anything from the MIC with DM approval, but I think I was using them wrong.

[Azoth]

Valarous for double damage on a charge +1. Blur strike for 10/day first attack in the round with weapon makes the enemy flatfooted +1. Easy way to up you pounce damage, help your first swings connect, and gives you your sneak attack/craven damage on the hits.

Otherwise, Holy is your best bet for a single +2 enchant.

[Laniius]

Not doing the math, I would think Keen would give the best bang for ones buck. Top that off with something else, maybe one of the ones that does extra damage on criticles, and you got something nasty.
By the way, how do those Synergy weapons properties work?
I got to use them in a campaign we were allowed anything from the MIC with DM approval, but I think I was using them wrong.

I have the feat Improved Critical instead. It's a limited gold campaign in that we only have wealth by level to start with and have no magic marts.

A synergy weapon works in that they have prerequisities. For example, Fiercebane at a +1 enhancement can ONLY be added to weapons that already have the bane enhancement. So you can't have a +1 Fiercebane Weapon (for a total enhancement cost of +2), essentially; you need a +1 Bane Fiercebane weapon (for a total enhancemnet cost of +3). I just wrote +1 fiercebane as shorthand.

[Varil]

Ah, yes, you do. I missed that you already had those, and was actually offering them up as an idea. Oops.

If you know you're going up against evil, holy sounds pretty good. Burst weapons seem pretty terrible to me, even for crit-fishing.

If you're up against evil outsiders, are they demons or devils? It might be worthwhile to try axiomatic or anarchic in conjunction with straight-up holy.

[Laniius]

Valarous for double damage on a charge +1. Blur strike for 10/day first attack in the round with weapon makes the enemy flatfooted +1. Easy way to up you pounce damage, help your first swings connect, and gives you your sneak attack/craven damage on the hits.

Otherwise, Holy is your best bet for a single +2 enchant.

Not sure how useful valorous would be for me as my GM ruled that the extra damage from Craven isn't multiplied.

[Laniius]

Ah, yes, you do. I missed that you already had those, and was actually offering them up as an idea. Oops.

If you know you're going up against evil, holy sounds pretty good. Burst weapons seem pretty terrible to me, even for crit-fishing.

If you're up against evil outsiders, are they demons or devils? It might be worthwhile to try axiomatic or anarchic in conjunction with straight-up holy.

Good idea, and if I had more money to burn I would definitely go for a holy anarchic weapon (mainly devils). But that's too expensive for now.

[Laniius]

Oh, and I'm trying to keep the weapons identical for purposes of making it easier for me to determine what happens when.

As for blurstrike, it's interesting but not needed for this build as I will pretty much always have a flanking buddy, and I have the distracting ember manuever, and plan on taking the Clarion Commander feat (from tome of battle; if I succeed on a DC 20 intimidate check I and my party, which includes a rogue, can treat an enemy as flanked for 1 minute).

Pounce is nice, which is why I took that barbarian level, but it isn't essential to the build. I will be standing still, flanking with the other melee character, more often than not. It's a dungeon environment so I'm not TOO worried about mobility.

[Darth Stabber]

collision damage does multiply on a crit RAW. It is easily the best +2 enhancement for a kukri, especially if you have improved critical. It works every time on everything that your weapon works on. Holy/unholy/axiomatic/anarchic aren't reliable, bane and fiercebane even less so. Valorous is good if you are ubercharging (which it sounds like you're not).

I have said it many times to many players: COLLISION JUST WORKS.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I believe that dropping this thread here might be of relevance - Bunk knows a steal when he sees one.

http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19872102/Bunkos_Bargain_Basement:_Magic_Items_That_Are_a_St eal!

[Laniius]

Waitaminute, while I have people looking at this, I have a question:

Would there be a multiclass penalty for me being a 6th level warblade/1st level barbarian/1st level fighter? What would it be? I'm a human so my favored class is warblade.

[Phaederkiel]

Albeit the dc is low, Slowburst is a Very Nice Ability to have, and dirt cheap.
In the Higher end of the Spectrum (haha), prismatic burst is really good.

What you need is probably not higher damage, but some effects you can have against things that do not care as much about damage. Both of the above can really cramp the style of a baddy with big Hp /crit immunity.

They are especially good since they do not require your enemy to take extra damage from crits.


Take things that will come into play often.
And I would rather have one Prismatic burst kukri than 2 with collision on it.

[Drelua]

And I would rather have one Prismatic burst kukri than 2 with collision on it.

Well, that sounds about right since it costs almost 3 2 (my bad :smallredface:) times as much on a +1 weapon.

[Varil]

Waitaminute, while I have people looking at this, I have a question:

Would there be a multiclass penalty for me being a 6th level warblade/1st level barbarian/1st level fighter? What would it be? I'm a human so my favored class is warblade.

I don't *think* so. Since Warblade is your favored class it isn't factored into the equation. Your barbarian and fighter levels would only cause multiclass penalties if they were more than...I think 1 level apart? So Fighter 2/Barbarian 1 is fine, and so is F1/B1, but F3/B1 would be a problem.

If I remember the rules right. My campaigns tend to ignore the multiclass penalties, so I'm a bit fuzzy on it.

[Phaederkiel]

Well, that sounds about right since it costs almost 3 times as much on a +1 weapon.

it is still dirt cheap for probably the best crit-enchantment available.

[Drelua]

it is still dirt cheap for probably the best crit-enchantment available.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's not a great enchantment, but 30,000 gp isn't dirt-cheap when you've only got 49,000, especially for a TWFer. I'd say you should go with +1 collision, then save up for prismatic burst.

[Kuulvheysoon]

*snip*

Take things that will come into play often.
And I would rather have one Prismatic burst kukri than 2 with collision on it.

...Wait, what? While I'm not familiar with the 'Prismatic Burst' property, I do know that collision adds 5 damage every time the weapon hits. How do you come into play more often than that?

[Godskook]

Replacing two +3 kukris would 'cost' 18k. Upgrading your current daggers to +4s would cost 28k. Upgrading one would cost 14k.

My advice is to upgrade one of your daggers now to a +1 Collision Viscious Kukri and the other when you get the other 10k. That'll be your highest increase in DPR, as well as the most efficient use of your money.

[Laniius]

Thanks for all the advice guys! I think I'll go for collision, because it's guaranteed on every hit, no matter what I hit.

Though, now that I think about it, I'm starting to wonder.

+1 collision kukri, or +3 kukri?

As it stands, with no other gear other than the weapon, my attack bonus will be 14/9 (18 strength, BAB of 9 because I lose 1 BAB with Bloodclaw Master, +1 from weapon). So my BAB is 9/4 and I'm doing 1d4 + 10 damage.

If I instead had a straight +3 weapon, my attack bonus would be 16/11 and I would be doing 1d4 + 7 damage.

The extra to-hit is nice, especially as we are facing enemies that have high AC, but I'm not sure if it's nice enough to trade away 3 damage.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Thanks for all the advice guys! I think I'll go for collision, because it's guaranteed on every hit, no matter what I hit.

Though, now that I think about it, I'm starting to wonder.

+1 collision kukri, or +3 kukri?

As it stands, with no other gear other than the weapon, my attack bonus will be 14/9 (18 strength, BAB of 9 because I lose 1 BAB with Bloodclaw Master, +1 from weapon). So my BAB is 9/4 and I'm doing 1d4 + 10 damage.

If I instead had a straight +3 weapon, my attack bonus would be 16/11 and I would be doing 1d4 + 7 damage.

The extra to-hit is nice, especially as we are facing enemies that have high AC, but I'm not sure if it's nice enough to trade away 3 damage.

Can you convince your friendly caster buddy (either cleric of wizard) to cast Greater Magic Weapon on you?

Worst case scenario, buy them a third level Pearl of Power so that it's effectively free (for them to cast).

[Laniius]

Can you convince your friendly caster buddy (either cleric of wizard) to cast Greater Magic Weapon on you?

Worst case scenario, buy them a third level Pearl of Power so that it's effectively free (for them to cast).

The only caster in the group is a non-optimized Mystic Theurge.

[Gurgeh]

So that's great! The Mystic Theurge's only real advantage is that they have access to a ridiculously diverse pile of spells. It shouldn't be too hard to have an ECL 10 Theurge save a third-level spell slot for buffing you; at that point they ought to have fourth-level slots in at least one of their spellcasting classes. Hell, you could even buy a scroll for them to cast on you - the possibilities are pretty much endless.

[Jasdoif]

Would there be a multiclass penalty for me being a 6th level warblade/1st level barbarian/1st level fighter? What would it be? I'm a human so my favored class is warblade.No. Your six levels in Warblade don't count because it's the favored class, and your one level in barbarian and one level in fighter are certainly within one level of each other; so there's no multiclass XP penalty.

[Kuulvheysoon]

The only caster in the group is a non-optimized Mystic Theurge.

That just means that they have more 'low' level spell slots. Of course, their CL will suffer for it...

Still doable. Ask your DM for an Eternal Wand of GMW, perhaps?

[FMArthur]

I think you can send your damage spiralling upward pretty quickly with Keen, Valorous Kukri using Blood in the Water stance. It's too bad about Craven but that doesn't suddenly defeat the point of all damage multiplication ever. You have damage and you can increase it dramatically by multiplying it, and increasing that damage separately while you do so leads to good things.

You could also consider the Bloodfeeding (+1) enhancement in MIC either before or after these others so that you can supply a hefty fixed bonus to your damage before your Blood in the Water picks up. You can use it to produce sudden bursts of damage which are added after determining that you hit and before calculating damage, meaning you can just wait for a critical to happen before dumping 5 of the weapon's rechargeable blood points into +10 damage, which is 20 in a critical.

Improved Critical might be worth considering since there are so many weapon enhancements to get for a crit-fisher and needing an extra +1 enhancement on each weapon pushes other features out of feasible financial reach pretty quickly.

[Laniius]

I think you can send your damage spiralling upward pretty quickly with Keen, Valorous Kukri using Blood in the Water stance. It's too bad about Craven but that doesn't suddenly defeat the point of all damage multiplication ever. You have damage and you can increase it dramatically by multiplying it, and increasing that damage separately while you do so leads to good things.

You could also consider the Bloodfeeding (+1) enhancement in MIC either before or after these others so that you can supply a hefty fixed bonus to your damage before your Blood in the Water picks up. You can use it to produce sudden bursts of damage which are added after determining that you hit and before calculating damage, meaning you can just wait for a critical to happen before dumping 5 of the weapon's rechargeable blood points into +10 damage, which is 20 in a critical.

Improved Critical might be worth considering since there are so many weapon enhancements to get for a crit-fisher and needing an extra +1 enhancement on each weapon pushes other features out of feasible financial reach pretty quickly.

I've decided to ditch the sneak attack/craven route and just focus on things that add damage to my kukris. I looked at valorous charge, but I don't plan on being that mobile and I have limited money to spend right now; besides wouldn't I have to have that on both kukris to get the bonus for all my attacks on a charge? Out of the two, valorous or bloodfeeding, which is more useful? As I mentioned before, I think I'm going to stick with +3 right now as I am worried about my to-hit. We are facing things with pretty high AC.

[Godskook]

If you're worried about your to-hit score, get the discipline enchantment from ToB and enchant it with your favorite stance's discipline. That's a +1 enchantment, so using that as an upgrade to +4 is quite reasonable, or you can find another +1 to stack and switch them out.

(Of point, a +1 Collision Discipline weapon gets a total +4 to-hit and +6 to damage. That's strictly 2 damage better than a vanilla +4 weapon.)

[Phaederkiel]

even if you are determined to take the "lesser damage" route ...
here is what the srd says about Prismatic burst.

you roll on this table, the dc for the weapon is 21.

1 Red 20 points fire damage (Reflex half)
2 Orange 40 points acid damage (Reflex half)
3 Yellow 80 points electricity damage (Reflex half)
4 Green Poison (Kills; Fortitude partial, take 1d6 points of Con damage instead)
5 Blue Turned to stone (Fortitude negates)
6 Indigo Insane, as insanity spell (Will negates)
7 Violet Sent to another plane (Will negates)
8 Struck by two rays; roll twice more, ignoring any “8” results.


As you can see, it is quite potent.

I'd say collison pales in comparision (and is also costing 16 per weapon), but it is your decision.

[Albonor]

Go holy, if only to avoid the Damage Reduction. It's 7 more damage on a evil average joe but it's 17 more to a Glabrezzu or another powerful fiend. Per hit.

Otherwise, Collision is always nice!