How strong should weapons be at level 14?

[IIzak]

It's all in the title. About how much of a bonus should the main weapons of the PC's have at lvl 14?

[Forrestfire]

Level 14 WBL is 150,000 gp, so I'd expect at least +4 or +5 weapons. If they've got spellcasters, then probably an effective +6-7ish, because of the existence of Greater Magic Weapon.

[hymer]

I'd say between five and seven plusses worth for the people who find weapons important. That'd be between about a third and two thirds of their WBL.

[tyckspoon]

The bare minimum, IMO, is the same bonus as whatever you'd get from your party Wizard/Cleric casting Greater Magic Weapon for you. So level 14 would be +3 or +4 depending on what kind of caster level boosters your caster buddy has. That's a bit low - somebody who actually wants to hit things with that weapon as his primary means of combat probably wants an effective +5 or 6 total - but that's the rock bottom baseline. If your weapon is below the point where a single spell from 7-10 character levels ago outdoes it, you either just don't give a damn about using is as a weapon or you really need to sit your DM down and have a chat about the purpose of WBL.

[Zaq]

Assuming that you're a character whose primary job is to make attack rolls . . . well, that basically depends on what kinds of monsters/enemies your GM likes.

Barring weird stuff like Aptitude or Skillful, the to-hit part of a magic weapon can't be greater than +5 pre-Epic. How much of that +5 you need depends on how often you're hitting without it, and correspondingly on how okay you are with that.

Now, in a game like 4e, what number the d20 has to show for your swing to connect is, if you follow some baseline assumptions (and correct/account for a couple flaws in the system), relatively consistent over the course of the game, assuming that you have an appropriate plus on your weapon. The appropriate plus, then, is what you need to make your target d20 number more or less the same as it was at any given other point. (As a player, obviously, hitting is better than missing, so you want that plus to be as high as you can make it . . . but if we're determining what it "should" be, a level 2 character with a +5 weapon is inappropriate, as is a level 25 character with a +1.)

In 3.5, though, to-hit and AC vary absurdly wildly as you progress through the levels. For some matchups, you basically can't miss with your primary swing and maybe your first iterative (in an extreme case, you only miss on a nat 1; in a less extreme case, you might only miss on a nat 4 or 5, let's say). For a dedicated monster-whacker, that's probably where it's going to be a lot of the time, at least at level 14 . . . BAB scales automatically, after all, while AC doesn't. If a monster is to be difficult to hit by means of AC, they have to be designed specifically for that, no? (And of course, touch attacks and the like do tend to throw wrenches in the works.) A monster (or player, for that matter) specifically made with high AC in mind, though, is going to be tricky to hit if you can't bypass it somehow; the dedicated monster-whacker with the really high to-hit is going to have probably even chances at best, so anyone with a lesser to-hit is going to be SOL.

But the key point is that neither style of monster is actually expected by the game, at least not to any consistent degree. You can't usefully say "the average monster AC at a CR x is y." (I mean, you CAN say it, but it's barely ever helpful.) To contrast, in 4e, you absolutely can (and SHOULD) figure out what the average monster AC is at a given level; there are actual well-known formulas for determining what numerical values a monster of a given type should have at a given level, and anything that deviates from that by more than a point or two is a major anomaly (and probably pretty darn old, to boot)! But that's not the case in 3.5. If your GM likes sending you up against certain kinds of monsters, your to-hit will basically only matter on your third swing and after, if that. (Well, you know, assuming you put some bare-bones basics into your to-hit, and then we're considering putting extra resources in. Like how big the plus on your sword should be.) If your GM likes sending you up against other kinds of monsters, though, you'll need every point of to-hit you can get your greedy little murderhobo mitts on, assuming that you want to keep making attack rolls against AC as your primary occupation. And if your GM uses a mix that's hard to determine, then you need to basically guess how often you're going to need a +1 vs. a +3 vs. a +5 bonus to hit, and how often you're going to way overshoot (or way undershoot). Personally, I get frustrated when I miss, so I'll lean towards a more reliable (if less flashy) to-hit bonus over other toys, given the option. (I know, no one LIKES missing, but I find it more frustrating than most folks do, I think.) There are times when I'm okay with high-risk/high-reward play, but being a beatstick isn't a time when I personally enjoy that.

Because then we get into the other half of magic weapons: adjectives and modifiers. (I just call them all "adjectives." I guess they're sometimes closer to adjectival phrases?) And that's where things get even messier.

Barring guaranteed access to GMW (or, perhaps, accounting for access to GMW, depending on how you want to look at it), adjectives are in direct competition with numbers. Now, numbers aren't usually as sexy (and really, going from a plain-Jane +4 sword to a plain-Jane +5 sword is useful in the abstract, but to be honest, I don't see the +5 as being 18,000 GP more exciting than the +4), but for a fellow who's going to be making attack rolls against AC every single turn, it's important to remember that if you don't hit, you don't matter. So you have to figure out whether hitting 5% of the time that you otherwise would have missed is worth whatever a +1 worth of adjectives will buy you. (Looking at bonuses in a d20 system that way is both tempting and scary, though, since it's sometimes hard to justify "well, all this +1 means is that when the d20 shows exactly 13, I succeed when I would have failed. If it's 12, I still fail, and if it's 14, I would have succeeded without this +1, so this only comes up exactly 5% of the time. Why bother?" when you move beyond the really cheap low-hanging fruit. But you don't get to "I only miss on a 1" levels without putting all those +1s together, right? If you ignore all of those nickel-and-dime bonuses that only matter 5% of the time, you can't reliably do what you want to do. You have to think both incrementally and collectively.) Now, if you've got your eye on some adjectives that are character-defining or nearly so (Splitting leaps to mind), then yeah, that's easy. But "filler" adjectives (whether they're ones that just don't come up very often or ones that only offer a little bit when they do come up) aren't likely to actually make you that much stronger overall.

Good weapon adjectives do exist, of course. But I tend to find myself wondering if the same price could get a similar or better effect in the form of another item.

I used to be a member of the "bah, bonuses are boring, get a +1 with all the adjectives you can muster!" school of thought. But honestly, now I think that magic weapons tend to be overpriced in general. Now I think that you should first figure out which adjectives you just can't live without (either because they're truly powerful, or because they're character-defining, or because they cover a major and persistent weakness in your build), then spend the rest of your gold on getting other cool items and toys, and THEN put plusses on with the leftovers. But you can't ignore the plusses, since if you don't hit, you don't matter. Basically, instead of advocating a really expensive sword with a +1 and a lot of adjectives, I'm advocating a cheaper sword with one or two really well-chosen adjectives, then as many plusses as you can afford after you cover your other bases.

The math in 3.5 is insane enough that you can't point to "this is what your weapon SHOULD BE at this level, and here's proof." There's value in having a high bonus on your weapon, since even if that extra point only comes up one time in twenty, that one time just might matter. (And an optimized beatstick can make easily ten or more rolls per encounter by level 14, right? Three swings from iteratives, assuming you can pounce or move for free, for three rounds . . . toss in an AoO or two, or Haste, or something like that, and that's about ten swings in a three-round combat.) But even at level 14, I'm more afraid of the beatstick with just a plain-Jane +1 sword and an arsenal of well-chosen other items than a beatstick with a +5 sword of adjectival awesome and hardly a copper worth of anything else on his person. (The +1 is important just to get past DR/magic, though.)

. . . I have totally lost track of what I was trying to say. I've been rambling for paragraphs now, haven't I? Hopefully, there was at least a scrap or two of interesting material in there. But maybe I had better stop.

[OldTrees1]

+1 through +4 depending on investment.
Maybe +5 but that takes more than 33% of your WBL so it is not advised.