Weapon of True Strike (an evaluation)

[Barstro]

There have been arguments in the past that a Weapon of True Strike is worth so much more than the EDIT+1 Enhancement* (so, minimum of 8,000gp for a +1 weapon of True Strike) when it has an ability that exceeds a +5 weapon. I am not here to argue what the true cost should be, I'm more concerned about how useful such a weapon would be.

*EDIT: I mean a First-Level Spell Ability. Pretty sure that amounts to a similar cost. Still not relevant to the purpose of this post, though

Such a weapon would, if you are generous, all a +20 on every attack roll. If you are not generous, it would allow the PC to take a standard action to cast True Strike, and then use it on the next attack. We'll stick with the first one.


So, a weapon with +21 to hit and +1 damage.
What is that really worth?

My recent playing was an Archer Inquisitor. At level 17, he could use Greater Magic Weapon to make the bow +4 hit and damage, Inquisitions to make it another +5 attack, +6 damage, Bane for +2 hit and +2 damage and another +4d6 damage. All told, he started at +38 attack rolls for the cost of a +1 bow (just so it could be Adaptive and Seeking)

In the fights we had, my character could miss only on a natural 1 for every attack except his final iterative. Using Point Blank Shot, Deadly Aim, Many shot, Multi-shot, I don't think we had access to Haste (assuming my spreadsheet is still correct), his attacks were +32, +32, +27, +22 with an average damage on all those attacks (we'll say he always hit his +27 and always missed his +22, even though he hit more often than that) of 200 points in a round.

A weapon of True Strike would generally give him only one extra hit for +50 damage, or 25%.

The above is also assuming a ranged character that can get a Full-Attack every round. A character that can only make a single attack receives almost no benefit from a +20 to attack.

True Strike just seems a tad underwhelming to me, even for the 6,000gp minimum it would cost to add to a weapon. Am I missing something?

[DarkSoul]

You're looking at it from the perspective of a 17th-level character. Assume 8,000 gp for a +1 weapon of use-activated true strike. That's half the WBL for a level 6 character, and just over a third of the WBL for a level 7. Those are pretty common thresholds for a single item so if such a weapon existed players could logically expect to have one by level 8. Add in the fact that it's an insight bonus, which isn't very common, and the fact that it ignores miss chances from concealment and you end up with a very potent effect in the hands of a low level character.

[Barstro]

You're looking at it from the perspective of a 17th-level character.
True. I find low levels go by so quickly that I tend to ignore how things interact with them.


Assume 8,000 gp for a +1 weapon of use-activated true strike.
Just an aside; Wouldn't "use-activated" on a weapon require a hit in the first place?


That's half the WBL for a level 6 character, and just over a third of the WBL for a level 7. Those are pretty common thresholds for a single item so if such a weapon existed players could logically expect to have one by level 8.
Started to ignore my original request to not argue price, but you brought it back around. Very nice.


Add in the fact that it's an insight bonus, which isn't very common
True, it IS likely to stack.


and the fact that it ignores miss chances from concealment
Seeking is only a +1 enhancement. (and I benefited from it in three fights from level 6-17, so I'm not sure it was all that cost effective)


and you end up with a very potent effect in the hands of a low level character.
I accept your point that it is better for low-level characters. But how much better, really? You did not exactly negate my conclusion that the +20 to hit doesn't have an overwhelming effect.

[Eldan]

Rremember that to hit is more valuable than damage. Most obviously since with power attack, every +1 to hit can be worth anywhere from +2 to +8 or so to damage.

[thecrimsondawn]

Crafting in pathfinder is utterly broken if you know what you are doing. In this case, your weapon of truestrike would be an added effect, or an effect added onto an item to be used. As far as balance goes, having a 1-3x a day wondrous item that casts the spell is not broken, since its a standard action to cast the spell, and then it only applies to your next attack roll. It has its uses, but its a one shot wonder, where full attacks often would hit more for a high BAB, and do more damage over all.
When you try to add it as a persistent effect however, and on a weapon at that - the cost jumps into the impossible to reach range that you may as well just make a weapon with a few wish spells per day instead. The reason truestrike is hard to find like that is its a sorc/wiz spell (and a couple other spell lists for casters who may need that boost) and it only works for themselves. If truestrike could be cast on others, it would not be a level 1 spell. No, it would most likely fall into the level 6 spell range or more then. The fact is that it is designed to be useful to a caster who really needs to hit with that touch or ranged touch spell needs to be taken into account.

[eggynack]

Core to your evaluation is the idea that the character is getting a bunch of big bonuses. Part of the value of true strike is that you can skip those. Imagine skipping most of your attack bonuses for something else. I know such skipping is possible on 3.5, and it probably is in PF too. So, now this character has something around a +20, low enough to miss a decent amount of the time.

And that's where you add true strike. This character, with little to no investment in to hit beside this cheap effect is hitting stuff more often than your character, which has focused on hitting ability. You could modify a lotime and get that result. Take a cleric 17, give them a +1 weapon, a 10 in strength, and no additional mods, and true strike is making them as good at hitting as you are. Even a wizard is coming close. That's a lot of power.

[DarkSoul]

Just an aside; Wouldn't "use-activated" on a weapon require a hit in the first place?So you're not using a weapon to attack unless the attack actually hits, or are you using it even if you miss?


I accept your point that it is better for low-level characters. But how much better, really? You did not exactly negate my conclusion that the +20 to hit doesn't have an overwhelming effect.As a martial character at level 8, can you think of any other enchantment you'd rather have on a weapon than +20 to hit and no miss chance from concealment? It virtually guarantees that attack rolls only miss on a 1 and low-level characters simply aren't that good, nor are they intended to be. AC becomes pointless very early in the game, and hit point totals need to be amplified to account for the fact that everyone will hit all the time. The wizard, who already has all the advantages of being a wizard, is suddenly just as good with a weapon as the rogue or cleric. They might not attack as often or hit as hard as dedicated martials, but they hit almost as consistently against current level-appropriate armor classes.

[Eldariel]

Between iteratives, penalties, concealment and such, it's huge. Indeed, even a meager CR19 enemy such as Great Wyrm Black Dragon can easily boast an AC in the 50's (it has base 41 and it obviously knows Mage Armor and Shield for 49; if it has any other AC-buffing spells or items it's already 50+) where the permanent True Strike would multiply your overall damage based on the stats you posted many times over. And that's before we consider the concealment-bypassing function. In lower levels it's even more important.

[DarkSonic1337]

Core to your evaluation is the idea that the character is getting a bunch of big bonuses. Part of the value of true strike is that you can skip those. Imagine skipping most of your attack bonuses for something else. I know such skipping is possible on 3.5, and it probably is in PF too. So, now this character has something around a +20, low enough to miss a decent amount of the time.

And that's where you add true strike. This character, with little to no investment in to hit beside this cheap effect is hitting stuff more often than your character, which has focused on hitting ability. You could modify a lotime and get that result. Take a cleric 17, give them a +1 weapon, a 10 in strength, and no additional mods, and true strike is making them as good at hitting as you are. Even a wizard is coming close. That's a lot of power.

Emphasis on this. With a weapon of true strike you can use the resources that would be used on getting high to-hit bonuses on something else...such as the ability to convert to-hit bonuses into something else that's valuable.

You could grab power attack to turn it into damage, or grab two weapon fighting AND natural weapons AND flurry of blows for extra attacks.

Or you could sink those resources into things like flight, negative energy protection, trueseeing, teleportation, ect. WBL can do A LOT of things and not having to spend it on hitting stuff as a melee character would be really powerful.

[Deadline]

I accept your point that it is better for low-level characters. But how much better, really? You did not exactly negate my conclusion that the +20 to hit doesn't have an overwhelming effect.

The main thing you are missing is Power Attack (not surprising because you are coming at this from an archery perspective - Deadly Aim is the Pathfinder archery equivalent I think). A +40 to damage (before crit multiplication) does have an overwhelming effect (and let's not even get into the bigger PA multipliers). Heck, a +20 to damage does too (for one-handed Power Attacking). And as pointed out, these numbers can come online as early as 6th level.

Edit - I don't have the wording of Deadly Aim in front of me, but in the case of a character at lower level (or with non-good BAB), the damage returns are limited to twice their BAB (or their BAB for one-handed), which is still insanely good.

[Psyren]

1) Why aren't you using Rapid Shot?

2) Your example refers to a character who already has frankly amazing odds of landing a hit, if as you claim he will miss only on a natural 1 for every iterative but his last one even after Deadly Aim/Power Attack. So yes - adding +20 to hit on a character who already has such preternatural accuracy that only their last iterative has >5% chance of missing, won't make a big difference in that character's overall DPR. In other words, your AB on even your penultimate iterative is at least 18 points higher than the AC of whatever it is you're fighting. This strikes me as your GM running unusually weak encounters; it's definitely not the norm to be that good at hitting things that you only have to worry about your very last iterative having a chance to fail.

A Black Wyrm Dragon (CR17) for instance has AC40, which is much harder for you to hit - you need an 8 on your first two iteratives, 13 on the next, and 18 on the last. That sounds much more representative of what you'll be fighting, and that's not even a challenging (CR +2) fight.

2) True Strike also ignores all concealment, so it can potentially get much higher than a +25% increase to hit, especially since concealment is calculated separately from AC. That's one less roll you have to make that another character would.

[Eldariel]

A Black Wyrm Dragon (CR17) for instance has AC40, which is much harder for you to hit - you need an 8 on your first two iteratives, 13 on the next, and 18 on the last. That sounds much more representative of what you'll be fighting, and that's not even a challenging (CR +2) fight.

And that's without their spellcasting. I find it highly unlikely a Black Wyrm wouldn't be using at least Mage Armor (takes a grand total of 2 of its 7 first level spells to keep it up 26 hours a day) and probably also has access to Quickened Shield (since PF made Quickening stuff not-unnecessarily-difficult for Sorcerers). And Magic Circle Against Good has quite the potential to be active lasting 10 mins/level and is one of the lower level spells.

[Barstro]

1) Why aren't you using Rapid Shot?

2) Your example refers to a character who already has frankly amazing odds of landing a hit, if as you claim he will miss only on a natural 1 for every iterative but his last one even after Deadly Aim/Power Attack. So yes - adding +20 to hit on a character who already has such preternatural accuracy that only their last iterative has >5% chance of missing, won't make a big difference in that character's overall DPR. In other words, your AB on even your penultimate iterative is at least 18 points higher than the AC of whatever it is you're fighting. This strikes me as your GM running unusually weak encounters; it's definitely not the norm to be that good at hitting things that you only have to worry about your very last iterative having a chance to fail.

A Black Wyrm Dragon (CR17) for instance has AC40, which is much harder for you to hit - you need an 8 on your first two iteratives, 13 on the next, and 18 on the last. That sounds much more representative of what you'll be fighting, and that's not even a challenging (CR +2) fight.

2) True Strike also ignores all concealment, so it can potentially get much higher than a +25% increase to hit, especially since concealment is calculated separately from AC. That's one less roll you have to make that another character would.

1) My calculations included it, even if it was not expressly mentioned.
2) "Odds". True. I have played only a Witch and an Inquisitor. Such an ability would be worthless to my Witch, so Inquisitor is all I had to go on.
2b) Yeah, I never had to deal with such high AC. That was part of the reason for my question; to learn from the experiences of people who played more.
second 2) I mentioned "Seeking", which does the same thing for a +1 enhancement.

As to the several arguments bringing up cost; I used my Inquisitor as an example because all of that relied on a Belt of Dex (at least +4, maybe +6) and a Seeking Adaptive bow (around 8,000gp). That is not much of an investment.

Thank you all for providing examples beyond what I have encountered in the game.

[Psyren]

2) "Odds". True. I have played only a Witch and an Inquisitor. Such an ability would be worthless to my Witch, so Inquisitor is all I had to go on.

Uncertain what you're getting at here. I was referring to your Inquisitor's calculations and wasn't even aware of a Witch.


2b) Yeah, I never had to deal with such high AC. That was part of the reason for my question; to learn from the experiences of people who played more.

But that's my point, it's not actually "high." That's a pretty typical CR 17 monster (found in core even) - and again, equal-CR encounters aren't even intended to be hard. On top of which, as Eldariel pointed out, the Dragon can and likely would get even higher with long-duration buffs.

If it seems high to you, your GM might be running an easier game than the intended default.

[Barstro]

Uncertain what you're getting at here. I was referring to your Inquisitor's calculations and wasn't even aware of a Witch.
You seemed to be correctly pointing out that my view of True Strike was based on a single example, which may not be a statistically accurate cross sample of typical Pathfinder characters.

I was agreeing with you and stating the reason why.


If it seems high to you, your GM might be running an easier game than the intended default.
I don't metagame, so I never ask my DM what the AC actually is. Maybe we have gone against things that high. I just know that, for most fights after level eight (or so), my PC was pretty much always hitting everything other than his final iterative.

My figures were based only on my Inquisitor's abilities that did not take standard actions to create. With the other party giving their buffs/debuffs and my Inquisitor having the ability to cast a spell or two ahead of time, he was easily in the +40+ to attack.

[Segev]

The long and the short of it is simply that it's too cheap compared to equivalent bonus-granting gear. It would either replace it more cheaply, allowing more powerful things to be bought elsewhere, or it would be the first thing bought and the more expensive gear would just stack on top of it faster than is intended.

An item that gives you 1 temporary hp every morning isn't all that impressive, but if it's 1 gp to buy it, literally every character will have one because it's just that good compared to what else you could get for that price (and, every now and again, 1 hp means the difference between life and death). So even if your analysis of true strike and its relative utility were accurate, it's too cheap compared to other things people are expected to be buying to do the same job.

[Psyren]

I don't metagame, so I never ask my DM what the AC actually is. Maybe we have gone against things that high. I just know that, for most fights after level eight (or so), my PC was pretty much always hitting everything other than his final iterative.

My figures were based only on my Inquisitor's abilities that did not take standard actions to create. With the other party giving their buffs/debuffs and my Inquisitor having the ability to cast a spell or two ahead of time, he was easily in the +40+ to attack.

Oh, doing that with group buffs is perfectly fine. For starters, the 40 AC figure is meant to be for an equal-CR (i.e. routine encounter for a group) monster, so a group taking it down fairly easily is expected. And second, such a monster can use its own buffs/debuffs and/or dispels to counter yours.

To tie this back to your original question, a Use-Activated True Strike weapon is therefore not underwhelming at all - for most characters, only missing on a 1 for every iterative but the last one even after attack penalty options like PA is not a normal state of affairs. Such an item would in most campaigns be very powerful and thus should get an Epic (read: exorbitant) price tag.

[Zanos]

AC 40 is actually a bit high for CR 17, which is expected as Dragons tend to have higher raw statistics than other monsters of their CR.

There isn't a ton of stuff in CR 17, but averaging the stuff in the bestiary spreadsheet got me an average AC of 33 at that CR.

It's worth noting that the Apostate Devil (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/outsiders/devil/apostate-deimavigga) at that CR has a whooping 46 AC, though. It needs an 18 to hit another Apostate Devil with it's natural attacks.

[Chronikoce]

An item of this sort would in general be too powerful. If it exists and the players know this when the game begins then there is absolutely no reason to ever invest any resources into abilities to improve attack.

Why bother even playing a straight martial character when a pure caster can get a +20 to hit with ease and then stack buffs from their spell list to increase their damage.

I mean a 17th level wizard with 10 str and this weapon would have +28 (+29 if it's also a +1 weapon) to hit without a single other resource invested into attack.

Honestly if this item was allowed in game I'm not even sure why you'd bother to roll attacks at all. From the moment you acquire it around level 7 or so you would have a 5% miss chance for every attack from that point onward. You might as well just run narrative combats where you tell a cooperative story and don't bother with the dice.

[Barstro]

To tie this back to your original question, a Use-Activated True Strike weapon is therefore not underwhelming at all - for most characters, only missing on a 1 for every iterative but the last one even after attack penalty options like PA is not a normal state of affairs. Such an item would in most campaigns be very powerful and thus should get an Epic (read: exorbitant) price tag.

Ok, so my "to-hit" experience is outside of the norm and such an enhancement is quite powerful, even at high levels.

Thanks for the clarification.