Firechanter
2018-07-20, 06:24 AM
Good day to all you excellent and admirable hobbits Playgrounders,
since I wasn't able to find a PF-specific guide to magic weapon properties, I figured I might as well write one myself. So far I have gone through the properties in CRB and APG, but kind of got in a rut when going through UE. Anyway, I figured I might present you with my findings so far, for feedback and improvements.
One problem I want to avoid is ending up giving everything the same "Circumstantial" two-star rating -- just like feats, some weapon properties make sense for certain builds and none whatsoever for everybody else. I try to cover that.
One particular pattern kinda crystallized and kept repeating itself: most weapon properties in PF simply aren't worth it. Too expensive, too situational, too marginal a benefit. Still, I want to publish this guide at least as a warning to new players not to fall for these traps. Therefore, when looking at my guide you will find that I added a fifth rating in extension to the usual colour-coded * - **** model: an "x", the Turd rating, for a special level of bad.
So without further ado, here is the link to the current version:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16GqCx4e8FEP_wkCkJd-EI-mF7umnImy238_nmPyr6So/edit?usp=sharing
For your convenience I am also pasting the content here inline, but for my convenience I am not going through the trouble of formatting and colour-coding it here:
Paradoxes of Defense
A Handbook about and Analysis of Magic Weapon Properties in the Pathfinder RPG.
Preface:
As a late convert from 3.5 to PF (about 3 years ago, I guess), I had to realize that magic weapon properties work differently in those systems. Some of the absolute best 3.5 properties do no longer exist altogether (e.g. Valorous, Discipline, Spell-Eating), others have been nerfed, and the general mechanics result in a complete paradigm shift, which we'll get to in a minute.
But do not worry, dear Reader, this guide is not at all centered on differences between 3.5 and PF. I will just make a couple of remarks here and there where it is relevant for the understanding of the evolution of a property. Otherwise, by and large, it is simply a standalone guide for Pathfinder players who want to use their characters' resources efficiently.
Ratings:
The guide follows the a rating system similar to the quasi-standard established for this system, in colour-codes and stars. With one notable addition:
**** : superb property, almost always an excellent choice.
*** : generally a good choice
** : usually very situational, probably not a pick for your primary weapon
* : typically a poor choice, too situational and/or overpriced
x : absolute turd. Admiral-Ackbar-sized trap. Avoid at all cost. Will make you weaker.
If found as a loot drop, sell immediately.
Of course, as opposed to other character options, equipment is a special case because you sometimes just _find_ it, and if you don't have a use for it, you can _sell_ it. Also, a party crafter can (given time) just create anything at half the list price, so even a super-situational weapon that you only need for a single quest can be superb, since you can simply sell it afterwards and be not a dime worse off.
Spoiler Alert: most properties introduced in post-APG sources will be of the crap variety.
First off, before we get to the alphabetical properties, let's explore some basics -- what makes a weapon property useful, and how much bang should you expect for your buck?
To discuss this question, let's first look at the simplest of staples, the plain old...
Enhancement Bonus **** : while in 3.5 a high fixed EB is considered unoptimized, this has changed in PF due to Greater Magic Weapon being less effective (due to CL pumping being very restricted). Also, sufficient Plusses now allow you to bypass most damage reductions. Therefore, the simple Plus has become the gold standard for weapon enhancements, and is better than about 90% of all other properties. In fact, a lot can be said for the strategy of not even thinking about other properties until your main weapon enhancement is at +5.
DPR Effect: every +1 Enhancement Bonus will improve your DPR by around 10-15%.
The other benchmark for evaluating the worth of a weapon property is the bonus damage die. +1d6 is worth +3.5 bonus damage per hit, and you can get this bonus in many different colours, so this is what other properties will be compared against.
The Math:
What is better -- a simple extra +1 Enhancement Bonus, or +1d6 damage? At first glance, the die might look vastly superior. In practice, it's far from straightforward.
First thing to remember is that a +1 counts for Attack and Damage. This may sound trivial, but a layman might be surprised how much that simple +1 adds up over time. It helps you not only your main attack better but also your iteratives, and it helps confirming threats, _and_ the bonus damage is multiplied on a crit. All things that a +1d6 won't do for you.
Conversely, the +1d6 simply will not always apply. If it's energy damage, some creatures will be immune or resistant to it. If it's aligned damage, it won't apply to the other alignments. And so on, you get the idea. A simple honest Plus will literally always count.
If you actually run the numbers vs regular, level-appropriate ACs, you will find that +1 EB and +1d6 are virtually identical in net damage output. So all those reasone are why I, personally, generally prefer the bigger Plus over an extra die. But still, the long and short of it that we need to keep in mind is the previously stated number: a +1 bonus should yield at least +3.5 damage per hit.
CRB Options:
+1 Properties:
Bane: **** Arguably, can range anywhere from * to **** depending, but if you can manage to get a Bane weapon keyed to the creature type you encounter most often, it is absolutely fantastic and by far the best bang for the buck.
Note that the increased Enhancement Bonus does count towards bypassing DR, so slapped onto a +4 weapon you can actually bypass DR/Epic.
Defending: this one varies a bit depending on the rule interpretation preferred at your table.
* if you follow the reading that you only get the AC bonus if you actually attack with the weapon. In that case, forget it.
*** if you only need to "wield" but not attack with it. In this case, slap it onto your Armour Spikes and have your party caster buff it with GMW every day -- cheap AC.
I am aware there is a FAQ advocating the red reading, but personally I don't care much for FAQs, as very often they seem to be just random and in direct contradiction to the RAW.
Distance: only for Ranged weapons.
* for projectile weapons (bows, crossbows) - experience teaches us that most battles will be initiated at <60' distance, so what do you want with 220ft range increment?
*** for thrown weapons - doubling a 10' or 20' range increment does make a difference.
Flaming: ** Not too bad a property at low levels, but there's simply too many fire-resistant monsters at higher CRs. In most cases, a simple + will do virtually the same for your DPR and be much more reliable.
Frost **
Shock **
same thing as Flaming
Ghost Touch: ** Unless you are playing a Ghostbusters-style campaign revolving around Incorporeals, you don't want this on your main weapon. May be worthwhile to keep around as backup weapon, at least until your party has other ways of dealing with ghosts.
Keen: I'm torn between giving this a ** and a *** because it's only very narrowly useful, but can be a lot of fun. If you're a Critfisher build, you'll have Improved Critical anyway so you don't need it. Generally, a simple Plus will do more for your average damage. That said, Keen may be the first property to consider once your weapon is enhanced to +5.
If you find a Keen weapon as a drop, there's nothing wrong with keeping it.
I could go on to write a whole essay about the viability of crits, but the long and short of it is: if you want to make critfishing worthwhile, invest in at least one feat that applies a rider effect to your crits. If you're just looking for raw damage on the other hand, it's probably a wash.
Ki Focus: Probably a good option for any class that uses Ki, but useless for everybody else.
Merciful: ** Of course, great for making prisoners, which then can be interacted with. Works on pretty much all living creatures. The downside is that any healing the enemy may possess becomes twice as effective.
All in all, unless you insist on playing a pacifist character, I would never slap this on a main weapon, but as a function of a Paladin's Divine Bond it is a useful tool in the arsenal.
Mighty Cleaving: * It sucks for the same reason that Cleave sucks in PF: it's exclusively the GM who decides when you are allowed to use it. If the GM doesn't put at least three monsters adjacent to each other (and in your reach), it will never proc.
Seeking: *** but YMMV. It's very good if you have to deal with concealment often, for instance if your GM is very particular about the lighting rules. In my experience, however, most tables don't bother with lighting or concealment very much.
Spell Storing: hard to assess because its utility will vary depending on your party's resources and creativity. You could technically use it to just deliver a damage spell, but it's
probably not worth it. Becomes a lot more interesting if you charge it up with hard debuffs. Note that it can only hold an up to 3rd level spell, and that there is the more effective Dispelling variant if packing Dispel Magic is all you really want from it.
Throwing: * Screw it. Why would you want to throw away your weapon?
And no, it's not even worth it in conjunction with Returning and Called. (q.v.)
Thundering: x Lousy extra damage, which only procs on a crit, and a rider that triggers a trivial save, which most enemies won't even care about even if they botch that save. The math says that the extra damage is worth an average of 0.45 points per hit. So that's less than half of a simple Plus and doesn't even improve your hit chance. Any questions?
Vicious: ** I know that many players like this property, so please bear with me: great bonus damage for the price, but comes at a cost. May be worth it as often as not. If taking that rebound damage means you kill the enemy and therefore don't have to weather their full attack, then fine. If the enemy would have gone down without the extra damage anyway, you've taken the rebound damage in vain. If you fail to take out the enemy, you're taking the rebound damage _and_ their attack.
Can easily move up to *** if you have reliable and plentiful (ideally unlimited) self-healing.
+2 Properties:
Word of warning: Generally Paizo seems to love slapping a +2 price tag on underwhelming properties that in most cases wouldn't even be worth a +1. Keep in mind that prices scale quadratically, and that just increasing your Enhancement bonus by +2 will give you roughly +20 to +30% DPR with no strings attached.
Anarchic / Axiomatic: ** Good in campaigns where you know you'll constantly be fighting Lawful / Chaotic enemies, respectively. But how often is that the case? In all other regimes, not worth it as a permanent property.
Disruption: * "Insta-gib vs Undead" sounds great at first glance, then you realize the Fort-Save DC is woefully low, so by the time you can afford this, any Undead that you can't one-round anyway will make a Save on a natural 2.
Flaming / Icy / Shocking Burst: * All of them are bad. The +1d10 on a Crit translates to an average +0.55 per Hit. So you can easily see how crappy it is compared to an extra +1.
Holy: *** I'm not disclosing state secrets when I say that in typical games, you'll fight Evil foes most of the time. No Evil creature has resistance to Holy damage - as opposed to Elemental damage types - and it aligns your weapon to overcome the DR/Good part of their damage reduction. However, keep in mind that so does a vanilla +5 weapon. So, Holy is good at lower levels when you can't yet afford a 50.000GP weapon -- and also at high levels where you already got your +5 and have another 48K to burn.
Unholy: * Bad in typical campaigns for the same reason that Holy is fine in these. Of course, the signs reverse when you play an Evil campaign against the forces of Good.
Wounding: x I'd attest the PF authors a certain sense of humour if only I could be sure that they even understand what they did there.
See, while Wounding was pretty good in 3.5 -- it did CON damage back then -- Paizo nerfed it into oblivion but didn't reduce the price. The way Bleed damage works this means you'd have to hit the opponent 14 times before it pulls even with, for instance, Holy. If an enemy survives 14 of your hits, you're doing it wrong.
+3 Properties:
Speed: ** I was about to make this at least green, but in reality its utility is largely dependent on the availability of Haste buffs in your party (since Speed doesn't stack with Haste). If you have a caster who provides Haste in most encounters anyway, this pretty expensive property is wasted.
Also keep in mind that Boots of Speed do the same thing for 10 rounds per day, which is probably all that you need, whenever you need it. And the boots will be at least 10K cheaper than the weapon property. Go figure.
So long story short, a Speed Weapon _can_ be excellent under very specific circumstances -- no suitable caster available and you need the boot slot for something else -- which is why I give this the "circumstantial" rating.
+4 Properties:
Brilliant Energy: * kind of "heavily armoured humanoid Bane". Not bad as such, just way overpriced. Keep in mind that a +1 Brilliant weapon already costs 50k.
Dancing: x Try as I might, I cannot figure out for the life of me under what regime spending >50k for a weapon that attacks on its own without using your Strength bonus for attack and damage sounds like a good idea. It was already pretty bad in 3.5, but for some reason it has been further nerfed in PF (the 4-round limits). Absolutely atrocious.
+5 Properties:
Vorpal: Again, an extremely divergent property -- either useless or fantastic depending on what you make of it. Insta-gibbing an enemy every 20th time is not worth the huge price hike, considering what else you might do with that kind of money. So on it's own, it's * .
This changes if you possess a way to generate 20s on demand. Then it immediately snaps to **** even if you can do that only once per day.
APG Options
+1 Properties:
Allying: **** I was about to give this a x turd rating because at first I couldn't figure out when this might be useful, but then I realized how you can game it to save a ton of money. First off, keep in mind that you are your own ally, so there's nothing to prevent you from wielding two weapons and using it on yourself.
Note that as with the Defending property, this hinges on not having to actually _attack_ with the Allying weapon. In other words, you want the reading where the operative word in "before using the weapon" is "before", not "using", and the limitation is there to prevent the players from transferring the bonus _after_ making attacks with it.
You could for instance have +5 Allying Armour Spikes and a +1 Holy Speed Glaive, for instance. You convert the bonus every turn (it's a Free Action, after all) and fight with a +5 Holy Speed Glaive. As an added bonus, if you ever get disarmed or outmaneuvered so you can't use your main weapon, you simply stop using Allying and still have a +5 weapon that you can't be disarmed of!
Price check for this example: 72K for the Spikes, 72K for the Glaive, total 144K as opposed to the 200K a +5 Holy Speed Glaive would cost, and a free 50K backup weapon thrown into the bargain. Pure beauty.
The break even point for this ability is 50.000GP, i.e. pulling off this stunt is only worth it if your desired effective weapon would cost more than 50k.
Conductive: this one obviously hinges on what kind of effects your class offers that you can channel through your weapon. Purely for damage, probably not so much, since it only works once per round. If however you could apply some rider effects like Stagger, Daze etc., that would be a different story. Long story short I can't give this a meaningful rating -- for most characters it will be red, but for the correct build it could be blue.
Corrosive: *** the best of the Energy damage types, because Acid is not a common resistance - at least not among the creatures you are likely to fight. Also, it breaks the regeneration of trolls, even types that are not susceptible to Fire.
(Corrosive Burst is still the same rubbish as the other types, though.)
Cunning: x Sure, you can invest a +1 price modifier and tons of skill ranks into knowledge skills in order to get a +2 bonus exclusively on threat confirmation rolls. OR you could use the same money to get another +1 to all Attack AND Confirmation rolls AND damage and not be bothered by bloody skills.
It would be great if the Knowledge skills gave you +2 to attack and damage or something, but as it is, it is utterly worthless.
Dueling: ** Super-situational: Offers decent bonuses in duel-like situations where you try to feint or disarm each other. How often does that happen, though? And how often will a simple Locked Gauntlet not suffice to do the job? The only saving grace is the fixed price modifier, which means you can slap it onto a high-level weapon without escalating further improvements down the road.
Furious: **** for Barbarians (or Bloodragers) obviously, worthless for everybody else.
Grayflame: here the usefulness depends on the class that uses it.
*** for Battle Clerics with decent CHA because you can afford it.
** for Paladins, because of the poor 2:1 Lay on Hands exchange rate. Not terrible, but usually you'll do better being a Vengeance Pala and buying another Smite instead.
Huntsman: ** I'm a bit torn on this one. While pretty flavourful, it's obviously only worthy of discussion if you can reliably track your targets. So I guess that very often, this won't be the case, because your enemies are ambushing _you_. May bog the game down if you insist to keep scouting and tracking. So all things considered it's probably more a fluff property.
Jurist: * Will not trigger very often. When do Inquisitors use their Judgment? When battle is joined. At that point you're usually past rolling Perception checks. The other benefit requires an enemy to target _you_ with a Combat Maneuver. How often that happens probably varies from GM to GM, but normally probably not very often.
Menacing: ** Another of those weird situational bonuses, but with it you might become your Rogue's best friend. Still, so situational and party-dependent that it's probably usually not worth the bother.
Transformative: * Would be fine if it could transform into _any_ weapon. But since you have to remain in the same handedness category, you're essentially paying 10,000 gold just to switch between damage types and pick up weapon properties like Brace, Reach etc. Or actually, the limitation "same general shape" may actually prevent the one useful application, i.e. switching between Greatsword and Polearm, for instance.
Is that worth it? I doubt it.
This concludes the CRB and APG options.
I have also started looking at all remaining options listed in Ultimate Equipment, but so far have only gotten to the midway point or so. However, the pattern we have started to see above is repeated: most options are just too situational, some require very specific builds to make them work, and others are just terrible. Only a very few, if any, are really and unquestionably _good_.
So for the time being, here are a handful of standouts, good and bad, of
Ultimate Equipment
Courageous: ** I just wanted to point out that this only only starts paying off once you have at least +4 Enhancement Bonus on your weapon, _and_ of course you need to have a steady source of Morale bonuses (such as being a Barbarian). If both conditions are met, then okay, give it a ***.
Cruel: **** Almost the only really good choice. Needs an Intimidation build to be useful, but doubling the debuff from -2 to -4 is really pretty stronk.
Designating (Lesser or Greater): *** or better if the players got their Teamwork act together. It requires coordination and a specific party setup (one ranged, multiple melee damage dealers), but then it can be a real force multiplier. If the terms "teamwork" and "coordination" are not the first things that come to mind when thinking about your fellow players, give this a * pass.
Endless Ammunition: x At a +2 bonus, probably the single most overpriced property in the entire game, bar none. All it does is provide you with unlimited mundane arrows. One mundane arrow costs what, 0.05GP, and you can pack hundreds or thousands of them in cheap magical storage items. This property will set you back at least 16,000GP (and that completely ignores the fact that you'll want more than a single +1 Enhancement bonus on your bow). So you see, the break-even point for this to pay off is at least 320,000 arrows. Three-hundred and twenty thousand! What do you think, how many arrows does the average archer fire throughout her career from level 1 through 20? As a rough estimate, fewer than 10,000. You're overpaying by a factor of 30 if you get this one.
Furyborn: x Again, only including this to warn you about this trap. It's almost as bad as Wounding -- not quite as bad, but close. In this case, it never makes sense if your base Enhancement Bonus is greater than +1; it caps out at +5; after a full 5 hits you're just breaking even; and you can't even make AoOs against other creatures or you'll lose everything. So you'd have to hit the creature at least 8 or 10 times to make it worthwhile -- which invokes the same issue as with Wounding -- if your target is still fighting after ten hits from you, you are not. doing. your. job.
Invigorating: x Another of those godawful properties that just make you wonder. You are supposed to pay a +2 bonus in order to recover from Fatigue if you kill an opponent. Of course you immediately spot the problem: once you are fatigued, you are a lot less likely to score a kill anymore.
What's more, who is prone to becoming fatigued in combat? That's right, Barbarians. Which makes the bonus for not being fatigued worthless, because it doesn't stack with Rage.
[That's as far as I got so far]
My questions to you are:
1. Did I miss anything?
2. What other UE properties should I definitely include, good or bad?
3. Should I explain the math more clearly, calculate examples etc., or is it fine the way it is?
And of course any other constructive feedback is also welcome.
since I wasn't able to find a PF-specific guide to magic weapon properties, I figured I might as well write one myself. So far I have gone through the properties in CRB and APG, but kind of got in a rut when going through UE. Anyway, I figured I might present you with my findings so far, for feedback and improvements.
One problem I want to avoid is ending up giving everything the same "Circumstantial" two-star rating -- just like feats, some weapon properties make sense for certain builds and none whatsoever for everybody else. I try to cover that.
One particular pattern kinda crystallized and kept repeating itself: most weapon properties in PF simply aren't worth it. Too expensive, too situational, too marginal a benefit. Still, I want to publish this guide at least as a warning to new players not to fall for these traps. Therefore, when looking at my guide you will find that I added a fifth rating in extension to the usual colour-coded * - **** model: an "x", the Turd rating, for a special level of bad.
So without further ado, here is the link to the current version:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16GqCx4e8FEP_wkCkJd-EI-mF7umnImy238_nmPyr6So/edit?usp=sharing
For your convenience I am also pasting the content here inline, but for my convenience I am not going through the trouble of formatting and colour-coding it here:
Paradoxes of Defense
A Handbook about and Analysis of Magic Weapon Properties in the Pathfinder RPG.
Preface:
As a late convert from 3.5 to PF (about 3 years ago, I guess), I had to realize that magic weapon properties work differently in those systems. Some of the absolute best 3.5 properties do no longer exist altogether (e.g. Valorous, Discipline, Spell-Eating), others have been nerfed, and the general mechanics result in a complete paradigm shift, which we'll get to in a minute.
But do not worry, dear Reader, this guide is not at all centered on differences between 3.5 and PF. I will just make a couple of remarks here and there where it is relevant for the understanding of the evolution of a property. Otherwise, by and large, it is simply a standalone guide for Pathfinder players who want to use their characters' resources efficiently.
Ratings:
The guide follows the a rating system similar to the quasi-standard established for this system, in colour-codes and stars. With one notable addition:
**** : superb property, almost always an excellent choice.
*** : generally a good choice
** : usually very situational, probably not a pick for your primary weapon
* : typically a poor choice, too situational and/or overpriced
x : absolute turd. Admiral-Ackbar-sized trap. Avoid at all cost. Will make you weaker.
If found as a loot drop, sell immediately.
Of course, as opposed to other character options, equipment is a special case because you sometimes just _find_ it, and if you don't have a use for it, you can _sell_ it. Also, a party crafter can (given time) just create anything at half the list price, so even a super-situational weapon that you only need for a single quest can be superb, since you can simply sell it afterwards and be not a dime worse off.
Spoiler Alert: most properties introduced in post-APG sources will be of the crap variety.
First off, before we get to the alphabetical properties, let's explore some basics -- what makes a weapon property useful, and how much bang should you expect for your buck?
To discuss this question, let's first look at the simplest of staples, the plain old...
Enhancement Bonus **** : while in 3.5 a high fixed EB is considered unoptimized, this has changed in PF due to Greater Magic Weapon being less effective (due to CL pumping being very restricted). Also, sufficient Plusses now allow you to bypass most damage reductions. Therefore, the simple Plus has become the gold standard for weapon enhancements, and is better than about 90% of all other properties. In fact, a lot can be said for the strategy of not even thinking about other properties until your main weapon enhancement is at +5.
DPR Effect: every +1 Enhancement Bonus will improve your DPR by around 10-15%.
The other benchmark for evaluating the worth of a weapon property is the bonus damage die. +1d6 is worth +3.5 bonus damage per hit, and you can get this bonus in many different colours, so this is what other properties will be compared against.
The Math:
What is better -- a simple extra +1 Enhancement Bonus, or +1d6 damage? At first glance, the die might look vastly superior. In practice, it's far from straightforward.
First thing to remember is that a +1 counts for Attack and Damage. This may sound trivial, but a layman might be surprised how much that simple +1 adds up over time. It helps you not only your main attack better but also your iteratives, and it helps confirming threats, _and_ the bonus damage is multiplied on a crit. All things that a +1d6 won't do for you.
Conversely, the +1d6 simply will not always apply. If it's energy damage, some creatures will be immune or resistant to it. If it's aligned damage, it won't apply to the other alignments. And so on, you get the idea. A simple honest Plus will literally always count.
If you actually run the numbers vs regular, level-appropriate ACs, you will find that +1 EB and +1d6 are virtually identical in net damage output. So all those reasone are why I, personally, generally prefer the bigger Plus over an extra die. But still, the long and short of it that we need to keep in mind is the previously stated number: a +1 bonus should yield at least +3.5 damage per hit.
CRB Options:
+1 Properties:
Bane: **** Arguably, can range anywhere from * to **** depending, but if you can manage to get a Bane weapon keyed to the creature type you encounter most often, it is absolutely fantastic and by far the best bang for the buck.
Note that the increased Enhancement Bonus does count towards bypassing DR, so slapped onto a +4 weapon you can actually bypass DR/Epic.
Defending: this one varies a bit depending on the rule interpretation preferred at your table.
* if you follow the reading that you only get the AC bonus if you actually attack with the weapon. In that case, forget it.
*** if you only need to "wield" but not attack with it. In this case, slap it onto your Armour Spikes and have your party caster buff it with GMW every day -- cheap AC.
I am aware there is a FAQ advocating the red reading, but personally I don't care much for FAQs, as very often they seem to be just random and in direct contradiction to the RAW.
Distance: only for Ranged weapons.
* for projectile weapons (bows, crossbows) - experience teaches us that most battles will be initiated at <60' distance, so what do you want with 220ft range increment?
*** for thrown weapons - doubling a 10' or 20' range increment does make a difference.
Flaming: ** Not too bad a property at low levels, but there's simply too many fire-resistant monsters at higher CRs. In most cases, a simple + will do virtually the same for your DPR and be much more reliable.
Frost **
Shock **
same thing as Flaming
Ghost Touch: ** Unless you are playing a Ghostbusters-style campaign revolving around Incorporeals, you don't want this on your main weapon. May be worthwhile to keep around as backup weapon, at least until your party has other ways of dealing with ghosts.
Keen: I'm torn between giving this a ** and a *** because it's only very narrowly useful, but can be a lot of fun. If you're a Critfisher build, you'll have Improved Critical anyway so you don't need it. Generally, a simple Plus will do more for your average damage. That said, Keen may be the first property to consider once your weapon is enhanced to +5.
If you find a Keen weapon as a drop, there's nothing wrong with keeping it.
I could go on to write a whole essay about the viability of crits, but the long and short of it is: if you want to make critfishing worthwhile, invest in at least one feat that applies a rider effect to your crits. If you're just looking for raw damage on the other hand, it's probably a wash.
Ki Focus: Probably a good option for any class that uses Ki, but useless for everybody else.
Merciful: ** Of course, great for making prisoners, which then can be interacted with. Works on pretty much all living creatures. The downside is that any healing the enemy may possess becomes twice as effective.
All in all, unless you insist on playing a pacifist character, I would never slap this on a main weapon, but as a function of a Paladin's Divine Bond it is a useful tool in the arsenal.
Mighty Cleaving: * It sucks for the same reason that Cleave sucks in PF: it's exclusively the GM who decides when you are allowed to use it. If the GM doesn't put at least three monsters adjacent to each other (and in your reach), it will never proc.
Seeking: *** but YMMV. It's very good if you have to deal with concealment often, for instance if your GM is very particular about the lighting rules. In my experience, however, most tables don't bother with lighting or concealment very much.
Spell Storing: hard to assess because its utility will vary depending on your party's resources and creativity. You could technically use it to just deliver a damage spell, but it's
probably not worth it. Becomes a lot more interesting if you charge it up with hard debuffs. Note that it can only hold an up to 3rd level spell, and that there is the more effective Dispelling variant if packing Dispel Magic is all you really want from it.
Throwing: * Screw it. Why would you want to throw away your weapon?
And no, it's not even worth it in conjunction with Returning and Called. (q.v.)
Thundering: x Lousy extra damage, which only procs on a crit, and a rider that triggers a trivial save, which most enemies won't even care about even if they botch that save. The math says that the extra damage is worth an average of 0.45 points per hit. So that's less than half of a simple Plus and doesn't even improve your hit chance. Any questions?
Vicious: ** I know that many players like this property, so please bear with me: great bonus damage for the price, but comes at a cost. May be worth it as often as not. If taking that rebound damage means you kill the enemy and therefore don't have to weather their full attack, then fine. If the enemy would have gone down without the extra damage anyway, you've taken the rebound damage in vain. If you fail to take out the enemy, you're taking the rebound damage _and_ their attack.
Can easily move up to *** if you have reliable and plentiful (ideally unlimited) self-healing.
+2 Properties:
Word of warning: Generally Paizo seems to love slapping a +2 price tag on underwhelming properties that in most cases wouldn't even be worth a +1. Keep in mind that prices scale quadratically, and that just increasing your Enhancement bonus by +2 will give you roughly +20 to +30% DPR with no strings attached.
Anarchic / Axiomatic: ** Good in campaigns where you know you'll constantly be fighting Lawful / Chaotic enemies, respectively. But how often is that the case? In all other regimes, not worth it as a permanent property.
Disruption: * "Insta-gib vs Undead" sounds great at first glance, then you realize the Fort-Save DC is woefully low, so by the time you can afford this, any Undead that you can't one-round anyway will make a Save on a natural 2.
Flaming / Icy / Shocking Burst: * All of them are bad. The +1d10 on a Crit translates to an average +0.55 per Hit. So you can easily see how crappy it is compared to an extra +1.
Holy: *** I'm not disclosing state secrets when I say that in typical games, you'll fight Evil foes most of the time. No Evil creature has resistance to Holy damage - as opposed to Elemental damage types - and it aligns your weapon to overcome the DR/Good part of their damage reduction. However, keep in mind that so does a vanilla +5 weapon. So, Holy is good at lower levels when you can't yet afford a 50.000GP weapon -- and also at high levels where you already got your +5 and have another 48K to burn.
Unholy: * Bad in typical campaigns for the same reason that Holy is fine in these. Of course, the signs reverse when you play an Evil campaign against the forces of Good.
Wounding: x I'd attest the PF authors a certain sense of humour if only I could be sure that they even understand what they did there.
See, while Wounding was pretty good in 3.5 -- it did CON damage back then -- Paizo nerfed it into oblivion but didn't reduce the price. The way Bleed damage works this means you'd have to hit the opponent 14 times before it pulls even with, for instance, Holy. If an enemy survives 14 of your hits, you're doing it wrong.
+3 Properties:
Speed: ** I was about to make this at least green, but in reality its utility is largely dependent on the availability of Haste buffs in your party (since Speed doesn't stack with Haste). If you have a caster who provides Haste in most encounters anyway, this pretty expensive property is wasted.
Also keep in mind that Boots of Speed do the same thing for 10 rounds per day, which is probably all that you need, whenever you need it. And the boots will be at least 10K cheaper than the weapon property. Go figure.
So long story short, a Speed Weapon _can_ be excellent under very specific circumstances -- no suitable caster available and you need the boot slot for something else -- which is why I give this the "circumstantial" rating.
+4 Properties:
Brilliant Energy: * kind of "heavily armoured humanoid Bane". Not bad as such, just way overpriced. Keep in mind that a +1 Brilliant weapon already costs 50k.
Dancing: x Try as I might, I cannot figure out for the life of me under what regime spending >50k for a weapon that attacks on its own without using your Strength bonus for attack and damage sounds like a good idea. It was already pretty bad in 3.5, but for some reason it has been further nerfed in PF (the 4-round limits). Absolutely atrocious.
+5 Properties:
Vorpal: Again, an extremely divergent property -- either useless or fantastic depending on what you make of it. Insta-gibbing an enemy every 20th time is not worth the huge price hike, considering what else you might do with that kind of money. So on it's own, it's * .
This changes if you possess a way to generate 20s on demand. Then it immediately snaps to **** even if you can do that only once per day.
APG Options
+1 Properties:
Allying: **** I was about to give this a x turd rating because at first I couldn't figure out when this might be useful, but then I realized how you can game it to save a ton of money. First off, keep in mind that you are your own ally, so there's nothing to prevent you from wielding two weapons and using it on yourself.
Note that as with the Defending property, this hinges on not having to actually _attack_ with the Allying weapon. In other words, you want the reading where the operative word in "before using the weapon" is "before", not "using", and the limitation is there to prevent the players from transferring the bonus _after_ making attacks with it.
You could for instance have +5 Allying Armour Spikes and a +1 Holy Speed Glaive, for instance. You convert the bonus every turn (it's a Free Action, after all) and fight with a +5 Holy Speed Glaive. As an added bonus, if you ever get disarmed or outmaneuvered so you can't use your main weapon, you simply stop using Allying and still have a +5 weapon that you can't be disarmed of!
Price check for this example: 72K for the Spikes, 72K for the Glaive, total 144K as opposed to the 200K a +5 Holy Speed Glaive would cost, and a free 50K backup weapon thrown into the bargain. Pure beauty.
The break even point for this ability is 50.000GP, i.e. pulling off this stunt is only worth it if your desired effective weapon would cost more than 50k.
Conductive: this one obviously hinges on what kind of effects your class offers that you can channel through your weapon. Purely for damage, probably not so much, since it only works once per round. If however you could apply some rider effects like Stagger, Daze etc., that would be a different story. Long story short I can't give this a meaningful rating -- for most characters it will be red, but for the correct build it could be blue.
Corrosive: *** the best of the Energy damage types, because Acid is not a common resistance - at least not among the creatures you are likely to fight. Also, it breaks the regeneration of trolls, even types that are not susceptible to Fire.
(Corrosive Burst is still the same rubbish as the other types, though.)
Cunning: x Sure, you can invest a +1 price modifier and tons of skill ranks into knowledge skills in order to get a +2 bonus exclusively on threat confirmation rolls. OR you could use the same money to get another +1 to all Attack AND Confirmation rolls AND damage and not be bothered by bloody skills.
It would be great if the Knowledge skills gave you +2 to attack and damage or something, but as it is, it is utterly worthless.
Dueling: ** Super-situational: Offers decent bonuses in duel-like situations where you try to feint or disarm each other. How often does that happen, though? And how often will a simple Locked Gauntlet not suffice to do the job? The only saving grace is the fixed price modifier, which means you can slap it onto a high-level weapon without escalating further improvements down the road.
Furious: **** for Barbarians (or Bloodragers) obviously, worthless for everybody else.
Grayflame: here the usefulness depends on the class that uses it.
*** for Battle Clerics with decent CHA because you can afford it.
** for Paladins, because of the poor 2:1 Lay on Hands exchange rate. Not terrible, but usually you'll do better being a Vengeance Pala and buying another Smite instead.
Huntsman: ** I'm a bit torn on this one. While pretty flavourful, it's obviously only worthy of discussion if you can reliably track your targets. So I guess that very often, this won't be the case, because your enemies are ambushing _you_. May bog the game down if you insist to keep scouting and tracking. So all things considered it's probably more a fluff property.
Jurist: * Will not trigger very often. When do Inquisitors use their Judgment? When battle is joined. At that point you're usually past rolling Perception checks. The other benefit requires an enemy to target _you_ with a Combat Maneuver. How often that happens probably varies from GM to GM, but normally probably not very often.
Menacing: ** Another of those weird situational bonuses, but with it you might become your Rogue's best friend. Still, so situational and party-dependent that it's probably usually not worth the bother.
Transformative: * Would be fine if it could transform into _any_ weapon. But since you have to remain in the same handedness category, you're essentially paying 10,000 gold just to switch between damage types and pick up weapon properties like Brace, Reach etc. Or actually, the limitation "same general shape" may actually prevent the one useful application, i.e. switching between Greatsword and Polearm, for instance.
Is that worth it? I doubt it.
This concludes the CRB and APG options.
I have also started looking at all remaining options listed in Ultimate Equipment, but so far have only gotten to the midway point or so. However, the pattern we have started to see above is repeated: most options are just too situational, some require very specific builds to make them work, and others are just terrible. Only a very few, if any, are really and unquestionably _good_.
So for the time being, here are a handful of standouts, good and bad, of
Ultimate Equipment
Courageous: ** I just wanted to point out that this only only starts paying off once you have at least +4 Enhancement Bonus on your weapon, _and_ of course you need to have a steady source of Morale bonuses (such as being a Barbarian). If both conditions are met, then okay, give it a ***.
Cruel: **** Almost the only really good choice. Needs an Intimidation build to be useful, but doubling the debuff from -2 to -4 is really pretty stronk.
Designating (Lesser or Greater): *** or better if the players got their Teamwork act together. It requires coordination and a specific party setup (one ranged, multiple melee damage dealers), but then it can be a real force multiplier. If the terms "teamwork" and "coordination" are not the first things that come to mind when thinking about your fellow players, give this a * pass.
Endless Ammunition: x At a +2 bonus, probably the single most overpriced property in the entire game, bar none. All it does is provide you with unlimited mundane arrows. One mundane arrow costs what, 0.05GP, and you can pack hundreds or thousands of them in cheap magical storage items. This property will set you back at least 16,000GP (and that completely ignores the fact that you'll want more than a single +1 Enhancement bonus on your bow). So you see, the break-even point for this to pay off is at least 320,000 arrows. Three-hundred and twenty thousand! What do you think, how many arrows does the average archer fire throughout her career from level 1 through 20? As a rough estimate, fewer than 10,000. You're overpaying by a factor of 30 if you get this one.
Furyborn: x Again, only including this to warn you about this trap. It's almost as bad as Wounding -- not quite as bad, but close. In this case, it never makes sense if your base Enhancement Bonus is greater than +1; it caps out at +5; after a full 5 hits you're just breaking even; and you can't even make AoOs against other creatures or you'll lose everything. So you'd have to hit the creature at least 8 or 10 times to make it worthwhile -- which invokes the same issue as with Wounding -- if your target is still fighting after ten hits from you, you are not. doing. your. job.
Invigorating: x Another of those godawful properties that just make you wonder. You are supposed to pay a +2 bonus in order to recover from Fatigue if you kill an opponent. Of course you immediately spot the problem: once you are fatigued, you are a lot less likely to score a kill anymore.
What's more, who is prone to becoming fatigued in combat? That's right, Barbarians. Which makes the bonus for not being fatigued worthless, because it doesn't stack with Rage.
[That's as far as I got so far]
My questions to you are:
1. Did I miss anything?
2. What other UE properties should I definitely include, good or bad?
3. Should I explain the math more clearly, calculate examples etc., or is it fine the way it is?
And of course any other constructive feedback is also welcome.