Help determining the price of an enchantment?

[Melcar]

In the A&EG (page 120) there is a sword called The Sword of Graceful Strikes. Its a +3 short sword, which allows the wielder to use Dex modifier to damage rather than his/hers Str modifier. Furthermore, an unsuccessful disarm attempt made with the sword of graceful
strikes does not allow the target a chance to disarm the wielder.

I have tried to reverse engineer the price of the of the "graceful" enchantment (Dex to dam instead of Str), isolating it from the +3 enchantment. The closest I have been able to get is that the "graceful" part is priced at 36.000gp

But, that seems very expensive to me - and thus, I turn to this collective for help:

1) What is the price of the graceful enchant alone in A&EG?
2) What would be an appropriate price, based on similar enchants and the utility of it?


Thanks in advance!

[Saintheart]

(1) There isn't a price. Not every weapon in D&D can be broken out to a specific enchantment, some items - such as this magic item - were specific items made with certain unique effects, there isn't a Graceful enchantment.

(2) Pricing such a thing is going to vary hugely depending on how you want to use it. DEX to damage is one of the features that D&D 3.5 is pretty damn stingy about. It is almost without exception hidden away as a class feature or a feat, and even then it generally only applies to specific weapons, not to any weapon you wield. If you're looking to replicate the scarcity of this ability, then a high price maybe isn't such a bad thing.

Reason being that it's highly likely the writers really, really wanted to keep melee damage as the province of big melee bruiser, because they already suspected or knew that doing melee damage had to be his niche. I can sort of see the reasoning that making DEX-based fighters strong on damage had a chance of taking that niche away from high-STR melee (hence why rogues' sneak attack is gated behind conditions such as flatfooting or flanking.) And that's before you get to the fact that DEX to damage for ranged weapons makes the archer a far more reasonable choice for combat-based characters, because they can then do main whack of damage without having to close with the enemy.

On the other hand:

If you're asking as a DM, for one specific DEX-based character, for one campaign, then honestly I wouldn't have that big a problem with it. Even for archers or rogue-based combatants, DEX to damage still isn't really keeping up with the Fighter's Power Attack for sheer hitpoint loss. It might be a different story if the character is playing a Thri-Kreen with Graceful longswords on every arm, because there the approach is to just spam attacks and deal hitpoint damage under multiple strikes. The main thing DEX to damage is going to do for a DEX-based melee type is make him more single-ability dependent, which isn't that bad since these guys invariably aren't wearing heavy armour and rely on a massive DEX score for attack bonus (through Weapon Finesse). At this end, I'd charge at least about the notional price of an item that replicates a feat, so around the 10,000 gp mark or so.

But this is all rule of thumb. You can't do much but eyeball it. If I had to grant it as a weapon quality, I'd charge about a +1 and restrict its use down to melee weapons only, soz to all the archers out there.

EDIT: In fact, on a short Google search that's pretty much how Pathfinder does it: the Agile enchantment does essentially the same thing, DEX to damage on Finessable weapons only, and costs a +1. Yay me. Assuming you think Pathfinder cured any or most of the ills with D&D 3.5, which is debatable at least.

[RNightstalker]

The weapon is essentially a +6 weapon in base price, so I would consider at least the non-numerical bonuses to add up to +3, however you would break up the Dex modifier and the disarming properties. Personally, I would go +2 for the Dex to damage and +1 for the disarming.