Pimp My Sword [Weapon Mods]

[Maerok]

From daggers to fullblades, we offer only the cutting edge services for your killing edge. When gauging the price for a Cold Iron weapon with these weapon mods, do not include them into the double price; add their costs afterwards.

Bladecatchers
-Cut notches into the blade of your sword, allowing you to snag an offending weapon away at the cost of some stability.
-+2 to disarm attempts; -1 HP/inch thickness
-75 gp

Serrated
-Small teeth are grinded into the backside of your sword, making it cut differently.
-Sword also becomes a piercing weapon.
-75 gp

Reduced Weight
-Unessential parts of the sword are removed to make it lighter. Treat a one-handed weapon as a light weapon.
-A one-handed sword becomes a light weapon; loses half its weight; half its HP
-200 gp

Metal Plated
-Another metal may be coated on the blade, giving it that metal's property every so often. One metal coating per sword.
-Choose a metal, the blade is coated in a thin layer of it (a total of 1 inch thickness). This adds the HP rating of that metal and whenever you roll a natural odd on your attack roll, treat the sword's material as the covering metal (for DR penetration, special effects, etc.). The weight increases by half.
-Costs half of what it would cost to make the weapon out of the metal + 50 gp (ex: Thinaun coating for a Light weapon sword -> 5050 gp).

More to come...

[Bob_the_Mighty]

I've always liked the idea of having different ways to make weapons, and most of these are excellent ideas. You might want to do something to raise the price, though. Maybe take the total price of all properties added x the total amount of all properties added? You could also add something saying that weapons already owned can't be modified.

[Tallis]

-Choose a metal, the blade is coated in a thin layer of it (a total of 1 inch thickness).[/quote]

An inch of thickness is a lot to add to a blade, might want to change that.
All in all these are some interesting and pretty workable ideas.

[martyboy74]

Make the blade electroplated! ;D

[asromta]

Reduced Weight seems really strong, because a reduced Longsword still deals 1d8 damage, which is more than a short sword. And the 200 GP is not going to matter at higher levels.

[Fizban]

I'd say make metal plated just like alch silver: it gives a -1 damage penalty. Tradeoff is reduced cost for less damage.
You might want to look into the weapon/armor temlates in the DMGII. They do similar things. Ex: Feycraft amor and shilelds are lightweight, easy to cast in, but fragile. Feycraft weapons are one size smaller but they synergize with some good weapon enhancements. There's templates for fey craft, and one for just about evey alignment. There's some other nice cheap weapon enhancement in there too, such as the surge qualites. Finally, magic/extrordinary weapons for low-level characters.

Anyway. About the serrated...it wouldn't deal piercing unlless it had big spikes. The quality itself isn't over-powered, I just don't think it makes sense. I rememeber reading a different serrated quality once, giving a +1 to damage with a slashing weapon for 300gp. Not so original, but it was there.

[Legoman]

Reduced Weight seems really strong, because a reduced Longsword still deals 1d8 damage, which is more than a short sword. And the 200 GP is not going to matter at higher levels.

Neither is the 1 point average damage increase.

[asromta]

Then compare a +1 shortsword and a mwk reduced weight longsword. Equal effectiveness but the second is a lot cheaper.

[MagFlare]

Then compare a +1 shortsword and a mwk reduced weight longsword. Equal effectiveness but the second is a lot cheaper.

The +1 shortsword is already masterwork (it's got to be, if it has a +1 enhancement bonus), can penetrate damage reduction/magic, and never gets a 1 on its adjusted damage roll. It's still the more effective weapon.

I don't think the reduced weight modification is that unbalancing.

[Fizban]

Well, at 2nd level a char should have 900gp or so in gear. At that level, the +1 to avg damage is useful.
But I'm not arguing, minor weapon enhancements make weapons more fun, and being able to get a bonus on disarm without a crappy/exotic weapon is nice.
I really like the metal plated idea though. The only problem is the whole 1" thickness, but that's just an oversight as to how big swords are.

[MagFlare]

I don't think that the "metal plated" modification is supposed to add an entire inch of thickness to the weapon. Rather...

-Choose a metal, the blade is coated in a thin layer of it (a total of 1 inch thickness). This adds the HP rating of that metal

...I think that it's supposed to add an amount of hit points to the weapon equivalent to that of an inch of the metal. For example, an adamantine-coated weapon would gain an extra 40 hit points, while a weapon coated in alchemical silver would gain only 10 hit points.

[martyboy74]

I don't think that the "metal plated" modification is supposed to add an entire inch of thickness to the weapon. Rather...


...I think that it's supposed to add an amount of hit points to the weapon equivalent to that of an inch of the metal. For example, an adamantine-coated weapon would gain an extra 40 hit points, while a weapon coated in alchemical silver would gain only 10 hit points.

It would also probably give the weapon DR.

[Malik]

Reduced Weight
-Unessential parts of the sword are removed to make it lighter. Treat a one-handed weapon as a light weapon.
-A one-handed sword becomes a light weapon; loses half its weight; half its HP
-200 gp

Exactly what part of a sword is unessential?
If you are going to make it a bit more realistic it would do less damage because the weight isnt behind it, take a bastard sword for example, take away half the weight and basically all you have is an anorexic sword that has a greater tendency to break and not do as much damage.

What are you going to do next lighten a two handed weapon and make it so that it can be weilded in one hand.

Bladecatchers
-Cut notches into the blade of your sword, allowing you to snag an offending weapon away at the cost of some stability.
-+2 to disarm attempts; -1 HP/inch thickness
-75 gp

They'd have to be some extremely big notches if you are going to snag another weapon, so really you lose damage off your weapon becuase you are missing chunks of it.

Serrated
-Small teeth are grinded into the backside of your sword, making it cut differently.
-Sword also becomes a piercing weapon.
-75 gp

How does making something serrated make it piercing?

Metal Plated
-Another metal may be coated on the blade, giving it that metal's property every so often. One metal coating per sword.
-Choose a metal, the blade is coated in a thin layer of it (a total of 1 inch thickness). This adds the HP rating of that metal and whenever you roll a natural odd on your attack roll, treat the sword's material as the covering metal (for DR penetration, special effects, etc.). The weight increases by half.
-Costs half of what it would cost to make the weapon out of the metal + 50 gp (ex: Thinaun coating for a Light weapon sword -> 5050 gp).

Adding another inch of thickness all over would make the weapon much heavier, thus i think that weapons should be treated as one category larger (e.g. light weapon becomes one handed etc.)

[sandman09]

idea from a D&D noobie.....
perhaps...for a large sum...making the blade able to transform into other weapons/tools?