Do Sacred weapon and Warrior spirit stack?

Question is pretty much in the title, couldn't find the question when I googled it but I may have just not typed the question right.

Any opinions are helpful, thank you in advance.

Each day, he designates one such weapon and gains a number of points of spiritual energy equal to 1 + his weapon training bonus. While wielding this weapon, he can spend 1 point of spiritual energy to grant the weapon an enhancement bonus equal to his weapon training bonus. Enhancement bonuses gained by this advanced weapon training option stack with those of the weapon, to a maximum of +5.

The fighter can also imbue the weapon with any one weapon special ability with an equivalent enhancement bonus less than or equal to his maximum bonus by reducing the granted enhancement bonus by the amount of the equivalent enhancement bonus. The item must have an enhancement bonus of at least +1 (from the item itself or from warrior spirit) to gain a weapon special ability. In either case, these bonuses last for 1 minute.

At 4th level, the warpriest gains the ability to enhance one of his sacred weapons with divine power as a swift action. This power grants the weapon a +1 enhancement bonus. For every 4 levels beyond 4th, this bonus increases by 1 (to a maximum of +5 at 20th level). If the warpriest has more than one sacred weapon, he can enhance another on the following round by using another swift action. The warpriest can use this ability a number of rounds per day equal to his warpriest level, but these rounds need not be consecutive.

These bonuses stack with any existing bonuses the weapon might have, to a maximum of +5. The warpriest can enhance a weapon with any of the following weapon special abilities: brilliant energy, defending, disruption, flaming, frost, keen, and shock. In addition, if the warpriest is chaotic, he can add anarchic and vicious. If he is evil, he can add mighty cleaving and unholy. If he is good, he can add ghost touch and holy. If he is lawful, he can add axiomatic and merciful. If he is neutral (with no other alignment components), he can add spell storing and thundering. Adding any of these special abilities replaces an amount of bonus equal to the special ability’s base cost (see Table 15–9 on page 469 of the Core Rulebook). Duplicate abilities do not stack. The weapon must have at least a +1 enhancement bonus before any other special abilities can be added.

So looks like yes, they explicitly stack with any enhancement on the weapon. I suppose a stricter reading could say the warrior spirit would have to be added first for it to be an "existing bonus" on the weapon when sacred weapon is activated.

Because both of these abilities are class level dependent, I'm not seeing a huge issue. And they cost separate actions (swift for sacred weapon and standard for warrior spirit), so that will impact the action economy a bit.

As an additional: Magus arcane pool uses similar language to sacred weapon.

Something to be careful with here is that you can't exceed a total +10 effective enhancement bonus on a weapon, meaning early levels they might stack perfectly fine, but by late level or even as early as 10 (with a high base enchanted weapon) you could be capped out and wasting the ability of part of either or an entire feature.

The other thing to be careful about is that both have to have at least a +1 bonus before special abilities are used. On an existing magic item that is not a problem, but if you are using them on a non-magical weapon that could become a problem. They both have different durations so you might need to have both of them provide the +1 bonus or the whole thing could fall apart. If you used one of them to give the +1 bonus and the other just to add enchantments the second one would cease working if the +1 bonus ceased operating. This could also contribute to the wasted bonus AwesomeDog is warning about.

Because both of these abilities are class level dependent, I'm not seeing a huge issue. And they cost separate actions (swift for sacred weapon and standard for warrior spirit), so that will impact the action economy a bit.

Second part, yes. It will have action economy impacts. For the first part, I'm assuming the plan is a Molthuni Arsenal Chaplain. At character level 9 with gloves of dueling the MAC can have +7 to distribute just from Warrior Spirit and Sacred Weapon.

It works. Maybe a bit cheesy, and PFS put limits on the MAC and banned Warrior Spirit because of the power potential, but it works per the rules. As has been pointed out you can bump up against the +10 cap, but if you keep your weapon to a +1 that doesn't become an issue until level 16. Even if the campaign is going that far you can at that point bump up your base enchantment and then use only one ability or the other each fight.

Warrior spirit is a great ability, but taking a standard action to activate, prevents it from being cheesy in my opinion.

Warrior spirit is a great ability, but taking a standard action to activate, prevents it from being cheesy in my opinion.

"Cheesy" may not have been the best word. It is definitely out of scale, though. A warpriest's sacred weapon, a magus's arcane pool, even other standard action abilities like a paladin's divine bond all have one thing in common: the abilities that can be added to the weapon come from a fixed, limited list for that class. Warrior Spirit is "add any weapon ability." As long as the ability exists (and you know about it) you can have the perfect property for any enemy you face. That you can change for the next enemy.

The particular interaction of Warrior Spirit with the Molthuni Arsenal Chaplain is what might be viewed as cheesy. Because it's a way of "double-dipping" on enhancement bonuses. Especially since for MACs an Advanced Weapon Training is almost always their best choice at 9th level.

A warpriest's sacred weapon, a magus's arcane pool, even other standard action abilities like a paladin's divine bond all have one thing in common: the abilities that can be added to the weapon come from a fixed, limited list for that class. Warrior Spirit is "add any weapon ability."

It's not unique, though - Occultist's Transmutation School Implement can also add any enchantment.

Occultist usually isn't walking into melee with a weapon every combat, so its far more niche of a case. The bigger cheese comes from fighter essentially stealing brawler's main mechanic of "swapping feats per encounter" by the even later publishing of the Intrigue books (didn't even realize that was the source, wow another reason for me to hate the Ultimate Intrigue rules) and Training weapon special ability.

That's not to say that there aren't tons of more broken things you can do with the ability, but almost all of them come from other things that were published without people stopping to realize "oh wait, fighters can just have all the upsides of this without any of the opportunity cost downsides now".

Occultist usually isn't walking into melee with a weapon every combat, so its far more niche of a case. The bigger cheese comes from fighter essentially stealing brawler's main mechanic of "swapping feats per encounter" by the even later publishing of the Intrigue books (didn't even realize that was the source, wow another reason for me to hate the Ultimate Intrigue rules) and Training weapon special ability.

That's not to say that there aren't tons of more broken things you can do with the ability, but almost all of them come from other things that were published without people stopping to realize "oh wait, fighters can just have all the upsides of this without any of the opportunity cost downsides now".

The opportunity cost is "being a Fighter."

A pretty steep cost, for most...

Occultist usually isn't walking into melee with a weapon every combat

Hahaha! Oh man that's a good one.

Not only do Occultists have Legacy Weapon from the TRANSMUTATION IMPLEMENT, but the Implement also gives them essentially a free belt of STR (or DEX if you prefer) from the Resonant power (and one that scales extremely well). On top of that they also have the ability to be a full-BAB class with the TRAPPINGS OF THE WARRIOR Panoply Resonant Power, and they can also use the Base Power from Trappings (Martial Skill) to grant themselves a feat as a move action, thus actually stealing the Brawler's main schtick as well (albeit at a very expensive cost, 3 MF points is way to steep).

So a level 6 Occultist can start with Full BAB and a free +4 STR belt (that doesn't use the Belt slot), and can then grant their weapon an additional +2 or equivalent bonus (eg. +1 and Bane) as a Standard Action, and then give themself a feat on top of that as a Move Action.

The actual limitation on both Legacy Weapon and Warrior Spirit is that they both say you can imbue any ONE special property in place of enhancement bonuses. So you could have Flaming, or you could have Frost, but you can't have Flaming and Frost by spending +2 worth of enhancements. This stops you from doing what something like the Magus does and stacking useful buffs like Keen with other things - that and they still can't break the +10 limit on weapons, as you said.

AwesomenessDog wrote:

Occultist usually isn't walking into melee with a weapon every combat, so its far more niche of a case. The bigger cheese comes from fighter essentially stealing brawler's main mechanic of "swapping feats per encounter" by the even later publishing of the Intrigue books (didn't even realize that was the source, wow another reason for me to hate the Ultimate Intrigue rules) and Training weapon special ability.

That's not to say that there aren't tons of more broken things you can do with the ability, but almost all of them come from other things that were published without people stopping to realize "oh wait, fighters can just have all the upsides of this without any of the opportunity cost downsides now".

The opportunity cost is "being a Fighter."

A pretty steep cost, for most...

Lots of ways to steal fighter weapon training without actually being a fighter, let alone that if your gm is fine with letting the warrior spirit in, they probably won't object to the many other things that bring fighter (almost) up to power with a swashbuckler (though with none of the extra fun).

Belafon wrote:

A warpriest's sacred weapon, a magus's arcane pool, even other standard action abilities like a paladin's divine bond all have one thing in common: the abilities that can be added to the weapon come from a fixed, limited list for that class. Warrior Spirit is "add any weapon ability."

It's not unique, though - Occultist's Transmutation School Implement can also add any enchantment.

But the balance is a bit questionable when the Magus needs to "buy" new kinds of possible enhancements with his Arcana. The Magus is a great class for me, but it suffers a bit of backlash from "we have given too much awesome stuff to the Inquisitor and the Summoner."

But the balance is a bit questionable when the Magus needs to "buy" new kinds of possible enhancements with his Arcana. The Magus is a great class for me, but it suffers a bit of backlash from "we have given too much awesome stuff to the Inquisitor and the Summoner."

The Magus can do things that Warrior Spirit and Legacy Weapon can't.

A 17th level Magus can add +5 worth of enhancements to their weapon, can use that +5 enhancement on either actual enhancement bonuses or on equivalent weapon quality upgrades, and (unlike the other classes) can split that +5 bonus as they please between enhancements and weapon qualities. They have a more limited list to choose from, but can use any and all of the bonuses on whichever effect they wish. They could turn their +4 weapon into a +5 Speed, Keen, Flaming weapon, or into a +4 Shocking, Flaming Burst, Icy Burst weapon. With they right Arcana they could turn it into a +4 Flaming, Ghost Touch, Holy, Flaming, Keen weapon.

The Occultist and the Fighter (and the MAC Warpriest and whoever) can't do that, they can only choose ONE special quality to add to the weapon. a 17th level Fighter wielding a +4 weapon can turn it into a +5 Speed weapon, but they couldn't turn it into a +4 Speed Keen weapon, nor a +4 Flaming, Frost, Keen, Ghost Touch weapon (nor could they turn it into a +6 weapon or above as per the normal rules).

Now I'm not saying it isn't strong, and I'm not even saying it isn't stronger than the Magus ability, but there are opportunity costs to this. Also it costs a standarad action and an Advanced Weapon Training option for the Fighter (which is at least a feat), where the Magus gets it for free and uses a Swift action.

Warrior spirit is a great ability, but taking a standard action to activate, prevents it from being cheesy in my opinion.

Standard action, 1 minute duration. Yeah those are real limitations that prevents it from being overtuned as in many cases you'll choose between activating it and a full-attack.

I think the real issue with Warrior Spirit is how it interacts with Gloves of Dueling. Every other ability is tied to character level, while Warrior Spirit naively keys both uses/day and the effect to your weapon training bonus. Which is how you get these lv 9 players rushing Gloves of Dueling to get the effect they'd normally have at lv 17.

Speaking of, Gloves of Dueling are way overtuned. I don't see any item boosting your Favored Enemy by +4, or Wild Shape/Domain/Rage Powers by 8 effective levels.

Gloves of dueling weren’t overtuned before advanced weapon training. The fighter had been lagging behind other martials and that helped balance things back out. There was a point where any archetype that traded out weapon training was considered an improvement. So boosting the unwanted ability seemed reasonable.

Occultist vmc magus is pretty disgusting, just saying