Strongest Plasma Blade you can get?

Plasma Blade

So I like the plasma blade, but it seems awfully weak considering it’s inspiration, the lightsaber, could cut through plasma resistant metal doors, just by placing it on the door and slowly moving it to create a hole.

So I was wondering how you would go about making it stronger?

My first thought was making it at least a +1 Flaming Burst Shocking Burst weapon. That way it now deals 1d10 plasma (half electricity half fire) + 1d6 elctricity + 1d6 fire + at least 1 plasma (I’m guessing the enhancement bonus would deal plasma damage since that is the primary damage of the weapon) + strength mod as plasma (same as enhancement bonus reason) + (on a critical) 2d10 electricity + (on a critical) 2d10 fire.

Pretty good. But can we make it better?

So a hypothetical one-handed weapon that is: 1d10 + 1 + 1d6 + 1d6, critical 19-20/x3 (3d10+3+1d6 + 4d10 + 1d6) and targets Touch AC. And you want to juice it up more? This can only end well.

FWIW, I threw together a level 12 Fighter with a few basic TWF feats and two of these (I included the Effortless Dual Wielding AWT from Blood of the Beast to allow DWing these like they're light weapons. Not that I think it mattered, since he only missed on a 1 anyway). DPR against a CR 15 troll (AC30/TAC 7) was around 300, give or take, compared with its 220ish HP. A similar TWF Fighter with dual long swords had expected damage around 110.

Targeting Touch AC is monstrously strong. The only drawbacks are that you're pretty hosed against any monsters with Resistance (or Immunity) to Fire/Electric and that you're melee. I know you're probably inspired by Star Wars, and want a sweet Lightsaber, and that's understandable. But what you're describing would be pretty imbalanced in terms of weapons in the game. (If that's your goal and you can convince your GM, have at).

Hitting touch AC is no joke. The damage dice may look unimpressive, but the key here is that you're basically guaranteed to hit all but the most agile of targets, even with something like power attack. If you can find a wizard to enchant it with enhancement bonus, then that's even better.

As Cheburn points out, however, the biggest problem is that fire and lightning resistance can absolutely decimate your damage output. Enemies that have both get to apply both against your attack, which can leave you utterly impotent. Given the high cost of the weapon (12k gp before magical enhancements!) you're basically locked into this weapon and that can be a big problem.

I think you two are overestimating the touch ac. It costs 12k gp before magical enhancements, so you can’t even get the thing until part way inbetween 5th and 6th level, and it can only be used for 10 minutes a day. Now I don’t know how accurate this is, but I constantly hear about 15 minute adventuring days being the norm. Every time the plasma blade runs out, you have to spend 100 gp on a battery for it, or 500 gp worth of diamond dust (plus spellcasting fees if you get someone else to cast it) for a Recharge spell.

And the battery will only work once. So every single day that passes, you will spend an additional 100 gp. And for 5 minutes of the day, you won’t have a weapon unless you spend an additional half of a battery’s worth of charges every day. So 150 gp every day. Considering games can last years in universe, that is at least 54,750 gp per year. 109,500 gp per year for two plasma blades.

So for a 12th level character, unless they haven’t used their plasma blades their entire careers, they can’t afford two effective +5 enhancement bonus plasma blades, because they will already have spent enough money that WBL says they’d have to be level 13. And on top of that, they would have absolutely no other magic items at level 13.

And it only takes two good sunder attempts to throw all that money down the drain.

So in short, the cost to use the weapon rises every day that passes. I think it is balanced for this reason.

I think you two are overestimating the touch ac. It costs 12k gp before magical enhancements, so you can’t even get the thing until part way inbetween 5th and 6th level, and it can only be used for 10 minutes a day.

This item isn't really affordable at 5th or 6th level. This is the sort of thing you might start considering around 9th or 10th, and by those levels touch AC is upwards of 10 points lower than regular AC. That's huge. The cost of the batteries is annoying, but as far as cost overheads go it's comparable to what the gunslinger requires.

So 150 gp every day. Considering games can last years in universe, that is at least 54,750 gp per year. 109,500 gp per year for two plasma blades.

Safety tip: turn your lightsaber off when you aren’t using it.

Quote:

So 150 gp every day. Considering games can last years in universe, that is at least 54,750 gp per year. 109,500 gp per year for two plasma blades.

Safety tip: turn your lightsaber off when you aren’t using it.

That doesn’t stop the charge from being used. It just prevents more charges from being used. But considering you will be fighting those 15 minutes, since that is referring to just the time spent fighting, you will have to spend charges for those minutes.

Asmodeus' Advocate wrote:

Quote:

So 150 gp every day. Considering games can last years in universe, that is at least 54,750 gp per year. 109,500 gp per year for two plasma blades.

Safety tip: turn your lightsaber off when you aren’t using it.

That doesn’t stop the charge from being used. It just prevents more charges from being used. But considering you will be fighting most of those 15 minutes, you will have to spend charges for those minutes.

I have never heard of a game that lasted 2 years in universe and featured combat every day.

I think you two are overestimating the touch ac. It costs 12k gp before magical enhancements, so you can’t even get the thing until part way inbetween 5th and 6th level, and it can only be used for 10 minutes a day. Now I don’t know how accurate this is, but I constantly hear about 15 minute adventuring days being the norm. Every time the plasma blade runs out, you have to spend 100 gp on a battery for it, or 500 gp worth of diamond dust (plus spellcasting fees if you get someone else to cast it) for a Recharge spell.

Tech items come from Numeria. If you want to create one you need access to an artifact which needs to be provided with power. Most of those artifacts are located in facilities that also house a more rare artifact called a generator that produces power. And in Numeria any known sources of power or labs or any other tech is controlled by a group of mages known as the Technic League. If you don't belong to the league yourself they definitely feel like they have a legal right to take your item.

Tech items don't belong outside of Numeria except as oddities that work for a while and then cease functioning. Inside of a proper campaign you'll eventually come to control a generator and production facilities that will let you craft said plasma blade. And there will be a massive amount of cash around because you keep finding tech in your treasure.

Earlier than that you'll find quite a few batteries and major bosses usually have a super battery that can be used a limited number of times to recharge batteries. Before you get a generator its really expensive to recharge anything. But once you control a generator its free.

As for making a more powerful Plasma Blade, a few suggestions.
Attaching a Gravity Clip will increase the damage from 1d10 to 2d8 for 10 hits. Instead of loading up on using Elemental Burst enchants it would probably be better to just add dice of damage and make it crit more often. So:

+5 Corrosive Flaming Shocking Keen Construct Bane Plasma Blade with attached Gravity Clip does 1d10+5+1d6 fire+1d6 acid+ 1d6 electricity +2d6+2 vs Constructs, and you can change the base damage to 2d8 for 10 hits. The crit range improves from 19-20/x3 to 17-20/x3.

Bane: Construct is a bit specialized, but if you are adventuring in tech rich environments a huge number of your opponents are going to be constructs of one kind or another. Or you could kick out of bane and add freezing instead, or drop bane and keen to add Holy.

...and if you didn't want to use power you could make it a Shadowcraft Weapon. Sure your opponent could disbelieve it. But you have a black lightsaber. Feel your Chunni blood burn!

Reksew_Trebla wrote:

Asmodeus' Advocate wrote:

Quote:

So 150 gp every day. Considering games can last years in universe, that is at least 54,750 gp per year. 109,500 gp per year for two plasma blades.

Safety tip: turn your lightsaber off when you aren’t using it.

That doesn’t stop the charge from being used. It just prevents more charges from being used. But considering you will be fighting most of those 15 minutes, you will have to spend charges for those minutes.

I have never heard of a game that lasted 2 years in universe and featured combat every day.

Well to sum up what I had tried to say before I lost my post, nobody I know, nor anyone they know, have ever played in a game where you only spend 15 minutes in combat a day. I was just using that, because I think a lot of people on here think that is the norm, because I constantly see it referenced.

and that entire thing is besides the point of what Meirril was saying. In a campaign where this weapon would be relevant (Iron Gods, which I'm currently GMing for example) you get access to things like generators, so you can recharge your weapons (and your spent batteries, albeit with a chance for ruining them, 20% or so) that makes the cost for weapons like this far far less. You take weapons like this in a vacuum and you can extrapolate all sorts of things, but put them in context and they make far more sense. Give it some thought.

I had a long post written (granted it was long because I was making a rant about why I believe 15 minute adventuring days make no logical sense since from an in universe perspective, your characters are real people and would know that you can’t get significant results if you only spend 15 minutes a day on a task (I had it in a spoiler so it wouldn’t take up too much space)), but I accidently hit submit before I was done (I’m on mobile and my finger slipped) panicked, hit the X button on the url loading area, and then panicked that it might have gone through despite that, and checked by reloading the page.

It wasn’t there. And I lost my post.

Oof. Same thing happens to me fairly frequently; I feel your pain.

As far as fifteen minute adventuring days go, that’s just a phrase. In a really intense day, where you have to go from one drawn out fight to another, and have six encounters, you still won’t spend an entire fifteen minutes fighting for your life. You’d spend less than six. Fights between people using edged weapons, not to mention evocations, tend to be short and brutal.

That, and assuming that it takes ~ten fights to gain a level, and you’re using your lightsaber from 1-20, it’ll only cost you 2,000 gp. Just don’t turn the thing on when you don’t need to stab anyone with it.

and that entire thing is besides the point of what Meirril was saying. In a campaign where this weapon would be relevant (Iron Gods, which I'm currently GMing for example) you get access to things like generators, so you can recharge your weapons (and your spent batteries, albeit with a chance for ruining them, 20% or so) that makes the cost for weapons like this far far less. You take weapons like this in a vacuum and you can extrapolate all sorts of things, but put them in context and they make far more sense. Give it some thought.

I wasn’t responding to Meirril. I was responding to Dave Justus. I didn’t see Meirril’s post until you brought it up. And I don’t feel like arguing on this anymore, as I’m depressed right now, so I probably won’t respond to anymore posts.

If anyone’s worried, thanks, but don’t be. I’ll be fine, I just don’t want to continue this.

Well to sum up what I had tried to say before I lost my post, nobody I know, nor anyone they know, have ever played in a game where you only spend 15 minutes in combat a day. I was just using that, because I think a lot of people on here think that is the norm, because I constantly see it referenced.

And very few players I know spend 150 rounds (15 minutes * 10 rounds per minute) per day in combat or have 15+ encounters per day. It's more time than you think. Those with longer adventuring days typically spend a lot of it exploring or conversing, not in active combat.

Sorry to hear you're feeling depressed. Hope you feel better soon.

You could theoretically put impact on it since it's a one-handed weapon and not a light weapon. Increase the 1d10 base to 2d8.

The more combat encounters you fight per day, the more XP and treasure rewards you will receive. For instance, if you're a 10th level character on the medium XP track in a 4-person party, you'd need to fight 21 CR 10 combat encounters to level up. Even if you spent one battery per combat encounter, that would only add up to 2,100 gp over the course of the entire 10th level. A CR 10 combat encounter, on average, should give 5,450 gp in rewards, so over 21 encounters you'd expect 114,450 gp in rewards, or 28,612 per player. Going from 10th to 11th level we expect WBL to increase from 62,000 gp to 82,000 gp, or only 20,000 gp. This means you have 8,612 to cover expenses, which is more than sufficient to pay for the batteries.

At any level where you can actually afford the 12k gp up front cost for your weapon, the batteries are a perfectly affordable overhead expense.