I've looked through the new pathfinder PDF and am pretty impressed. Only I noticed that magical item section has not reference to magical ammo specifically. Im Not sure if this has been talked about already, pretty new to the whole Pathfinder thing.
Its widely accepted that enchanting the ranged weapon itself is superior to enchanting the ammo. Which has always bugged me a little, although not sure why... just one of those things that nag at you. It was something I always ment to house rule in a change for, just never got around to doing it until this weekend. I just started a new campaign and it came up will characters where getting rolled up.
One of my long term players is a huge fan of a PSP game "Jeanne D'arc", and one of her favorite characters is an elven archer who uses different magical arrow attacks. So she put together a rather interesting Ranger, and took the Craft Magical Arms and Armor. So im changing some rules for her, and using her character to test them out in game.
Requiring that magical ammo must be first enchanted to be +1 before they can have any other special ability placed on them just seems to raise thier cost beyond functionality. To get flaming arrows, you have to make +1 Arrows of Flaming. Which is just redundant considering most enchant thier bows with Attack Bonuses, and these don't stack with the magical arrow bonus.
Im going to be housing ruling Magical Ammo of all shapes are the exception when enchanting weapons, and they dont require a +1 bonus before other special abilities can be added. And I would think that this would be something Pathfinder could look into fixing or altering. Perhaps even coming up with something better, then my idea.
Im also removing the mandatory "destroyed on successful hit" rule, but still keeping the 50% break chance. Again, to increase the functionality of magical ammo.
One thing you could do is rule that magical ammunition follow the same rules as creating wands.
Crazy? Hear me out.
Magical ammunition: 50 items which, when used, become mundane.
Wand: 50 charges which, when used, become lost.
So, you could create a set of 50 arrows of some generic 1st level fire spell to create fire arrows, or maybe shocking grasp to create lightning arrows, or whatever. Or, you could just the magic weapon spell to create generic +1 arrows if you want.
One thing you could do is rule that magical ammunition follow the same rules as creating wands.
Crazy? Hear me out.
Magical ammunition: 50 items which, when used, become mundane.
Wand: 50 charges which, when used, become lost.So, you could create a set of 50 arrows of some generic 1st level fire spell to create fire arrows, or maybe shocking grasp to create lightning arrows, or whatever. Or, you could just the magic weapon spell to create generic +1 arrows if you want.
Thats a very interesting idea. To late for my campaign as it already started, but its defently something worth looking into. I never would have looked at arrows as wand charges.
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Its widely accepted that enchanting the ranged weapon itself is superior to enchanting the ammo. Which has always bugged me a little, although not sure why... just one of those things that nag at you.
Hi, Kong. Nice topic.
I haven't spent a lot of time on boards noodling over bows versus arrows, but I've played a few archery-centric characters.
I've been happiest enchanting my character's bow with universally useful enchantments (enhancement bonuses, holy, maybe seeking), and buying enchanted arrows with specific purposes (bane against individual target types, arrows of slaying, ghost touch, keen and bursting...)
This is because enchanting 50 arrows to be +1 and flaming or bane costs 8350 gp, while adding another +1-equivalent enchantment to the +2 holy bow takes it from +4 (32,000) to +5 (50,000), over twice as much. And stacking different bane properties on top of one other is pointless.
Did your player consider the Arcane Archer prestige class?
One thing you could do is rule that magical ammunition follow the same rules as creating wands.
You could create a set of 50 arrows of some generic 1st level fire spell to create fire arrows, or maybe shocking grasp to create lightning arrows, or whatever. Or, you could just the magic weapon spell to create generic +1 arrows if you want.
Oh, you want more than that. Right now, the Arcane Archer is the only character who can easily use arrows as the vector for spells. And we probably want to keep it that way, to let that prestige class shine.
In D&D 3.5, if you want 50 "fire arrows", they need to be +1 and flaming. That costs 8350 gp. A burning hands wand costs only 750 gp.
Wands have other limitations. They're spell trigger items, and the 50 charges of a wand have to be used up one at a time (barring outre feats from Complete Splatbooks). Meanwhile, those 50 fire arrows can be distributed to 10 militamen with no magical talents, who can inflict serious damage in a few seconds.
Your mileage varies. I'm not saying that Kong's house rule is bad, or that your rule doesn't make magic arrows more attractive. But I think 50 ray of enfeeblement arrows, or 50 silver bane: evil outsiders arrows ought to cost more than 750 or 2350 gp. At least, they do in my campaign.
Favorite archery quotation: "You can run, but that just means you'll die tired."
Im going to be housing ruling Magical Ammo of all shapes are the exception when enchanting weapons, and they dont require a +1 bonus before other special abilities can be added. And I would think that this would be something Pathfinder could look into fixing or altering. Perhaps even coming up with something better, then my idea.
I like this. In some ways it is similar to what artificers in Eberron do with their weapon augmentation abilities, but applied just to ammo (and permanent in this case).
50 +1 Arrows would be 2350 gp.
50 Masterwork Arrows and a Wand of Magic Weapon would be 1,100 gp.
So, as a very rough estimate, you could make magical amunition be Enchantment Bonus^2 * 1000gp, and magical missile weapons Enchantment Bonus^2 * 2000 gp.
A +1 Shortbow probably would be a better deal than +1 arrows, but beyond that arrows would always be a lot cheaper. And getting 50 +1 flaming arrows for 2350 gp would be much cheaper than getting a +1 flaming bow for 8,350, and chances are you want +1 frost arrows the very next adventure.
The super-cost of ammunition stems from 3.0 rules when the bonuses from bow and arrow stacked.
Now, they do not. As such, the cost of arrows needs to be seriously toned down.
Now this is Not where I go spouting off mathematical formulae. Math is not, and never will be, my strongsuit. However, given the cost of a bow it doesn't make much sense that a +1 flaming bow costs as much as 50 +1 flaming arrows (from a balance perspective).
What I would instead suggest is that instead of magic arrows- you have magic quivers. (or magic quiver compartments?.. hmm).. each of which could be enchanted just like a weapon and any arrow drawn from it and shot within 1 round would have the enchantment bestowed upon it.
With this rule, I would also remove the +1 requirement from the quiver/arrow but would stipulate that any such arrow to be enchanted would have to be masterwork.
In case that isn't clear, I will present an example.
A Flaming(+1) Holy (+2) quiver compartment would cost the equivalent to craft as a +3 magic weapon: 18,000gp.
If the player wanted the spend the gold on an arrow or two of a specific type instead, then I would also allow that.
(don't really Need a quiver of orc bane usually, and so on).
This would keep them in rough balance with the dual wielders in terms of cost without going to the current extreme of paupering the poor archers just for a little extra damage.
-S
Just let her craft less than 50 arrows, like ten +1 flaming arrows. Now the cost for the +1 is not so overwhelming anymore, even though it stays the same in a way. But it is possible to craft more different arrows.