In the past i experimented with a bane weapon focused against spellcasters, i'm aware one was published in a 3.5 splat book after my failed experiment, but i found it extremely powerful due to the huge number of creatures it targetted. A large portion of creatures above cr 8 and above seem to have some spellcasting ability. Having scrapped that plan i had a new idea...
Spellbane; gives +2 enhancement and an additional +2d6 damage against creatures who cast spells of a particular school, creatures who have in memory (prepared casters), are able to cast (spontaneous casters) or have on their sla list any spell of the specific school activate the enchantment as per the bane quality.
Req; feat, dispel magic Price; +1 bonus
Basicly i have a paladin who is using the undead scourge archtype who does not need an undead bane weapon as more damage is pointless, what he would like is a better way to fight the necromancer who made them, so a spellbane(necromancy) longsword seems like a useful addition to his armoury without being hugely overpowering. It could also be handy for pc's combating planar incursions with a conjuration focus, i also had a sneaky idea for an elite guard unit equipped with evocation bane subdual weapons to combat blast happy wizards in cities.
My worry is that i'm wrong and the monsters that got minced by my original foray into this kind of weapon will still be getting minced, i was thinking of adding in that the sword will only work in such a way on a target who has cast a spell of the school in the last 24hrs but it seems clunky already and the secondary method will be harder to track.
What do people think?
The original mage bane from the 3.5 era got errata'ed if I remember correctly to only affect those that actually cast spells or had incantations (like the warlock) -- but I'm not 100% certain of that.
I know that in RotRL there was something like what you are talking about that was specifically focused on a school of magic.
Well i'd like it to affect any actual spellcaster regardless of race, my big issue is the fact everytime i do it i seem to hand out a beat stick vs dragons, outsiders, aberitions and a few undead as well.
I suppose removing the sla from it would knock most of them out of the running other than old dragons casting spells and the rare outsiders who have racial casting abilities. Obviously would still work on liches and such as well as aberitions with class levels. Hmm, that might be the answer.
I don't know about Egoish, but that's exactly what I'm after (and I didn't know I was looking for it.)
Its like an 'Evil' bane weapon (if you house rule such in) - it works on a broad array of creatures.
No need to house rule such thing in. It's called holy.
There is no such thing as arcane spell like abilities.