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The problem with rules lawyers is that they tend to throw all common sense out the window. The idea that a black blade is not a magical item but a class feature is ridiculous. It's obviously a magical item, and one should be able to enchant it like any other magical item. I think it makes perfect sense that it could be an heirloom weapon, or found in a pile of treasure, or just appears to the character at level 3.
Ultimatley unless the devs say something, this is totally up to your DM. My 2 cents is as follows.
Being that I play a bladebound now, I would love to be able to improve my weapon, but I fully understand not allowing it too.
Ego score and power balancing become tricky. Determining the cost of improving (if your weapon is still going to continue leveling with you from its adjusted power level) is also an issue.
I don't see why there would be an issue with a player "swaping out" enchantment bonus for an equivalentit weapon property. ie: instead of my black blade being +2 could I make it +1 agile, or +1 spellstoring, or even +1 orc bane. Some of those options may actually fit great from an RP stand point, and are not going to lopside weapon power. Why should a dex character be forced into the same cookie cutter scimitar dervish build? If my weapons secret mission is to obliterate an entire group of beings, wouldn't the bane property seem fitting?
As far as when the player recieves his weapon....(whether its an heirloom weapon, or a weapon the character suddenly recieves at level 3).. who cares!? As long as the blackblades powers dont "manifest" until the appropriate time (level 3), then what difference does it really make?
The Black Blade can’t be changed from the stats listed in the progression chart. The Black Blade’s charted enhancement bonus can’t be reallocated to special abilities like flaming or keen. Eventually the weapon will have a +5 enhancement bonus and the Arcane Pool will make it equivalent to a +10 weapon.
What this means is that at level 3-4 the Black Blade has a +1 enhancement bonus, and you can use Arcane Pool to increase it to a +2 weapon. At level 5-6 the weapon is +2 and you have a +2 bonus from your Arcane Pool to build a +4 equivalent weapon. This means you could have a +4 weapon, a +3 Keen weapon, or a +2 Flaming Burst weapon. You could not make the weapon a +1 Keen Flaming Burst weapon, since you couldn’t use the weapon’s enhancement bonus to add special abilites.
Thank you SO MUCH for explaining this. I was wondering how the black blade worked and if it had any inherent enchantments/adds for damaage and to hit or if everything had to come from the magus' arcane pool.
The lack of it being made of special material isn’t a major setback. At level 5 you can make it a +4 weapon with Arcane Pool. At this point it bypasses Silver, Cold Iron and Adamantine DR. At 9th level you could make the Black Blade a +5 weapon which bypasses Alignment based DR.
I beg your pardon, but where is this rule (that a+4/+5 weapon can bypass material-based or alignment based-DR) listed? I must have blinked and missed it.
Every time I see this thread I FAQ it. I just put it on the ask james jacobs thread to see what he says. So here is hoping the developer will tell everyone.
ok James jacobs replyed on the ask james jacobs thread and he says, "Nope. Unless your GM allows it." Telling me the answer is no unless your gm house rules its ok. So for pfs it really is no.
Von, would you be so kind as to provide a link to his post, please?
I was just about to post to say that I think enchanting a black blade is not only perfectly fine, but allowed. Oh well.
im not quite sure how to link it. esplain real fast and i will.
[url=http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz2u4o&page=355?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here]
did this work
My issue with Enchanting a Blackblade is that At level 3, the blade is a +1 weapon, so enchanting it would cost 6000gp?
What about if it was a Lv 13 blackblade? He's got a +4 bonus on his weapon, so adding a property costs how much? 6000, or is it 18,000 to go to a +5 enchantment? The question is how does it actually work at the different levels?
Since the Blackblade provides an Enhancement bonus, and they don't stack, and usually if there is an enhancement bonus, the strongest bonus usually overshadows the other bonuses. So the Blackblade's bonus could cancle out any other lower enhancements, not stack with them. So at level 9, the +3 enhancement bonus from the Blackblade class-feature would cancel out a +1 agile enhancement.
So Occam's razor, simplest explanation is that you can't enchant the Blackblade. It gives you a free unbreakable enchanted weapon that scales with level. Balance-wise it's a HUGE boon. and letting you further enchant it is way stronger than any other option for a magus. Loose one arcana with the ability to get a +10 weapon for 50,000 (150,000 less than it should cost).
it's twards the bottom
The lack of it being made of special material isn’t a major setback. At level 5 you can make it a +4 weapon with Arcane Pool. At this point it bypasses Silver, Cold Iron and Adamantine DR. At 9th level you could make the Black Blade a +5 weapon which bypasses Alignment based DR.I beg your pardon, but where is this rule (that a+4/+5 weapon can bypass material-based or alignment based-DR) listed? I must have blinked and missed it.
Thanks for the link.
I feel like people are missing something. The Black Blade is an intelligent weapon that refuses to work as anything beyond masterwork for anyone except it's magus. It seems to me that, following the conventions for magic weapons, it's a little silly to think of the Black Blade as actually gaining in power with the magus; rather, it seems more like every Black Blade is an incredibly powerful magic item that requires it's wielder to be at a particular level to wield portions of its power. In other words, it's like the Black Blade only allows its magus to access certain amounts of it's power based on the magus's level.
With that in mind, in my own games I would certainly allow a Bladebound magus to further enchant their Black Blade... but based on it's abilities at its full power. Therefore, one could not add a straight enhancement bonus (since the weapon ends up as a +5), but could add special weapon properties such as flaming by calculating the weapon's existing bonus as +5. So regardless of the magus's level, adding flaming to an otherwise un-enhanced Black Blade would cost 22,000gp (the difference between a +5 and an effective +6 weapon).
Of course, one could also argue that an epic level magus's Black Blade would continue getting enhancement bonuses (becoming a +6 weapon at level 21) since it is a regular progression, so it has potentially unlimited power... but as we've seen, one can make a lot of arguments about Black Blades :P
Just my two cents on the matter.
