The Magus Arcane Pool says that their weapon gains up to a +5 weapon enhancement, based on their level, which can be added to the weapon, stacking to a max of +5. Does this mean that the total enhancement of Arcane Pool + the weapon normal enhancement can only be +5 for a Magus, even though any non-Magus’ weapon enhancement limit is +10?
According to the rules:
A single weapon cannot have a modified bonus (enhancement bonus plus special ability bonus equivalents, including those from character abilities and spells) higher than +10.
The bolded part was errataed in, however, and it opens the door to a lot of questions. My group doesn't play with that limitation - a +10 weapon can still receive the full benefit of a divine bond or an arcane pool. However, per RAW, it can't. There's nothing that specifies what happens when you try to use a class ability to add more bonus to their weapon than +10. Does the class ability shut down some properties of the weapon? If so, who gets to choose which ones? Does the class ability just get weaker as your weapon gets stronger, so that if you have a +10 weapon your ability is useless? It was much simpler before.
That being said, the magus can have as strong a weapon as he wants - simply having the ability doesn't limit what he can use. However, it's up to the GM what happens when he does activate his arcane pool to enhance it. I think the consensus is that he takes whatever it's currently at and can only bring it up to a +10 max, meaning he might "waste" some of his bonus. But as I said above, there's other options.
The max +5 is just like all other weapons +5 is max for the enchantment to hit / damage bonus.
The rest of your bonuses go to abilities.
lets say a magus has a +1 Long sword and is level 5 with a arcane pool enchantment of +2.
This would mean he could :
one, make the weapon a +3/+3 weapon for the duration
two, make the weapon a +2/+2 flaming (or other +1 ability given on the magus list)
three, make the weapon a +1/+1 keen (or other +1) shock (or other +1)
four, make the weapon a +1/+1 flaming burst (or other +2)
that being said
when a weapon by its self has say a total of a +6 say a +5 flaming long sword. and you have a magus that can add a +5 to a weapon, you have another type of choice.
as stated by Bobson you can only have a total of +10, so is there a +1 waist going on here? Not really.
When choosing the abilities your weapon recieves you get a choice to deactiveate the weapons extra abilitites. using the flaming from above, you can turn it off in favor of a more effective enchantment, say if your target is immune to fire or has fire reduction. Or you just really want to make that sucker vorpral.
hope that helps and doesn't confuse you
When choosing the abilities your weapon recieves you get a choice to deactiveate the weapons extra abilitites. using the flaming from above, you can turn it off in favor of a more effective enchantment, say if your target is immune to fire or has fire reduction. Or you just really want to make that sucker vorpral.
Entirely a house rule. There is no official answer to this question that I've seen. If I missed one, feel free to link it.
It's just as valid to say that the bonus is wasted as that it suddenly makes your weapon stop having a power it always has...
Thanks for the help!