| Strannik |
I'm not aware of anything that would raise that DC. I imagine a friendly GM might work something out to increase the DC by either increasing the cost of the enhancement (perhaps Disrupting could become a +3 enhancement?) or something similar. It would fall under custom magic item territory, which is completely GM regulated.
| DM_Blake |
This has always bothered me about the flaky and inconsistent magic item rules that began in 3.0 and never really got any better.
Long-winded analysis of game balance:
Item DCs are always below what a caster's DCs would be. At lower level, it's not too much of a big deal. A level 1 PC wizard casting Color Spray would probably have a save DC of 15 or 16, but if he used a wand of Color Spray the save DC would be 11. A significant difference but still fairly minor-ish.
But Disruption uses the spell Heal. Any cleric who is able to cast that spell must have a 16 Wisdom so the minimum save DC is 19 but realistically, any 11th level PC cleric would have a WIS of at least 22 and maybe 24 or even 26, so the save DC would be 22-24.
But a Disruption weapon has a DC of 14, that's 5 below the MINIMUM required to even cast the spell the ability is created from.
Yeah, I know, just because Heal is used to make the Disruption weapon doesn't mean it's using that exact spell when it hits an undead. Still, it is the basis, and even a basic +1 Disruption weapon is not likely to find its way into the hands of adventurers of a level much lower than 11 (when clerics can cast Heal), so it strikes me as almost useless to create a cool weapon idea with such a puny low save DC that it becomes nearly useless.
That said, there is a bigger consideration here:
Save or be utterly destroyed is a really powerful effect. Really powerful. Unlimited constant use of it is way way more powerful than trying to cast Heal on every undead you meet - someone with 3 iterative attacks gets 3 (or more with Haste) chances every round to utterly destroy undead. It's clear that the low DC is intended to balance the incredibly useful effect.
Given that, it might be a game-breaking idea to raise this DC. Consider the standard lich from the bestiary, with a Will save of 11. Put a Disruption weapon in the hands of a level 11 fighter, paladin, barbarian, etc., and throw Haste on him, and he will get 4 chances to disrupt the lich if all 4 attacks hit. Running some quick numbers, in just one round the fighter has about a 35% chance to disrupt the lich. Give just a +2 to the save DC and the chance rises to about 59%, and give +4 instead and the chance goes up to about 76%.
That's a pretty small change, really, since the DC is only 18, still way lower than an 11th level cleric casting Heal (probably DC 22-24) but the chance to disrupt more than doubled.
As you can see, this can get way out of hand very quickly.
Final consideration is how often characters of this level fight undead. It's already a questionable idea to pay 18k for a +1 Disruption mace at level 10+ because out of all the things PCs fight at that level and higher, undead are quite rare. This weapon would sit in the backpack, encounter after encounter, collecting dust. Expensive dust.
But that might not be true in a campaign with a heavier focus on undead.
In the first case, the weapon might be overpriced but in the second case, it might be underpriced.
All that leads to a conclusion: It's a bad idea to raise the DC, as pathetic as it is. If you do, it can have huge consequences. The RAW doesn't really give a way to do this, so you're already in houserule territory, but if you created a couple new weapon abilities, you might want them to work like this:
Improved Disruption: as Disruption except the save DC is 16 and it counts as a +3 enhancement.
Greater Disruption: as Disruption except the save DC is 18 and it counts as a +4 enhancement.
That could be a little steep, Maybe make the DCs 17 and 20 instead, but I would go no higher or your undead encounters will become extremely trivial, which might not be a problem if you hardly ever use undead at those levels.