I'm trying to work out what a fair price for elemental enchantments over the base +1d6 damage. My first thought is that you'd just stack, for example, flaming twice or three times (or four or five), but by the time you get to +5d6, you're doing significantly more damage (most of which bypasses DR) than someone with a +5 flaming weapon, even taking in to account the fewer hits. Now, that doesn't take in to account the relative rarity of various DRs and energy resistances, or a number of other things.
So, my question is, theorycrafting aside, would you (your current, most recent or just favorite martial character) pay 32310 gp for a +1 flaming flaming sword? (Or a frost frost, or whatever.) Similarly, what would kind of extra elemental damage would you expect from a +5 sword with another +5 of elemental enchantements? (Would you be satisfied with 3d6 extra damage for 200,310 gp? 4d6?)
While I'm interested in what people feel such things are worth, I'm also interested in doing some math, so theorycrafters are welcome too (but it might help if you mentioned what is and isn't theorycrafting).
Edit: Oh yeah. If there are any official weapons that do more than +1d6 elemental damage (on every hit), that'd help quite a bit.
What about a +1 flaming, frost, acidic, shock weapon? That would do 4d6 elemental damage and almost certainly at least 3d6 of that to anything. Compare to a +1 flaming, flaming, flaming, flaming weapon that would cost the same exact price and do the same exact 4d6 elemental damage, but would be nearly useless against a red dragon.
I'm not sure I would change the price at all.
Flaming flaming flaming is more powerful than flaming frost shock, due to the way resistances work. Several creatures have low-level resistances to a variety of elements, but few have true immunity to an element. Yes, there are a select few, such as a red dragon or a fire elemental, but in general you are much more likely to find resistance than immunity. Flaming flaming flaming can punch through resistances, and therefore is more powerful.
Wow. That was quick.
The +1 flaming frost shock acid weapon is a good comparison. As you say, you'd usually expect to get about 3d6 extra damage out of it against just about anything. On the other hand, you probably wouldn't use a +1 flaming flaming flaming flaming weapon against something you know is going to be immune (time to switch to your +1 frost frost backup bow) whereas you would probably continue to use the multi-element weapon even if you knew something would resist part of it.
I should mention, that's mostly me being devil's advocate. In my home games I would probably just allow them to stack, but I'm trying to come up with something more balanced for a wide range of playstyles (i.e. something potentially publishable).
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Wouldn't each d6 be effected by resistances. You would not add up each flaming d6 then apply it once. They are separate instances. I think it would be easier to ignore that though.
The multi element idea will be a pain against a lot of monsters, but being a d6 at least a lot of the time it won't matter, once you pass the resist 5s.
Edit: I guess the per attack wording could be read differently
I hate flaming frost acid shock weapons... They are such... nonsensical...
Wouldn't each d6 be effected by resistances. You would not add up each flaming d6 then apply it once. They are separate instances. I think it would be easier to ignore that though.
The multi element idea will be a pain against a lot of monsters, but being a d6 at least a lot of the time it won't matter, once you pass the resist 5s.
Edit: I guess the per attack wording could be read differently
There's no reason each die of fire damage should have to deal with resistances individually. After all, you get to add your strength bonus, sneak attack and all other physical damage together to overcome DR. The only reason a flaming frost weapon would have to apply resistance multiple times is because each applies a separate resistance.
Also, while I keep calling it flaming flaming for simplicity, I'm really thinking of it more as improved flaming, a single property that adds 2d6 fire damage.
The point about punching through resistances is a good one, and compared to everything else, I think it'd be most fair to add a +1 tax to anything beyond the first die. So +2d6 is a +3, +3d6 is a +4 and +4d6 is a +5. Would you buy such weapons for any of your characters?
Now to figure out how to price a flaming burst flaming burst weapon. ;)
Finally a way to get my temple sword closer to a lightsaber. (brilliant energy is a little expensive for PFS and doesn't effect constructs etc, which a lightsaber should)
I hate flaming frost acid shock weapons... They are such... nonsensical...
And the time it takes reporting the breakdown of quantity of damage by type to to your GM - since by the time you had it so many creatures have resistance - would drive you both mad, possibly causes a sundering/vanishing/curse to occur upon the weapon.
magimaster I think the +1 tax is a good way to go and you can do it the same for the burst, it will increase the base damage and you can do that every 2 dice of damage adds 1 d10 to the bursts crit
So flaming burst x2 would be +4 and x3 would be +5, and both would do 2d10 on a crit? (While abilities in total can exceed +5, there are no single +6 or better abilities, and I'd consider triple flaming burst to be one ability.)
Can you get a 15-20/x4 with auto-confirm? If you could, flaming burst would give you a bonus 4.125 average damage per hit. An extra die would raise that to 5.5. An extra 2 dice would raise it to 6.875. An extra d6 on every hit would add around 3 extra damage (depending on hit rate), so for simplicity, I might just say for +1 over the base elemental, burst adds a d10 for each d6.
Would a flaming x3 burst that does 3d6 fire damage on each hit plus 3d10 on a crit (4d10 for a x3 weapon or 5d10 for an x4 weapon) be too much for a +5 property?