So say you are a Harrower and you have the Deadly Dealer feat. You enchant a deck of cards with +2 magic for 8000gp.
Then you run through all of your cards and you have to buy a new deck ... Is it right that you have to pay another 8000gp to enchant it again? Meanwhile the ranger with the +2 longbow just has to buy regular ammunition and his attacks are still considered magical and +2.
Am I missing something?
Actually since you consider the decks to be ammunition you would be paying 8740GP for a +2 Harrow Deck (or ~161 GP, 8 SP, and 2cp per card at 54 cards.[This includes the 100 GP for the base deck])
So yeah, not worth it unless you are a Witch with the Cartomancer Archetype.
Unfortunately yes that is who it works. Like a lot of things in pathfinder, being cool has huge opportunity cost over being bland. It is better in every way imaginable to use a bow. In some ways it should be since one is actually a weapon. Feats like Deadly Dealer are supposed to impose feat pentalities that allow you to do unique things decently for an increased cost. Often these feats fail do to the games assumption that magic items are given at certain levels.
There is no way to prevent cards from being destroyed so enchanting them is a foolish goal. However that being said there are ways to have them be pretty nice.
Traits-
Surprise weapons- gain +2 to hit with all the cards
Rough and Ready- gain +1 to hit with all the cards, as well as the ability to ignore the pentaly(this is pretty much a free Throw Anything feat if you say you are a gambler)
If you want improved Improvised Weapon Mastery to make the cards do a d6 with Deadly Dealer, then pick Surprise Weapons for a huge +2 boost to hit. If you don't want to invest two feats into it then take Rough and Ready for a free feat and a +1 to hit. They are both trait bonuses so they do not stack.
Arcane strike will let you bypass a bit of DR, and saving the cash you would be using to enchant weapons will allow you some pretty cool items instead.
You can then go:
-Bard(arcane duelist, getting arcane strike for free, and the ability to use spells when DR is a problem.
-Monk(of the Empty Hand), this lets you flurry with the cards, plus gain additional dr and enchantment bonus for free with them(and all improvised weapons) as you level.
-Rogue, take the talent that gives you minor magic to qualify, and focus on using the cards to sneak attack, relying on the large amount of SA damage to punch throw DR and improve your damage (also see Slayer and Investigator, for more combat or skill focus respectively)
I just realized that you didn't ask for this text dump, and that I answered you with the first sentence...but I don't want to have written this just to delete it.
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Don't do it that way!!!
Enchant the deck qua the deck as a weapon with endless ammunition. Cards thrown as weapon are destroyed, but the deck doesn't actually lose cards.
Presto!
Unfortunately the endless ammunition enchant only works on bows and crossbows. The abundant ammunition (UC) spell is what you need. For the magus card caster take the wand wielder arcana and umd a wand of it. It's first level so only 750 for 50 minutes of combat, much cheaper than buying new decks. your first round every fight is to spell combat cast abundant ammunition and throw a card.
