For those of you that have been following a few of my posts prepping the World for my upcoming campaign, I have an idea that I want to implement with "sacred" weapons that plays off of the idea that any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. Nanites grant immortality to creatures and said weapons put off an EMP field that can disable said nanites enabling the party to "kill" with them when used. The issue with these weapons though, is they will keep them the entire arch, and I don't want them to A.) Be massively over powered at the beginning or B.) Severely underpowered at the end... So I came up with a possible solution.
Instead of just disabling the nanites, what if the weapons absorb them. Once certain amounts have been collected, they can be spent at a special forge to upgrade the weapon in various ways. Think, experience points in Minecraft. X amount can make the weapon +1, Y amount makes gives it a +1 enchantment, and so on. We don't use the suggested experience point values in the Beastiary, but I think I might use it as a basis for how many nanites said creature gives, some earned with each it, the bulk for the killing blow, some spread evenly so spell casters can get some too.
Ideas? Concerns?
Have you read Pathfinder Unchained? There's multiple rules for magic items that scale with level.
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The examples in unchained are a good starting point. You can also look at the two different loot alternative tables in unchained for an idea of a not overpowered level for weapon enhancement.
That being said, I really like your idea. Your problem is going to be that the martials are going to level their weapons up much faster than the casters or ranged unless the nanite absorption becomes like a cloud that diffuses into nearby receptacles (weapons in this case). The greedy players will also play carefully to get kill steals :P
Perhaps have a target number of CR appropriate creatures needing killed. To go from uncharged MW item to a +1 item, perhaps it needs 20 APL CR kills. APL-1 takes 2 kills to advance 1 on the meter. APL-2 takes 4. APL-3 and lower creatures don't power, as their nanites are negligible to the weapon. Opposite progression for APL+ creatures. 2 for 1 for APL+1, 4 for 1 for APL+2, and APL+3+ creatures give clouds of nanites that give maybe something interesting beyond the 4 (or 8!) for 1 to everybody. As you advance in +'s, the number of kills needed to advance + goes up.
As for having them depowered to start with, perhaps they lose 1+ equivalent per year not used to slay a nanite monster.
I have not even heard of the unchained source... Looks like I have some research to do. I'm loving the CR idea. It keeps numbers more manageable as XP can quickly get into the thousands and beyond. For my magic users, I may have them wear a totem of sorts that would channel it. Basically it would just be an interface to interact with the nanites as "magic" in this world is just a manipulation of them. The ancient words spoken are C++ and the somatic jeastures are just touching the proper buttons on an invisible HUD type keyboard.
As for making the users themselves magical, it just doesn't fit with the flavor of where I am trying to go. If that were the case, I think someone would have stumbled on this method before. These weapons have been dormant for thousands of years, probably prototypes from before the postmodern world apocalypse hit that made the world into what it is in my campaign.
Eventually the players will find out they are on Earth in the year 40XX... But I want it to be a slow dawning.
Do you mean level them with the character? If so, that is not quite as dynamic as I want it to be. Three of us take turns as DM because we each have different strengths and styles. Mine is lore and introducing new dynamics, MegaGames, ah-ha moments. I'll dig into Unchained tomorrow and I hope it won't become super complex, but I DO want some complexity with it.