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in AP, I just remove them, but I do not adjust the Mooks stats. Every now and again, I may adjust the what it is made out of if i feel some wealth needs to be added. like a level 10 rouge mook in a chain shirt, I may change it to mithril or change a weapon to cold iron ect.I'm curious from the GM aspect on how does one handle the influx of +1 weapons/armor/rings/cloaks and +2 enhancement items that baddies usually have, particularly mooks. Do you just remove these items and adjust the mook based on ABP? Seems like more work for the GM when running a AP.
this is also how I run it. Sure, with the items gone the stats don't add up but that doesn't matter much to me. the listed stats are where they should be and the players won't see the stat block anyway! Sometimes I oke fun at this and they will find a +3 battleaxe that melts away as they pick it up. haha
With the items gone but leaving the stats the same, essentially it's like the Mooks also have an inherent automatic bonus progression themselves.
In all seriousness, I haven't come across a 10th-level NPC that did not have a stat-enhancing, save-increasing, or AC-bumping item. Being able to put all of that aside gives me room to hand out more unique and memorable magic items.
With Mr. Seifter's alternative system, how do you price out an item that will only be used to provide enhancement bonuses? Or do only items with special abilities also have a capacity?
The latter; if you attune to a nonmagical weapon, it's free for any amount of attunement (minus the normal price for the nonmagical weapon, of course).
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It has been working very well in my Sunday morning game. I use the stats in the module, and the PCs just find masterwork gear on the enemies. Then I can add whatever unique items I want.
Why provide masterwork weapons/armors instead of mundane versions? Does it help you keep your group at 50% of "Character Wealth by Level"?
I've been using the ABP rules for about a year now, with the blog post's more nuanced rules. It takes a bit to explain, but once you wrap your mind around the concept it's just a matter of finding where you are on the chart.
Reaction has been generally positive? The players like it because it means they don't need to juggle the various items they *have* to have (No one gets a profound thrill out of buying a Cloak of Resistance, but everyone has to do it). So instead they've been turning their mental energies towards higher-capacity weapons and metamagic rods. Meanwhile, I like it because it streamlines NPC creation, and reduces PC stat variability a little bit (meaning that one monster can threaten but not overwhelm the whole party, rather than challenging only part of it).
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So if I understand the standard ABP, a 9th level fighter using a flaming longsword would only get a +1 from their weapon attunement bonus? And when using a shocking bane weapon, the fighter wouldn't receive any attunement bonus. But if they are using an adaptive longbow, since that enchantment doesn't cost a "+1", the same fighter would receive the normal +2 attunement bonus.
And the cost of these items (minus the item + masterwork costs) would be 2,000 gp for the flaming longsword and 8,000 gp for the shocking bane longsword?
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To further this inquiry, how would a weapon like flame tongue work with the 9th level fighter? Would the weapon then become +0 flaming burst longsword (+fiery ray ability)?
What if a 14th level fighter used flame tongue with their +3 weapon attunement bonus? +1 flaming burst longsword (+fiery ray ability)?
@ckdragons
I always thought the attunement's enhancement bonus was in addition to whatever special qualities (flaming, bane, etc) the weapon already had. So your 9th level fighter using a flaming longsword would have a +2 flaming longsword.
<at dude with N name with gold dragon avatar>
That is what I thought too seems simpler to me.
No, with the base system special abilities use up your attunement. If you want to have the flaming property for example you must spend +1 of your attunement to activate it. Its actually a pretty bad setup for martials which is why the alternate chart system is much better.Alternate chart system?
Bumping for this
Did someone post a Link to the alternate system Can't seem to find it?
Wasn't showing up for me for some reason thanks for reposting.
Okay so I thought I had a handle on all this but I got myself confused. I'm gonna bump this and try to simplify this as much as I can for my question.
So if I had a +1 Longsword under attunement I'd be getting +1 to my attack and damage rolls.
If I then made lt Keen, I would be getting +0 to my rolls?
The chart which I cannot understand would basically result in me getting a Keen Longsword that gave me a +1 to attack and rolls instead? Am I still correct?
If so, would an easier solution be to just use the chart in the book and not have Keen subtract the +1?
The price would be wonky, but am I right on everything?
If you're referring to the chart in the blog post (which is what I use for ABP):
A Keen Longsword with 0 capacity would cost 2,000 gold since Keen is the equivalent of a +1 bonus. But if you have a "weapon attunement" bonus you would not be able to take advantage of it with a 0 capacity weapon; so you wouldn't get a bonus to hit and damage.
If you had a weapon attunement bonus of 1, and you wanted to use that with a keen longsword the price of that weapon would be 6,000 gold, or if you had an attunement bonus of 2 it would be 10,000 gold.
If you wanted a keen, flaming, ghost touch long sword, that's the equivalent of +3 in terms of enhancements so would cost 18k, 30k, 42k, 54k, 66k, and 78k for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 capacity version respectively.
This is pretty much the same as the pricing for magic weapons in the non-ABP system, as a +2 Flaming longsword and a +1 Flaming Keen longsword cost the same.
Okay yeah that doesn't help me at all because I was trying to ignore everything involving prices and capacity.
Prices would come later after I got my question worked out.
If you have a weapon attunement bonus, you can pick up any old longsword and get that bonus to attack and damage once you've attuned it.
If you happen to come across a flaming long-sword, in the default rules it would be flaming, but you'd have a bonus to your attack and damage that's one less because it's magical. If you're using the rules from the blog post (which is recommended) you would have to consider the capacity of the weapon. If it was just a flaming longsword (i.e. capacity 0) then you would have to pay someone to improve the capacity so you could have a flaming longsword that gives you +1 to attack and damage.
It's not "you have a +1 sword and have it made keen" but "you have a keen sword and have it made so you can still get your +1 bonus that you'd get with any mundane longsword you attune to."
The ABP rules look great on paper, but I'm really disappointed with how convoluted a lot of it turns out and how badly it treats thrown weapon warriors (who should have been one of the top priorities for rescue under the new ruleset). Has anyone come up with any house rules that make this ruleset thrown weapons-friendly?
Thank you, PossibleCabbage, that answers my question and helps a lot.
Now, just to make sure I have this all correct.
With crafting being half the cost...
Default Unchained
Let's say Jim is Level 4. He has Weapon Attunement 1. He finds a keen sword, and decides to use it. It "costs" him his attunement due to the Keen property, effectively giving him a "+0" Keen sword.
Upon reaching Level 9 with Weapon Attunement 2, he effectively has a "+1" Keen sword.
Chart Unchained.
Jim is Level 4. He has Weapon Attunement 2. He finds a keen sword, and decides to use it. He pays out 3000 gold to improve it to Capacity 1 and Enhancement 1 [1 Attunement and +1 cost from Keen], effectively giving him a "+1" Keen sword.
Upon reaching Level 9 with Weapon Attunement 2, he then pays to have the sword increased to Capacity 2 Enhancement 1 [2 Attunement and +1 cost from Keen.] That would cost 5000, but since he already paid 3000, he would only need to pay the 2000 difference. Now he effectively has a "+2" Keen sword.
If he wanted to THEN upgrade it to Flaming Keen, he would need to pay for it to get to Capacity 2 Enhancement 2, which would cost 12000, but since he already paid out 5000, he'd only need to pay 7000.
I might be looking at the chart backwards, but am I on the right track?
If I am on the right track, then I think just having attunement not be "spent" in the default unchained rules is indeed the way to go.
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Actually, doesn't this system fail at one of its primary goals? One of the big problems with magic weapon abilities has always been that nobody can justify taking them over the +1 to-hit and damage. If you still have to make that choice, it seems to me that the system has entirely failed to address that problem.
So, the top three reasons I'm unhappy with this system:
1. Still forces choice between martial effectiveness and rad weapon abilities. Instead of a magic weapon being a major step up, it's just an option to switch over to a different type of benefit. It's kept equivalent, which seems pointless to me. Magic items shouldn't just be about extra options equivalent or worse in value to your existing options, they should be benefits.
2. Still screws over throwers, improvised weapon fighters, and anyone who uses more than one or two favorite weapons.
3. The blog "fix" is convoluted and doesn't seem to address either of the problems I have with it.
I'm just sort of bummed and bewildered. I feel like ABP is an obvious solution to a glaring problem that got lost within itself. All I wanted was a system that would allow me to make magic weapons rare and do away with the Big Six. Instead I foresee scenarios where I offer a swordsman a flaming longsword and he turns it down because he likes his +1 attunement better.
After considering it, my fixes:
1. No more capacity. No more "weapon abilities are taken out of your attunement bonus". If you get a disrupting mace, it's not a trade for an equivalent bonus, it's a benefit.
2. No more lengthy attunement. The ABP applies to all weapons you wield. Because why not? It doesn't screw with the math or anything. The only reason not to is flavor, but the decision to make attunement take a while was arbitrary to begin with. Attunement takes place the second you pick the weapon up.
3. I'm just gonna ignore that stuff. A quarter of the reason I'm after ABP in the first place is to escape Mathfinder. Sorry, Mark. ;P
Here's how I've houseruled it (and it's worked fine):
Magic Weapons and Armor do not count against attunement bonuses (breathe a sigh of relief.)
You may attune one weapon and one piece of armor with your full, primary attunement bonus each day.
When you gain access to split attunement bonuses, rather than being able to split your primary bonus between multiple items, the highest value of your split bonus instead applies to all other weapons and armor that you attune.
You may attune yourself to one primary weapon and piece of armor each day and one secondary weapon and piece of armor each day.
Attuning yourself to an item takes 10 minutes, which generally involves practicing with the item and fitting, honing, hemming, or cleaning it to suit your specific needs.
Attunements don’t expire unless changed. Only one character can be attuned to an item at a time. Attuning yourself to an item overwrites any previous attunement.
3. I'm just gonna ignore that stuff. A quarter of the reason I'm after ABP in the first place is to escape Mathfinder. Sorry, Mark. ;P
For a simple version that guaranteed still won't overpower your weapons you can just ignore most of the chart and always use the 5 capacity price to determine the true value of weapons with special abilities (22k for +1 equivalent, 48k for +2 equivalent, 78k for +3 equivalent, 112k for +4 equivalent, and 150k for +5 equivalent). Otherwise the special ability weapons are going to be sorely underpriced and you're going to strongly need to remove serious issue-presenting ones like bane. Of course, the game is resilient enough to survive the distortions that would come into play from not doing that, but it's probably not good to institute a math-fixer houserule that actually makes things worse unless you're intending to increase the mathematical power level substantially (and recreate some of the "Big 6", as weapon special abilities become so powerful and inexpensive for their effect that they become optimization-"required" choices).
The main problem I foresee with the former is balance. Sadly, this issue could have been averted had Paizo endeavored to design with it in mind to give us a guide instead of shutting it down (yeah, I'm a little bit salty), but without that guide, we're left to pretty much eyeball it. First, I'm only going to use this system in games where I make magic weapons unavailable in stores. That gives me tighter control over what the PCs get. Magic weapons will be rare.
It does impact balance. A magic weapon ability is now a strict upgrade, and that's not nothing. But weapon abilities generally aren't that drastic. I don't foresee it breaking things. You get weapon abilities as special bits of lucky treasure, and those should offer an edge.
As for lengthy attunement...frankly, I can't see how it could mess anything up. I guess you could make it hinge on a feat if you wanted to keep it from getting out of hand, but why bother? The only problem I can foresee is that DR #/magic no longer really matters at higher levels. But it wasn't gonna, anyways.
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The main problem I foresee with the former is balance. Sadly, this issue could have been averted had Paizo endeavored to design with it in mind to give us a guide instead of shutting it down (yeah, I'm a little bit salty), but without that guide, we're left to pretty much eyeball it. First, I'm only going to use this system in games where I make magic weapons unavailable in stores. That gives me tighter control over what the PCs get. Magic weapons will be rare.
It does impact balance. A magic weapon ability is now a strict upgrade, and that's not nothing. But weapon abilities generally aren't that drastic. I don't foresee it breaking things. You get weapon abilities as special bits of lucky treasure, and those should offer an edge.
As for lengthy attunement...frankly, I can't see how it could mess anything up. I guess you could make it hinge on a feat if you wanted to keep it from getting out of hand, but why bother? The only problem I can foresee is that DR #/magic no longer really matters at higher levels. But it wasn't gonna, anyways.
Honestly if you can't buy/sell magic weapons in your game anyway, then whether you use capacity or not doesn't impact anything except for on your end considering the capacity price gives you a much better barometer of how powerful the PCs actually are. So I think in your particular case, you should just not have the PCs pay for capacity, but you yourself, when calculating how much treasure you've given them for the purpose of figuring out how much more to give, should consider the magic weapons you've given out to be worth the amount they would cost for the full capacity.
Does that make sense? Basically the idea would be you just drop a flaming sword, say, but then if the PCs have +5 attunement, consider that sword to be worth 22k (as opposed to 2k for 0 attunement) when determining how strong the PCs are in WBL.
I just wanna say that while I may be hard sometimes on elements of Pathfinder Unchained, I'm hard because I care*. I really appreciate how open and helpful you are on these threads, Mark, and I think what you've just suggested there makes a ton of sense.
Just to make sure I'm clear, though, that would mean they get +5 "enhancement bonuses" to attacks and damage, plus the flaming property? I think what's kinda confusing about it is that under the old rules, that would effectively be a +6 weapon, and it would cost 72,000 gp.
*Phrasing.
Also, I think the best solution for swapping around more is to have attunement be something like use the one weapon value (or the reduced value for two weapons if you're using TWF) on all nonmagical weapons, period, but still attune to one magical weapon each day. That way your thrower is fine (throw mostly nonmagical weapons, at the full attunement +) but you neatly sidestep the serious land mines with bane and a few other things by limiting to only one magic weapon.
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I just wanna say that while I may be hard sometimes on elements of Pathfinder Unchained, I'm hard because I care*. I really appreciate how open and helpful you are on these threads, Mark, and I think what you've just suggested there makes a ton of sense.
Just to make sure I'm clear, though, that would mean they get +5 "enhancement bonuses" to attacks and damage, plus the flaming property? I think what's kinda confusing about it is that under the old rules, that would effectively be a +6 weapon, and it would cost 72,000 gp.
*Phrasing.
So essentially, when they are high enough level for +5 attunement from the ABP system, they would get all of those, yeah. And your observation is exactly correct (in fact, you've just rediscovered the design that led me to capacity on your own ;) ): a +5 flaming weapon costs 72k. But ABP "pays" for 50k of that for you, so you as a GM have given them 22k of value at that level. But if you handed that off to a group with just +1 attunement? Well, a +1 flaming weapon is 8k and ABP pays for 2k for a +1 weapon, so at that point you gave the PCs 6k of value. So by not using capacity, the magic weapons increase in their actual value substantially (almost quadrupled!) as the PCs increase in attunement, and in your games, without a magic shop to buy/sell them, you're set as long as you consider that (in games where you can buy and sell them, that's when you need capacity to handle that gap).
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Also, as the creator of ABP and the one who asked really nicely to get extra pages to add it in there, "being hard + caring" is way better than just not caring about the rule. I want these rules to stimulate your houseruling and game design parts of your brain to the point that you come up with the perfect rule for your own game; even if it is literally unrecognizable compared to the Unchained version and all the Unchained version was just an inspiration of "gosh that doesn't work at all for my group, but I agree with the concept of changing this aspect, so I'll use it as a starting point and make something completely different" then I consider that a big success for Unchained. It's the book about mixing up the game to help fit varying needs!
Also, I think the best solution for swapping around more is to have attunement be something like use the one weapon value (or the reduced value for two weapons if you're using TWF) on all nonmagical weapons, period, but still attune to one magical weapon each day. That way your thrower is fine (throw mostly nonmagical weapons, at the full attunement +) but you neatly sidestep the serious land mines with bane and a few other things by limiting to only one magic weapon.
God, I feel like the ABP rules' main speedbump has just been similar-seeming words. Attunement. Enhancement. Capacity.
But if I understand you right, you're saying that the wielder only gets one weapon ability (or two, with TWF), but gets the attunement bonus for everything?
Actually, it does occur to me that the "attunement bonus applies to all weapons" house rule would interact sort of weirdly with the TWF reduced bonus rule. How would those interact? Would I just drop the "split the attunement" rule? Or would I use the "split attunement" value for all weapons?
So essentially, when they are high enough level for +5 attunement from the ABP system, they would get all of those, yeah. And your observation is exactly correct (in fact, you've just rediscovered the design that led me to capacity on your own ;) ): a +5 flaming weapon costs 72k. But ABP "pays" for 50k of that for you, so you as a GM have given them 22k of value at that level. But if you handed that off to a group with just +1 attunement? Well, a +1 flaming weapon is 8k and ABP pays for 2k for a +1 weapon, so at that point you gave the PCs 6k of value. So by not using capacity, the magic weapons increase in their actual value substantially (almost quadrupled!) as the PCs increase in attunement, and in your games, without a magic shop to buy/sell them, you're set as long as you consider that (in games where you can buy and sell them, that's when you need capacity to handle that gap).
This makes perfect sense. Thank you!
For a simple version that guaranteed still won't overpower your weapons you can just ignore most of the chart and always use the 5 capacity price to determine the true value of weapons with special abilities (22k for +1 equivalent, 48k for +2 equivalent, 78k for +3 equivalent, 112k for +4 equivalent, and 150k for +5 equivalent). Otherwise the special ability weapons are going to be sorely underpriced and you're going to strongly need to remove serious issue-presenting ones like bane. Of course, the game is resilient enough to survive the distortions that would come into play from not doing that, but it's probably not good to institute a math-fixer houserule that actually makes things worse unless you're intending to increase the mathematical power level substantially (and recreate some of the "Big 6", as weapon special abilities become so powerful and inexpensive for their effect that they become optimization-"required" choices).
The main problem I foresee with the former is balance. Sadly, this issue could have been averted had Paizo endeavored to design with it in mind to give us a guide instead of shutting it down (yeah, I'm a little bit salty)
I just realized that Mark ninja'd this post from earlier with some points I probably should have considered. I think that's the forum equivalent of that sitcom trope. Sorry, Mark! The kobold was in one of his sourpuss moods today.
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I removed all the magic item progression and AC bonuses from the list and just use the Resistance and Mental/Physical stat progression for my players at the levels given on the chart from the book. It's really freed up their options to buy/use items in the belt, headband and back slots. It's worked out really well so far.
Where ABP really words great, in my experience is that it makes "what's in the loot pile" much, much easier on the GM.
Not only do you get to put "interesting" items in loot piles instead of "useful" or "important" ones, but you can cut the loot in half (which is less bookkeeping for everybody), you don't have to worry about "is there a local Magic-Mart", and you don't have to worry about characters who have specialized in an unusual weapon being able to find those (if you're far away from Dwarven lands, it's pretty unrealistic to be finding a lot of longhammers).
Ideally it works more or less the same as the game without ABP, just with less hassle.
I run with kobold cleaver option 1 but not 2. It seems only fair to me when a 3rd level spell would completely replace your bonus anyway.
I run with kobold cleaver option 1 but not 2. It seems only fair to me when a 3rd level spell would completely replace your bonus anyway.
I would strongly recommend removing the spell in a game with ABP that used the variants we've been discussing for Kobold Cleaver's game, particularly since the spell would generally give a smaller bonus than your attunement anyway so would only be useful in weird edge cases.
For a simple version that guaranteed still won't overpower your weapons you can just ignore most of the chart and always use the 5 capacity price to determine the true value of weapons with special abilities (22k for +1 equivalent, 48k for +2 equivalent, 78k for +3 equivalent, 112k for +4 equivalent, and 150k for +5 equivalent). Otherwise the special ability weapons are going to be sorely underpriced and you're going to strongly need to remove serious issue-presenting ones like bane. Of course, the game is resilient enough to survive the distortions that would come into play from not doing that, but it's probably not good to institute a math-fixer houserule that actually makes things worse unless you're intending to increase the mathematical power level substantially (and recreate some of the "Big 6", as weapon special abilities become so powerful and inexpensive for their effect that they become optimization-"required" choices).The main problem I foresee with the former is balance. Sadly, this issue could have been averted had Paizo endeavored to design with it in mind to give us a guide instead of shutting it down (yeah, I'm a little bit salty)I just realized that Mark ninja'd this post from earlier with some points I probably should have considered. I think that's the forum equivalent of that sitcom trope. Sorry, Mark! The kobold was in one of his sourpuss moods today.
Eh, no worries. I'm generally full of good variants of the Unchained variants in part because (as the blog showed), we often had multiple possible solutions or variations of the solutions we worked out and then picked the one that the team thought fit best overall, but if we had twice as much space in the book, we could have explained them all in the book. Instead, the designers are just generally good living sources of those for our sections.
What i'm considering doing is taking it out of the players hands completely. The bonus they will just naturally gain no atunement there just direct buff to the characters like a class ability is. Then reduce Gold I give out drastically and focus on giving out fun non stat buffing items. There will still be flaming keen axes but it will have no plus at all the player will add pluses to anything they pick up. So the only things that might influence decisions on what to use will be feats and if they want to use a frost weapon over a flaming or etc.