Custom Weapon Questions / Concerns

[omegatiger121]

I realize I've already made two topics about my personal creations, the Elven Branchblade and Elven Thornblade, but I figure it'd be nice to have a single topic where everyone may share questions and/or concerns about their custom weapons. Speaking of which, it'd be nice for a mod/someone associated with Paizo to pin/sticky/whatever this topic to keep it at the top so people won't have to go searching for it.

I'm concerned about the cost of the underwater hand crossbow (see below) and, for that matter, any other underwater crossbows we make because the doubling in price from regular to underwater is such a radical departure from the standard creation rules.

Underwater hand crossbow
Coming soon
Price 200 gp; Type ranged; Proficiency exotic; Damage (S) 1d3/(M) 1d4; Critical 19-20×2; Weapon Group crossbows; Weight 2 lbs.
Qualities: Improved critical range (3), improved damage (1), lesser range (-20 ft.), weapon damage (piercing)
Note on cost: Instead of the normal 8 gp of an exotic ranged weapon, this costs 200 gp to be in line with the doubling cost from the light crossbow to the underwater light crossbow.

[Claxon]

Those weapons existed before anyone bothered to codify "rules" for creating new weapons.

There's really nothing more to it than that. If you examine many of the weapons you would probably find that several do not fit the "rules" for creating new weapons.

[Imbicatus]

The rules on weapon creation included in the WMH are intentionally designed to produce weapons that are underpowered when compared to existing weapons. It was made that way because when you start using point-buy to create weapons, you can min-max to come up with some really broken things. The system stops that from happening by limiting the total power of a weapon to be less than existing weapons.

As a GM, you can just make what you want for your campaign and handwave the cost. If you are trying to do this as a player, you can use the system to make a flavorful unique weapon, but not an overpowered one.