I'm working on an NPC fighter-- not a cohort, but the players have cultivated her to the extent that she follows them when it makes sense IC-- that's allied to my PCs. It's a mythic game, and I've upped defenses to suit, so I'm trying to optimize to make her relevant (mostly in terms of hitty, but I'm working on some maneuvers too). She's nonmythic.
As a result, and since I'm the GM and don't care about being cheesy too much, I'm poking at weapon design to specifically enhance her usefulness. They haven't seen her for 5 levels, so she's had time to retrain and so forth, but the basic character was a Str 22 two-handed fighter. I'm not sure if I'm getting this right, because the results seem out of proportion to pre-existing weapons.
Martial Weapon. Starts at 5 DP, M, 1d3, x2, B (I think this is the most likely to be useful-- dealing with demonic and magic-made creatures mostly), Price 5gp
Fighter Weapon Group: Polearms
Hands: 2 (+3 DP, net 8)
Wt: TBD
Qualities:
Additional Design Points x3 (+45 gp price, +3 DP; net 50 gp, 11 DP)
Improved Critical Range 1 (-3 DP, +1 threat range, net 8 DP, 19-20/x2 crit)
Improved Critical Multiplier 1 (-6 DP, +1 multiplier; net 2 DP, 19-20/x3 crit)
Weapon Feature: Reach (-1 DP, net DP 1)
At this point, I could: (1) go Exotic and add another feature-- probably Brace or Trip, though I'm dubious that's worth a feat-- (2) stay Martial and go to 1d4 damage, (3) go Exotic and jump to 2d4 damage (again, not sure that's worth the feat)
As I'm expecting her to be 15th level and having Improved Critical, Power Attack, and Str 28 (including MI), it seems to me that additional damage is worth the most, rather than core damage dice. I'm also presuming every crit confirms for simplicity, but even with the enhanced levels, I doubt she's going to miss much even when power attacking. With ImpCrit and x3, range moves to 17-20/x3, which means that 20% of hits will do triple damage. As opposed to 18-20/x2 becoming 15-20/x2- 30% of hits doing double damage-- 28/20 > 26/20.
So, 20% of the time, she's getting x3 backswing-- not sure if that means 9*6=54, 9*5=45, 9*1.5~13*6=78, or 13*5=65 extra damage, but either way she swings it, that's substantially more than even a greatsword's max-- 36-- crit one time out of twenty. The power attack would be either 54 or 45 again, depending on whether multipliers are additive or multiplicative. I've been doing the former but I'm starting to wonder. Then there's weapon enhancements, buffs, etc.
Am I seeing this wrong? Is there any reason to care at all about the base damage die for a high level fighter who can expect to either overwhelm or bypass DR?
