I recently was thinking about weapon special materials and the fact that... To be blunt, a lot of materials are just plain useless, and a number of abilities centered around materials lose their worth easily because of one simple rule.
Just as a reminder, in PF, Higher Enhancement Bonuses allow you to bypass ever greater amounts of damage reduction.
+2 (as far as I know) ignores slashing piercing and bludgeoning
+3 removes Cold Iron and Silver Resistances
+4 removes Adamantine resistances
+5 removes ALIGNMENT resistances
This design was to remove the long present "Golf Bag of Weapons" problem wherein you'd technically need a Slashing, Piercing, Bludgeoning, Cold Iron, Silver, Adamantine, and Aligned (to your own alignment/s) weapon if your GM was particularly lavish with different enemy and DR types. However, this brings with it the problem that a lot of abilities both within the normal game and in 3pp become useless. (Here are some examples)
First Party Example
The Multimetal Mace (Original Source: Pathfinder unchained: but I can not access the archives right now is designed with the concept that you can change its properties and metal on a whim, but any fighter worth his salt would probably just get a +3 adamantine light mace (assuming they don't go for literally any other weapon) and be done with it.
3pp example
Mystic Fists (source Spheres of Might): A talent designed specifically to allow you to bypass different types of DR... Or you could just get an amulet of mighty fists.
I'm not saying this material problem is a HUGE issue, but I have been wracking my brain a bit trying to find a good way to sort it out, and I thought I'd throw what ideas I have out into the ring... Although granted I needed to use individual concepts for different types.
Slashing, Piercing, and Bludgeoning: +2 enhancement bonuses when using the proper weapon just halve the effective DR, whilst using the proper one removes it entirely. I feel this doesn't really gel well with the system I used for others here because of how common these three are.
Cold Iron and Silver: +3 enhancement bonuses alongside having the proper material is basically an equivalent to Bane (but probably not stack with bane). I feel this is somewhat fair despite being far less expensive than bane itself simply because... Well mostly because you've already spent the gold to get it up to a +3, and it's fitting in setting that creatures that normally resist anything other than these materials would be "Weak" to these materials, and really hit a more thematic tone than just "I enchanted this to be particularly strong against this kind of monster" (Also... I'd note that dependant on the GM I cannot say whether Mithril gains a similar ability, some GMs rule that mithril adds the finesse property and as such has an inherent bonus in and of itself aside from DR penetration and wouldn't gain this bane bonus, but for others the only advantage mithril has over silver is not coming with a -1, where then it WOULD get the bane bonus)
Adamantine: I'd personally note that rather than just a +4 enhancement bonus bypassing adamantine, something of 20 hardness or greater bypasses adamantine, similar to adamantine itself ignores and hardness less than 20 itself. I wouldn't want to combine it with the Bane idea is because it has inherent bonuses unto itself (ignoring hardness below 20 and reducing effective hardness by it if it is 20 or more)
Alignment based DR: I'd say group this in with silver and cold iron for the whole 'new bane' idea, but I'm pretty sure that the only way for players to get permanent Alignment DR piercing (aside from maybe Celestial Bloodragers' Angelic Strikes and Paladins' Smite Evil and another class or two I might be missing) is with the Holy, Unholy, Axiomatic, and Anarchaic weapon properties, which already hand out the +2d6 bane type ability I'd already be handing out for this "you have +5 AND the right alignment" bonus.
Either way, I think that the idea of making it that no one 'needs' to have the DR piercing materials, meaning that you're not going to have a constant golf bag of weaponry or arrows, but you still get players to use different materials and matching weapon to DR without making it punishing for them if they don't want to carry a metric tonne on them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
To me the solution has not been to change the materials, but to eliminate DR entirely, which is one of the worst hang-on mechanics of 3.x. In my experience, people at the table constantly forget to apply it, causing endless math retconning. It also tends either to make fights too hard--at low levels, anything but a fully melee optimized party will not be able to beat the thing with DR if they happen to not have the required material, which is common--or too easy (monsters with DR have their CRs calculated with DR as a valid defense, but high level PCs WILL have a way to bypass it, making it useless, and they end up being an easier combat than you expect).
Instead of DR, you can do any number of other things to boost defenses:
- make them immune or resistant to critical hits
- give them more HP
- give them a higher AC
- give them fast healing or regeneration
Where mythology or flavor requires a special substance, e.g., silver being especially useful against lycanthropes, rather than requiring the special material to effectively do decent damage, instead...
- As you suggest, make it work like bane
- Make only the special substance able to crit the monster, or
- Make it work like regeneration on a troll (which I think is how were-creatures mythologically are supposed to work anyway)--anything can hurt them, but you need the special substance to kill them permanently, or
- Give them a high HP and high AC, but make the special substance deal double damage
Then the material, as to the purpose of hurting monsters, becomes helpful, but it doesn't feel absolutely required, and you don't end up with party members that are alternately completely helpless versus a monster or able to shred it to pieces more easily than they should be able to.
As an aside, special materials DO have other uses, at least in some cases. Adamantine of course has hardness, making it ideal for those not wanting to have weapons sundered. Mithral's lightness (and the fact that yes, it does count as silver for DR reduction) and improved durability is handy. There are reasons besides DR to have special materials, but they should never feel absolutely necessary, and should feel special when obtained.
As an aside, I wish more had been done with cold iron... it is more expensive to enchant, but its magic-resistant properties should have other effects (like actually be cheaper to make abjuration-based enchantments, etc.).
If you are eliminating weapons that only have a bonus, such as +2 bastard swords of nothing, you might want to toss out the bonus bypass rule. It encourages weapons like that.
On the other hand, granting fighters of certain levels the bypass would help level the playing field. Conan the Barbarian would be able to bypass the DR of the snake shaped iron golem as well as the were snake high priest.
Sorry for disappearing for so long. And to properly touch on all of the concerns mentioned..
1: Replacing raw DR with something along the lines of Regeneration could work. Though I'd worry that it would make battles more difficult (seeing as regeneration still means they can't die if you don't have the right thing. Or the more general idea that they just gain some kind of 'healing surge' when they reach 0 could work as well.
2: I regards to "+2 bastard swords of nothing" and wanting to remove them. My more general thing is that I want magical weapons to have more interesting fluff to them, the idea that a "Bane" Weapon is as such because of the fact that it's made of the material that most easily kills that creature normally, with added enhancement on top of it, rather than just "We enchanted this sword to hit creatures of a specific type really hard"
3: Which on this topic of fluff in weaponry, What would y'all want to see as new weapon ideas?
Hardwood spear of vampire bane. On a crit it impales their heart.
Also, blessed crossbow bolts of Rakshasa bane.