I was rather curious about this (although admittedly I know that this might be the wrong place, but I assume that this will need some homebrewing). I recently read through Pathfinder Unchained again and its various rules on equipment, and just couldn't help but wonder how a lot of these classes would work since... Well let's go class by class
Armorist/soulknife:
Automatic Progression: Both basically gain an inherent weapon (and armorist gets inherent armor), so how do you balance the enhancement bonuses?
Innate item Bonuses: How would you even start to balance this out when the extra enhancement bonuses to their items are part of their class table?
Magus:
Automatic Progression: He doesn't have it QUITE as bad, but still has the issue that the black blade's main gimmick is a bonus to enhancement.
Innate item bonuses: Same issue as the other 2, you can't exactly remove the black blade's enhancement bonuses since that is still part of his class features and getting their +1 later would cause trouble for trying to balance (I don't know if it would be a dead level or not though)
You let them use the enhancement bonus to purchase special abilities of equivalent value.
Well I mean I understand that. I just mean that you can't really replicate the "double the cost" part of innate item bonuses without causing some less than pleasant repercussions.)
Armorist: Summoned Equipment becomes +3, which isn't a MASSIVE issue but it also means that some abilities just can't be used with your summoned weapons at all (Namely the Ethereal Weaponry Arsenal Trick, which allows the use of Brilliant Energy which is a +4. and a similar issue with Bound Equipment that a lot of its "Here have a extra enhancement bonus with them" is baked right in, and levels 9. 13. and 17 could potentially become dead levels (though it would more likely start at 5, leaving the levels that would be dead relatively untouched)
Soulknife: A little better for wear because it doesn't have the summoned equipment issue, and you could just say that the "Maximum enhancement bonus" line relates more to how many abilities it can have, but again level 9. 13, and 17 could end up as dead levels (how come it's always those specific levels)
Black Blade: Looking at it, this one would actually get buffed by being just left as is (since it only gets a maximum of +5 alongside its unique powers), but if halving it was attempted you'd get... +2.5
Edit: Also mentioning Spheres of Power, the same issue as Black Blade Magi comes about with the Enhancement Sphere, that a +5 turns into a +10, but you can't halve 5
I don't know what rule you're referring to.You let them use the enhancement bonus to purchase special abilities of equivalent value.Well I mean I understand that. I just mean that you can't really replicate the "double the cost" part of innate item bonuses without causing some less than pleasant repercussions.
In Innate Item Bonuses, the way that they balance the cost of you gaining double the bonuses (by gaining a +2 ability AND a +2 bonus at the same time) is by doubling the gold cost of those abilities for weaponry and armor.
In Innate Item Bonuses, the way that they balance the cost of you gaining double the bonuses (by gaining a +2 ability AND a +2 bonus at the same time) is by doubling the gold cost of those abilities for weaponry and armor.I can't find that rule on the SRD. I'm seeing a rule about trading your automatic bonus for weapon special abilities, and a rule about adding weapon special abilities to weapons without first needing to add an enhancement bonus to the weapon, but nowhere does it ever mention doubling anything.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/innate-i tem-bonuses/
Arms and Armor
Under this system, weapons and armor are not forged with pure enhancement bonuses, and don’t need to have a +1 enhancement bonus to have a special ability. Instead, add up the effective enhancement bonus for the item’s special abilities, then assign the total to the item as its new enhancement bonus on attack and damage rolls. To find the new price, multiply the total cost of its original special abilities—not counting the new enhancement bonus—by 4.
For example, the keen ability is equivalent to a +1 bonus and would normally cost 2,000 gp. Under these rules, a keen falchion would gain a +1 bonus on top of its keen ability, and the cost would become 8,000 gp. A keen holy falchion, on the other hand, normally costs 18,000 gp and has abilities equivalent to a +3 bonus, so it would gain a +3 enhancement bonus on top of its abilities and cost 72,000 gp instead.
And it's even worse than I thought. It multiplies the price by 4!
I guess that would be the answer that "These classes use the regular rules" Though whilst I have the conversation up I will say that something doesn't seem right about 4x multiplication there, like it would be 2.
For a game I'm running (SUPER SLOWLY, two of the players had a baby, and we haven't been able to play in a long time), I told my Black Blade Magus, that I was going to ask them to apply the ABP to a 2ndary weapon, which would sidestep the entire issue. In effect, it means that they were going to have a free back up/ranged weapon, in addition to their bread and butter black blade.
When we last played, we had possibly JUST hit level 2, it's been a while though, so I do not have anything about how it worked out to report.
What they do is double the plus-equivalency, which ends up quadrupling the price.
I don't quite understand that, I'd think that the prices would be somewhat equivalent even in the other system (unless innate item bonuses specifically wants magic items to be rare).
For a game I'm running (SUPER SLOWLY, two of the players had a baby, and we haven't been able to play in a long time), I told my Black Blade Magus, that I was going to ask them to apply the ABP to a 2ndary weapon, which would sidestep the entire issue. In effect, it means that they were going to have a free back up/ranged weapon, in addition to their bread and butter black blade.
When we last played, we had possibly JUST hit level 2, it's been a while though, so I do not have anything about how it worked out to report.
For Black Blade and even Soulknife that certainly can work, However Armorist still has the issue that basically all of their equipment is designed to be summoned. they gain 5-6 'bound' items by level 20, and a number of other summoned equipment, but that still brings the issue of how to make the Innate Item Rules work.
Organized Play Developer
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Honestly, I personally probably wouldn't use the ABP replacement system in a game where I had made those classes available. For most intents and purposes their "big" class feature is essentially "get ABP bonuses in a system that doesn't normally have them", so if everyone is getting ABP bonuses, their class feature is either going to skyrocket to being too powerful, or it's going to be functionally neutralized by everyone else also getting it on top of their normal class features (to a large extent; the point about back-up weapons still stands for some of the classes and archetypes).
The other thing you could consider is giving them the choice between either using their weapon's normal progression or the ABP bonuses, and then give them a new class feature to compensate and keep them balanced to the table. For example, I know you use the Spheres books, so one thing you could do is allow these character's to treat their class feature weapons kind of like an Armiger's customized weapons, gaining a bonus Spheres of Might combat talent that's only available while wielding that weapon whenever the character would normally get an enhancement boost. Now granted, that kind of wedges in on the Armiger's territory, but at least in that situation you're only undercutting one class instead of an entire sub-list of character types. Note that for the Bladebound Magus you could also pretty easily grant Spheres of Power magic talents in the same way. 1 talent = +1 equivalent enhancement bonus isn't terribly precise, but it's probably going to be close enough for the purposes of your table unless someone is really bent on manipulating it.
Thanks for the input Mr. Sayre, and admittedly it's certainly true that it might not be the best option... Although overall I'm somewhat more concerned with the Innate Item Bonus Rules, mostly because automatic bonus progressions rendering these classes somewhat moot (though you get like 5 weapons with armorist compared to one or two with abp.
Because of the fact that these classes gain these enhancement bonuses, trying to balance bound weapons to say halve your effective bonuses would still leave dead levels in the end..
Starting with +1 at level 3 leaves 9 13 and 17 as dead levels.
Starting with +1 at level 5 leaves things a bit better without any straight up DEAD levels, but still leaves it that all you're getting on those levels is armor training.