Magic weapons question about Runes.

[larsenex]

Greetings Folks,

I am reading the CRB and I am missing something.

If my weapon has a +1 potency rune, that weapon just gets +1 to hit.

If my weapon has a +1 striking rune, that weapon gets an extra die of damage but not a +1 to hit.

Does a weapon need both Potency and Striking runes to be both +1 to hit and +1 die of damage?

Thus a +1 striking (weapon) has no magical to hit but has extra die of damage.

Is this correct?

[First World Bard]

larsenex wrote:

Thus a +1 striking (weapon) has no magical to hit but has extra die of damage.

Is this correct?

A +1 Striking weapon by definition has both types of runes. The "+1" is the potency rune.

[larsenex]

Ok so in order to have any other runes, the weapon must have the initial Potency rune of different values. I see that the value of the potency rune indicates the number of 'other' runes you can add to the item.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

There are two kinds of runes. "Fundamental" runes are weapon potency, armor potency, striking, and resilience. The others are "property" runes. You can only have as many property runes as the value of your fundamental potency rune. Striking and resilience don't count against that limit because they're fundamental, not property.

I am 98% sure of this: Nothing stops you from having a striking weapon without the +1, because striking is a fundamental rune, not a property rune. You will not see any "+0 striking" weapons (or equivalent armor) in the book for two reasons. One, they try to only list what you'd "naturally" get in the course of upgrading your stuff, and +1 is cheaper than striking, so you'd normally get it first. Two, back in the playtest potency and striking were rolled together into a +N parameter that both gave you +N to hit and N extra damage dice, and (IIRC) already determined how many property runes you could have. A +0 weapon under that system would be non-magical. So that version of the book only put in +1 (or better) weapons and armor. When they changed the rules, they didn't bother to insert new examples to illustrate the now-valid +0 case, probably because it would be a pain and take up page space for little value.

[Cunningallusionment]

If you put a +1 potency rune on a bow, is the damage dealt by arrows fired from the bow magical?

[Nefreet]

Yep.

[Thomas5251212]

I'm pretty sure Fuzzy-Wuzzy has the right of it here.

[Megistone]

Under Fundamental Rules there is a passage that says:

Quote:

A potency rune is what makes a weapon a magic weapon or armor magic armor.

While this doesn't strictly prohibit having a Striking Rune without a Potency one, it would be strange to have a non-magical striking weapon.

[Thomas5251212]

I suspect in that case its still "magic" in a sense, but not in a fashion that's relevant to hitting things than need magic to hit them. Which is, admittedly, odd, but there you are.