My question is what is says on the tin. Is there a way to play a character that uses thrown weapons that does not require the use of returning runes? I feel like throwing a returning shuriken or javelin is kind of dumb but that seems to be the only way to play a character specializing in these kinds of weapons.
Am I missing something?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Yes you'd want the returning rune or spend a lot of money getting multiple magical weapons.
Yes you'd want the returning rune or spend a lot of money getting multiple magical weapons.
That seems to be the case. Do you figure that is a bug or a feature?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
That seems to be the case. Do you figure that is a bug or a feature?Yes you'd want the returning rune or spend a lot of money getting multiple magical weapons.
I don't know, but it seems intended.
I could also see a relatively simple way around it by creating a magic item like gloves that grant X weapon properties to thrown weapons and overwrites any inherent magic properties of the weapon. That way you could sling javelins etc as long as you had ammo.
That seems to be the case. Do you figure that is a bug or a feature?Yes you'd want the returning rune or spend a lot of money getting multiple magical weapons.
I don't know, but it seems intended.
I could also see a relatively simple way around it by creating a magic item like gloves that grant X weapon properties to thrown weapons and overwrites any inherent magic properties of the weapon. That way you could sling javelins etc as long as you had ammo.
Yeah, I hope something like that gets published. I have some house rules like that which I offer when I GM but that doesn't really help me when I am actually playing the game rather than GMing.
I was hoping that there was some work-around that I missed.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well, lets think of it as a comparison to ammunition based weapons.
If you throw a weapon, it's definitely easiest if you have the returning rune.
But let's assume you don't want to.
Instead you just buy multiple weapons with attack bonus runes at max, and damage dice bonus runes at one less than max for your level. It's expensive, but the damage dice bonus is the more expensive of the two runes.
However, your thrown weapon gets to add strength (something even propulsive weapons only get half of) and you get to use your main attack attribute rather than switch to dex.
In terms of damage, it probably works out as a wash even without the extra damage dice because of the strength damage (though it will depend on dice size, and I haven't run the math).
Certainly the easiest way is just buying a weapon with the returning rune.
Unlike older version of returning, at least this one returns your weapon to you as soon as the strike is resolved so you don't have to worry about multiple returning weapons.
Perhaps they will create a "sharding" property like the PF1 enchant that basically just says "As you make an attack with this weapon instead of actually letting go a copy breaks off to complete the attack and disappears once the attack is resolved."
Perhaps they will create a "sharding" property like the PF1 enchant that basically just says "As you make an attack with this weapon instead of actually letting go a copy breaks off to complete the attack and disappears once the attack is resolved."
I maybe like that more flavor-wise.
Discussing your earlier post: I do not think buying 3+ full level enchanted shuriken is a valid use of money. You would just fall too far behind in all the other things you need to buy. It is a non-option.
I think whether or not buying several +3 potency runes for multiple throwing weapons is viable depends on viewpoint. At 16th level when they become available it's about 10% of your wealth. As you continue to level up that percentage goes down. The real problem is that it doesn't including the striking runes, which are equally important and more costly.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
There is something cool about throwing a dagger at a guy, then closing the distance and taking the dagger from the guys chest as his dead body falls to the ground and stabbing another guy with it (which nicely fits into the 3 action economy).
Another idea is having multiple magic daggers, and having the multiple daggers being a positive as they can all be different, giving you some versatility. Maybe against a werewolf you throw the magic dagger made out of silver first, while against a golem it is the adamantium one first. The guy with just one returning dagger can't have it be ideal for every situation, but with multiple daggers your first shot can be.
IIRC, we also had a pair of gloves in PF1 that basically gave enhancement bonus to weapons thrown, but i can't recall the name of it.
We might get something like that too.
I'd be okay with a system wherein I have 10 daggers for throwing, I pay to put runes on one with potency & striking and the rest end up with the same bonus somehow. And then I proceed to throw and use them all up.
Generally speaking this is worse than just having returning on that one dagger, so the cost should honestly end up at about the same.
I wish they just let the doubling rings work on thrown weapons.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
I've always really wanted like, a magic bandolier or quiver that is enchanted like a weapon and temporarily imparts those enchantments to thrown weapons, so you could have a quiver of javelins or pouch full of shurikens that all get the magic buffs when you throw them.
Returning works great in PF2 mechanically and has good flavor for weapons you use as both melee and ranged weapons like hammers or whatever, but it is really goofy when instead of throwing a volley of shurikens you're just throwing the same shuriken over and over really fast.
There is something cool about throwing a dagger at a guy, then closing the distance and taking the dagger from the guys chest as his dead body falls to the ground and stabbing another guy with it (which nicely fits into the 3 action economy).
Another idea is having multiple magic daggers, and having the multiple daggers being a positive as they can all be different, giving you some versatility. Maybe against a werewolf you throw the magic dagger made out of silver first, while against a golem it is the adamantium one first. The guy with just one returning dagger can't have it be ideal for every situation, but with multiple daggers your first shot can be.
I do like the idea of burying a knife in a guy's chest and then going to retrieve it. It would be cool to have a feat or enchantment to formalize how that kind of thing could work. Maybe removing dagger could be some kind of specialized attack that can cause damage? I have also been toying with the idea of creating an alternative to the returning rune that requires an extra action to call back (ala the axe in the latest God of War game) that could let you attack an enemy in between you and where the weapon landed/stuck. That is more tangentially related though.
I agree that having multiple enchanted daggers of varying material types is useful, but I still think you would want to have returning on those +whatever daggers if only to stop those weapons from being taken by an opponent or accidentally losing it in the ocean or off a cliff or whatever on a miss.
Even beyond that point, I don't mind returning daggers so much as I am bothered by returning shurikens and darts and stuff. If your dagger or light hammer is your main weapon, I think having the returning property is kinda neat. I really like how specialized throwing weapons play at lower levels (where you generally have to draw the weapon with a free hand and chuck 'em). I like using hand-and-a-half weapons like bastards swords and the katana and backing that up with javelins, shurikens, or even throwing hammers. However, when your throwing weapons are all valuable artifacts in-and-of-themselves, throwing them at dudes is suddenly a real issue without the returning property. Also, you suddenly have the problem of having stow your throwing weapons rather than freeing up your hand each time you attack.
IIRC, we also had a pair of gloves in PF1 that basically gave enhancement bonus to weapons thrown, but i can't recall the name of it.
We might get something like that too.
I'd be okay with a system wherein I have 10 daggers for throwing, I pay to put runes on one with potency & striking and the rest end up with the same bonus somehow. And then I proceed to throw and use them all up.
Generally speaking this is worse than just having returning on that one dagger, so the cost should honestly end up at about the same.
I wish they just let the doubling rings work on thrown weapons.
I also wish doubling rings worked with thrown weapons.
I've always really wanted like, a magic bandolier or quiver that is enchanted like a weapon and temporarily imparts those enchantments to thrown weapons, so you could have a quiver of javelins or pouch full of shurikens that all get the magic buffs when you throw them.
Returning works great in PF2 mechanically and has good flavor for weapons you use as both melee and ranged weapons like hammers or whatever, but it is really goofy when instead of throwing a volley of shurikens you're just throwing the same shuriken over and over really fast.
The "magical bandoleer" is more or less my houserule, actually. I just price the bandoleer like a magical weapon and weapons drawn from the bandoleer stay magical until the end of your turn.
I also have a house rule that players can have all their weapons gain the necessary striking/whatever runes but I generally like to make my house rules well balanced against existing options and rules and I still have some tweaking to do with that w.r.t. specific interaction rulings and pricing/item level regimes. I kind of went into that in someone else's homebrew thread, but I have already changed my mind about some things there. My current version is an item that costs about 1.5x the cost of a base weapon and then the price goes up for each category of weapon that you want the items to apply to. I don't know how to handle the item level itself yet though.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Well actually by raw they can. Doubling Rings only work on melee weapons true, but the thrown trait makes no mention on changing weapon type, so as long as you are throwing melee weapons that happen to have the thrown trait (hand ax for example) instead of ranged weapons with the thrown trait it is technically legal.
That's not the problem. The problem is that any weapon augmented by doubling rings stops working the moment you stop wielding it. The rules for the rings themselves even specifically call out that you can't throw them.
Yeah, the way the rings are written it's pretty clear they don't allow you to throw weapons.
Which was very disappointing for my rogue. I built him with the doubling rings thinking I would have thrown daggers as backup ranged weapon, but no.
That was actually a mistake on my part, but I decided to keep it there since I figured, "well, if there is a 3PP solution somewhere, I guess I'd like to know."
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly, I'd suggest just reflavouring it. Mechanically, it's still a returning weapon. In-universe, it's a bag full of shuriken, or a quiver full of javelins, with each attack being a different one each time. Remember, the system is the mechanics, not the skin over top of them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Another idea is having multiple magic daggers, and having the multiple daggers being a positive as they can all be different, giving you some versatility. Maybe against a werewolf you throw the magic dagger made out of silver first, while against a golem it is the adamantium one first. The guy with just one returning dagger can't have it be ideal for every situation, but with multiple daggers your first shot can be.
A throwing based flurry ranger. He rolls his "knowledge" check to see if the enemy has any elemental weaknesses.
This "knowledge" check is a series of dagger throws. Each dagger has a different elemental property, and he listens to see which weapon makes the creature yell the loudest.
If you have spellcasters in your group, you could also consider getting the Magic Weapon spell cast on a few thrown weapons.
The RAW don't really support a fighting style based solely on thrown weapons. You're better off mixing it up between throwing and melee. Or sticking with the returning property.
ABP is great for this, but there isn't any special reason it should only apply for characters using throwing weapons, and doing so would be harder than doing it for everybody since total loot distribution is changed. To be clear, even using ABP you are likely going to have some weapon with better enchants than others, but those are specific enchants and every weapon can benefit from basic accuracy and damage die "runes". But that is at least something tangible in the world i.e. "look at my magic fire dagger burn bright", and not abstract numbers. While you probably want to recover your fire dagger after a fight, if you can't recover every generic dagger you threw it's no big deal if you can restock sooner or later.
Ultimately, this just seems about Returning Runes not happening to align to whatever your prexisting notion of swords & sorcery fantasy was. I think you were fighter/adventurer who had the opportunity of Returning Runes, it's fair to say that is useful/beneficial. And it happens that in P2E (or really, P1E also, but throwing weapons in general were worse then), Returning Runes are part of the assumed lore/dyanmic of the magical setting. So of course they are normalized by mechanics. But ABP does exist to make Returning not so necessary in terms of base mechanics (although it still has benefit in terms of not needing to draw new weapon, even if Quickdraw still has further advantage when you haven't yet drawn weapons or want to switch to new weapon type)
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
If you care about this, make sure to yell at Paizo to make the brace-of-pistols bandolier in Guns and Gears also work for throwing weapons. The blinkback belt and returning property were Ultimate Equipment additions in 1E and throwing builds that actually functioned came even later than that so we're still well ahead of the pace for this build working.
Was wondering about a shuriken-based Thaumaturge earlier and found this thread - apologies for the necro, but has anything come out to fix this since?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
There are some work arounds like Ricochet Stance from Fighter, Fane's Fourbiere (though this one is another can of worms) for Rogue and Swashbuckler.
Though there is a huge book of equipment coming soon, maybe they'll have a "shuriken pouch" you can inscribe in that one.
Yeah, I love me some shuriken, thanks to kung fu media and Diablo 2's expansion pack. :-) Yet I can't seem to make them work...like at all compared to other options, including the simple javelin.
I would allow creating a pouch, sheathe, bandolier or other container that is designed to only work with one thrown weapon type and can accept all the runes that that weapon type could accept and applies it to any weapon drawn from it. This item's cost would be some percentage of the Returning rune that makes sense for requiring having a bunch of mundane ammo loaded into it, and then upgrades could allow it to apply to multiple types of weapons so you could throw different kinds of shuriken.
One partial workaround is via the Soulforger archetype. Unfortunately, it requires two class feats (plus a third if you want to take another archetype): Soulforger Dedication and Rapid Manifestation. It's not as good as a returning rune, but it still lets you throw the same weapon multiple times.
Manifest your soulforged weapon (free action), throw your soulforged weapon (one action), dismiss your soulforged weapon (one action), manifest your soulforged weapon (free action), and throw your soulforged weapon again (one action). The next round, dismiss your soulforged weapon (one action), manifest your soulforged weapon (free action), throw your soulforged weapon again (one action), and dismiss your soulforged weapon (one action). Rinse/repeat.
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
As a homebrew, it probably would be reasonable to basically make a variant handwraps of mighty blows that applies to all and only thrown weapons. It'd save you a rune but at the cost of a point of investment and a magic item slot. Since handwraps are currently also considered reasonable for augmenting all of your different unarmed strikes, this doesn't seem a big step to me.
Is there any specific reason it would be too big of an advantage for a player if the benefits of Doubling Rings applied to a thrown weapon until that attack is resolved? Because I can't really think of any obvious ones. Both Doubling Rings and the Returning Rune are 3rd level items and the gold difference of 5 gp seems balanced by the risk of losing a couple mundane weapons that a character throws.
I suppose it provides a bit of an advantage to a character who carries a bunch of weapons with different damage types and traits and knows enough about each monster to grab the most advantageous one with their iron ringed hand and throw it. They would be getting a mechanical advantage over the returning rune, but they're sinking actions to draw them, maybe knowledge checks to grab the right thing, and money to be carrying around a coat full of hammers and daggers and shurikens and such.
I kind of like the idea of a character who just carries a runestone in the gold ring hand and uses the other hand to draw and throw weapons empowered by it.
Would this empower thaumaturges too much or step on their class features excessively?
Is there any specific reason it would be too big of an advantage for a player if the benefits of Doubling Rings applied to a thrown weapon until that attack is resolved? Because I can't really think of any obvious ones. Both Doubling Rings and the Returning Rune are 3rd level items and the gold difference of 5 gp seems balanced by the risk of losing a couple mundane weapons that a character throws.
I suppose it provides a bit of an advantage to a character who carries a bunch of weapons with different damage types and traits and knows enough about each monster to grab the most advantageous one with their iron ringed hand and throw it. They would be getting a mechanical advantage over the returning rune, but they're sinking actions to draw them, maybe knowledge checks to grab the right thing, and money to be carrying around a coat full of hammers and daggers and shurikens and such.
I kind of like the idea of a character who just carries a runestone in the gold ring hand and uses the other hand to draw and throw weapons empowered by it.
Would this empower thaumaturges too much or step on their class features excessively?
There is a new item coming with treasury of dragons called throwers bandolier.
The main issue of doubling rings is just that it would become too useful overall applying to both melee and ranged at once and the game usually applies a cost to versatility like that.
But yeah thrower's bandolier solves the issue so it doesn't really matter.