The Inspired weapon enchantment reads (bolding mine):
This special ability can be placed only on simple weapons, hand crossbows, rapiers, shortbows, short swords, and sword canesUE. In the hands of an investigator, an inspired weapon reduces the cost of using inspiration on attack rolls made with the weapon. The weapon’s wielder needs to expend only one use of inspiration to augment his attack rolls with this weapon, as with the combat inspiration investigator talent. If the wielder already has the combat inspiration talent, the wielder must still expend one use of inspiration, but in addition to adding the result of the inspiration roll to the attack roll, the investigator adds twice the result of the inspiration roll to the weapon’s damage roll.
This leads me to two questions:
1. Is the bolded section rules relevant? Do you actually have to be an investigator to make use of this weapon enchantment, or does it simply suffice to have the ability to use inspiration to augment attacks (as is the case with the Wild Whisperer Druid archetype)?
2. If the bolded section is rules relevant, can the enchantment be made to work for non-Investigators with the ability to use inspiration to augment attacks by making the appropriate UMD skill check to emulate having the Investigator's inspiration ability? I'm guessing not, since the enchantment looks for the class itself and not a class feature, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.
The actual mechanic seems to be the sentence after the one where you bolded the start - 'The weapon’s wielder needs to expend only one use of inspiration to augment his attack rolls with this weapon,...' which doesn't specify class. It should work for a wild whisperer IMO.
The actual mechanic seems to be the sentence after the one where you bolded the start - 'The weapon’s wielder needs to expend only one use of inspiration to augment his attack rolls with this weapon,...' which doesn't specify class. It should work for a wild whisperer IMO.
Glad to see your take on this; I'd definitely like to think that sentence isn't rules relevant, but sometimes it's hard to tell what's rules or fluff.
Flavor text should be completely separate, if not completely removed altogether, from descriptive text.
Slashing Grace doesn't muddy the waters with a bunch of useless speech on HOW you add your Dex to damage. It doesn't need to, because nobody cares.
That being said, I don't see any flavor text, whatsoever, in the Inspired weapon enhancement description...
In the hands of an Investigator seems pretty clear to me. Nothing about this sentence seems to be just for flavor. It, in fact, is a really good example of what rules/descriptive text should be. By RAW, if you aren't an Investigator, this enchantment does nothing for you.
Furthermore, the enchantment, itself, is conveniently only available for weapons that the Investigator is proficient with.
It goes on to mention a specific Investigator Talent, by name, and details exactly how it interacts with the aforementioned Investigator Talent.
A benefit of the enchantment is that you only need to spend one use of Inspiration for your attack, when it normally costs more than one use (unless you have the specific and aforementioned Investigator Talent).
There is an additional benefit for Investigators who already have that specific Investigator Talent, because the original benefit is rather redundant with the benefits of the Talent.
The enchantment mentions the Investigator, not anyone else with access to Inspiration.
In juxtapose, the Skewering enchantment is more open in its description and allows anyone with Panache to benefit from its magics. It has special text as to how it interacts with Swsshbucklers, but it is not exclusive to them.
Flavor text should be completely separate, if not completely removed altogether, from descriptive text.
Completely agree.
That being said, I don't see any flavor text, whatsoever, in the Inspired weapon enhancement description...In the hands of an Investigator seems pretty clear to me. Nothing about this sentence seems to be just for flavor. It, in fact, is a really good example of what rules/descriptive text should be. By RAW, if you aren't an Investigator, this enchantment does nothing for you.
The second half of that sentence, "an inspired weapon reduces the cost of using inspiration on attack rolls made with the weapon", looks like rules but isn't. It's purely descriptive fluff (though not in-game flavor fluff), explaining nothing about how the enchantment actually works. You could remove that sentence fragment entirely and change nothing about the enchantment.
Whether the first part of the sentence is also fluff is up in the air, though I think you're probably right. I'll admit I posted the OP hoping someone would say exactly the opposite, so I'm not exactly unbiased.
Furthermore, the enchantment, itself, is conveniently only available for weapons that the Investigator is proficient with.It goes on to mention a specific Investigator Talent, by name, and details exactly how it interacts with the aforementioned Investigator Talent.
A benefit of the enchantment is that you only need to spend one use of Inspiration for your attack, when it normally costs more than one use (unless you have the specific and aforementioned Investigator Talent).
There is an additional benefit for Investigators who already have that specific Investigator Talent, because the original benefit is rather redundant with the benefits of the Talent.
The enchantment mentions the Investigator, not anyone else with access to Inspiration.
In juxtapose, the Skewering enchantment is more open in its description and allows anyone with Panache to benefit from its magics. It has special text as to how it interacts with Swsshbucklers, but it is not exclusive to them.
The Investigator-specific weapon limitation is perhaps evidence in favor of this being limited to Investigators, but, since Investigators aren't the only ones who get access to those talents, I don't see the rest as being evidence of the limitation. "As with" describes how, and isn't a limiting clause. Later, when it describes what happens if you already have Combat Inspiration, it doesn't continue to refer to it as an investigator talent.
For example, an Investigator 1/Wild Whisperer 9+ could take the Extra Investigator Talent feat to gain Combat Inspiration, and Inspired would key off of that just fine despite it not originating from the Investigator class levels.