Hello all. I have an issue when I GM with handing out useful loot. It seems like past a certain point. Usually level 4 or 5 they kinda glue themselves to one weapon and seek out enchanters to keep it up to pace which makes my job of making loot for them very difficult. Does anyone else have this issue or am I making a mountain out of a molehill?
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For me the auto bonus progression solves a lot of problems with magic items. Since the players don’t need to worry about the big 6 items it means they can enjoy odd items for slots that would normally be taken up by one of the big 6.
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Yup, this is normal in my experience. One issue is with the pf ruleset, specializing in one weapon is very advantageous. Any given build might have 5 more to hit and 15 more damage with their chosen weapon. So even if you give them an amazing longsword, if they chose scimitars then they'll still be better with a plain non magical scimitar than the amazing longsword they just found.
Even when you give them the correct weapon type, they probably have better. Like you said, many players focus on their weapon, making it one of the first things they upgrade. For these players, you probably can't give them a better weapon without breaking your treasure budget.
Here's what I end up doing. I'll have situational weapons drop as treasure. Say I have a character that uses scimitars, maybe I'll have a cold iron demon bane scimitar they find. Now it's not going to replace what they have, but it will be better in specific situations. That player may then hold onto the weapon as their backup in case of demons. Or maybe I'll drop a +1 shocking shortbow. It's not their weapon of choice, but it's a lot better then the mwk shortbow they currently carry for their ranged option.
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Back in D&D, my friends and I allowed Polymorph Any Object to work on magic weapons (it specifically did not affect magic items by the rules, IIRC), so that the +2 glaive-guisarme-voulge you just found that nobody on earth knows what to do with could be transformed into a +2 longsword. (With the caveats that certain properties only worked in certain forms, and were lost if you, for instance, tried to turn a vorpal sword into a mace, and also that you couldn't turn ammunition into permanent weapons, unless you have 50 of them...)
It was also the go-to solution for changing the size of weapons, for when you went Against the Giants and ended up with a half-dozen Large-sized +X weapons that were good only as really big trophies.
The other solution would be to allow a fast form of retraining to apply to some weapon-specific feats, so that a Shoanti Fighter who has got all his buckets filled with feats to enhance the use of his Earthbreaker but just got a rocking magical ranseur from the latest Runelord to get in the party's way could spent an hour in the morning adapting his special moves to this new weapon and transfer his feats to 'Weapon Focus (ranseur)' and 'Weapon Specialization (ranseur)' and 'Improved Critical (ranseur).'
I would be inclined to limit that weapon-feat-hotswap option to Fighters, 'cause I'm a big meany, but even non-Fighters could retrain the slower way.
Yeah I've had this problem a bit.
Our GM gave my Bloodrager a +2 Construct Bane Longbow for Iron Gods. Sounds amazing (and it kinda is), but it's not a Composite Longbow sonall that strength is totally wasted. I sold it and bought a +1 Adaptive Longbow and damage is about the same (although the to-hit is lower), but the party has ~6,000gp left to spend.
It is hard to find fun things, my advice is for everyone to play an Occultist, then you can turn any weapon into something amazing and flavourful ^_^
No but seriously I do want to try automatic bonus progression, I think it'd be fun.
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Rather than having everything drop as treasure from monsters, set it as ‘if you do XYZ the grateful NPC will enhance your favourite weapon for you”, or even “as you slay the blue dragon your spear seems to draw in some of its essence, and begins to crackle with lightning”. That way the players get to have the fun stuff they want without the artificiality of selling massive piles of +1 ogre hooks that no one would actually want.
Plus, from a roleplay perspective, ‘this is my father’s sword that he bequeathed to me and I slew my first zombie with’ is cooler than “this is a sword that has a marginally better enchantment than the one that replaced the one that dad gave me”.
Many players of martial characters seem to see their weapon as extension of their character. Hence they develop some sentimental connection to it - probably due to the monsters and NPCs they did beat with that weapon. So an upgrade to the weapon of choice is way better loot than a replacement weapon.
Note that the same players usually build no emotional connection to their armor or other items. So here replacement items are more welcome. How comes? Maybe because they don't use these items actively, so they spend little time noticing them.
Would be interesting to know whether a wizard gets emotionally attached to a wand of magic missile as an actively used item, assuming they carry it for many levels, it gets stronger over time and maybe it regains some charges.
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Would be interesting to know whether a wizard gets emotionally attached to a wand of magic missile as an actively used item, assuming they carry it for many levels, it gets stronger over time and maybe it regains some charges.
I could see a new player who grew up on stuff like Harry Potter might consider a wand a viable life-long weapon choice, but for those of us who grew up on D&D, it's always been a disposable thing, like a potion or scroll, just with a slightly longer shelf life.
Now a wizard who had a bunch of power and utility bound into a magical staff, that gained a new feature every time he gained a new level of spells, and so 'grew with him' would be awesome. (And players who grew up with Gandalf or Raistlin as their fantasy wizards might be able to get behind that.) Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed had some options for a Magister (his version of the wizard or arcanist) to imbue their staff with new powers and features as time went on, and that sort of thing could be fun to adapt to Pathfinder, and even make an order of 'Staff Wizards' who focus on enchanting their staff, and channeling power through it.
I vaguely recall an ancient Dragon article about 'focus items' that a wizard could use to basically grant him access to a spell. So a 'wand of magic missile' was a wand that allowed him to spontaneously convert any spell he had prepared to a magic missile spell at his caster level, as long as he was holding the wand. Basically it was a free spell known, in sorcerer terms, but held no charges itself. That could be a neat lifelong 'magic wand,' since the spell within it would 'grow' with the caster level.
Most martial characters put a lot of effort into improving their combat ability. More often than not this means they specialize in some form or another. Unless your loot weapon fits into that plan it is going not going to be considered worthwhile no matter how cool you think it is. If the character is playing scimitar wielding dervish dancer a +2 scimitar is going to be cooler to him than a Flame Tongue. People want to play cool characters not cool weapons. Sure having a cool weapon can make a character cooler, but only if it enhances what the character does.
While the auto bonus progression solves many of the problems with characters trading away cool loot for cash to get the basics it does not fix the issue of cool weapons. Some martial classes are very narrowly focused while other have a much broader focus. Fighters and Swashbucklers for tend to focus on specific weapons. On the other hand most Paladin class abilities function equally well on any weapon. A fighter who spent most of his feats on a greatsword is not going to be interested in a greataxe. The paladin who does not have any weapons specific feats will usually not have a problem switching weapons.
So really what it comes down to is the weapon focused characters. There is one solution that can help those characters. The Scaling Items option works well for these types of characters. Chances are that not all the characters in the party are going to be playing weapon focused characters, so you don’t need to give every character a scaling item. But giving the weapon focused characters a scaling item and using the auto bonus progression will solve most of the problems with characters wanting to sell any loot.
Thanks for all the advice guys. I should have mentioned in the first post that our group usually uses ABP. Y'all have given me some good ideas. Much appreciation
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You could toss in a few weapons with the Transformative or Greater Transformative property on it. It doesn't really make the weapon much better, but it would let them turn it into whatever weapon they want.
Would be interesting to know whether a wizard gets emotionally attached to a wand of magic missile as an actively used item, assuming they carry it for many levels, it gets stronger over time and maybe it regains some charges.
Yeah I fairly quickly discovered that there are barely any tech items that are useful for a Bloodrager in Iron Gods (unless you go DEX-based), so dispite the fact that I haven't enhanced it at all my Chainsaw is my most prized posesseion. I've spent more on armour (and a huge amount on a cloak of Displacement), but the weapon is about the only campaign specific thing I own, so it's more important to me ... even if I don't use it in some fights.
<Iron Gods Bloodrager Chainsaw stuff>When I was playing Iron Gods I was an archer fighter that doubled as our entire front line. The entire party was ranged.
I ended up with the chainsaw because a fighter with no feats supporting a chainsaw is still decent with it. I talked the GM into letting me change it to Adamantine.
Yeah I'm our party's entire front line. Honestly the Chainsaw is perfect for my character and is his main weapon, but being a 2-handed weapon means if he gets grappled/etc he has to switch to a backup. Since I' the only front-line character that happens a lot =P
Also being the only tanky character in a party of ranged damage dealers means I don't really need to deal damage, I just need to stand in the way and survive till everything dies. Then occasionally rescue someone from being surrounded. I'm building toward the Stalwart feats now coz my AC just isn't keeping up.
Getting off track now =P
Yeah sometimes it's as simple as changing a +2 Longsword into a +2 Scimitar to suit the party. I like Meirill's holy symbol example, that'd be really great for the party.
Or as I said, play Occultists and you can turn fun items into fun Implements =D
It seems like past a certain point. Usually level 4 or 5 they kinda glue themselves to one weapon and seek out enchanters to keep it up to pace which makes my job of making loot for them very difficult.
The way to fix this is to hand out weapons that are actually useful for the characters. If the martial has Weapon Focus (greataxe), handing out an awesome longsword is akin to spitting the player in the face, as even if the weapon is better even withoutn the feat, invalidating part of the character feels bad. It doesn't matter what movie/anime with a cool sword (wielding character) you had just seen, the player has dedicated their character to using greataxes, and if you want your cool new weapon to be used by the character, and you want to not be a dick, make it a greataxe.
I suggest not starting with complete concepts based on a different weapon type, but rather to start with the weapon type in question and look for cool weapons of that type, or think about cool concepts for that type of weapon.
Tip #2 is to listen to your players. I have a player who's character is using a morningstar. The player inquired about a weapon with a sort of retractable chain that could transform into a sort of flail. I had denied that for the start of the campaign (or rather I said that it wouldn't be a simple weapon), but that's a potential weapon to hand out.
Our GM gave my Bloodrager a +2 Construct Bane Longbow for Iron Gods. Sounds amazing (and it kinda is), but it's not a Composite Longbow sonall that strength is totally wasted.
I utterly hate that. What, you're willing to buy a weapon for 18,375gp, but spending 25gp more to make it composite was too expensive?
F$!# that shit. Magic non-composite longbows should not exist in the game. In-universe, it's utterly stupid to create such a weapon, as it's much harder to sell.
It's like buying a stick shift car in a region where 99% of the people only know how to drive automatic. It might work for you, but not being able to sell it if you ever want to replace it, nor beign able to lend it to other people, is a huge disadvantage.
Honestly the Chainsaw is perfect for my character and is his main weapon, but being a 2-handed weapon means if he gets grappled/etc he has to switch to a backup. Since I' the only front-line character that happens a lot =P
Grappling a character wielding a running chainsaw should require a will save against a fear effect!
Our GM gave my Bloodrager a +2 Construct Bane Longbow for Iron Gods. Sounds amazing (and it kinda is), but it's not a Composite Longbow sonall that strength is totally wasted.I utterly hate that. What, you're willing to buy a weapon for 18,375gp, but spending 25gp more to make it composite was too expensive?
F#&% that s~!&. Magic non-composite longbows should not exist in the game.
Yeah I *Think* that longbow was part of the AP, but even if our GM added it I wask't super upset. I would probably have kept it if it were a +1 Construct-Bane Longbow (that's a nice backup), but a +2-Bane weapon is worth so much that upgrading it is too expensive and selling it is too appealing. It's my backup-backup weapon and I'm the only character who could use it (well the Techslinger can, but ...), so it wouldn't have mattered too much if we'd kept it, but 9,000gp for the party is worth more.
Grappling a character wielding a running chainsaw should require a will save against a fear effect!
Haha absolutely!
EDIT: I split this into 2 posts since they're not really related.
One more thing that hasn't been mentioned (I think) is the "Elephant in the Room" feat tax rules. There are a lot of changes, but specifically the way they treat feats like Weapon Focus/Improved Critical/etc is that they apply to groups of weapons (the Fighter Weapon Training groups), so you could use those rules - or at least that one - if you want to add more versatility to your loot drops without nerfing the characters.
I'm pretty sure that, historically, there was no such thing as a composite longbow. In fact, the whole point of a composite bow was actually to essentially do the same amount of damage as a longbow with a smaller/easier-in-certain-respects construction.
I presume what Pathfinder calls a composite longbow is not a composite bow of longbow measurements, but rather a composite bow with the strength of a longbow. This is heavily supported by the fact that it can be used while mounted, a feature that is about size and not draw weight.
The thing is that having the wielder's strength not relevant (beyond a potential penalty applying to damage rolls) for longbows is nonsense. So while it shouldn't technically be a composite bow, a longbow should have a strength score like one.Of course, my comment was mainly about game mechanics. In Golarion and other settings using the Pathfidner rules, crafting a magical non-composite bow would be a bad business tactic. The +25gp is negligible compared to the price of a magic weapon (at least 2375gp), and being able to add adaptive should greatly improve resale value.
would belts or cables around a chipped sword prevent it from further damage?
No. The one just below the hilt might be able to secure the crossguard, but the strap further down on the blade cannot possibly be useful. The strain on a sword upon making contact is much higher than that on a bow from it being drawn.
Of course, even ignoring the fact that the sword is way to unwieldy to properly swing, Amiri's sword is way too damaged to be remotely useful. The edges of the blades need to be smooth for a sword to work, there is no way the edges of that sword are even remotely sharp. Also, all the nicks in the blade mean the weapon will get tangled in the target's clothing (or fur) all the time.One more thing that hasn't been mentioned (I think) is the "Elephant in the Room" feat tax rules. There are a lot of changes, but specifically the way they treat feats like Weapon Focus/Improved Critical/etc is that they apply to groups of weapons (the Fighter Weapon Training groups), so you could use those rules - or at least that one - if you want to add more versatility to your loot drops without nerfing the characters.
Four problems: First, it only goes so far - Weapon Focus (axes) still doesn't help using a sword. Second, players usually pick the best weapon for their character from the group anyway, so the weapon to hand out would need to be sub-par. Third, there's still plenty of characters who can only really use a specific weapon (e.g. a Swashbuckler with Fencing Grace). And forth, some players want to use a specific weapon for flavor reasons.
Of course, even ignoring the fact that the sword is way to unwieldy to properly swing, Amiri's sword is way too damaged to be remotely useful. The edges of the blades need to be smooth for a sword to work, there is no way the edges of that sword are even remotely sharp. Also, all the nicks in the blade mean the weapon will get tangled in the target's clothing (or fur) all the time.
I dunno, I think if I got hot with that thing I'd die pretty quick. Maybe just change the damage type to bashing and you're good to go.
One more thing that hasn't been mentioned (I think) is the "Elephant in the Room" feat tax rules. There are a lot of changes, but specifically the way they treat feats like Weapon Focus/Improved Critical/etc is that they apply to groups of weapons (the Fighter Weapon Training groups), so you could use those rules - or at least that one - if you want to add more versatility to your loot drops without nerfing the characters.Four problems: First, it only goes so far - Weapon Focus (axes) still doesn't help using a sword. Second, players usually pick the best weapon for their character from the group anyway, so the weapon to hand out would need to be sub-par. Third, there's still plenty of characters who can only really use a specific weapon (e.g. a Swashbuckler with Fencing Grace). And forth, some players want to use a specific weapon for flavor reasons.
I'm not saying this is a 100% fix, but it'll give you a lot more room to play with.
1. It won't let them use any weapon you drop on them, but if they've focused on axes you can drop a dwarven heavy axe-gauntlet, dwarven light axe gauntlet, bardiche, battleaxe, boarding axe, butchering axe, collapsible kumade, dwarven waraxe, gandasa, greataxe, handaxe, heavy pick, hooked axe, knuckle axe, kumade, light pick, mattock, orc double axe, pata, throwing axe, or tongi on them and they can do something with it. That's a lot more than just a Greataxe.
2. Yes they do, but if their chouce is between a +2 Greataxe or a +1 Holy Battleaxe as they go into the haunted mansion they're more likely to make use of the flavourful weapon for at least a little while, thus making varied loot more intersting.
3. I'm pretty sure the way those rules work Fencing Grace would work for all weapons in a group, so this wouldn't be a problem. I'd have to look it up to remember how it works exactly for this feat, but the idea is that there is no feat that's specific to one weapon, feats affect weapon groups.
4. I can't help you with this one, but if they're using a weapon for flavour reasons then you're not really dealing with the same problem. As I said, it's not going to fix everything but it'll open up the floor for a lot more flavourful options for the GM to throw in, and a lot less hyper-specialised builds where the characters sell the interesting stuff you give them because they can't use it.
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if you don't want to specifically tailor all the weapons to what the characters use, which does start to get a little silly at a certain point, you can modify the reason that players are hesitant to switch them up for mechanical reasons. Namely the pigeon hole the feats put you in. If your character has taken Weapon Focus: bastard sword and the accompanying stuff, they are going to be loathe to use anything other than a bastard sword because of the use of their limited feat choices. Our group has been playing by the Trailblazer fix to this since that came out, which simply changes the Weapon Focus (and similar) to weapon damage type instead of specific, so you take Weapon Focus: Slashing, Bludgeoning, Piercing, or Ranged and you get that bonus for all attacks of that type. This helps a lot towards solving this problem as characters are no longer tied to a single weapon type as much, and also helps out most any non-fighter class since they don't get the massive number of feats.
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The thing is, pathfinder can be a lot more specialized than just weapon focus. There are numerous feat chains, archetypes, traits, prestige classes, etc that are designed around the use of specific weapons.
Maybe you want to make an aldori swordlord, or a taldan rondelero duelist. How about a kapenia dancer? Maybe you want to play a shoanti barbarian fighting with thunder and fang. For any of these characters, you will likely lose the benefit of half your class features, feats, and other abilities if you don't wield the correct weapon(s).
not sure if that is reply to me or not, if so, yeah you just change all of that to be damage type instead of the specific weapon. You can still use your Aldori dueling sword with your Aldori Duelist, you just don't have Weapon Focus: Aldori Dueling Sword anymore, you have Weapon Focus: Whatever damage type it is. Nothing else changes, save now the character could also pick up another weapon of the same damage type and receive the benefit from their feats/class abilities.
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I stole something from 2nd edition for my group, Steal enchantment. It's a one hour ritual that allows you to transfer the enchantment from one magical item to a non-magical one. The character that has access to that ritual is an elf, so they have the hours available to do some during the night.
This allows them to keep the items that they might have personally bonded with, but still has some small amount of time requirement for them to swap out, but YMMV.
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Taldan Rondelero Duelist, fighter archetype. You fight with a falcata and buckler. You get to shield bash with your buckler. A special disarm maneuver with your buckler. A bonus to hit and damage with falcatas and bucklers. You then take the taldan duelist feat that gives you aditional bonuses only while fighting with falcata and buckler. You also took weapon focus, specialization, improved crit, all that only work with specified weapons.
For an aldori swordlord you might have taken one of a dozen different aldori sword specific feats, half a dozen traits, 3 class archetypes, and a prestige class. All of which specify what weapon you must be using for them to work.
Weapons are not balanced. The kapenia dancer class lets you do all sorts of stuff with a bladed scarf, but the bladed scarf is a crappy weapon at 1d6/x2 for an exotic 2 hander. If you let them use different weapons, then they bust out a falchion for 2d4/18-20, and you just threw the class balance out the window.
So you're dealing with a number of factors. One, weapon choice isn't just mechanical, it can be thematically tied to the setting. Two, the mechanical aspects were designed around being limited. Removing the limitations might open up new combinations that are far more powerful than intended. Three, players might want to roleplay something like being a samurai and using their daisho set and to toss it aside would be a disgrace to their ancestors. Four, it makes sense from a simulationist perspective. Real world martial artists also tend to focus on a limited set of style, weapon, or techniques to master.
I think some of this isn't a problem as far as this thread is concerned.
If a character is using their amcesteal martial-art-style that only works woth kukris, and because of that they throw away the enchanted Longsword that the party finds then that's not really a problem. They're selling the weapons to enhance roleplay, not in spite of it.
If your character finds a magical longsword that's posessed by their ancestor spirit but they throw it away because they've spent 9 feats and 2 class-dips in order to be better with kukris and now the Longsword is useless then this is the mechanics getting in the way of the roleplay, and it's a problem.
If it's not the mechanics getting in the way of the roleplay then I don't think it's really the problem this thread is trying to address.
There was a thread recently where someone was having trouble keeping up with the other players. The GM gave the character a +5 Vorpal Longsword and the player was still having trouble. The character in question* had 10 STR, 22 DEX and Weapon Focus in a different weapon, so he was actually better off using a non-magical weapon than using this 200,000gp artifact-level weapon. This was a real problem for their game, and one that could easily have been solved with a little more personalised loot (or a slight modification of the feat rules or something.
*I don't actually remember the stats off-hand, but I do remember working out that they were better off without the Vorpal sword.
Taldan Rondelero Duelist, fighter archetype. You fight with a falcata and buckler. You get to shield bash with your buckler. A special disarm maneuver with your buckler. A bonus to hit and damage with falcatas and bucklers. You then take the taldan duelist feat that gives you aditional bonuses only while fighting with falcata and buckler. You also took weapon focus, specialization, improved crit, all that only work with specified weapons.
For an aldori swordlord you might have taken one of a dozen different aldori sword specific feats, half a dozen traits, 3 class archetypes, and a prestige class. All of which specify what weapon you must be using for them to work.
Weapons are not balanced. The kapenia dancer class lets you do all sorts of stuff with a bladed scarf, but the bladed scarf is a crappy weapon at 1d6/x2 for an exotic 2 hander. If you let them use different weapons, then they bust out a falchion for 2d4/18-20, and you just threw the class balance out the window.
So you're dealing with a number of factors. One, weapon choice isn't just mechanical, it can be thematically tied to the setting. Two, the mechanical aspects were designed around being limited. Removing the limitations might open up new combinations that are far more powerful than intended. Three, players might want to roleplay something like being a samurai and using their daisho set and to toss it aside would be a disgrace to their ancestors. Four, it makes sense from a simulationist perspective. Real world martial artists also tend to focus on a limited set of style, weapon, or techniques to master.
yeah, still not seeing a problem. We've been using it for near a decade now and nothing involved in the change effects anything you just said on a practical level. At worst, the very last part, where someone may specialize in a specific weapon at the expense of all others, but then they can just not pick up a longsword if they've spent their adventuring career mastering a glaive. Or they can get a +1 to hit with it, neither is breaking anything.
as another take on that, I've used a Master Smith before, an NPC who shows up early and explains that they are tasked by some power or just their own inquisitiveness to study all manner of weapons and armor, offering to take anything the group finds, study it, break it down and then if they so desire, apply their new knowledge to the benefit of the group. Or mechanically; give him the +1 shocking longsword to study and breakdown and then he'll enchant your mace to be +1 shocking.
This also helps with the question of what to do with the mountain of Unholy weapons and other items the typical good party is loath to use.
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Or, y'know... houserule power crystals.
One way to flavor this up would be to use cold iron being twice as hard to enchant as precedent for saying that metal in general is hard to enchant, perhaps because magic is somehow imbued with life-energy or something and metal is 'cold' and doesn't contain magic well, but crystals totally do, so it's easier and more efficient to place a power crystal in the hilt of a weapon and enchant the crystal, than to try and get the magic to 'stick' to the weapon itself.
And trained individuals can remove a crystal and implant it into a different weapon, without risking the magic imbued within it. (Perhaps PCs can learn to do so, perhaps only NPC magewright-smiths, depending on how, as a GM, you want to deal with it.)
Druids might have a small advantage at this, being attuned to the natural magics involved, which would alter the flavor considerably, if so. (Or they might have, in the past, but arcanists and other divine casters have figured it out and eliminated their previous advantage. Perhaps even other casters get involved, like it was an alchemical process that first allowed a crystal to be removed and implanted in a new item, which also was later figured out by others as well?)
Of course, my comment was mainly about game mechanics. In Golarion and other settings using the Pathfidner rules, crafting a magical non-composite bow would be a bad business tactic. The +25gp is negligible compared to the price of a magic weapon (at least 2375gp), and being able to add adaptive should greatly improve resale value.
While I agree that the additional cost of making a bow composite is fairly negligible for a magic weapon, it isn't quite as negligible as you're thinking. Sure, a composite longbow only costs 25 gp more than a regular longbow, but that's a +0 Strength modifier bow. It also costs 100 gp per +1 Str mod you want the bow to provide.
This makes it both more costly and trickier for crafters to make the "right" choice, because if you make the modifier too high, many customers can't use it effectively, and if you make it too low, stronger customers won't want it. Magic composite bows really need to be custom orders, and it's probably more logical to just make all of them Adaptive.
I've always felt that hyper-specializing with a specific weapon or the like should come with certain risks/vulnerabilities.
If you use most of your resources getting better in situations where everything is exactly as you want it, then situations where the odds are against you will be made even more difficult.
The guy who uses six feats and half his wealth to make himself better and better at using some specific exotic weapon will be more potent than a character taking a more generalized approach. In ideal situations. But if both of their respective weapons are stolen/destroyed, they're fighting in a tight cave tunnel/spider web/grapple or in adverse conditions, the all-comers build will be hurt less. One operates at 150%/25% efficiency, where as the other is at 100%/75%.
I personally think the latter character makes for a more compelling, relatable one, but that's a while different topic. I don't mind making someone pay the piper for being a one-trick pony.
I think the Magicmart problem is a big part of this whole issue as well. I let my players know that they will not be punished for keeping "suboptimal" items, I limit the number of magic item-vendors (sometimes to zero), and use almost exclusively custom magic items. All of this helps me establish that magic is strange and wondrous and mysterious. The more easily cataloged and categorized magic items become, the less magic will seem to be, well, magical.
Quasi-seconding Rauðúlfur's post above. In the Kingmaker campaign I'm running, the party encountered these crystals with souls/spirits in them underneath one PC's childhood village. TL;DR: when shattered, some of the spirits entered the party's weapons and armor to enhance them (and I just had one PC's axe also 'swallow' up a Belker that it killed last encounter), but one crystal which remained unshattered actually contains the soul of the crystal-trapper-creator dude. And the next time our Wizard (who hasn't crafted anything since this arc) sits down to craft, he'll find that he can transfer enchantments from one item to another similar item (weapon to weapon, armor to armor, ring to ring, etc), or he can break down an enchantment into a reservoir that can be used for later enchantment. So if they don't want to use the +2 warhammer they found, or place the +2 on another item, they can break down the +2 enhancement into 4000gp worth of weapon enhancement-equivalent energy to be used at a later date.
Thank you. I know it is also verboten, but there is also the concept of residuum from the dark edition. A similar ritual to that could be used to infuse it into a weapon. If you take the residuum from a +1 flaming weapon, maybe the residuum has a fiery essence?
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That makes me think of something else, a side note on timing. Say one of your pcs uses a longsword. They currently have a +2, so you add a +3 one into some treasure. Great, they will be happy right? Well, normally yes, but... You just came off a month of downtime, and your player spent their downtime forging a sword and enchanting it to +2. Then they go to adventure with their new +2 sword and the first loot the get is an upgrade. You just negated their month of downtime with cruel irony.
I considered taking master craftsman in ruins of azlant where I built a tannery in the settlement and had ranks in profession tanner. The GM told me it would only work to make magic items made of hides. When I tried to explain how awful that restriction would make an already poor feat, he got mad at me like I was trying to game the system.
In my home games, I let everyone craft without feats by using the dynamic magic item crafting rules from unchained. They can still take the feats and craft by the normal rules if they want.
Personally, I don't like the idea of just giving out a +2 upgrade gem they can put on anything. I like having treasure be a choice where they can use it as found or sell it for half. Keeping something gives you more gp value, but selling it gives you customization. For this reason, I often try to drop loot that is useful, but not what players would normally buy themselves.
Yeah...no this is a bad idea...he wanted a permanent Cure Light Wounds Rock...
The chapter on magic item creation is pretty clear that crap like this doesn't work. It's right there in the rulebook (see Mark Hoover 330's continuous True Strike effect--literally in the book as an example as to what the formula are NOT meant to do). So I hardly think this constitutes evidence that letting players have a hand in magic item creation is a bad idea.
If at any point someone is trying to abuse the rules, ruin your game, or do something decent people shouldn't do, you stop them.
You're the GM. You get the last word.
--I don't really see how those concepts aren't just a given at all times. If I had an sp for every time someone answered a question with "of your GM says so", or saw the general "this could possibly lead to to problems so never do it, ever" mindset at work...
The first rule of magic item creation is to see if there's already an item that does the same thing. If there is you use that as a price guide.
CLW Rock = BOOTS OF THE EARTH.
They're different, but essentially they're both unlimited healing ... out of combat healing (they can both be used in combat, but not effectively). The Rock would heal the party ~5 times faster than the boots, so it should be more expensive. I don't know if I'd make it 5 times as expensive (it's still out of combat healing), but I'd make it least twice as much.
So you're looking at around 5,000gp at least.
There are 2 caveats to this:
1. The Boots of the Earth do break the game, in that you get unlimited healing for the entire party for 2,500gp (crafted). It takes time but it stops the need for tracking resources to keep the party healed over time. As a result this is a contentious item that is often banned.
2. To counter that, tracking resources to keep the party healed isn't fun for anyone. At a certain point it amounts to carrying around a sack full of wands and just ticking them off between combats.