All,
My swashbuckler is level 3, and already **really** tired of ghosts and devils and things that resist normal damage.
She carries a katana and wakizashi (short sword). I'd like to work the wakizashi into something that's effective against ghosts and other "things of the Netherworld." (I have other plans for the katana, but want to keep a weapon handy for those annoying situational encounters.) Obviously I'll need to get a ghost touch enchantment on the wakizashi, but I am also thinking of making it out of either silver or cold iron.
I know that in Pathfinder the "Netherworld" is not one place but is actually broken down into different planes, and that demons are different from devils. It's all a bit confusing for my ancient brain. Of the two materials, silver or cold iron, is one effective against both demons and devils? Anything you can recommend?
Most martials just buy a bunch of silversheen and now ghost oil to deal with random stuff like that. Hard to do at level 3, but you can bully the local caster for pocket money or to keep magic weapon prepared a little longer so you can afford the contingency.
Cold iron works against Demons, Silver versus Devils.
Do they take extra damage from these, or is it just that they don't resist the damage?
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Do they take extra damage from these, or is it just that they don't resist the damage?Cold iron works against Demons, Silver versus Devils.
Depends if the creature has Weakness or Resistance.
Weakness (usually what Demons have to Cold Iron) take more and Resistance (what Devils usually have) take less from all sources that aren't that type.
I think Demons typically have weakness to cold iron, meaning they take extra damage against cold iron weapons but will take normal damage from regular weapons. Devils have resistance to all physical damage except if caused by a silver weapon. Ghost are incorporeal and resistant to all damage except force and ghost touch.
So if you wanted to get around defenses, a silver ghost touch weapon would do it. You don't technically need cold iron if you goal is to avoid defenses because cold iron for demons causes extra damage, not avoiding damage reduction. But obviously if you're encountering more demons than devils it's probably better to choose cold iron instead.
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What my Age of Ashes Halfling Thief eventually ended up with for maximum melee flexibility was:
Cold Iron (High Grade) Shortsword.
Silver (High Grade) Shortsword.
+3 Striking (Major) Shifting Holy Frost (Greater) Adamanine (High Grade) Pick
Doubling Rings (Greater)
The pick was typically shifted into the form of a gauntlet worn on my 'off' hand and used as a rune source (via the rings) for whichever weapon I had in my 'main' hand (cold iron for demons/fae, silver for devils/lycanthropes, or either for stuff without known resistances/weakness). When facing an elemental or construct, I could shift the gauntlet into a finesse weapon and use it instead.
With the shifting rune, I could shift any of my weapons between Shortsword (for Piercing or Slashing damage), a Light Mace (for lethal Bludgeoning damage), or a Poi (for non-lethal Bludgeoning damage) as needed.
Incorporeal foes were still a problem, but their immunity to Sneak Attack damage kinda made my weapon strikes against them sub-optimal in any case, so I just used Disrupt Undead cantrip from my Cleric Archetype when facing incorporeal undead...
The flexibility was great (Crystalline construct? Good thing I am just one action away from having a full power Adamantine bludgeoning weapon in hand!) but keeping multiple 'precious material' weapons of the 'appropriate grade' is fairly expensive: The pick I used was an actual AP drop (without the property runes), but I had to pay for all the rest and it wasn't exactly cheap...
Does it cost more to enchant weapons made of silver or cold iron? I mean aside from the increased cost of the weapon itself?
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Does it cost more to enchant weapons made of silver or cold iron? I mean aside from the increased cost of the weapon itself?
Sort of. You need higher grade purity of the materials to have higher level enchantments on it. So to keep competitive it gets more expensive.
In general, for people who dual wield it's usually more effective to put enchants on your non-precious material weapon and use doubling rings or something to duplicate it.
Single weapon users actually kind of get screwed. And the price difference is enough, that generally you're not going to keep a special material weapon unless you fighting something that it's useful against like 50% or more of the time.
I really think precious material rules, at least the purity with different grades, needs to go.
In my mind, the expense of rooms will keep you from having multiple weapons that you can use. So you wont have multiple materials, unless you wield two weapons and have one "backup" weapon with all the runes and use doubling rings to copy them over.
But generally speaking, people will only maintain 1 special material weapon due to cost of the material and runes.
So while you might be able to get bonus damage (or overcome resistance) against certain groups of enemies, it's not as though you'll be guaranteed that.
I just don't think the "extra" damage against some enemies is a big enough deal. As it sits, it's so expensive unless I'm regularly running into enemies in 50+% of combats who are affected by one material type I'm probably just going to bear through as is.
Does it cost more to enchant weapons made of silver or cold iron? I mean aside from the increased cost of the weapon itself?
Sort of. You need higher grade purity of the materials to have higher level enchantments on it. So to keep competitive it gets more expensive.
What I mean is, is it more expensive to enchant a +1 on a silver weapon than it is on a steel one? I'm not talking about the cost of the weapon. Just the cost of the enchantment.
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Well, in PF2 things don't quite work that way.
You have runes. Specifically you have fundamental runes, which includes Potency (+X to attack, NO damage bonus) and Striking runes (+1dX damage, where X is your weapon damage die). The lowest level versions of those runes are levels 2 & 4. The next step up for fundamental runes are at item levels 10 and 12. Why do I bring this up? Because Special Materials.
Low-grade items can be used in the creation of magic items of up to 8th level, and they can hold runes of up to 8th level. Standard-grade items can be used to create magic items of up to 15th level and can hold runes of up to 15th level. High-grade items use the purest form of the precious material, and can be used to Craft magic items of any level holding any runes. Using purer forms of common materials is so relatively inexpensive that the Price is included in any magic item.
So, a low grade precious material item can only hold runes (including fundamental runes) of up to 8th level. Meaning you can't get to the second tier potency and striking runes without upgrading to standard grade precious materials. This also happens when you want to upgrade to the 3rd tier of fundamental runes, you'll need high grade precious materials. Those higher purity grades are very expensive.
So, while technically adding the runes themselves isn't more expensive, in practice it is because you have to pay for upgrading the precious material purity.
So "no", but actually yes.
Compared to a weapon made from "regular" materials to a cold iron +3 greater striking weapon will pay 4950 gp more. At 16th level, the level when high grade cold iron is available, that's about 6% of your entire treasure by level.
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So "no", but actually yes.Compared to a weapon made from "regular" materials to a cold iron +3 greater striking weapon will pay 4950 gp more. At 16th level, the level when high grade cold iron is available, that's about 6% of your entire treasure by level.
The cost of a Cold Iron Weapon (High-Grade) weapon is 9,900g+: Creating/Upgrading it yourself still requires the full price in the form of raw components, sweat equity (your earn income result), and the original Cold Iron weapon value (if you are upgrading an existing weapon).
Using the Chapter 10: Game Mastering / Rewards / Treasure / Treasure for New Characters rules as a guideline, this is:
- About half of a 16th level character's expected 20,000g wealth, or
- about a third of a 17th level character's expected 30,000g wealth.
...
So "no", but actually yes.Compared to a weapon made from "regular" materials to a cold iron +3 greater striking weapon will pay 4950 gp more. At 16th level, the level when high grade cold iron is available, that's about 6% of your entire treasure by level.
The cost of a Cold Iron Weapon (High-Grade) weapon is 9,900g+: Creating/Upgrading it yourself still requires the full price in the form of raw components, sweat equity (your earn income result), and the original Cold Iron weapon value (if you are upgrading an existing weapon).
Using the Chapter 10: Game Mastering / Rewards / Treasure / Treasure for New Characters rules as a guideline, this is:
- About half of a 16th level character's expected 20,000g wealth, or
- about a third of a 17th level character's expected 30,000g wealth.
Sorry, I looked at the crafting cost and not the market price, and I looked at a different table and must have misread that too.
So it's even worse than I thought.
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Overall:...
So "no", but actually yes.Compared to a weapon made from "regular" materials to a cold iron +3 greater striking weapon will pay 4950 gp more. At 16th level, the level when high grade cold iron is available, that's about 6% of your entire treasure by level.
The cost of a Cold Iron Weapon (High-Grade) weapon is 9,900g+: Creating/Upgrading it yourself still requires the full price in the form of raw components, sweat equity (your earn income result), and the original Cold Iron weapon value (if you are upgrading an existing weapon).
Using the Chapter 10: Game Mastering / Rewards / Treasure / Treasure for New Characters rules as a guideline, this is:
- About half of a 16th level character's expected 20,000g wealth, or
- about a third of a 17th level character's expected 30,000g wealth.
Sorry, I looked at the crafting cost and not the market price, and I looked at a different table and must have misread that too.
So it's even worse than I thought.
- Having a Precious Material weapon as your main weapon just slows your rune progression a bit around levels 8 and 16, as the additional cost becomes fairly insignificant after a few more levels.
- My 'gearing trick' was particularly annoying at those levels, as I had to get both my Cold Iron and Silver weapons upgraded before I could even consider getting the higher level runes (the adamantine weapon was 'high grade' when we found it).
- Having multiple weapons enchanted with 'top of the line' fundamental runes isn't really feasible, as this takes up one-half to one-third of your expected wealth for just a single weapon (while a 20th level character's expected 112,000g seems impressive, a single Magic Weapon (+3 Major Striking) is 40,000g before taking any property runes or precious materials into consideration): Generally speaking, the 'get one set of runes and share them with all your weapons' trick is pretty much the only practical way to get multiple 'fully runed' weapons for any significant portion of your character's career...
Ahem. Instead of worrying about those costs, you could consider the Soul Forger archetype with this once per day ability:
Planar Pain
Evocation
Source Secrets of Magic pg. 237 1.1
Weapon only. When you manifest the essence form, choose one damage type: acid, chaotic, cold, electricity, evil, fire, good, lawful, negative, positive, or sonic. Attacks with the weapon deal this type of damage instead of their physical damage with a +2 status bonus to the damage
Use positive damage against ghosts and you just increased your damage by 7 per hit. If you turn it to good damage against a devil, you are bypassing its resistance AND hitting a weakness, adding 12 damage per hit. The once per day thing is fine in Abomination Vaults where you can rest whenever you want, and even if you don't rest cheese you often fight about one encounter a day where it is useful.
You can also use it to trigger almost any other weakness (including golem antimagic) or bypass physical resistance .
The only problem for a Swashbuckler might be qualifying for it. 14 wisdom is hard with the MAD. I'm not sure if the kitsune divine innate casting feats would qualify you.
Soul Forger. It is an underappreciated gem. And if you're already planning this for a a back up weapon then a you can use doubling rings to empower it on demand.
Curious what you are doing with the katana, though, since it is neither finesse or agile.
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Curious what you are doing with the katana, though, since it is neither finesse or agile.
What I'm doing with a katana is fudging.
It is *actually* a rapier. It just *looks* like a katana. For thematic reasons.
Ahem. Instead of worrying about those costs, you could consider the Soul Forger archetype with this once per day ability:
~snip~
Once per day
That is the thing I most dislike about the archetypeThe abilities are all cool but all are only once per day
I really would like something similar that has weaker but more often usable abilities
If you would in any Form be reliant in the ability you are screwed
And it seems just too likely to me that a once per day ability gets used at the wrong point
Ahem. Instead of worrying about those costs, you could consider the Soul Forger archetype with this once per day ability:
~snip~
Once per day
That is the thing I most dislike about the archetype
The abilities are all cool but all are only once per day
I really would like something similar that has weaker but more often usable abilitiesIf you would in any Form be reliant in the ability you are screwed
And it seems just too likely to me that a once per day ability gets used at the wrong point
This would be a larger concern in another campaign, but the utter lack of time pressure in Abomination Vaults makes it much less of an issue. Getting a silver weapon eventually may be a good idea, but it can wait until you've got more gold to spare.