Useful Pluses (3.5e Variant Rule)
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Useful Pluses
Introduction[edit]
Can anyone on this wiki remeber when they wanted a +1 sword? Not found, but wanted one? Noone who plays D&D past AD&D seems to answer yes, because the Pluses have been repeatedly trumped by a growing selection of special abilities. To keep up with damage various energy and bane weapons are needed, and even those are secondary to the 2.5 Big Abilities: keen (and impact for blunt weapons) and vorpal.
This rule is designed to make Plus weapons valuable on their own. The problem is not Pluses to hit, but the damage factor. A +1 weapon is mathmatically and functionaly worse depending on the increasing power of the weapon it is placed on. A +1 Dagger is pretty good, but a +1 Greatsword might as well be a really spendy masterwork. Thus, we shall play with the damage plus to change this.
Rule Mechanics[edit]
This rule is fairly simple- for the to hit component of a plus, the bonus is unchanged. For the damage component, you add 1 to the weapons plus and multiply the weapons base damage dice by the result. For example, a +1 Dagger would deal 2d4+ Str damage, while a +3 Dagger would deal 4d4+Str damage. That in itself would be simple enough, but makes energy bonuses kinda worthless...
...Which brings in part the second. For a weapon with a single energy type or other kind of bonus damage, the weapons plus acts as a multiplier of that damage in dice. You use only the base plus, no addatives. For example, if we were to make the above daggers Flaming, they would result in 2d4+1d6 fire and 4d4+3d6 fire respectively. However, each energy type after the first decreases the energy damage mulptiple by 1. If this would reduce damage to zero or fewer dice, it adds energy damage equal to the weapons Plus. Thus, a Flaming Frost example of the above daggers would be 2d4+1 fire+1 cold and 4d4+2d6 fire+2d6 cold respectively.
The only weirdness of this would be the Bane weapon. This section is not just for the Bane abilities, but for any other abilities that opperate under similar mechanics, like Magebane and aligned weapons (Anarchic, Axiomaic, Holy and Unholy). Against it's favored foe, the effective plus increase also applies to the base weapon damage in addition to the listed bonus damage. For example, if the sample daggers were Magebane, against a target that uses spells or other magic the damage increases to 4d4+2d6 and 6d4+2d6 respectively. However, this plus increase does not affect energy types and counts as an energy type while used against it's preffered target. For example, a +3 Magebane Flaming Frost Dagger would deal 4d4+2d6 fire+2d6 cold against most targets, but against magic using foes the damage becomes 6d4+2d6+1d6 fire+1d6 cold.
As a final note, multipliers from critical hits follow the standard D&D protocol. For example, a +1 Dagger under this variant will deal 3d4 damage on a critical hit. This also applies to other multpliers to weapon damage. Spells that mimic the previous plus system, such as Magic Weapon and it's relatives, are unchanged and have their written effects.
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