[4E] Acceptable or overpowered weapon enchantment?

[Drakefall]

So, let's cut right to the chase: I'm a happy player of 4e but there's one thing that I just do not like about it and that's the complete lack of static bonuses to weapons. I don't want my sword to expel a wave of deadly fire once per encounter, I want it to be more deadly than an average sword on every hit. I'm quite happy to let armour and other items have nice little powers and in most cases, especially armour, I really like the powers. This generally leads me to take +X weapons, bah at any enchanted versions and spend my money on much better armour than anyone else has which is all well and good but by Kord I want my static bonuses!

Thus I have attempted to craft an enchantment to give me such bonuses... only I'm terrible at balancing such things and I think it would be truly overpowered no matter what I do with it if it got into the hands of melee strikers:smallsigh:.


So here's what I've got as a general idea so far:

+2 Burning Weapon

Lvl 8 +2
Lvl 13 +3
Lvl 18 +4
Lvl 23 +5
Lvl 28 +6

Weapon: Any
Enchantment: Attack rolls and damage rolls
Critical: +1d6 fire damage per plus
Power (At-Will * Fire): Free Action. All damage dealt by this weapon is fire damage. Another free action returns the damage to normal.
Power (Daily * Fire): Free Action. For the rest of this encounter this weapon deals an extra 1d6 fire damage per successful hit. It does not deal this damage on a miss even if used with a power that deals weapon damage on a miss.
Lvl 13 and 18: 1d8 fire damage
lvl 23 and 28: 1d10 fire damage


So, overpowered as I fear or acceptable? If acceptable what level should I give to such a thing per enchantment bonus and should the extra 1d4 ever become 1d6? Etc, etc, blah...

[hamishspence]

Last bit should say "does not deal extra damage on a miss even when used with a power that does damage on a miss"

Trading off the bonus critical damage per plus, for permanent bonus damage is reasonable, but being able to use it all the time is a bit of a stretch- maybe a daily power that lasts for the duration of the encounter, or a very small bonus.

Maybe compare it to top tier weapons, then see if the power is a shade too good or not.

[Drakefall]

Last bit should say "does not deal extra damage on a miss even when used with a power that does damage on a miss"
Whoops, thanks for that. Error corrected.



Trading off the bonus critical damage per plus, for permanent bonus damage is reasonable, but being able to use it all the time is a bit of a stretch- maybe a daily power that lasts for the duration of the encounter, or a very small bonus.
That's an excellent idea. I've changed it to a daily power that lasts for an encounter.


Maybe compare it to top tier weapons, then see if the power is a shade too good or not.
A problem I'm encountering is that I don't know where to actually put this weapon level wise so I don't know what to compare it to. I'm thinking of putting it around level ten because I can reasonably see a level eight character carrying it but I wouldn't think of letting a character lower than level five have it. But then again I really can't tell at what level the extra damage stops being overpowered and becomes reasonable.

[NecroRebel]

I'd call this underpowered, actually; +1d4 damage, particularly fire damage, for one encounter a day at the cost of a daily item use and critical damage bonuses , and without any leveling mechanic for stronger versions, add up to be weak just in general.

If you have the Adventurer's Vault, compare Radiant Weapons (which are considered overpowered actually), which can deal radiant damage for a more useful damage type, get a standard d6/+ crit bonus, and have an item bonus to damage rolls equal to the enhancement bonus. This is weaker than that (though, as mentioned before, Radiant is overpowered).

I'd say give it d6/+ fire crit damage, change the daily power to a standard-action encounter power, and make the damage bonus scale to +2d4 at levels 11-25 and +3d4 at 26+.

With those changes, I'd call this a level 10/15/20/25/30 item. As it is now, I'd call it weaker than a simple +x weapon with the same enhancement.

[Alteran]

It's not that powerful, especially with no extra damage on a critical hit. I would say it's probably fair as a level 2/7/12/17/22/27 enchantment. I think it would also be fair to raise the extra damage to 1d6 at paragon and 1d8 at epic. If you add in an extra 1d6 fire damage per plus on a critical, I'd raise the level by one or two.

[Meek]

On the subject of radiant being overpowered, how about if this weapon does +1 per tier fire damage? Astral Fire and suchlike are woefully bad, but built into a weapon, would they be perhaps be a more balanced version of the Radiant weapon?

[Drakefall]

Ok... underpowered you say? Well I just gave it a significant power boost. It now starts out dealing an extra 1d6 per hit, gets a 1d6 per plus critical and scales in damage. I may have gone a bit far and I'm not sure about the leveling I chose but it does look a lot better. So, final comments and critiques? Oh, and would I have to do change anything if I were to give the enchantment cold or lightning damage instead of fire?

[NecroRebel]

On the subject of radiant being overpowered, how about if this weapon does +1 per tier fire damage? Astral Fire and suchlike are woefully bad, but built into a weapon, would they be perhaps be a more balanced version of the Radiant weapon?

Fire damage is inherently weaker than Radiant, since more things resist fire and more things are vulnerable to Radiant, so it wouldn't be as bad, and reducing the bonus by about half would make it a bit less rediculous. Probably balanced at the level it is then.


Ok... underpowered you say? Well I just gave it a significant power boost. It now starts out dealing an extra 1d6 per hit, gets a 1d6 per plus critical and scales in damage. I may have gone a bit far and I'm not sure about the leveling I chose but it does look a lot better. So, final comments and critiques? Oh, and would I have to do change anything if I were to give the enchantment cold or lightning damage instead of fire?

I'd call it somewhat weaker than a Flaming weapon now. Both Flaming weapons and yours deal extra damage with a free action daily, but yours simply does more. Flaming's power averages a bit less than 13.5 per tier, assuming an average of 2 rounds to save vs. the ongoing fire damage, while yours varies dramatically depending on when in the battle it is used. Assuming 6-round battles, though, hitting 50% of the time, and using this during the first round, comes out to 10.5/13.5/16.5 damage, depending on tier. Longer battles and battles against soloes and elites favor yours.

Um. Yeah, I'd call that about right. Maybe change the dice at higher tiers to simply 2d6 and 3d6 instead of d8 and d10 so it scales up better, but otherwise it seems appropriate for an enhancement+2, particularly since Flaming isn't really worth enhancement+4 in most cases.

Cold and lightning damage are slightly, but not significantly, stronger than Fire, so it should be alright to leave it as is and just change the elemental type. We're talking more damage than the PHB elemental weapons, but no slow or AoE damage, so it balances out I suspect.