Spells for creating weapons

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Alternatively (and this is what I'd do), you could just say "to heck with 'realism', this is a wizard creating magic weapons out of magic ice!", and let them have full weapon quality. Honestly, if you're giving the Icy Weapon bonus, you're probably already beyond the realm of just "frozen water" - stabbing someone with an icicle just below the freezing point of water is not going to add +2 damage to whatever impaling damage the icicle would do.

I think players might expect magic ice to do magic ice damage, and if you are losing the ability to fool people with created objects (which IMO is a big part of the utility of Create Object) replacing it with bonus damage seems reasonable.

[thedanster7000]

The campaign this is planned to be used in is fairly gritty, and I think the benefit of not having to buy/carry weapons far outweighs the cost.

I've gone for 1FP/$50 cost of weapon, with a 1/min maintenance cost, does that look right?

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by thedanster7000

I've gone for 1FP/$50 cost of weapon, with a 1/min maintenance cost, does that look right?

I'd go with a weight-based cost, rather than price, if you're aiming for realism. Weapon cost depends too heavily on a bunch of things that "just make it from ice" doesn't really care about, including intangibles like how prestigious the weapon is. I'd go with something like "1 energy/2 lbs. (or fraction thereof) of weight", so a large knife (1 lb.) costs 1 energy to create, while something really huge, like a halberd or maul (both 12 lbs) costs 6 energy. I'd still suggest allowing them to create higher-quality items with an energy surcharge - maybe 1 extra FP for Fine, and 2 for Very Fine?

[Flyndaran]

Weight would make ice swords far easier to create than ice axes, while cost based would reverse that.
I like the idea of ice axes, so my bias should be obvious.
Even with magic, I like the idea that not maintaining it won't make it disappear or insta-melt but revert it to normal but very hard cold ice.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Weight would make ice swords far easier to create than ice axes, while cost based would reverse that.
I like the idea of ice axes, so my bias should be obvious.
Even with magic, I like the idea that not maintaining it won't make it disappear or insta-melt but revert it to normal but very hard cold ice.

I've seen ice "swords", or daggers anyway and it was really neat(it was colder then normal and we were pretty high in the mountains anyway) but never an ice ax, at least not an ax made of ice.

Maybe most of them would be more like ice kubatons but without grips or a ring. But you probably could have fought with them though they would have broken pretty quick.

[Jefepato]

What if you based FP cost on the highest damage bonus of the weapon (minimum 1)? So if a weapon can do either sw+2 or thr+1 damage, it costs 2 FP. Then half to maintain.

This isn't really "realistic," but basing the cost on what the character is practically getting out of it seems like the most balanced way. Weapon prices and weights are all over the place.