Magic & Mastercrafted weapons

Magic & Master crafted weapons

Some thoughts

The concept of master crafted weapons arrived with 3rd edition AD&D where they where a stepping stone for characters on the way to the more serous enchanted weapons at later level useful for Gm's who wanted this escalation to be slowed down a bit and to make fully enchanted weapons a bit less common than they might otherwise have to be. It proved useful as an addition to mundane weapons with other qualities particularly silvered ones. HackMaster and for that matter Pathfinder took this concept and expanded on it considerably, each in their different ways.   

HackMaster took it and decided that a mere +1 bonus was a bit too general vague and wooly so expanded it to give a +1 to +5 with +1 being a good example of the weapons smiths art the sort a professional warrior would want both as a tool and as a status symbol and +5 being the pinnacle of the weapon smiths art. However none of these weapons are enchanted and all are subject to wear and tear in normal use and breakage if misused even if their quality might make them some what more resistant to it.  The +1 etal weapons to be found in the various current edition adventures are of this sort even if it does not say so explicitly in the write up

Actual magic weapons are another thing altogether and in the context of the HackMaster setting vanishingly rare. Though there is some blurring of this separation as Master crafted weapons might well be the subject of minor enchantments to help persevere them form wear and tear of the sort I have created for the utility spells section of the expanded spell book. However actual magic weapons are on the same scale as the one for master crafted ones +6 to +10, for magically +1to +5 in traditional AD&D terms and as this bonus add to all the weapons qualities particularly damage its easy to see quite how lethal they are. Using an example form the Company of Fools game the arrow that Killed the Count of Vayham’s son was +1 magical or at least the head was and so it did 2d6+6 damage fired from a goblin short bow and even without the critical and the penetration on the roll would have sailed straight through his +1 master crafted plate mail and caused as bad wound as a normal arrow shot at a more lightly armoured target.

Magic weapons come about as I see it in two ways the first is deliberate where the weapon is made to be and then is deliberately enchanted with powerful arcane or possibly clerical magic, the +1 arrows I talked about above are of this type, having been deliberately made by the dwarf Arch Mage Aildor for the war against the elves. The other is by association and “Groin Seeker” the Smiter of ogres might be going that way where a weapon acquires it enchantment by association with a hero and that hero’s deeds with it. The former very defiantly do detect as magical the latter might not necessarily do so even if they are in game terms equivalent though a sage or even a knowledgeable individual would be able to identify it from the weapons fame. Of course some weapons are a bit of both a weapon enchanted for a Paladin as +1 may grow in enchantment as her fame and her deeds in the service of her god do to become the +5 Holly sword of traditional AD&D.

I don’t have access to the DMG alpha yet but I understand from my reading of the feedback treads on the Kenzer forums that both types of magical weapons are described in it.