GK over on Nifty wrote: Your magic doodad that casts a 3rd level spell once per round forever costs 30,000. The same item that can only cast that spell 50 times costs 15,000
Your magic sword that can do 1d6 cold, fire, and electricity damage every hit every round, forever costs 32,000. A bundle of arrows that can do the same but only 50 times costs...32,000
The difference with magic arrows is that you can actualy split them up to gain more firepower, which you can't do with a wand or staff. 50 magic arrows are really 50 arrows, not one item wtih 50 charges. So you can hand 10 arrows to 5 different people.
I would think that's what would warrant the price increase.
You can have magic arrows and a magic bow, for a possible (effectively) +19 weapon.
Plus, magic arrows can be a lot more versatile than a wand: You can have 10 adamantine Dragonbane Magebane arrows, 10 cold iron Evil Outsiderbane Magebane arrows, 10 Spell-storing Magebane arrows, 10 alchemical silver Wounding arrows, etc.
Actually, I'm with GK on this one. The ability to use up your ammo at a higher rate is irrelevant -- the limitation is supposed to come from the amount of uses you get. Ask an Artificer.
Similarly, you can't use a single item-creation shtick to produce a bunch of different kinds of magical arrows -- they create in stacks of 50 straight up.
The obvious solution is to have magical arrows create in stacks of 100. Easy change, no one will really notice.
How much would you pay for a wand with 50 charges of fireball? How much would you spend for a wand with 25 charges of Twinned Fireball? Which would be the better buy?
The ability to use up ammo twice as fast makes your items better. A lot better. And 50 charges is more than matters for virtually any combat item.
You expect to go up a level after 13 encounters. Some encounters are at melee range, some are traps or puzzle monsters. You're only gong to use arrows in like half your combats, and even in those combats you're rarely going through more than 4 arrows. So generally speaking, 50 arrows will last you about 25 encounters, which is about 2 levels - long enough for you to upgrade your weaponry anyhow.
So really, the only problem with arrows is the lack of "resale value" - which is a stupid and broken mechanic anyway so I don't care.
Now, there's a very real problem here that weapons are in general way overpriced compared to items that give you real abilities that you care about. It's all part of the conspiracy to make fighters suck ass. Wizards and Druids work just fine without magic weapons, which are overpriced, and benefit as much or more from real magic items like flying carpets and slippers of spider climb that often are not. The net result is that fighters end up spending more gold just to stay level competitive than wizards are spending to branch off into doing additional awesome crap because their spell attacks are level comptetive whether they have any magic items or not.
And yeah, that's bullshit. But it's not because arrows are too expensive relative to magic swords.
Frank wrote: You're only gong to use arrows in like half your combats, and even in those combats you're rarely going through more than 4 arrows. So generally speaking, 50 arrows will last you about 25 encounters, which is about 2 levels - long enough for you to upgrade your weaponry anyhow.
Four arrows every other combat? No way. I used to blow through ten or more arrows in a combat, easily. I played this elven cleric, you see...
They weren't all, or even mostly, magic arrows, but they were arrows nonetheless.
My wife has certainly run through way more than 20 arrows in a single encounter with her level 4 barbarbarian (there was a pit obstructing her from the enemies, and the rest of the party was dead or paralyzed, which left it to her to keep the fight going for a while), and she isn't even a dedicated archer. The only people who should even consider magic arrows are dedicated archers who will be flinging arrows in almost every combat, and presumably many arrows a round. For example, in the last session I played (yesterday) we had one archer who was firing off 4 arrows a round, and I'm sure we had more than 10 rounds total of combat where he did this, so he blew at least 40 arrows.
My problem with arrows isn't just that they are totally over priced like all magic weapons, and that their enhancement bonus doesn't stack with bows, but that they break on top of it all when used as intended. It makes no sense balance-wise, and even less sense story-wise.
I've never seen arrows break from hitting a fleshy target, or the ground. Maybe they would break if it hit stone, or failed to penetrate armor, or if the critter thrashes around or intentionally breaks it in removing it, but that is totally different from how the rules treat projectiles now. Self-destructing shurikens are at least as ridiculous as well, by the by. I hated shurikens in 3.0, and always wondered why they couldn't just be exotic throwing daggers with a better range increment, but 3.5's admantine shurikens which are destroyed by contact with fluffy bunny rabbits isn't much of an improvement.
