Fun Finds!

[CantripN]

At high levels, when your weapons are SOOOO expensive and important, I usually shell out for an Aurorum weapon. It's better than any amount of Hardiness, because it's just plain impossible to destroy.

[Littha]

And seriously, it would be pointless to pay 4000 gp to repair a masterwork item.

True. 
I never used Aurorum because I always thought that +4000gp was too cheap to auto restore magic to a broken item (as well as make sundering useless), and so I thought it only repaired the physical portion.
If it does restore the magic, I guess I will have to look at using it for sunder protection in future builds.

Sundering is worse than useless, so I fail to see the big deal with that one.

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

[CantripN]

Oh, I dunno. It's a great tactic for NPCs. I don't really play nice as a DM. Most enemies aren't after your loot, they just want you dead, and get payed for it, or eat you - your loot is just a bonus.

[Lycanthromancer]

How about riverine arrows? Impossible to destroy without something like a sphere of annihilation. More LESS Just about as expensive, but and it works.

[Ras F]

Dr#353 p.71 - Stinging weapon enhancement +1000gp: weapons whose damage is normally blocked by armor (Whips) deal damage normally.

[Lycanthromancer]

Okay, take some otherwise nonmagical aurorum or riverine arrows, become an arcane archer, and fire them off one by one. They become permanent +1 arrows which don't break (permanently, at least), and you can now enhance them much more cheaply, if only for yourself.

Oh, and they can't be dispelled, since they're from a (Su) ability.

Though it'll eat your caster level. Is there a version with full casting?

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Okay, take some otherwise nonmagical aurorum or riverine arrows, become an arcane archer, and fire them off one by one. They become permanent +1 arrows which don't break (permanently, at least), and you can now enhance them much more cheaply, if only for yourself.

Oh, and they can't be dispelled, since they're from a (Su) ability.

Though it'll eat your caster level. Is there a version with full casting?

Pretty sure riverine arrows will still break, since it doesn't override the ammo clause.

[JaronK]

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

WBL is the wealth you're supposed to have access to at any given level.  It's hardly the DM's fault if you broke it all.  It's not like you can just spend all your wealth on expendable scrolls and expect more wealth as a result to make up for it.

JaronK

[Lycanthromancer]

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

WBL is the wealth you're supposed to have access to at any given level.  It's hardly the DM's fault if you broke it all.  It's not like you can just spend all your wealth on expendable scrolls and expect more wealth as a result to make up for it.

JaronK

Or single-charged wands. *snrk*

Okay, take some otherwise nonmagical aurorum or riverine arrows, become an arcane archer, and fire them off one by one. They become permanent +1 arrows which don't break (permanently, at least), and you can now enhance them much more cheaply, if only for yourself.

Oh, and they can't be dispelled, since they're from a (Su) ability.

Though it'll eat your caster level. Is there a version with full casting?

Pretty sure riverine arrows will still break, since it doesn't override the ammo clause.

But riverine is only destroyed or damaged by disintegrate and similar. It's a matter of specific-vs-general.

[The_Mad_Linguist]

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

WBL is the wealth you're supposed to have access to at any given level.  It's hardly the DM's fault if you broke it all.  It's not like you can just spend all your wealth on expendable scrolls and expect more wealth as a result to make up for it.

JaronK

Well, you do get a budget for consumables each level, so that's a bit of a special case

[Lycanthromancer]

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

WBL is the wealth you're supposed to have access to at any given level.  It's hardly the DM's fault if you broke it all.  It's not like you can just spend all your wealth on expendable scrolls and expect more wealth as a result to make up for it.

JaronK

Well, you do get a budget for consumables each level, so that's a bit of a special case

And if you don't use those consumables you have extra money to play with, assuming you're not generating a new character using creation-WBL.

Yay economics!

[Bauglir]

Sundering is only useless if your DM dicks you over and doesn't keep your wealth by level to what it should be anyway. That said it is still a melee tactic and is probably only better than grappling once everyone has freedom of movement...

WBL is the wealth you're supposed to have access to at any given level.  It's hardly the DM's fault if you broke it all.  It's not like you can just spend all your wealth on expendable scrolls and expect more wealth as a result to make up for it.

JaronK

The difference being that if you sundered it all you didn't get anything, and if you bought a shitload of scrolls you did. Seriously, your DM is a dick if he keeps you underwealthed because you decide to try and use sundering as a tactic. A dick who likes verisimilitude, but a dick nonetheless. But WotC is a worse dick for making wealth so incredibly important and then making sundering work the way it does.

[JaronK]

Or single-charged wands. *snrk*

You know, I was looking at the DMG and it actually does say that your initial starting wealth explicitly can include partially charged wands.  Seriously, it's in the section about making higher than first level characters.

Of course, this says nothing about a long running campaign... but I thought it was interesting.

The difference being that if you sundered it all you didn't get anything, and if you bought a shitload of scrolls you did. Seriously, your DM is a dick if he keeps you underwealthed because you decide to try and use sundering as a tactic. A dick who likes verisimilitude, but a dick nonetheless.

Sundering the stuff before you pick it up is like killing someone and then just not taking the gold.  The DM put it right there in front of you... he's not a dick if you simply don't pick it up.

JaronK

[Bauglir]

The difference being that if you sundered it all you didn't get anything, and if you bought a shitload of scrolls you did. Seriously, your DM is a dick if he keeps you underwealthed because you decide to try and use sundering as a tactic. A dick who likes verisimilitude, but a dick nonetheless.

Sundering the stuff before you pick it up is like killing someone and then just not taking the gold.  The DM put it right there in front of you... he's not a dick if you simply don't pick it up.

JaronK

Except that not picking up free gold doesn't afford you a tactical advantage. I mean, the point here is that there are sometimes reasons to Sunder something (unlike just not picking up the gold), and there are many situations where it's thematically interesting, but at the same time WotC's decision to make wealth so integral to character power that your DM has to keep limits on what you have access to (so you don't get free shit for buying a bunch of scrolls) completely overrides whatever the pro-Sunder reasons are. That, and the shitty rules on how to actually sunder things, make it a terrible tactic, but if the DM has a simple and obvious band-aid (give out wealth to account for the destroyed wealth), a good DM will take it. It's not like you're giving them free debuffs - a character still spent an action (and likely feats and equipment on getting good at sundering if they do this with any frequency).

I should revise my original statement, though, which was a bit over the top. It doesn't make you a bad DM, it just is a mark that indicates low probability of being an otherwise good DM.

[JaronK]

I consider a good DM to be one who gives players power in the world, which means the actions of the players have consequences.  One who simply compensates for everything the players do (good or ill) is just railroading more subtly.

JaronK

[Bauglir]

I consider a good DM to be one who gives players power in the world, which means the actions of the players have consequences.  One who simply compensates for everything the players do (good or ill) is just railroading more subtly.

JaronK

I would agree with you on that. I would also say it's irrelevant to discussing sunder. I don't think "Your characters are poorer so the monster eats you" is a consequence I want to impose for a tactical choice that could potentially make for a more interesting story ("You managed to sunder the BBEG's cursed sword! Holy crap, that means he's no longer possessed by the ancient ghost...") or just be an interesting quirk of how a character fights. I don't think denying players a potential way to influence the world because it will screw up their character's ability to be effective is a good way of accomplishing what you want.

EDIT: Before I'm inevitably called a Sundertard by Sunic or whoever it is who throws that term around (apologies to Sunic if I've got the wrong user), I'm not saying sundering is actually a viable tactic in all settings, that it's a smart move even if it doesn't make you poorer in a game revolving around wealth, or that the ability to do it makes mundanes viable or some such shit. I just don't think that the particular objection of "You're destroying your own wealth" is really as big an issue as people make it out to be, since it's just as easy to interpret the WBL guidelines in a way that doesn't force Sundering to fuck you over as it is to interpret them in a way that does. I do think sunder ought to be a good option, but as it stands it still ranges from mediocre (if the wealth is replaced) to i-enjoy-stabbing-myself-in-the-face (if it isn't).

[The_Mad_Linguist]

I've played with a DM who randomly determines most of the loot given separately from what the enemies have equipped.

Doesn't really make that much sense from an in-game perspective, but it certainly makes sundering a viable tactic.

[Gods_Trick]

Would making Sundered magic items fixable or transferable in terms of magic make Sunder work?

[Benly]

I was poking through Dragon 311 after someone brought up the Green Whisperer, and the variant clerics in that issue deserve mention as Fun Finds. Of main note are the Evangelist and the Arcane Disciple, at least at first glance. The Evangelist appears to be a superior Favored Soul; it uses sorcerer casting progression off the cleric list, but instead of a random heap of class features, it gets domains, starting with two and gaining another domain every five levels. It adds all the domain spells to its normal spells known and gets the domain powers, which seems a lot more useful than what the FS gets.

The Arcane Disciple gives up turning, domains, heavy armor, and gets a slightly worse HD. In exchange, at every class level he chooses any sorc/wiz or bard spell lower than his highest-level spell slot and adds it to his class spell list. (He also gets the spells from Magic domain, but not the ability.) You'd want to get turning back somehow but it's still potentially pretty rad.

[veekie]

And seriously, it would be pointless to pay 4000 gp to repair a masterwork item.

True. 
I never used Aurorum because I always thought that +4000gp was too cheap to auto restore magic to a broken item (as well as make sundering useless), and so I thought it only repaired the physical portion.
If it does restore the magic, I guess I will have to look at using it for sunder protection in future builds.

Sundering is worse than useless, so I fail to see the big deal with that one.

Not to mention it makes sundering more useful given that the big problem with it is you're destroying your own loot and this lets humpty dumpty get back together again after the fight.