I've found many weapons with bonus towards certain enemies and I must say, I think I've found one only that seemed worth using. It's sad, because I really like the idea.
Beard bane hatchet, kobold hatchet, dwarf killer club, and so on. Anybody ever used a kobold mace (+1 vs gnome)?? All these weapons just look inferior to a normal battle-axe or longsword to me, even if you're fighting against that particular race. And once you've found some saurian axe with +1 damage or a drow longsword, then its just worse.
Is it just me or that loot needs an update?
Considering the places these are found, I would suggest that the general idea behind them is to give monsters and other flavor concepts a minor edge against their racial enemies. Notice how those weapons you listed are small weapons, fit for races which can't tot around greatswords and whatnot.
Sometimes loot is just setting appropriate an not necessarily min-maxed candy
There's min-maxed candy, and worthless crap. I think we could have something inbetween.
Is there some harm for "crap" to exist? Now if you got ideas for specific loot pieces, I absolutely welcome you to share what those are, but I am not sure what is so harmful for there to be very quirky and rather extremely situational pieces to exist in world. There are plenty normal and more universal pieces too. If you don't like those, then don't use them. In some situations where you are less equipped, or supplies run low because of a long scenarios, these pieces have suddenly arisen to be worth their weight in pure gold, and ended up being quite a source of amazing stories, as well.
Maybe I explained myself wrong. I -love- quirky and extremely situational loot. Except that I can't fathom anybody ever bother to carry around and eventually use a kobold mace for exemple. If the idea behind these items was to serve as a flavourful alternative to the ''rotten trash'' item, then I have no problem with it. I don't think it's harmful to have worthless crap laying around in chests either. It's just, that I felt like it wasn't the DMs idea to make these items, for them to never see use and constantly end up left on the ground, behind.
It really is mostly just intended to be "worthless crap," friendo. It's challenging to come up with lots (and lots) of different kinds of ambient loot to balance out the occasional good thing.
Of course there is also occasionally loot oriented towards a specific race that IS quite good or strong vs. that, but maybe balanced by being an unnecessary heavy burden most of the time.
Quote from: Howlando;n674706It really is mostly just intended to be "worthless crap," friendo. It's challenging to come up with lots (and lots) of different kinds of ambient loot to balance out the occasional good thing.
Of course there is also occasionally loot oriented towards a specific race that IS quite good or strong vs. that, but maybe balanced by being an unnecessary heavy burden most of the time.
Fair enough, thanks
When you run out of things to do with weapons you find, there's always Shelgarn's Persistant Blade! :)