The Golf Bag
Ah, the golf bag. Every warrior’s best friend. We touched on this subject back in “Weapon Focus,” but it deserves a special mention here. As Cleric and Warrior so ably demonstrate, the rationale for carrying backup weaponry goes well beyond “being disarmed sucks.”
Whether you’re aiming for monster vulnerabilities in 5e or trying skirt DR in 3.X, owning a collection of alternate loadouts is good policy. Every time you take the attack action, you want to get full impact out of your swing. That means avoiding common immunities (get that mess enchanted!). It means bludgeoning damage (take that, skeletons!). It means wooden clubs for rust monsters, silvered weapons for lycanthropes, and adamantine daggers for shenanigans. In other words, there’s a reason that Paizo’s iconic cavalier looks like a walking scrapyard.
All of this leads naturally to our question of they day: How much is too much? When you’re building up your arsenal, what tools do you positively, absolutely have to have in your toolbox? What threats are too esoteric to warrant prepping for? I mean, not every campaign is going to need an anti-vampire kit. Do you assume that you’ve always got three different polearms strapped to your back, or do you get pack horses to lug that mess around? How do you calculate the trade-off between “main weapon” enchants and keeping your backups at a reasonable level? And let’s not forget the economics of the situation. If you decide to keep four to five reasonably-enchanted weapons on your person, that’s a lot of gold that’s not going into the party’s general fund. Where’s the line between “well-prepared” and “over-prepared?”
So what do you say, my fellow fighty-types? Shall we figure out a proper shopping list? Tell us all about the contents of your ideal golf bag down in the comments!
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I remember in my first ever D&D campaign, I bought an iron dagger then worked to keep it out of sunlight, because I thought cold iron was just iron which was cold. Although, I do recommend the vampire hunting kit. Holy symbol, steel mirror and garlic together aren’t costly, and a silvered stake-to-the-heart does, in fact, kill non-vampires as well.
In 5e, this doesn’t come up much, as there are precious few creatures with vulnerabilities in the game, and all of the creatures with weakness to silver/adamantine are also vulnerable to magic weapons. On one hands, that’s nice, as it means that you don’t have to spend gold getting a +5 lawful/holy/anarchic adamantine weapon, plus the same cold iron weapon, and ironwood weapon, and silvered weapon; on the other hand, it means that there isn’t much use in going after the lycanthrope with silvered arrows when a more versatile and powerful option would be to just use the +1 bow.
I mean, you could just hold off on magic items, but that doesn’t work for all groups. Plus, if the players know a blacksmith skilled enough to forge adamantine weapons, then they probably know someone skilled enough to get them a +1 weapon instead.
Seems like a shame to have part of the game “turn off” the second you have a magic weapon. I guess you can point at weird dudes like the helmed horror…
https://www.aidedd.org/dnd/monstres.php?vo=helmed-horror
…But you’re right that those critters seem more the exception than the rule.
Obviously you need weapons that fit all of the major DR categories, and as a proper fighter you will want them all to be something stupid and large like a fullblade. As such, here’s your weapon choices (all fullblades and magical unless otherwise noted) that you’re lucky to have someone else carry:
Holy
Unholy
Axiomatic
Anarchic
Silver – note, you need both a holy and unholy one in case of certain monsters
Cold Iron – note, you need both a holy and unholy one in case of certain monsters
Adamantine
Adamantine Greatclub – because DR/bludgeoning and DR/Adamantine and Bludgeoning are a thing
Holy Spear – really anything pointy and holy, in case of Rakshasa
And of course epic variants when available.
This has been a shopping guide for the least picky fighter
In a perfect world sure. But if we’re taking average wealth by level into account, is that the best use for the money? What can we afford to give up?
All armour, potions, defensive and utility items, and invest everything in weapons and offensive items. There’s a reason why Improved Initiave was created, after all.
Your jib. I like the cut of it.
The best defense is a +6 vorpal keen ghost touch falchion of ruin. Unless you’ve moved from 3.0 to 3.5, then it should be a fullblade.
main weapon
adamantine heavy pick (for grapples, underwater fighting, bypassing the door, and much much more)
efficient quiver containing:
+1 adaptive composite longbow
5 quarterstaves (quarterstaffs?) they’re 0gp so why not
60 cold iron arrows coated with alchemical silver weapon blanche (36gp for the lot, bypasses two forms of DR and doesn’t have the -1 damage of regular silver arrows)
I’m guessing the ‘much much more’ includes not arguing about whether an adamantine dagger can dig a tunnel. And that’s a win in my book.
I don’t get the quartertaves though. What’s the rationale there?
Adamantine heavy pick, good for: fighting golems, fighting while grappled/swallowed whole, fighting underwater, coups de gras, destroying the lock/hinges/doorframe/door, digging through the maze/dungeon wall, works as an improvised grappling hook, you can two hand it for full returns on power attack or go sword n board (or both with quick draw and quickdraw light shields).
Quarterstaff for fighting rust monsters, when you get disarmed of your main two-hander, or when you need to pull a Gandalf and get a ‘walking stick’ in past the guards.
I thought they needed to be light weapons for grappling?
Quarterstaffs: 5 (or 6)ft pole (not as safe but much more convenient); emergency fire wood; convert into a spear or stakes: truly the potential is limitless.
Combine the above with the ultimate adamantine lockpick (dagger) to unleash your true potential in any situation.
Also gives you access to all three damage types.
For Fifth, always have one weapon of each physical damage type and one that is magical/can become magical.
Dagger, club, and sickle with either one being a +1 or Shillelagh is the cheapest and most obvious set. The club could be swapped for a sling/magic rock pair and the dagger with darts if you like being majority ranged.
Of course, most casters should ignore this and get a force spell as soon as possible.
I’ve always wanted to roll a force specialist. I’m too lazy to scour the spell lists though.
I love this. You can say so much about characters with their weapon choices. From the vengeful vigilante (“humans are the real monsters. Regular steel works just fine on them”); the practical adventurer with one weapon that will work pretty well against just about everything but not deal huge damage anywhere; the special connection, keeping something substandard for character reasons; or the sword nut who can’t carry any treasure because his carry weight is entirely taken up with swords. Basic, crappy swords. Because he likes swords, okay?
But a hireling sword caddy? This I must do.
If you’re shopping for a henchman, accept no substitutes:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/fighter/archetypes/paizo-fighter-archetypes/weapon-bearer-squire/
She sounds useful, but does she come in golf gear?
Yes I realise how that sounds, after much deliberation I decided to let it stand.
Squints
Is that a silver cheese grater?
https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2018/03/school_paddling_punishment_feature.jpg?resize=865,452
SFW version: no, no it is not.
Did cleric loan the smiting certified Sterling Redeemer(tm) from Paladin?
Forge Mistress is a dwarf of many talents: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/mithril
Ah yes, corporeal punishment.
Entirely appropriate for D&D!
If PF.
An adamantine gnome pick/hammer for breaking through anything, and still being able to cut on need technically. Bow, or mobility options like flight. (Its an optional)
Your main weapon choice, usually a two type weapon if you are non-crit.
Polearms are optional, but great way to get the above and reach. Avoid elemental damage, its a trap i feel.
5e, A good sword or a good axe of special material (For dangerous disposals, and I prefer axes because they are useful outside combat.)
Bow even if its not super boosted, its nice, or take a flighted race/magic item that lets you close. (I loved my Aaracrockra Barb for exactly this reason, and fastball catching the rogue after we threw him).
I prefer hammers, because its the rarer of resisted vs axe/sword. (And better to break in to thing with.)
Elementally, Radiant. Radiant just is a perfect bread and butter damage type that nothing resists, and the big threats are weak to.
Necrotic fades too fast. Fire, cold, get resisted or immune very fast. Lightning becomes common sadly late, but good early. Force too rare to get on weapons. Acid loses luster vs demons/devils/fiends.
Only angels resist radiant. Demons tend to have a weakness vs it, and undead crumble with radiant, nothing else tends to resist.
I’m amazed at the number of fighty-types I see who forget to take the ranged weapon. There’s gonna be harpies one day. You’ve got to deal with the harpies, man!
4th Edition got me into always taking both ranged and melee.
The “Weapon Attack” meant that powers could be used with either as needed, and many a foe loved to dance away with melee types. So Ranged options let you do the same damage with one as melee.
“I have trained with this weapon since the day of my birth! I am a true master. I know every form, every kata, every possible combination of lunge and riposte. And also I can shoot good.”
Heirloom trait, is that you? Didn’t you get nerfed/eratta’d to the ground?
No, don’t look at me! I’m hideous!
Bludgeoning, Piercing, Slashing, Ranged, all the common material types and maybe one or two that aren’t common.
I’ve been in an adventure where one of our PCs wielded a magical khopesh made out of pink salt (it only really held together because of the enchantment). Lo and behold, we would wind up fighting salt-vulnerable enemies on two separate occasions.
That mad alchemist who’d amalgamated himself with a giant slug was not pleased.
Hey man. Salt-vulnerable enemies happen: https://www.starjammersrd.com/game-mastering/bestiary/enemies-by-type/aberrations/akata/akata/
I didn’t think the timpani sound effects for Succubus were diegetic!
The creatures of the lower planes possess many powers some consider to be…unnatural.
This problem is one of the reasons that I love Weapon Crystal in 3.5. Instead of carrying around a golf bag of weapons, carry around your main weapon and a backup or two, and then deal with the various resistances with a small bag of weapon crystals. Fighting trolls? Phoenix ash crystal. Fighting an invisible stalker? Revelation Crystal. Golems? Construct crystal. Creatures that benefit from fighting in darkness? Illumination crystal. And so on. So much cheaper than the golf bag of weapons, and let you get the enchantment you need on your weapon when you need it and not have to worry about it when you don’t. Thematically too I like the concept of them a whole lot more than carrying around a golf bag of weapons.
As for what the main weapon is, if you want to be economical in your weaponry get a poleaxe with an adamantine axehead, a silver hammer head, and a cold iron spearhead. Otherwise a slashing or piercing primary weapon with a backup adamantine dagger and quarterstaff/10-foot pole is usually a safe bet for me.
Got a link to these crystals? My Google-fu is weak this morning.
IIRC it’s in the Magic Items Compendium. Here’s a list of some, though I can’t vouch for its authenticity:
http://zyanya.wikidot.com/weapon-crystals
Wait a minute… You just gave materia a fancy new name!
https://imgur.com/gallery/SEn4m
😛
Wait a minute. Did you sneak in a HoEF strip into our regularly scheduled Wholesome Adventuring ™ strips? Or is this merely a prequel for one?
<_<
Preperation wise, whenever I make any character, I try to start off or obtain one of:
– At least one light weapon of any kind – in case of grapples, or getting swallowed whole by a monster.
– Aslashing, piercing, and bludgeoning weapon, of which the ‘main’ weapon is masterwork quality or has a +1 enchant.
– At least one cold iron and one silver weapon.
– A ranged weapon (sling, bow, or light crossbow, depending on class) with an equal mixture of durable cold iron and silver ammo (for slings, silver coins can function in a pinch).
– As much armor as affordable early on.
– Throw-able cheap alchemicals, like alchemist fire, acid.
– Arson supplies, like tindersticks, lamp/keros oil, torches.
– Antiplague, antivenom, vermin repellant (the last one is amazing vs swarms).
– A ton of other RP supplies (e.g. grooming kit, special clothing trinkets, toys), adventuring supplies (tools, climbing gear, etc), writing supplies, outdoor camping/survival gear.
As an example, my current lvl14 wizard ratfolk still carries around a masterwork cold iron dagger, a masterwork silver club, has a cold iron ratfolk tailblade, and a light crossbow with silver/C.I. ammo. He used them maybe two times over 5 Adevnture Path books.
I wonder if it’s on GMs to prompt knowledge checks. I’m willing to bet that PCs would be more willing to deal with DR if they were more aware of its effects turn over turn. “You feel some resistance” is one way to play it, but I’m imagining a more blatant “You know there’s some way to overcome it… Some alloy. If only you’d prepared more weaponry!”
Well, in my case, it was more ‘I’m a STR dumping wizard who couldn’t kill someone in melee even if he got a coup off’ (which was the second time it was used to try killing a sleep’d demon). My wizard is also the guy who regularly identifies the monsters (read: rolls high enough to be linked the monster’s SRD page by the DM) and then uses the ‘Linked Legacy’ spell to instantly share all his wizardly knowledge of said monster to the party (as in, I link the monster info to the rest of the party so I don’t have to worry about them lacking crucial combat info).
Our party is also more notably caster oriented than anything. We’ve got me as wizard, a shadow sorceress and a witch with side-focus in hair-slaps. We mostly care about their immunities to status’s (like sleep or illusions) or which elemental damage to hit them with. Our actual melee goes around DR by hitting hard enough to ignore it, or enchanting the weapon with holy / high enough modifier to flat out ignore the DRs.
It was different back at the lower levels, but we’re a decent combat machine at this point.
One issue that crops up with the golf bag concept are classes that need but can’t reliably use the golf bag. Most notably, this is for natural attack users or shapeshifter/non-weapon builds (Shifter, Druid) or unarmed users (Monks). For them, they don’t really have a choice – their weapons are their fists/claws, and for natural attacks in particular, it’s very difficult and/or expensive to get them to pierce DR, or their class features let them do it way too late. Meaning they have to ditch their main class weapon for a clunky club or similar to reliably hurt the enemy.
What kind of golf bag kit does one make for a Druid? Monks do have ‘monk weapons at least, but natural attacks seem to be out of luck.
Monks have monk weapons. Get knuckle dusters in all the colors of the metallic rainbow.
As for druids, I feel like falling back on, “Oh well. I guess I’ll just be a 9th level caster this combat” isn’t too much of a hardship.
one of the dragon mags for 3.5 had claw extenders that could be made of special material and enhanced.
In PF1e you can solve the problem backwards. Get one weapon that can pierce all DR. Using the Weapon Versatility feat you can change a weapon to any damage type, and by taking the Warrior Spirit fighter training ability, you can get a +5 weapon earlier than most classes.
You’ve heard about my buddy the bladebound magus. Same deal. Hit that sweet +5 and you can safely ignore (almost) all of the DR in the game.
I do wonder if it’s got a bit too easy to achieve though. :/
our barbarian has the brute force approach to DR:
inherent Incredible Strength + Belt of Incredible Strength + Rage + Power Attack + Weapon Enhancement Bonus on a two handed weapon = Base Bonus to dice of 28.
Yeah… I see that method a lot. That’s why I’m beginning to wonder if it’s better for a GM to make the effects of DR more visible. Because I sit on that GM side more often than not, and seeing all the damage that gets left on the table has motivated me to take DR more seriously.
a little assortment of differently tipped arrows or bolts doesn’t cost much space or gold, the last one can also be used as an improvised melee weapon.
plus a few wands of various energy damage types.
so yeah, efficient quiver it is.
Nice! I dig that solution.
As I’ve said before, I dislike how in 5E almost nothing is resistant/immune to damage done by any magic weapon. Werewolves? Magic Warhammer. Golems? Magic Warhammer. Fiends? Magic Warhammer. Pretty much the only exceptions are skellingtons, (Bludgeoning vulnerability) Treants (Resistant to all piercing/bludgeoning, but not resistant to slashing) and Rakshasa. (Vulnerable to piercing damage done by good creatures) The designers went and put creatures that had resistances to weapons that weren’t silver or adamantine, then gave you a way to completely ignore those mechanics.
My Paladin had his primary weapon, (Warhammer, because swords are for chumps and Elves, but I repeat myself) a dagger that was more of a tool than a weapon; used mostly for digging out small objects and cutting rope, and a bag full of javelins so he could do something when enemies were beyond reach.
My Warforged Fighter had a vaguely Roman-theme, so he had a polearm as his primary, a gladius (Shortsword) as a backup, and a back full of pilum (Javelins)
What’s your preferred resistant/immune system? Is that a TTRPG that gets it right?
I could be wrong, but I remember 4E being really good aboot it. Also, everything in 5E that’s resistant taking exactly half gets a little silly. I miss the degrees of resistance that 4E and earlier had. I feel like subtraction is just as easy as halving everything. Most 2nd graders can handle it, so it shouldn’t slow down gameplay too much.
I think they’re trying to address the weirdness of “many small attacks are completely ineffective against damage reduction” with that move in 5e. A DR system puts monks and their flurry of blows, for example, at a severe disadvantage as compared to greatweapon dudes.
Many small attacks would be less effective against a hardened target though. There’s a reason you use high-caliber weaponry against a tank rather than ineffectively unloading with any automatic weapon. They could just let Monks ignore a certain amount of DR if they went that way.
I personally prefer the halved resistance. Duel wielding was hurt by DR, with little attacks doing nothing; you already had double costs in two weapons, but you also had to contend with buying cold iron/silver/other weapons as well. In a 3.5 game, our rogue is essentially going to be useful against the upcoming vampire, as without sneak attack he can’t penetrate DR, and his elemental weapon damage won’t get past resistance. In most circumstances, a minor hit on a creature should still count for something, even if it’s impossible to notice. While objects, and some creature, would be entirely unaffected by a minor strike, that’s where damage threshold and non-magic immunity come in, from my perspective.
TL;DR, while DR could be seen as more realistic, the balance issues make it a lot less fun for duel-wielding and other builds.
I’m okay with penalizing dual-wield, since dual-wielding has always been dumb.
Personally I like to just punch through damage resistance and accept that creatures with a high DR are just hard to hurt, unless I’m facing a lot of the same enemies or has a flavor reason to specialize (so my werewolf hunter will have a silver weapon for instance).
I do this both for flavor reasons (to maintain my mental image of signature weapons) and to avoid “wasting” too much of my WBL on stuff that will be rendered obsolete once I upgrade my main weapon enough.
There are two exception to this general rule:
1) low-level characters using normal weapons (there a cheap cold iron morning star/axe is good for those skeletons/low-level demons/fey and it feels more appropriate for a low level character to be scrappy to my mind).
2) Archers, having a bunch of neat arrows for various situations just feels cool to me, so I love doing that. This includes both cold iron + mithril/silver in both normal and fowling variants as well as a few more fun stuff, like arrows prepared with ghost salt weapon blanch or those tanglefoot arrows. For book keeping purposes I like to make them blunt arrows (not the alchemical ones of course).
Could be fun to run an improvised weapon dude who specializes in the golf bag. Adamantine spanners and silver candelabra could be a blast to play with.
The golf bag comic!
I’m actually thrilled that Cleric ended up being the pick for this, because hey funny story: When it came up in the comments last time, I mentioned it to my fiancé, and he loved it because it’s exactly my type of character. In fact, he suggested I pick one up for my long-running switch hitter — my dwarven ranger.
She’s since crafted a special weapons bag, and started stocking it with some more unusual choices. Currently looking into some way to jazz up a standard whip, whether by enchantment or artifice, and I think fire is going to be the way to go.
Anyway, is collecting weapons just a dwarf thing? I can totally see it being a dwarf thing.
Funny story. One of the very first comics I wrote for this thing was about dwarf weaponry. It’s so old Fighter is named “Hero” in the script. Sadly, it wound up being rejected since it doesn’t really work in a single-panel format. It still holds a special place in my heart though.
Top Text: If it’s a magical weapon, it’s yours. Brook no argument.
Dialogue: Cleric: “That’s a dwarven great chain, lad. Ye dinna even have proficiency.” Hero: “I know what I’m doing.”
Image: Hero nutshots himself.
Utterly amazing. It’s a real comic in my heart. I picture Fighter’s mishap happening exactly like that one viral video about the bear and the water tank.
Enough to bring a smile to my face and a tear to Fighter’s eye.
Hero: “But… I’m proficient in martial and simple weapons! That means I have proficiency in all weapons! Now give me your gun, dwarf!”
An actual (though paraphrased), statement from our paladin to the dwarven gunslinger. Seems like people being jealous of the dwarf’s plentiful weapons is a common trope. Or, in quote form: “Small campaign world, huh?”
This comic’s life force burns with the fuel of common experience. 😀
Cleric is doing things wrong, you don’t use your henchmen to carry your back up weapons, you use them to gain time to go to the town get the right weapon and then go to another dungeon because you forgot about him the moment you stepped out of the first dungeon. His brave sacrifice will not be remembered nor honored by anyone 🙂
I gather that there’s a lot of henchman turnover in your party.
We change henchmen as much as a clock change seconds. In fact 3600 henchmen the hour is the standard turnover rate if the party leads armies 🙂
Fireball… raising henchmen life insurance since first edition!
That is if we even cared for giving them a life insurance. We keep our henchmen… How is it? Out of the books, unregistered? We only pay them if they survive, that save us a lot of money 🙂
I play in a lot of low-cash campaigns, where we might even be below wealth-by-level at times, so my characters who use weapons generally keep a main, well-enchanted weapon and one “will do in a pinch” backup weapon, generally a light slashing weapon to be used if the character is swallowed by a large monster. The “golf bag” doesn’t really come up much, especially since I like to play spellcasters, who have much less reliance on specific weapons.
There’s a reason that fighty-types have higher starting wealth by level. When you lower the cash flow on the game, you make the fighty-types comparatively weaker as they’re more gear-dependent.
Just last comic I mentioned backup weapons. Most of the time the main weapon is slashing, so the backup weapon is a cold iron kunai for piercing and blunt damage. And it works as a crowbar and piton if needed. Though once the main weapon was cold iron and the kunai was silvered. And of course, a ranged weapon with cold iron regular arrows and blunt arrows. If the main weapon is a piercing type, then I grab both a kunai and a dagger.
And of course, if the character is a ranged attacker, I have a dagger and kunai as melee backups. And I have more types of arrows.
I’ve always had a soft spot for the oddball arrows: https://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/weapon-descriptions/ammunition/ammunition-bow-arrows-common/
Yeah, my Inquisitor has a couple of Thistle Arrows. I haven’t played her yet so she’s only level one and can’t afford more.
My only other ranged focused character is a Gun Chemist. Sadly, there aren’t as many specialty bullets as there are arrows. Most of the alchemical cartridges that have special effects can only be used in a scatter gun. He’ll just have to settle for making bullets in different types of metal.
Well, in most 5e games I’m aware of you can’t buy magic items aside from maybe potions and scrolls. There are of course optional rules for doing so in…. downtime. But I’ve never seen those rules used. Or downtime rules in general for that matter. So in my experience buying and selling magic items is a non-thing.
This results in the standard issue of 5e and money… which is that past the first few levels you soon have lots of money and absolutely nothing worthwhile to spend it on.
As such there’s basically no reason not to prepare for every esoteric foe and situation you can imagine. Because at least that’s more than than “and I buy all the healing potions in this town too, what am I up to now? 411?”
Also personally I just enjoy at character creation trying to buy as much starting equipment as possible and I just sort of extend that into the standard murder hoboing policy of taking anything not nailed down harder than a single check athletics check aided by a crowbar/shovel/mining pick/grappling hook/battering ram can pry loose. ;D
I once statted a tengu ranger in Pathfinder who wielded a dozen different sideswords for this exact purpose.
In retrospect however, just getting all the pluses on an adamantine P/S weapon and accepting a -4 or doing a shield bash on the rare occasion you need to do bludgeoning damage seems like the an easier option.
Ah, swords, truly the swiss army knives of weapons.
At some point, if you wear enough of your sword collection it becomes an armored kilt.
Speaking of Team Bounty Hunter, is Pug joining up with them or is she a free agent?
She’s a free agent.
Why, is Team Bounty Hunter recruiting? Did they put out a want ad that I missed or something?
Well, they ARE missing the traditional 4th party member :p
My Paladin is a traditional hammer-and-shield type, but she has been known to carry a large variety of weapons. Her primary being the Adamantine warhammer, however she also has the following:
Ashwood Stake (aka wooden shortsword)
Two javelins of Lightning
Silver Lance
Dragonbone Longsword
Longbow
Ogre’s Greatclub (basically does 2d8 but I needed 18 strength to use it. Also made entirely out of wood)
Naturally I don’t carry all of them with me. Only the javelin and shortsword is part of my regular kit, everything else goes onto my horse, and the club into my bag of holding. But that doesn’t change the fact I do carry separate weapons for the separate occasion. Hammer is my mainstay but if need be I can stab a vampire with my shortsword. Demons I often try to fight on horseback so that I can use my lance. Rust monsters either get the maul or my dragonsword depending if I need my shield or not.
Ultimately however my usual goto weapon is of course my hammer. Everything else is just a specific tool for specific jobs.
I don’t know if you know this anime, but this page is highly reminiscent of an anime called “The Tower of Druaga”, specifically there’s this character in it that’s basically an entitled noble with a loli (because of course) assistant. His whole shtick is that he has like, 10 different staffs with a specific explosive effect. Then when he needs a specific tool, his assistant opens up his bag and procures the necessary item.
Then, in a very golf-style way, he flings the magical effect at the enemy. His attendant carries the staves, so without her, he’s useless.
As for my experience with 3.5 games, I’m fond of using unarmed strikes or natural weapons. As such, I tend to pick up Versatile Unarmed Strike, which gives me either slashing, bludgeoning, or piercing damage depending on stance. From there, I just need gloves lined with silver, cold iron, or adamantine metals to bypass DR. If I’m going VoP, I forgo gloves and just use my fists to damage the foe.
Otherwise, I carry a Longsword, Spear, Longbow, Hammer. A great set of weapons for any fighter.
As a rogue, I just need a silvered adamantine rapier, and I’m good to go, but that’s 5e, where immunities are rare, and sneak attack damage is the great equalizer.
I’ve never done more than one or two backup weapons, and haven’t had a game last long enough to worry about it. That being said… in late 3.5 the Magic Item Compendium had items called “augment crystals” that could be swapped out on magic items to add different magical effects. Usefulness varies, which I never got a chance to experience properly. But as for “making sure you have the right enchanted weapon for the job”, those could substitute for a lot of basic enchantments like Flaming, bonus damage against undead or constructs or evil outsiders (and could probably argue a version for good outsiders, or lawful/chaotic). As for weapon properties… The only one that’s “easy” is silversheen for getting silver. But that’s all I know