A Guideline for Making Custom Weapons in 3e D&D

While this guide will not give exact number for every weapon, it is spot on for 95%+ of the weapons in the PHB and supplements (like Sword and Fist)

All weapons start as Medium d6/20 X2 weapons and get "points" to spend on abilities
- simple weapons get 1 point
- martial weapons get 2 points
- exotic weapons get 3 points

Upping the size category by one increases the die size by one, and decreasing the size category by one decreases the die size by one.
The die sizes are d3 <-> d4 <-> d6 <-> d8/2d4/d10 <-> d12/2d6 <-> 2d8
(as per pg. 162 of the DMG)


You can spend your points in the following ways:

So let's try some examples from the PHB: