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thomblake comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
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There's been some speculation on what a +4 spoon would do, so I figured I'd weigh in as an expert of sorts on D&D.
Really, it depends upon what it's being enchanted for. I think the default assumption is that it's enchanted as a melee weapon, and so functions as a diminutive one-handed weapon that does 1d2+4 damage - given the strength of such creatures, you're probably looking at 1d2 damage after the strength penalty, which is a modest improvement over the 1d2-4 (minimum 1) an unenchanted spoon would get you, for the reasonable price of 32,300 gold pieces.
For justification of this, that effectively makes it a diminutive club (d6 stepped down 3 times); it would be capable of being wielded as a light bludgeoning weapon by a tiny creature (something about cat-sized) at a -2 penalty, and not effectively usable as a weapon by anyone small (halfling-sized) or bigger.
An alternate explanation would make it a spoon which gives you a +4 bonus of some sort to a spoon-related skill, which would then be about 4000 gp (twice normal for not taking up an equipment slot).
It gives a +4 bonus to the dexterity check to avoid dropping ice cream on your clothes, or others' clothes. However, due to a quantization issue in the laws of physics, exactly one-twentieth of all scoops still result in critical failures, and many of those failures lead to food fights, which is where the +4 to hit and damage comes in.
Don't be silly, it's just a bonus to Craft (cooking) or Profession (chef).
Does a dex check have a critical failure on a 1? I think that applies only to saves and attack rolls. Skill checks don't suffer that problem and I think the same rule applies to flat ability checks. (I'm going off the 3.5 rules here, I seem to remember when critical failures occur was slightly different in 3.0 which may be relevant here)
Of course not.
I'm not sure most people have the rules so intimately understood that they would think the "of course" in "of course not" deserved to be there. This may be related to understanding degrees of inferential distance.
Yes, that was the joke.
Ah, in that case, I must spend too much time on the Giants in the Playground Forum where a statement like that would seem perfectly natural.
Would the +4 also go to the attack roll not just the damage roll?
Yes, but it won't stack with the enhancement bonus for masterwork, if it's a weapon. Incidentally, these bonuses do stack on at least some skill enhancement items, like musical instruments, because they give different bonuses ("circumstance" and "competence", IIRC).
Right, but the masterwork enhancement is just +1.
For instruments it's +2.