Do magical enhancements that are not of the 'correct' melee/ranged weapon/damage type still apply to attacks made of some other sort?

Question

Following on this question, what happens if you deliver an attack with a weapon that has a special property that can only be applied to weapons of type X - but, despite the fact that your weapon is validly of type X, you are using it as a weapon of theoretically incompatible type Y? (Melee vs. ranged came to mind first (daggers and other thrown items), but consider as well e.g. disrupting as a property on a weapon that deals B/P or B/S or B/P/S.)

Answer 1

As far as I know, there is no clarification or explanation on this; we just have magic properties that say what they say, and we’re left to figure it out from there.

Accordingly, the general consensus I have seen is to just use the specific text of the property in question: if it says “melee weapon,” your melee weapon is still a melee weapon even if you throw it. It is still a bludgeoning weapon even if it is also a piercing weapon and you’re using it for the piercing damage. And so on.

As opposed to something that says “ranged attack” vs. “melee attack.” When you throw a melee weapon, that’s a ranged attack. It’s a ranged attack with a melee weapon, but it’s still a ranged attack and not a melee attack. Properties apply appropriately—“melee weapon” properties apply, “ranged attack” properties apply, “melee attack” properties do not. Likewise, if you have to deal “bludgeoning damage,” and you use your bludgeoning-or-piercing weapon to deal piercing damage, that’s not going to count, even though it would count for something that needs a “bludgeoning weapon.”

The only time the rules talk about separating two uses of a weapon are with double weapons, where each end is a separate weapon¹ and has its own separate magic. For those, using the other end means not getting any of the properties of the other, even the ones that would be compatible. So if a double weapon has a bludgeoning-damage end and a piercing-damage end, like the gnome hooked hammer, when you attack with the piercing damage end you’re only attacking with a piercing weapon, not with a bludgeoning one. Effects apply accordingly.

This is consistent and “honest” to the rules, but kind of annoying because you have to look up the exact wording of each property.

Ultimately, very, very few of these kinds of properties are going to make it really important to abide by those restrictions; most of them are just for flavor, anyway. And most weapons that allow you to switch things up are weaker than weapons that don’t, so you’re “paying” for the privilege. While I would reserve the right to nix particular combinations, my first assumption would be that the game will be better allowing these kinds of synergies.

1. _{Technically, the rules for double weapons don’t really do a thorough job of separating the two ends: they’re separate for magical enhancement, and you calculate two-weapon fighting attack penalties as if they were a one-handed weapon and a light weapon, but that’s it. There is a rule-as-written argument that otherwise, the double weapon is one, single, two-handed weapon. That would include having an attack with the piercing end of a gnome hooked hammer count as an attack with a bludgeoning weapon. It would also allow you to calculate your damage as if each end was a two-handed weapon, i.e. 1½×Str to damage, improved Power Attack bonuses, etc. Needless to say, no matter what the rules technically say, almost no one ever plays that way.}

Answer 2

I don't believe there's a general rule in the SRD, but this GM's interpretation is that the weapon has to be used in a manner consistent with the enhancement's requirements.

For example: the skewering bonus requires a light or one-handed piercing melee weapon, while disruption requires a bludgeoning melee weapon. A cestus is a light melee weapon that does bludgeoning or piercing damage; a +1 skewering cestus of disruption could either do bludgeoning damage and disrupt undead or do piercing damage and allow a swashbuckler to automatically confirm a crit with a panache point. The morningstar is a one-handed melee weapon that does both bludgeoning and piercing damage; a +1 skewering morningstar of disrpution could thus both disrupt undead and allow a swashbuckler to automatically confirm the crit with a panache point (presumably, after checking to see whether the undead in question was destroyed).

Similarly, a returning dagger is clearly a reasonable weapon since daggers can be thrown. But, the description says that the dagger returns "to the creature that threw it": a returning dagger wouldn't fly back to the owner if it was (eg.) stuck in an ooze after a melee attack even if it may well do so after being thrown at that same ooze.