magic weapon creation idea

[kenmeister]

So I had what I think is a neat idea; tell me what you think. When a weapon inflicts a killing blow on a magical monster, the weapon has a chance to become imbued magically, say at a percentage chance equal to the creature's hit dice.

So for example Joe the fighter gets the killing blow on a dragon with 7 hit dice. As a magical creature, Joe's sword has a 7% chance to improve to +1. This also satisfies the notion that magical weapons should have interesting backstories. Instead of being a +1 sword, it would be the sword that killed Wyrmiclus the nasty dragon.

Furthermore, if the sword kills another dragon and rolls under its hit dice, maybe it now becomes a dragon slaying sword.

Other magical monsters would be chimeras, hydras, medusas, basilisks, you get the idea.

[cadriel]

I like that idea -- you can consider it stolen.

Now, how would you go about determining the alignment of the weapon? I could see two ways, one nicer than the other to the players. The "nice" variant is that the weapon takes on the alignment of the person wielding it, so your lawful Fighting-Man's sword becomes lawful in alignment. The not so nice way would be that the weapon takes depends on the creature slain.

Creature is Lawful: roll 1d6. 1-2: Neutral; 3-6: Chaotic
Creature is Neutral: roll 1d6. 1-2: Lawful; 3-4: Neutral; 5-6: Chaotic
Creature is Chaotic: roll 1d6. 1-2: Neutral; 3-6: Lawful

I kinda like the second variant. You could do a simpler version of this, where the die roll is only used for Neutral creatures, and Chaotic creatures make Lawful weapons and vice versa, but I like having a better chance of the weapon being neutral.

[kenmeister]

Aug 18, 2008 12:53:04 GMT -6 cadriel said:

I like that idea -- you can consider it stolen.

Great!

I don't have an opinion on alignment determination; I could even see saying that any weapon infused with power in such a manner is always lawful, in a Darwinian sort of way.

[coffee]

Taking the "sides" view of alignments, I should think that a sword which slew a great Chaotic beastie would need to be Lawful, and vice versa. If your Chaotic Lord slays a Gold dragon, his weapon would then be Chaotic.

In this scheme, Neutral pretty much equals "selfish" (according to Dave Arneson anyway), so a neutral-slaying sword would itself be neutral.

Anyway, that's my 2 coppers.

Kenmeister, have an exalt for a thoroughly nifty idea!

[kenmeister]

Aug 18, 2008 13:39:18 GMT -6 coffee said:

Kenmeister, have an exalt for a thoroughly nifty idea!

Yay! My first one!

[Restless]

This is really an interesting idea. I rather like it, and it helps defuse the whole "why would wizards sit around making magic weapons they can't even use" argument.

Here's a question, though: suppose you have a class of creature-slaying swords that only affects creatures struck by magic (say some forms of undead, elementals, demons, whatever). How would you reconcile that, since the sword isn't already magical? If you say a +1 sword can become +2 with whatever-slaying, then as your sword gets more powerful what stops you from making it more and more powerful by picking fights? Seems like there'd be a lot more +4 and up weapons floating around in such a situation.

Going back to your example with the seven hit dice dragon, I was thinking that if you slay that dragon, then if you roll 2-7 it makes the sword a +1. If you roll a 1 it makes it a +1 sword of dragon slaying.

In addition, though, how would you make +2 and greater swords? Fire tongue swords? Holy avengers? Cursed swords? This is begging for a cool-but-simple mechanic to be wrapped around it that yields common results, and the DM can handle the especially rares case-by-case.

Also... how would you extend this to armor?

[kenmeister]

Aug 20, 2008 7:29:13 GMT -6 Restless said:

Here's a question, though: suppose you have a class of creature-slaying swords that only affects creatures struck by magic (say some forms of undead, elementals, demons, whatever). How would you reconcile that, since the sword isn't already magical? If you say a +1 sword can become +2 with whatever-slaying, then as your sword gets more powerful what stops you from making it more and more powerful by picking fights? Seems like there'd be a lot more +4 and up weapons floating around in such a situation.

I picked magical beasts specifically instead of elementals/undead because you generally don't need magic weapons to harm them in the first place.

As to the weapons getting more & more powerful, there's probably a limit to this spontaneous magical creation. Maybe the percentage is halved to improve from +1 to +2, so killing a 10 hit die dragon has a 10% chance of making a normal sword +1, but only a 5% chance of making a +1 sword +2.

Also... how would you extend this to armor?

I wouldn't.

[Random]

Have an exalt on me as well, Ken.

Very nifty idea, and I'm surprised it's never occurred to me.

[irdaranger]

I really like this idea as "One more way" to make magic items.

[machfront]

Know what I love? Ideas that are more in the field of creativity rather than mechanical in nature. I'd rather have a sense of wonder than wonder what sense it made, dig?

Another Exalt!

[ragnorakk]

Totally spiffy idea! Kudos!