demon sword vajra discussion

BESW

00:32

I can't help with the 5e-specific stuff, but an important place to start with all homebrew is identifying what effect you want it to have on the play experience.

What choices are you forcing on (or taking away from) your players, what options are you giving them (or taking away), what constraints are you imposing (or removing)? How do you want the game to change because this thing is in it?

Dan B

hello!

so, here's what's up: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/87357/… was closed as too broad for the site, and I think that's probably the right decision

but, I really want to answer the question anyway!

so I thought: on occasion I've seen mods say: "let's move this discussion to chat"

and "RPG general chat" is listed as a valid discussion forum in meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/5449/…

so, if I create a chatroom, post my answer here, and link to it in a comment -- is that legal?

I guess we'll find out?

Miniman

For example, currently the player with this weapon is heavily incentivized to kill stuff. As much stuff as possible, as quickly as possible. Is this a desired effect?

Dan B

first comment: you've got a mechanic where the sword absorbs souls, and the wielder can choose to either make that process happen faster or make it happen slower. But there doesn't seem to be a good reason to make the process happen slower. All the sword's abilities are positive.

Even the 15+ ability "you can choose to submit to the sword's influence" is totally voluntary. A good-aligned wielder oppose the sword on moral grounds, but a good-aligned wielder wouldn't be wielding a demon sword in the first place...

second comment: that 15+ ability changes the wielder's alignment to CE, and it sounds like you think that's a disadvantage (ie, you think that will make your player not want to do it). I've had some bad experiences with this sort of ability in the past.

Miniman

Also, rereading the question - "For the campaign I'm running, one of the players had a fairly detailed request for an artifact weapon." - that's...interesting. How much of the artifact was the player's design? And what rationale did they give for why you should include the weapon in the game?

Dan B

Sometimes I get players who secretly want to kill all the other players' characters. They know that's not the sort of game I want to run, but sometimes they try to use "I'm being mind controlled" as an excuse to go on a PvP murder spree.

If that happened in your game -- if your character powered up the weapon to 15 souls, used the demon possession power, and backstabbed and killed the rest of the party -- would that be a good outcome, from your perspective? Or would you feel like you'd lost control of the story?

Here is a worldbuilding question. This thing is an artifact, so it has lasted a long time, right? Why doesn't it have any souls in it now? Is there some mechanic by which souls go away over time?

Lastly let's talk about game balance. Usually, when one character is much more powerful than the other characters, DMs view that as a problem. Are you making a deliberate exception here? Is your plan that your one character should be more powerful than the others because he's got an artifact weapon?

Here's what I would do with this weapon.

The demon sword Vajra is a +1 longsword whose dark power grows with the number of souls it devours. When it kills a creature with a soul, it attempts to devour the creature's soul.

The sword deals +X damage on a hit where X is the number of souls it has devoured today. But, when it devours a new soul, it releases evil energy which deals X damage to everyone within ten feet, including the wielder.

The wielder can make a Constitution save DC15 to avoid the damage. The wielder can make a Wisdom save DC10 to prevent the sword from devouring a soul.

At dawn, the souls Vajra has devoured are released. Even this artifact blade is not strong enough to chain a soul forever.

Miniman

00:51

Hint: If they just said "You should give me a super powerful weapon that captures souls and becomes even more powerful", that's not a good sign.

nitsua60

01:51

Probably not going to cause any problems in this case.
Answers in comments are discouraged because comments are an improper place for an answer: they can't be edited indefinitely, downvoted, commented-on (except by thread-style reference--ugh), there's no revision history, &c.
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Arta Soral

03:10

First off i really appreciate the feedback, i feel kinda bad for posting incorrectly in the stack exchange but thank you so much fr the response

your right I was kinda of blinded by the player, hes CG and plays the character that way, even going so far as to refuse to fight in some situations where there was great loot and stuff

As far as the worldbuilding goes, your right that I do need to add a mechanic for having the sword lose souls, but I kinda (mostly because i know the player wont be happy otherwise) want to make the sword be able to absorb souls at least semi permanently

Also, and this may be me being a bit selfish, I wanted to make it, really unique. It's not just any magic weapon its an artifact with a whole huge backstory and stuff behind it. So the special submision action and diguise stuff really apealed to me

Miniman

"For the campaign I'm running, one of the players had a fairly detailed request for an artifact weapon." - that's...interesting. How much of the artifact was the player's design? And what rationale did they give for why you should include the weapon in the game?

Arta Soral

03:37

in terms of the technical aspects of it he only really cared about 1. making it thrown (hes an eldritch knight and he likes summoning his stuff back to his hand)

2. making it a casting focus (same reason)

3 having it absorb souls in some way that improved the weapon

however flavor-wise he had ALOT

heres my notes on the flavor background he wanted (sorry for length ill sum up)

Hundreds of years ago a great war broke out in the northern lands of Ogrillion. The demon lord (name) opened a portal from the Abyss to the Material plane and began his invasion. (rest of backstory of the war here [I lost my notes on that so we gotta work on it again]
Upon seeing the invasion begin to fail, a fleshsmith crafted a demonic sword in an attempt to turn the tide of the war. Sacrificing and binding the powerful demon Vajra he spent weeks straight performing horrifying rituals and crafting the blade to perfection. At the last, he gave his own soul to the sword, and the dark wea…

so i know he wants the sword to act similar to the One Ring from Tolkien in terms of being semi-sentient and CE

thats about it though, the rest I tried to base as closely as possible with stuff from the DMG

I looked esp at the Book of Vile Darkness, thats where i got the alignment change idea from

Miniman

04:16

So, the thing is: Vajra is overpowered. But that's ok, because artifacts are supposed to be overpowered.

Where it becomes problematic, though, is that normally artifacts are overpowered because the campaign is about them.

The party goes through long quests to get them, has to deal with everyone else who wants them, and is often forced to destroy them in the end.

Whereas this sounds like it might be a case of your player saying "Hey, how about you give me this really cool sword?"

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

But at the very least, I'd strongly consider how it affects the other players.

Arta Soral

o, your probably right, thank you

ill tone it down alot, or mby attach a quest line to it

Miniman

If one player has this amazingly powerful artifact tailored specifically to them, with all this awesome backstory behind it, and everyone else gets nothing, that's a little unfair. But if every player gets similar treatment, it's probably not an issue.

Arta Soral

that sounds stressful :) but then again i suppose thats the DM's job

Miniman

@ArtaSoral If you're happy with playing a high-powered game, giving everyone their own piece of totally sweet bling works too.

Arta Soral

lol they're lvl 11 now and i don't plan on having them jump too quickly

Miniman

04:22

@ArtaSoral In the end, the DM's job (and everyone else's job too) is to make sure everyone's having a good time.

So as long as you're having a good time, and your players are having a good time, everything's OK, really.

Arta Soral

true, i just wish i felt like less of a newbie DM at times

I apreciate all the help, ty so much

Miniman

@ArtaSoral You're welcome! I can't guarantee it's all good advice - I'm pretty new to this too.

BESW

04:39

← 5 messages moved from RPG General Chat

daze413

05:09

Suggestion on losing souls: Vajra loses 1d12+3 souls after the wielder finishes a Long Rest (or every dawn, if you want to avoid some cheese). 15 Souls is pretty easy to get for a typical adventurer. I think

Arta Soral

15:29

@daze413 so that the balance im trying to find, but I did the math and the way I have it setup if a CE character is using the sword so hes trying to get souls theres are 2/9 chance he will get the souls, which means he will have to kill (as in be the one to "last hit") around 5 people a day to get a soul. And thats for a character who is playing Evil

A good character whose trying not to kill people and send them to the abyss only has a 2/26 chance, so the sword might never get powered up if it loses souls too quickly

1/26*

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demon sword vajra discussion