Please help reworking blackrazor and wave

[Phaederkiel]

Hi

this beeing my first post in these hallowed halls I hope to do everything right...

Before I come to the problem, here the context:

I play in a group of three players, we take turns beeing GM.

The least experienced of us three GM'ed us through "white plume mountain", based on the modules good reviews (and boy, did the last battle deliver...).

Unfortunately, we took one look at our two Weapons of Legacy and found they were to bad to really use.

Since selling them would be quite a mean thing to the GM, we decided that I, beeing the designated next to GM should rework them.

Let me shortly describe the party:

a) Centaur 4 / Cleric 5 (wants to go sovereign speaker next), much less a caster than a heavy hitting Charger, he shall get wave.

b) Stony warrior Knight6/Fighter2/crusader1, using Karmic strike and shocktrooper to be both a damage dealer and a tank (due to the houseruled 1/2 playerlvl +1 dmg reduction from Stony)

c) Changeling Rogue3, Factotum6, 4 Fonts of Inspiration, Knowledge Devotion, he shall get Blackrazor. Prefers to dump 10+ inspiration Points in single sneak attempts.

Okay, here come my attempts with the two weapons. I am fairly content with wave, as it is quite Flavorfull and lets the Centaur charge in some funky situations. The problems stem mostly from Blackrazor.

Wave:
Trident / Lance +1 bonus

Wave is Water pretending to be steel, it a) can be transported in a bottle, b) changing its length and therefore threaten 5 foot as well as 10 foot (or rather, since mr. Centaur is large, 10 as well as 15); c) change its form to some extent to meet the wishes of its wielder (can become a Longspear, a lance...)

Wave can once per week imitate the effect of a Dust of Dryness (drink up to 100 galleons of water, or when having already drunk some, spit it out again)

When its wielder gets a natural 20 on an attack, Wave tries to suck all the water from the hit creature as long as this creature was alive. DC18 fort.

Against elementals with the Water subtype, it does this on every attack.

Waves' wielder can breath under water (growing some gills, which look great on a centaur) and can move, charge, attack on and under water without any impediment.

No mortal would ever be able to enchant or enhance Wave any more.
But if you were to put a magic weapon in a barrell with Wave, said Weapon soon will rust and dissolve and perhaps give Wave some additional Powers.

Wave tastes salty.


Blackrazor
Dagger, +1 Bonus


Blackrazor starpeppered black blade has 7 stars which very much stand out.
Whenever you use one Blackrazors abilities, one or more of the stars darken and fade. Each dawn they begin to shine anew.

abilities:
1 charge: gain Scent for 3 hours and the ability to track as if you had the feat.
2 charges: Attack someones shadow to hurt him. attack has +5 reach and target is flatfooted
3 charges: gain true seeing for 10 minutes
4 Charges: use vampiric touch one someone (watch out for this one, sneak attack d6 can massively boost the lifegain)
5 charges:gain mindsight for 1 minute (100ft)
6 charges:
7charges: get into a frenzied berserkers (deathless)Frenzy for 3 rounds

Whenever you use an ability or kill a foe, make a will save. This will save starts at 10, but increases for every charge you used by 1 (never goes above 25, resets when the charges are regained at dawn).
If you fail your will save, you partially lose control and try to burn through your charges as fast as possible (in a meaningful way).
This effect ends only if you make the will save.

When you have burnt all your charges, Blackrazor deals 1d4 constitution dmg to you and replenishes all charges.

Blackrazor is as hungry as it is fickle. Any Item coming to close to it (which is not made frome ebony) may be eaten, as to grant the dagger more powers.
Or not, if th blade doesn´t like its taste.


My questions:

a) how much worth in money are the two weapons (so, how much do they need to eat to grow better)

b) are the Problems Blackrazor creates big enough to balance the worth of the two weapons or is Blacky much more powerful?

c) Do you like the abilities I gave Blacky? Do you like the order of the abilities? what to chose for as an penultimate ability? Do you think the "once you lose your will check you go soon into a Frenzy"-Fluff works?

d) is using blackrazor too dangerous for the rogue /factotum with the abysmal will save (+1) and only 13 con?


Do mind, I do not need to be convinced that Weapons of legacy suck or that I could use the original weapons from the earlier versions of WPM...

Thank you in Advance :)

[tyckspoon]

Honestly, Wave sounds much more powerful to me... or.. well, not exactly powerful, but perhaps I should say useful? Being a near/far capable reach weapon is very nice on its own (although you either are operating houserules or misunderstanding how Reach works; RAW, it just doubles the wielder's natural reach. Since Centaurs only have the reach of a Medium creature that would make his reach 10 feet.) That's a very good trait for anybody- the other stuff is basically gravy, and all it really needs to be usable for the rest of the character's life is a reliable Greater Magic Weapon or enough other stuff sacrificed to it to give it a level-appropriate base enhancement value.

Blackrazor.. will probably kill its wielder, and it doesn't give all that much in return for it; all of the abilities are neat, but none of them are good enough to justify the Con damage. It's a good idea, but needs some more tweaking. I'd think about some of the following:

Add another base property so the wielder can use Blackrazor without wondering why he doesn't just go buy a +3 dagger that won't eat him instead; a unique benefit would be good, but this could be as simple as giving it the Deadly Precision property (reroll 1s on Sneak Attacks, don't recall if this is actually a weapon property anywhere. I know it's a feat.) or some other SA-benefiting trait.

Remove the will save on killing a foe, so the weapon can be used in the normal course of a day without forcing the wielder to sacrifice to the weapon- it only goes off when you use Blackrazor's unique powers.

Change the recharge sacrifice to be less lethal; if you want it to sap his physical health, consider just HP damage, which is much easier to restore and won't kill him as fast if he ends up over-using the charges. I would favor Wisdom damage/Wisdom penalty/Will save penalty, in descending order of danger; that way each time he taps out the dagger it makes him more susceptible to being controlled by the dagger next time, and it doesn't directly impact his ability to go and kill more stuff with Blackrazor the way physical damage does.

[Phaederkiel]

are you sure that centaurs have only the reach of a medium creature?
I didn´t see that anywhere...
If they have, the feature is somewhat unimportant, since centaurs get some natural hoove attacks for short reach combat...

Everything else is exactly as intended. The players should get a good base to build upon.


I also thought about the dmg being wis rather than con, since that would help nicely with failing the saves, but trying to kill its owner is kinda Blackrazors Schtick, so I deemed Con dmg more flavorful.

Perhaps reducing the con dmg to 1d4 -1 dmg?

anyway, I strongly consider killing the save on killing a foe. Perhaps this could even -1 the willsave? or -1/2EL of the slain foe? This would be a nice incentive to actually use the thing...No problem, I can handle it, i just slew three guys, I can give myself some scent...

How do you like this approach? It nicely fits the flavor of the dagger not really caring who it kills. It prefers you, but when you feed it, it purrs.

My main problem with giving it more abilities is this:
I do not want Blackrazor to look like it was made specially for the rogue.
I snuck in some really good ability for rogues with the vampiric touch and the shadowstrike, but i think both fit the flavor of the soulsucking sword good enough that noone thinks: "what a niece piece of equipment he made for his rogue". Same as the trident will NOT get valorous, ever.

Putting Rogue-abilities in is what the players should do with it.


any suggestions as to what the penultimate ability should be?

I thought about some shadowdancer-like teleport, but I think that is quite underwhelming, since mindsight and true seeing are so useful.

btw, do i rightfully put true seeing below mindsight?

thanks for the answer, anyway :)

[LansXero]

Or allow a save to avoid the damage (although the rolling may get tedious)

[Phaederkiel]

okay here the updated stats for Blackrazor

Dagger, +1 Bonus


Blackrazor starpeppered black blade has 7 stars which very much stand out.
Whenever you use one Blackrazors abilities, one or more of the stars darken and fade. Each dawn they begin to shine anew.

abilities:
1 charge: gain Scent for 3 hours and the ability to track as if you had the feat.
2 charges: Attack someones shadow to hurt him. attack has +5 reach and target is flatfooted
3 charges: gain true seeing for 10 minutes
4 Charges: use vampiric touch one someone (watch out for this one, sneak attack d6 can massively boost the lifegain)
5 charges:gain mindsight for 1 minute (100ft)
6 charges:
7charges: get into a frenzied berserkers (deathless)Frenzy for 3 rounds

Whenever you use an ability, make a will save. This will save starts at 10, but increases for every charge you used by 1 (never goes above 25, resets when the charges are regained at dawn).
If you fail your will save, you partially lose control and try to burn through your charges as fast as possible (in a meaningful way).
This effect ends only if you make the will save.

When you kill a foe, said will save dc gets reduced by 1/2 foes EL -1
(when for example killing a foe with an EL of 8, you get -3 on the will save)
This reduction lasts longer than a day, but each day the blade grows hungrier again, slowly eating the reduction by 1 point per day.

When you have burnt all your charges, Blackrazor deals 1d4 -1 constitution dmg to you and replenishes all charges.

Blackrazor is as hungry as it is fickle. Any Item coming to close to it (which is not made frome ebony) may be eaten, as to grant the dagger more powers.
Or not, if the blade doesn´t like its taste.

I think question d) is anwered now. Unless someone says that the weapon is far overpowered, i will keep it that way.

Sadly, especially a) and c) make me feel far out of my depth...

so, allow me to ask again:

a) how much worth in money are the two weapons (so, how much do they need to eat to grow better)

b) are the Problems Blackrazor creates big enough to balance the worth of the two weapons or is Blacky much more powerful?

c) Do you like the abilities I gave Blacky? Do you like the order of the abilities? what to chose for as an penultimate ability? Do you think the "once you lose your will check you go soon into a Frenzy"-Fluff works?

I am especially at a loss about the frenzy ability, how good is it? how bad is it? how flavorful? It prevents the user from further using the charges, but prevents people from helping him. How much money is such an abiity on a weapon?

[Coidzor]

Centaurs (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/centaur.htm) are presented as long (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/movementPositionAndDistance.htm#bigandLittleCreatu resInCombat)-style creatures with a 10' space and a 5' reach.

[Djinn_in_Tonic]

I'm honestly not liking Blackrazor...the mechanics feel really, really off to me. As a player, it's probably not something I'd use: the enemies are already trying to kill me, and I'm not sure I want my weapon doing so as well.

[Phaederkiel]

@Coidzor
the question is: does a large creature wield a large lance?
His reach is 10 feet with a normal Lance, should he get a large one?

(not that he would need the dmg, though)

wht do you think, is the ability to use his lance adjactant to him good enough or should I rule the lance to be able to hit at 15 feet?

Remember, we liftet the bloody things from a Dungeon made especially for them, they are supposed to be quite powerful...

@Djinn_in_Tonic

If you have any better ideas how to build this while keeping its fluff alive, please, please tell me.

@ all

what to do with its penultimate ability? Since Frenzy is something i rather do not expect anyone to use, it is kinda the best ability the weapon should sport.
But i do honestly not know how much oomph I should give it.

I thought about Barghest feast, that conserves the flavor nicely and is highlvl, but it seems too situational for anyone to want it.


what about an disintegrate? is that too powerful?