Weapon Alignment Change

[Rustybarnacle]

I have a question about a cursed weapon.

One of our party is good but a sword that he picked up is obviously changing his alignment. The character isn't allowed to notice but everyone else in the party has noticed.

The sword talks to him, sings in battle giving him temporary hit points every time he hits a creature that isn't a demon and after every session the DM says that you alignment is starting to pull again.

Is there a way that the rest of us can change the alignment on the sword to good permanently? I noticed that Bless Weapon will override any alignment that a weapon has but it's not on the list of permanent spells.

[Kelb_Panthera]

BoED has some rules for redeeming evil magic items. I'd start there. You might also try to convince the sword of the error of its ways so that it voluntarily changes its alignment to a less evil one.

[Jeff the Green]

You might also try to convince the sword of the error of its ways so that it voluntarily changes its alignment to a less evil one.

Speaking of, there's actually rules for this in BoED too. You lock it up and talk to it. I wish I were kidding.

[Chaosvii7]

You could destroy it, that would change its alignment from something to nothing. :smalltongue:

If you reforge it with the desired alignment enhancements, you should be able to mellow it out into a neutrality, though some argue that it would turn it in those directions, glancing over True Neutral. Either way, that would technically bump the ego up, and then the problem becomes "getting a High Ego True Neutral sword to do much of anything", which would eventually bleed over into the character.

The BoED options exist for this purpose, but I think you could argue that finding someone to make the sword axiomatic and holy would yield you a neutral intelligent sword if you would rather spend money than simply try and make it see the error of its ways, which might not work if its aligned towards demons(who are straight up thugs and don't care about anything).

[Kelb_Panthera]

Speaking of, there's actually rules for this in BoED too. You lock it up and talk to it. I wish I were kidding.

Why? A set of guidlines for that sort of thing is quite useful for someone that doesn't want to do a whole-lot of legwork on ciphering how to do something similar, themselves.

Also, I doubt locking the weapon up would be necessary. It -probably- doesn't have any motive abilities that would allow it to escape.

[Jeff the Green]

Because the rules are horribly simplistic. It's a Will save (+ level) vs. a Diplomacy check. They get bonuses to Will saves for being "always" evil and for losing class features if they change alignments. That's it.

[CaladanMoonblad]

Because the rules are horribly simplistic. It's a Will save (+ level) vs. a Diplomacy check. They get bonuses to Will saves for being "always" evil and for losing class features if they change alignments. That's it.

Were I the GM, I'd do these rolls in secret, mark 'em in my notebook, and role-play it out. That way the heroes can't be too sure if they made the check or not. I might even suggest best 2 out of 3 over the course of 6 months of game time.

[Fates]

Polymorph Any Object the sword into a man, put a helm of opposite alignment on him, then dismiss the Polymorph?

[Jeff the Green]

Were I the GM, I'd do these rolls in secret, mark 'em in my notebook, and role-play it out. That way the heroes can't be too sure if they made the check or not. I might even suggest best 2 out of 3 over the course of 6 months of game time.

Actually, they have to fail their Will save 7 times in a row, with potentially infinite rerolls and no backsliding.

The biggest thing that bothers me is that there's no penalty or bonus for their disposition toward you. Whether you disembowled their mother in front of them the week before or they'd die for you at a moment's notice, the probability of them changing their ways is the same.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Because the rules are horribly simplistic. It's a Will save (+ level) vs. a Diplomacy check. They get bonuses to Will saves for being "always" evil and for losing class features if they change alignments. That's it.

IIRC you also have to keep them contained (not restrained) and make, I think it was, seven checks in a row with no failures for each step on the alignment scale.

If they make no attempt to escape over the extended period of time -most- characters would take for this task (obviously diplomancers have little trouble but they're already broken anyway) its as much his own fault as his captors'; assuming he doesn't just attack them outright at every opportunity. You can't convert someone if the only states you ever see them in are trying to kill you and unconcious.

Nevermind the possibility of a -false- conversion. His bluff beats your sense motive and you not only have to start over -again- but you may even let him escape.

With one hard-counter and as many "soft"-counters as the DM can think up (can you say "ad-hoc circumstance modifier"), I don't really see the relative simplicity of the rule-set to be all that problematic.

[Jeff the Green]

Like I said, it's not the basic mechanic I object to (though I'd probably have gone with level + Wis + Cha + modifiers rather than Will), but the simplicity. Yeah, the DM can add in circumstance modifiers, but those tend to be "what chance do I want the PC to have to succeed," rather than any sort of reproducible thing.

[Greenish]

Were I the GM, I'd do these rolls in secret, mark 'em in my notebook, and role-play it out. That way the heroes can't be too sure if they made the check or not.Well, aside from being overly simplistic, skills and saves just scale on an entirely different scale. Your average bard could take 10 for DC 24 save at 2nd level.

[Rustybarnacle]

Thanks guys. Lots to think about in here.

[Rustybarnacle]

Can anyone tell me where the Helm of Opposite Alignment is documented in a book?

My DM is a stickler for easy to aquire stuff. Nothing that can only be found in the Magic Item Compendium, that sort of thing. I was hoping to find it in the DMG but I didn't see it under wonderous items.

[hamishspence]

It's under Cursed Items.

[Fates]

Cursed items in the DMG.

[Greenish]

Nothing that can only be found in the Magic Item Compendium, that sort of thing.Well, Magic Item Compendium is mostly a compendium (who'd have thunk it?) of magic items from other sources, so most of them can be found in books other than MIC, thus satisfying this condition.

That said, if your DM thinks MIC is somehow strange and exotic source of magic items, there's probably not much you can achieve with that route.

[mattie_p]

Whether you disembowled their mother in front of them the week before or they'd die for you at a moment's notice, the probability of them changing their ways is the same.

Umm, you did just talk about disemboweling the mother of an intelligent sword, right? ::blinks::

[Rustybarnacle]

For anyone curious about how this went, my DM had made it a split personality so 2 people popped out of the sword and my bard charmed the wrong one. The evil personality turned out to be an evil wizard trapped within the sword and he gated away.

The other one was his confused and rather useless brother, so I had him turned back into a sword without using the helm and we'll see if it was all worth it or not. :smallannoyed:

[Shining Wrath]

Were I the GM, I'd do these rolls in secret, mark 'em in my notebook, and role-play it out. That way the heroes can't be too sure if they made the check or not. I might even suggest best 2 out of 3 over the course of 6 months of game time.

Yes and no - because I would have to rule that a sword pretending not to be evil can't have too much effect on a character's alignment. It has to reveal itself at a critical moment and attempt to take over, and then the PC knows what it's up to.

[Phelix-Mu]

For anyone curious about how this went, my DM had made it a split personality so 2 people popped out of the sword and my bard charmed the wrong one. The evil personality turned out to be an evil wizard trapped within the sword and he gated away.

The other one was his confused and rather useless brother, so I had him turned back into a sword without using the helm and we'll see if it was all worth it or not. :smallannoyed:

This was actually a very interesting development. I think it's safe to say that your solution may have rumbled something that was supposed to be a big plot element for the DM. When elegant solutions lead to bizarre complications, it's often a sign that the DM had to rethink things he'd rather not have rethought.

Kudos for the good solution (even if it didn't work as planned), and kudos to the DM for not 100% shooting you down.