Amaril
2014-01-04, 09:57 PM
(Wall of text incoming--my apologies in advance.)
So, in my long-running Pathfinder game, my party recently found a really cool magic sword, and it was decided that it should go to my wizard--partly because he was the only one with no magic items at the time, partly because he's the type of wizard who likes to buff himself through the roof and wade into melee with the warriors, and partly because he's the only member of the party who uses a sword. Anyway, tonight I finally got a chance to test it out in a fight against a mummy, and based on that experiment and a later casting of identify, I now know the full extent of its powers. It's a False Blade of Ardent Fire +2 (which I'm pretty sure is a homebrew item), which has a ten-foot aura of an enhanced protection from evil effect that grants +4 bonuses instead of +2, shines brightly when evil creatures are nearby, and, most importantly, is sentient. It has an Int score of 13, is of Chaotic Good alignment, likes to be called Ardy, and has mind-affecting powers that force the wielder to make Will saves or be compelled to take foolishly heroic risks in battle against evil.
Now, I really want to use this thing, but the downsides make it very risky for my character to wield, even with his high Will save. So I came up with an idea for a way to negate the item's flaws. See, it's a common element of magic systems in fantasy that if a person possesses an item for a long time and develops an attachment to it, some of their essence can rub off on it, hence why mages can often use people's possessions to target them with magic the same way they can for blood, hair, and other body parts. Now my character, being an elf, has a nonmagical longsword that was given to him at his coming-of-age seventeen years previously, as part of a cultural custom of adult elves carrying honor blades. In that time, he's developed quite an attachment to the sword and carried it with him pretty much everywhere, so I figure it more than qualifies for the conditions outlined above. So I have an idea that my character could research an item creation ritual that would allow him to forge the metal of his old sword into the new, magical one, thus infusing the sentient blade with some of his essence and making it more compatible with his personality, and neutralizing its mind-controlling affects on him. Obviously, this process would be severely costly, possibly as much as creating a whole new magic item, but my character and I would both consider it worth the effort. As an added bonus, this would solve the issue I've been having over my character swapping out his old sword with sentimental value for a new one because it's practically more effective. It might even make the sword more open to being called by a different name, because Ardy just doesn't sound like a name worthy of a sword of legend to me.
I have some questions about this, though, before I pitch the idea to my DM. First, I wanted to know if anyone has any recommendations for how the process I'm describing would work mechanically--how much it would cost, how long it would take, what materials I'd need, that kind of stuff. It would probably see some revision before it (hopefully) gets approved, but I figure it might be helpful to have more detail to the idea when I suggest it, and I'm curious how one might go about balancing something like this. Second, I'm interested to hear people's opinions on altering sentient magic items--is it evil to change them because they're intelligent beings, or do they not count because they were artificially created? What do you think? I eagerly await your responses.
So, in my long-running Pathfinder game, my party recently found a really cool magic sword, and it was decided that it should go to my wizard--partly because he was the only one with no magic items at the time, partly because he's the type of wizard who likes to buff himself through the roof and wade into melee with the warriors, and partly because he's the only member of the party who uses a sword. Anyway, tonight I finally got a chance to test it out in a fight against a mummy, and based on that experiment and a later casting of identify, I now know the full extent of its powers. It's a False Blade of Ardent Fire +2 (which I'm pretty sure is a homebrew item), which has a ten-foot aura of an enhanced protection from evil effect that grants +4 bonuses instead of +2, shines brightly when evil creatures are nearby, and, most importantly, is sentient. It has an Int score of 13, is of Chaotic Good alignment, likes to be called Ardy, and has mind-affecting powers that force the wielder to make Will saves or be compelled to take foolishly heroic risks in battle against evil.
Now, I really want to use this thing, but the downsides make it very risky for my character to wield, even with his high Will save. So I came up with an idea for a way to negate the item's flaws. See, it's a common element of magic systems in fantasy that if a person possesses an item for a long time and develops an attachment to it, some of their essence can rub off on it, hence why mages can often use people's possessions to target them with magic the same way they can for blood, hair, and other body parts. Now my character, being an elf, has a nonmagical longsword that was given to him at his coming-of-age seventeen years previously, as part of a cultural custom of adult elves carrying honor blades. In that time, he's developed quite an attachment to the sword and carried it with him pretty much everywhere, so I figure it more than qualifies for the conditions outlined above. So I have an idea that my character could research an item creation ritual that would allow him to forge the metal of his old sword into the new, magical one, thus infusing the sentient blade with some of his essence and making it more compatible with his personality, and neutralizing its mind-controlling affects on him. Obviously, this process would be severely costly, possibly as much as creating a whole new magic item, but my character and I would both consider it worth the effort. As an added bonus, this would solve the issue I've been having over my character swapping out his old sword with sentimental value for a new one because it's practically more effective. It might even make the sword more open to being called by a different name, because Ardy just doesn't sound like a name worthy of a sword of legend to me.
I have some questions about this, though, before I pitch the idea to my DM. First, I wanted to know if anyone has any recommendations for how the process I'm describing would work mechanically--how much it would cost, how long it would take, what materials I'd need, that kind of stuff. It would probably see some revision before it (hopefully) gets approved, but I figure it might be helpful to have more detail to the idea when I suggest it, and I'm curious how one might go about balancing something like this. Second, I'm interested to hear people's opinions on altering sentient magic items--is it evil to change them because they're intelligent beings, or do they not count because they were artificially created? What do you think? I eagerly await your responses.