decapitating a dragon with out hitting him with a dagger lol

[Anbu002]

so i was thinking , and plz correct me if im wrong but i think this could totally work lol.
lets say i have a dagger with the sizing enhancement from the mic(which states that the weapon will change to any size category at the users behest)
can i just let the dragon eat me whole while holding the dagger and inside the throat put the dagger in front of me and tell it to become colossal and in all technicality when the dagger grows it should be so big as to essentially decapitate said dragon right?

[Studoku]

Ah, the old Shrink Item method.

[Spore]

Or if your DM is not mental you would deal the damage of a collosal dagger ONCE and then give the dragon a major debuff. This way you contribute heavily but do not single handedly kill it with a nominee for most immersion breaking acton.

[Eldan]

Logically? Yes, it probably would.

However, the rules don't say anything about what happens in such a case. Your DM would have to decide what happens.

[satcharna]

Logically, the dragon would chew you to death first. They're not snakes, after all.

[Renen]

There was a thread around something along the lines how to "always kill a dragon but never hurt a skeleton"
The answer was the nat 20 decapitation enhancement.

[Psyren]

Wouldn't this cause a paradox? If you make it too big, you can't use it, and if you can't use it, you can't activate it and thus the dagger should revert.

[StoneCipher]

Either that or my ruling would be that the dragon gets a bite attempt against the weapon while it is sizing and if it breaks it (which is probable), absolutely nothing happens.

And if they wanted to argue about enhancement bonuses vs breaking I will just say that the dragon made enchanted dentures :) DM always wins.

[Chronos]

The dagger would grow to the limits of its enclosure and then stop growing.

[bjoern]

The resizing thing is kind of along the same lines as a discussion we had in our group.

A character was able to use colossal weapons through various feats, abilities, items, spells, etc. That was his schtick, he ran around with a colossal great sword chopping stuff . He tried to make the case that the colossal great sword was so humongous that he should now have a reach of 10' or 15' due to the weapons size.

Of course rules state that reach is determined by what kind of weapon it is, or creature size. The DM explained that regardless of size of the weapon, its length was still the same just its girth and weight got larger.

This naturally led to the chuckling when we all pondered the idea of the colossal dagger.
Still only 6" long, but had to be used two handed due to its size. Like trying to stab someone with a block of iron that's pokey on one end.

[StoneCipher]

The resizing thing is kind of along the same lines as a discussion we had in our group.

A character was able to use colossal weapons through various feats, abilities, items, spells, etc. That was his schtick, he ran around with a colossal great sword chopping stuff . He tried to make the case that the colossal great sword was so humongous that he should now have a reach of 10' or 15' due to the weapons size.

Of course rules state that reach is determined by what kind of weapon it is, or creature size. The DM explained that regardless of size of the weapon, its length was still the same just its girth and weight got larger.

This naturally led to the chuckling when we all pondered the idea of the colossal dagger.
Still only 6" long, but had to be used two handed due to its size. Like trying to stab someone with a block of iron that's pokey on one end.

The DM is wrong on the length bit at least by RAW. The weapon simply doubles in size every jump and does not say that it specifically is girth or length so you would assume everything about it doubles. However, I'm not sure if that would give you reach with the RAW.

I would assume that if reach is not specified, you would be able to attack anything within the length of the sword and hit only the first thing you hit. So, in a straight line in front of you, you would stop at the person closest to you since the angle of any swing would hit them first.

[bjoern]

The DM is wrong on the length bit at least by RAW. The weapon simply doubles in size every jump and does not say that it specifically is girth or length so you would assume everything about it doubles. However, I'm not sure if that would give you reach with the RAW.

I would assume that if reach is not specified, you would be able to attack anything within the length of the sword and hit only the first thing you hit. So, in a straight line in front of you, you would stop at the person closest to you since the angle of any swing would hit them first.

Your right it doesn't specify how it gets bigger. But completely RAW a colossal great sword is 30' long with still only a 5' reach. (96' if you actually x2 it for each category, i used the x2 + x2 = x3 method)
Which makes no sense.

But if you think about it, to double a 3 dimensional object all you have to work with Is doubling one dimension.

Example a weapon that is 6'x1'x1' (for simplicities sake) simply doubling each dimension is actually increasing it by x6. So the double should be split into thirds and applied equally to each dimension.

So jumping 1 size category increases each dimension by 2/3. So

10'x 1'8"x1'8"

And a colossal sized would be 16'x 2'8"x 2'8"



Brings it back to reality a little but still should give you reach logically.

That's where he came from trying to explain it the way he did. Rather than just have something exist in game that made no sense. Still clunky though.


Oh and a colossal dagger is 1' 4" long.

[Psyren]

Your right it doesn't specify how it gets bigger. But completely RAW a colossal great sword is 30' long with still only a 5' reach.

Not really. Something with only a 5' reach is most likely too small to ever use it, and assuming you mean the sword itself, if you animated it then it would gain a reach appropriate for its size. So the circumstances under which a 30' sword would have 5' reach are actually nonexistent.

[bjoern]

Not really. Something with only a 5' reach is most likely too small to ever use it, and assuming you mean the sword itself, if you animated it then it would gain a reach appropriate for its size. So the circumstances under which a 30' sword would have 5' reach are actually nonexistent.

That would make it a functional situation. Where does it say that weapons of a larger size gain the ability to grant a longer reach to the wielder?

The actual "reach" property just doubles the natural reach of the creature using it. That's not really what were talking about though.

We need a property that grants the user a new base reach value. I remember looking for something along these lines for some time but I was never able to find anything.

[Psyren]

That would make it a functional situation. Where does it say that weapons of a larger size gain the ability to grant a longer reach to the wielder?

They don't - that's my point. You have to be the right size to even use it, in which case you already have the longer reach because you're bigger than medium. Hopefully that was clear.

[StoneCipher]

They don't - that's my point. You have to be the right size to even use it, in which case you already have the longer reach because you're bigger than medium. Hopefully that was clear.




A character was able to use colossal weapons through various feats, abilities, items, spells, etc.


What was the combination of feats/spells/etc and what size was he wielding this colossal weapon?

He must have had to have at least one or two size increases (assuming medium character size) to be able to wield colossal.

Not saying that you can't do it with RAW as a medium character, but it would be one hell of a (broken) combo.

[bjoern]

What was the combination of feats/spells/etc and what size was he wielding this colossal weapon?

He must have had to have at least one or two size increases (assuming medium character size) to be able to wield colossal.

Not saying that you can't do it with RAW as a medium character, but it would be one hell of a combo.

It was early on in 3rd edition. To be honest I can't even remember what he had. Just a bunch of stuff wrote down. We all looked at it and it made sense RAW. probably missed a few things that would make it not work, but we made lots of rules interpretations miatakes back then. I remember monkey grip, some kind of bracers, and he had templates and stuff like that to get him there, large build and the like.

More recently I had a guy who was able to use a greatsword 2 sizes bigger and wanted reach but was unable to reach beyond 5'

[StoneCipher]

Yeah powerful build and monkey grip already clash, so likely this wasn't possible.

Those specifically state you can wield something one size larger than you are, not one size larger than you can wield.