[Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] as a Weapon of Legacy

[Xaroth]

I've been looking into Weapons of Legacy lately, and I figured that if I'm gonna make my own, why not start with a meme?

However, I find myself at a loss, and so here I am. I'm not entirely sure what rituals or progression I would use for Thunderfury. Would someone be willing to help me out? I feel like it would begin as a +1 Greatsword? Requirements could be Knowledge(Planes), BAB +3, and something else?

[Venger]

you might look at this iron chef (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477153-Iron-Chef-Optimisation-Challenge-in-the-Playground-LXXVI) for inspiration.

[Chronikoce]

I'd probably go with bastard sword since thunderfury is a 1h weapon

[DarkSoul]

Did someone say...? Nevermind.

I think it should be a one-handed weapon, or at the very least something capable of being wielded in one hand like a bastard sword. It's never been a two-handed weapon to my knowledge.

[Xaroth]

you might look at this iron chef (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?477153-Iron-Chef-Optimisation-Challenge-in-the-Playground-LXXVI) for inspiration.

I did look at it, but I couldn't really find anything that could've given me inspiration. All I could find were people talking about it, I couldn't find anyone actually laying out a table or anything.


I'd probably go with bastard sword since thunderfury is a 1h weapon

Ah, fair enough. Bastard Sword would make sense. So at base, a +1 Bastard Sword. Being 5th level would allow it to be +2, or +1 Holy? Y'know, because Blessed Blade.


Did someone say...? Nevermind.

I think it should be a one-handed weapon, or at the very least something capable of being wielded in one hand like a bastard sword. It's never been a two-handed weapon to my knowledge.

I believe I just heard...? Never mind.

A +1 Bastard Sword would probably make more sense, and I can fluff it to look like Thunderfury.

[Venger]

I did look at it, but I couldn't really find anything that could've given me inspiration. All I could find were people talking about it, I couldn't find anyone actually laying out a table or anything.

Huh? Everybody made a table. Builds start on page 6.

[Xaroth]

Huh? Everybody made a table. Builds start on page 6.

Oh what? Weird, I went all the way over to like page 13 and started from there. I did end up finding the one on page 6 though and it answered a question I've had for a long time related to the rituals. I'm still somewhat concerned as far as balancing out goes, though. I don't want Thunderfury to be gamebreaking, but I feel like it should still be powerful?

[ExLibrisMortis]

Keep in mind that the pre-printed weapons are (nearly?) all seriously underpowered. Either throw out the costs, or make your weapon a real bomb.

As for abilities, I have no idea what this weapon is supposed to be, but I can say this: bastard swords are annoying. They require EWP, yet only deal an extra point of damage per hit, and that's only when deciding to give up two-handing benefits (else they're straight worse than greatswords). I'd either use a longsword, or provide a few more points of damage/utility, to compensate for the lost feat.

[Chronikoce]

I probably wouldn't use Holy as the enchantment personally. Definitely needs shock and shocking burst at some point though for the lightning. Maybe toss thundering in as well.

[Xaroth]

Keep in mind that the pre-printed weapons are (nearly?) all seriously underpowered. Either throw out the costs, or make your weapon a real bomb.

As for abilities, I have no idea what this weapon is supposed to be, but I can say this: bastard swords are annoying. They require EWP, yet only deal an extra point of damage per hit, and that's only when deciding to give up two-handing benefits (else they're straight worse than greatswords). I'd either use a longsword, or provide a few more points of damage/utility, to compensate for the lost feat.

http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/497240.jpg

http://media-azeroth.cursecdn.com/attachments/92/689/635834454761951337.png

A longsword could work, I suppose? I'm not entirely sure.


I probably wouldn't use Holy as the enchantment personally. Definitely needs shock and shocking burst at some point though for the lightning. Maybe toss thundering in as well.

Thundering could be fun, Shock and Shocking could be equally fun. What about the abilities? It should probably grant something to the wielder.

[ExLibrisMortis]

http://wow.zamimg.com/uploads/screenshots/normal/497240.jpg

http://media-azeroth.cursecdn.com/attachments/92/689/635834454761951337.png

A longsword could work, I suppose? I'm not entirely sure.
That's just how it looks; given that it's cartoonishly unpractical, you could call it a longsword, bastard sword, scimitar, or even shortsword (looking at the hilt:blade and width:length ratios). What Thunderfury is, however, depends on what it's used to do. If you want to import it (or anything, really) into D&D, ask yourself: "What type of person would wield this sword?" (c.q. "use this thing"). Then make it attractive to the D&D equivalent of that kind of people.


P.S. It could also be a thinner strategic bomber (http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/813/813935/supreme-commander-forged-alliance-20070820032517576.jpg), for all I know.

[Chronikoce]

So from an ability standpoint let's take a look at what the sword gives/does

Stat boosts: not something that translates particularly well to d&d weaponry. Probably better off slapping +X on there to model the better stats as improving ability to hit and deal damage.

Defensive boosts: + Fire/Nature resistance. Nature resistance doesn't exist in D&D obviously but since "nature" is modeled with lightning damage I think it would be fair to change that to electricity resistance (from this point on I'll just use electricity in place of nature for ease of referencing). This is a good spot for a scaling ability. Maybe start it out at 5 Fire/Elec Resist and eventually scale up to 15 or 20 depending on how strong you want this to be.

Abilities:
Chance to deal Elec dmg and then jumps to up to 5 targets. This is the part I would model with shock/shocking blast/thundering. These targets have their electricity resist dropped by a certain amount. The sword originally lowers the electricity resistance of the enemies by 3x the resistance it gives to the wielder. I think this is rather neat and could easily be left in as such. This might slow down the rate at which you choose to allow the wielder resistance to progress but honestly at high levels resistance doesn't matter to much (as opposed to immunity) so the 3x scaling is probably fine.

As a note to game mechanics. I'm pretty sure most things in game had a base nature resist of some sort so that this effect always did something. Maybe consider that when the sword is at full power the subtraction of elec resist is allowed to go negative and these negative values increase the elec damage which is taken.

Finally it also has a chance of consuming the primary target in a cyclone and slowing attack speed by 20%. This could be modeled in two ways that I can think of.
A: crits apply the spell Slow to the target. Their move speed is slowed and their attack speed is slowed by virtue of not being able to full attack.
B: crits apply a misfortune effect where the target rolls 2 dice and must take the lower of the two.

For crit rate I would probably make it special and put it at 18-20/x2 even if you go with the bastard swords d10. The proc seemed to go off pretty frequently and I feel like extending the bastard sword range by 1 isn't going to be gamebreaking (especially since this is supposed to be a legacy weapon).

Personally I like option A better because it doesn't increase the amount of die rolling that needs to occur (and if fact decreases it if the target effected regularly would full attack) and it also slows the targets movement rate which is a nice bonus that isn't too powerful overall.

As for scaling, you could easily have the effects grow over time. Maybe crits just movement slow and apply thundering, then later thundering, shocking, and movement slow, then etc etc and pick and choose how you want to distribute the power until it has ramped all the way up.

As for flavor. Most magic weapons glow and many can't even have this glowing suppressed by the wielder. Given the in game model I believe this is appropriate. The sword should always be crackling with electricity and therefore providing some amount of light and the wielder has no ability to suppress this unbridled power.

[Xaroth]

So from an ability standpoint let's take a look at what the sword gives/does

Stat boosts: not something that translates particularly well to d&d weaponry. Probably better off slapping +X on there to model the better stats as improving ability to hit and deal damage.

Defensive boosts: + Fire/Nature resistance. Nature resistance doesn't exist in D&D obviously but since "nature" is modeled with lightning damage I think it would be fair to change that to electricity resistance (from this point on I'll just use electricity in place of nature for ease of referencing). This is a good spot for a scaling ability. Maybe start it out at 5 Fire/Elec Resist and eventually scale up to 15 or 20 depending on how strong you want this to be.

Abilities:
Chance to deal Elec dmg and then jumps to up to 5 targets. This is the part I would model with shock/shocking blast/thundering. These targets have their electricity resist dropped by a certain amount. The sword originally lowers the electricity resistance of the enemies by 3x the resistance it gives to the wielder. I think this is rather neat and could easily be left in as such. This might slow down the rate at which you choose to allow the wielder resistance to progress but honestly at high levels resistance doesn't matter to much (as opposed to immunity) so the 3x scaling is probably fine.

As a note to game mechanics. I'm pretty sure most things in game had a base nature resist of some sort so that this effect always did something. Maybe consider that when the sword is at full power the subtraction of elec resist is allowed to go negative and these negative values increase the elec damage which is taken.

Finally it also has a chance of consuming the primary target in a cyclone and slowing attack speed by 20%. This could be modeled in two ways that I can think of.
A: crits apply the spell Slow to the target. Their move speed is slowed and their attack speed is slowed by virtue of not being able to full attack.
B: crits apply a misfortune effect where the target rolls 2 dice and must take the lower of the two.

For crit rate I would probably make it special and put it at 18-20/x2 even if you go with the bastard swords d10. The proc seemed to go off pretty frequently and I feel like extending the bastard sword range by 1 isn't going to be gamebreaking (especially since this is supposed to be a legacy weapon).

Personally I like option A better because it doesn't increase the amount of die rolling that needs to occur (and if fact decreases it if the target effected regularly would full attack) and it also slows the targets movement rate which is a nice bonus that isn't too powerful overall.

As for scaling, you could easily have the effects grow over time. Maybe crits just movement slow and apply thundering, then later thundering, shocking, and movement slow, then etc etc and pick and choose how you want to distribute the power until it has ramped all the way up.

As for flavor. Most magic weapons glow and many can't even have this glowing suppressed by the wielder. Given the in game model I believe this is appropriate. The sword should always be crackling with electricity and therefore providing some amount of light and the wielder has no ability to suppress this unbridled power.

That's amazing, actually! I think this'll help out a ton with sorting out the table. Thanks!

[Vaz]

It's also in Diablo 3; where it's attacks trigger blasts of Lightning, hitting 5 additional targets, so a CL11 Chain Lightning seems appropriate also?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/thunderfury-blessed-blade-of-the-windseeker

Source info. 11d6 damage seems like it's good enough, but you could always apply Metamagic to the Chain Lightning later on Empowered, then Maximised, the Maximise AND Empowered.

[Xaroth]

It's also in Diablo 3; where it's attacks trigger blasts of Lightning, hitting 5 additional targets, so a CL11 Chain Lightning seems appropriate also?

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/item/thunderfury-blessed-blade-of-the-windseeker

Source info. 11d6 damage seems like it's good enough, but you could always apply Metamagic to the Chain Lightning later on Empowered, then Maximised, the Maximise AND Empowered.

Oh damn, that sounds awesome, actually.