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View Full Version : D&D 5e/Next Samehada (Legendary Shark Skin Sword)



RulyBlackGiant
2017-11-14, 09:34 PM
The DM for our current group told use to come up with some ideas for some legendary weapons we can use. Since I had been rewatching Naruto Shippuden for the past couple of days, I came up with the legendary shark skin sword, Samehada, wielded by Kisame Hoshigaki. I have seen one other build on this sword so I figured I would give it a shot and do a build of my own. This is a rough build and I figured I would run it by this forum for any suggestions. If I get enough positive response, we'll use it in our current game. Any and all suggestions and criticisms are welcomed. Here it is:

Samehada “Shark Skin Sword”
• Type: Legendary Great Sword
• Height: 7 ft.
• Reach: 10 ft.
• Abilities
o
Life Bond: The sword master is bound to Samehada until the end of his/her life.
o
Life Drain: The defending creature must make a DC 15 Constitution save. If the saving throw fails, half the damage taken is converted to HP and transfer over the sword’s master.
o
Feeding Frenzy: The sword must be fed in order for the sword master to use it. The sword can feed on physical, magically, or spiritual energy. If the sword is not near a food source, the sword master must make a DC 15 Constitution save. If you succeed, you lose ¼ of your current HP. If you fail, you lose ½ of your current HP. If at any time you fail a saving throw and your current hit points fall to 0, you must then make a death saving throw to avoid being eaten by the sword.
o
Blood in the Water: If the sword successfully hits a creature, the sword becomes hungry for more of that creature’s blood. On its next attack, the sword can take an additionally 1d12 slashing damage to the same target.
o
Feeding Frenzy Chart:


Small: 1 day worth of food


Medium: 3 days worth of food


Large: 1 week worth of food


Huge: 2 week worth of food

JNAProductions
2017-11-14, 11:53 PM
Life Drain fails the bag of rats test.

In addition, this feels clunkily and unclearly written. I'm not even 100% sure what some of that stuff does.

Lalliman
2017-11-15, 02:25 AM
Life Drain fails the bag of rats test.
For the uninitiated, this means that you can gain infinite healing by attacking a bag of rats, or something similarly inconsequential and easy to come by. In this case it's limited by the fact that healing is based on damage, and common sense dictates that you can't deal more damage to a creature than they have HP. Which for a rat would be 1, and half of 1 rounds down to 0. It doesn't say the attack needs to be lethal though (and any attack can arbitrarily be nonlethal in 5e), so you can still regain a bunch of HP by attacking anything with 2 or more HP (e.g. cats) and you don't even have to kill them.

But indeed, feeding frenzy is unclear. When exactly does the Con save trigger? How do you determine if there's magical or spiritual energy to feed on? If the sword eats multiple people, does the satisfied duration stack? If yes then in an average game you'll pretty much never have to worry about it turning on you.

RulyBlackGiant
2017-11-15, 05:53 PM
First, I'm sorry for being unclear in terms of writing it. We were all in the office while we were talking about this, and I wanted to get my idea on paper before I had forgotten about it. And thanks a lot for the suggestions. I was excited about this idea. This was just a rough build for the sword, just to see what kind of response I would get. The sword in the anime is a powerful great sword. The sword "eats" or essentially absorbs chakra (Hence Life Drain). I had thought since the sword has animal like qualities, I would add those on, like it needs to be fed or it will feed on you or your companions and it only listens to those you could wield it. Plus sharks don't really need to feed every day if the meal is large enough (hence the shoddy chart I made lmao) DM said to come up with a Strength requirement for the sword. I was going to if I had gotten responses so we could play test it. Even if a response was like, "this sucks" lol. And in terms of spiritual and magical energy, those may even towards feeding it, but I haven't quite figured that out yet. Maybe the type of energy it absorbs whether it's good or evil, determines its nature. But still a rough draft, we haven't done anything yet.

Composer99
2017-11-18, 08:52 AM
The DM for our current group told use to come up with some ideas for some legendary weapons we can use. Since I had been rewatching Naruto Shippuden for the past couple of days, I came up with the legendary shark skin sword, Samehada, wielded by Kisame Hoshigaki. I have seen one other build on this sword so I figured I would give it a shot and do a build of my own. This is a rough build and I figured I would run it by this forum for any suggestions. If I get enough positive response, we'll use it in our current game. Any and all suggestions and criticisms are welcomed. Here it is:

Samehada “Shark Skin Sword”
• Type: Legendary Great Sword
• Height: 7 ft.
• Reach: 10 ft.
• Abilities
o Life Bond: The sword master is bound to Samehada until the end of his/her life.
o Life Drain: The defending creature must make a DC 15 Constitution save. If the saving throw fails, half the damage taken is converted to HP and transfer over the sword’s master.
o Feeding Frenzy: The sword must be fed in order for the sword master to use it. The sword can feed on physical, magically, or spiritual energy. If the sword is not near a food source, the sword master must make a DC 15 Constitution save. If you succeed, you lose ¼ of your current HP. If you fail, you lose ½ of your current HP. If at any time you fail a saving throw and your current hit points fall to 0, you must then make a death saving throw to avoid being eaten by the sword.
o Blood in the Water: If the sword successfully hits a creature, the sword becomes hungry for more of that creature’s blood. On its next attack, the sword can take an additionally 1d12 slashing damage to the same target.
o Feeding Frenzy Chart:
 Small: 1 day worth of food
 Medium: 3 days worth of food
 Large: 1 week worth of food
 Huge: 2 week worth of food


OP, I really like the concept of this weapon. A sword made out to look like a shark - perhaps even forged to have 'shark teeth' in the metal (or even real shark teeth embedded in it!) seems really cool.

That said, I must echo other posters that the mechanics could do with some work. I'll go through them individually.

Life Bond: I'm assuming this weapon requires attunement, yes? If so, I'd consider re-wording this ability to specify that the creature attuned to this weapon remains so until death (or until a wish or similar magic is used to sever the attunement).

Life Drain: This ability is oddly worded. Damage is already hit point damage, so why would it be "converted" into hit points? Also, why does the target need to make a saving throw? It's not taking extra damage, so the healing effect hasn't anything to do with it at all.

While I wouldn't worry too much about the whole bag of rats thing if I were you, it does point to the issue that this ability basically lets you get unlimited healing, especially if you're benefiting from, say, the Great Weapon Master feat and the sword's Blood in the Water feature together. 5e doesn't really like giving characters that kind of healing. The closest equivalent to this effect is the sword of life stealing (https://www.5thsrd.org/gamemaster_rules/magic_items/sword_of_life_stealing/), which actually only gives you temporary hit points.

Feeding Frenzy: It's hard to tell what's going on here, and the chart illuminates it a bit, but you need to spell out what's happening a bit more clearly.

My guess is, when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points when wielding this weapon (presumably a living creature, not a construct or undead), the target has to make a death saving throw or be devoured by it? The explicit consequence is that the sword is considered to be "fed" or "well fed" for a number of days based on the size of the target (as per the chart), so it seems. (An implicit consequence is that you need something like true resurrection to bring a devoured creature back to life?)

If the sword isn't currently "fed", then it might try to feed off the creature it's attuned to, or someone else nearby. But it's not clear when this effect is triggered. Maybe when you finish a short or long rest? Once an hour if you actually want the sword's wielder to risk hitting 0 hit points? Also, although in a reply you indicate it can "attack" nearby creatures in this way, it's not specified in the description. Maybe add some sort of random targeting clause? (Creatures within 10 feet? 30 feet? Also must figure that out.)

I know you mention the possibility that the weapon can feed on magical and spiritual energy, but IMO that doesn't really seem very shark-like to me.

Anyway, I would consider adding a new feature, called 'Devour' or something like that, which spells out what happens when you reduce a creature to 0 hit points. Then, you have the feature where it tries to "eat" you or people around you if it's not fed properly, referring to the Devour feature if you are unfortunate enough to reach 0 hit points.

Now I come to think of it, it's actually impossible to reach 0 hit points unless you're at 1 hit point and fail your saving throw, based on how the ability is currently worded. Maybe it would be better for the fractions to refer to your maximum hit points?

Blood in the Water: Other than using "take" when you meant "deal", this ability seems clear. Since a greatsword does 2d6 damage (unless your DM has changed it for your campaign), I'd consider changing the extra damage to 2d6, or, to make it more generic, something like "On your next attack against the same target, the target takes additional slashing damage equal to another roll of the weapon's damage dice."