Mournlode Targets [Eberron]

[Afgncaap5]

tl;dr: if you were to homebrew things that Mournlode targeted, how would you theme it?

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A player with a character who collects rare and exotic weapons talked about wishing he hadn't missed a day so that he could've used his Mournlode weapon on a werewolf. I checked and said that Mournlode technically only worked on Undead, not just any ol' creature with DR that was overcome by cold iron or silver. He asked me which monsters that included, and I just stared blankly.

After a search online turned up nothing (one person in a thread said that "Wights and Wraiths" were hurt by silver but I couldn't find evidence of that...) I started looking for what monsters counted in the Monster Manual. Vampires turned up (which I always forget) as did their spawn. And then I saw Nightshades.

So... Vampires, their Spawn, and three varieties of Nightshades. Not a huge list, and not the kind of thing a player wants to fight on the super regular unless you're in Ravenloft. This was just the list for Silver, though; expanding this to Cold Iron, I found Bodaks. So from the core collection of monsters, we've got a grand total of six affected targets.

This actually isn't too bad a list; it's still small and literally all the targets are enemies that it's good to be able to hit harder, even if they don't feel like common enemies. Having said that, it seems small to my player. I'm thinking about homebrewing some more targets, maybe making a storyline around it where Mournlode might be a little more useful. I'm trying to get a good feel for what connects these things thematically.

-They're all *creepy*. With the exception of the overexposure that movies give Vampires, these are all things that go beyond typical thoughts about undead just being "things that stopped living and are now moving around again and also violent." Vampires aside, these beings seem to bear no real connection to whoever or whatever they were in life. I'm not even convinced that the Nightshades *were* things in life, I feel like they might just be the result of way too much darkness and evil and death happening, but I don't know how I'd gauge that.
-Just being around them is a bad idea. Nightshades have auras, and vampires and bodaks have eyes you probably don't want to look at.
-They all have some measure of aversion to sunlight, thank goodness.

Now, there are admittedly other undead in other books who can be affected by Mournlode/silver/cold iron, but those are the targets from the core books. With the Monster Manual as a jumping off point, do you think there are any good homebrew options these might lend themselves to? Creating minions to fight through feels especially challenging... on the one hand, I don't want the weakest option of these monsters to be Vampire Spawn, but on the other hand I don't want to risk the commonality of whatever I make to risk taking away the rampant "unholiness" and "this should not be"ness of the monsters.

[Fizban]

Weapons with DR piercing properties aren't really supposed to feel powerful- they're supposed to be the silver bullet you need to fight a specific type of monster on even terms. You feel thankful to have it rather that awesome for having it. I think the main problem here is that your player just doesn't like how special materials work in this game: you don't get them because shiny, you get them because there's something you do specifically plan on fighting a lot of.

Mournlode beats DR/silver of undead without taking the usual -1 damage penalty of silver, also affects a particular type of undead that would require cold iron instead, and. . . yeah that's about it. +1 damage is actually considered pretty pricey, so 700gp isn't unheard of to ignore that penalty. It could also help against a fey undead of some sort with DR/cold iron from some source. Vampire Spawn are the kind of thing that you can find at low levels and need to kill in droves, while Nightshades are almost the only endgame undead- when you do need to fight these, a weapon that works is a lot more important.

The only real buff I think it'd need is to like some of the other weird materials in splatbooks, just flat beat any beatable DR of the target creature type. This is a much more offensive boon, letting you whack skeletons and liches and probably some golem-ish things with DR/adamantine and any undead that think they're gonna win 'cause they got a Stoneskin up. You could also let it bypass incorporeal miss chance if you want, but that's a whole separate ability usually valued at at least 1,000 even when restricted to wooden weapons (see Serren wood from BoED).

[Afgncaap5]

Actually... fey undead might be the kind of thing I need to think about. Thanks!

[Nifft]

You could also invent an enemy NPC spell which grants DR, and have this Mournlode weapon penetrate that DR.

Perhaps the spell is only known to Vol's Blood followers -- so the PCs will find out about it when they cross the Emerald Claw, or something.

[Falontani]

Perhaps have it interact in a different manner when blessed/enchanted. It already interacts differently with Turn Undead, allowing you to deal Turning Level in damage to any undead in your Turn Undead area when you Turn.