Need help with magic weapons.

[Redhood101]

I’m making my players powerful magic weapons. They are around level 15-17 when the get the weapons. I want all of the weapons to also have a curse. The weapons are given by these evil gods.
One is a great axe given by a god that enjoys the suffering of others. I’m thinking maybe a weapon that can hurt the user.
The second is a scimitar that is given by a god that haunts the part with horrible nightmares. No idea what to do here.
Finally I have a rapier that is given by a god that is trying to make the party evil. Once again. No idea.
I would love some help.

[dmteeter]

Great axe of back biting on a critical hit the player rolls another d20 1-10 the critical hit is against himself.

Scimitar just make it a sentient weapon that slowly possesses the soul of the party by attacking them in their sleep.

Rapier of bloodthirst make the damage on the rapier scale upward with the number of innocent victims the player murders with it.

[Man_Over_Game]

The axe deals some significant bonus damage. After hitting an enemy, you gain X amount of temporary hit points. If an enemy hits you while you have these temporary hitpoints, damage that is mitigated by the temporary hitpoints is granted back to them as temporary hitpoints.

So, you attack, you get a shield. If someone attacks you, they steal that shield. It's an axe that rewards violence with more prolonged violence. It doesn't have to kill you when everyone is incentivized to hurt you.
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For the Scimitar, while players sleep the Scimitar randomly casts harmful Illusion spells that attack them in their dreams (such as Phantasmal Force or Illusory Dragon) that only last a single round (to prevent the game from slowing down too much). When a player dies in the dream, they do not benefit from the long rest and instead get two stacks of Exhaustion. If a player dies from any stack of exhaustion from the Scimitar, they instead become possessed by the Scimitar.

For added creepiness, make it so that the players don't realize they're asleep yet. When a player says "Well, I'm getting some sleep", you say "As you head to your room, you notice there's something outside your window." They end up fighting off things that aren't actually real, but penalize them over the long term as the players get constantly weakened by occasionally losing these encounters. It'd basically be a Freddy Krueger style horror, where they don't know what's real or not as they die from fatigue.
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For the Rapier, it allows you to read the minds of non-hostiles, and grants advantage to attack anything that has neither rolled initiative yet or is not hostile yet to you. If you do not attack with advantage this way and kill a creature attacked this way before a long rest, you do not benefit from the long rest, and will wake up with one level of Exhaustion.
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You need to give players the proper incentive to obey these weapons. Give them both the carrot AND the stick, and they'll believe it was their choice to fall.

[thoroughlyS]

The weapons are given by these evil gods.
Could we get some more info on these gods? Like a paragraph summary on their dogma or methodology? Also, why are they giving these weapons to the party? Their purpose might inform their functions.

[Asmotherion]

Best curses I know triger a d100 roll on some event (for example, when using their abilities, or 3/day if they have no abilities; For a certain percentage (let's say 71-90) something anoying yet funny happens. 91-99 something serious happens, everyone is sweating. 100 is a Dread situation that nobody is laughing at, and should be treated imediatly.

Example:

Stage 1: Roll 1d4
1) Your skin becomes more pale for 1d12 days
2) Your eyes become red for 1d12 days
3) Your voice becomes ten times deeper for 1d12 days
4) You gain an alergic reaction to garlic for 1d12 days, and caugh blood when within 5 feet of it, dealing you 1 necrotic damage.

Stage 2: Roll 1d4
1) You gain the sunlight sensitivity trait for 1d12 days
2) You gain a phobia against a creature type chosen by your DM for 1d12 Days; Creatures of that type have advantage to hit you, and you get disadvantage to hit them.
3) Your Alter Ego Animates during your Sleep, and has the stats of a Simulacrum of your Level. It knows all you know, and has an antagonistic personality towards you. For the following 1d12 days it will use all the information you know up to that point to humper your efforts and advancment, and perhaps comfront you directly in battle the last day.
4) For the following 1d12 days, you hear a voice in your head that sometimes helps you, and sometimes suggests you things... things that are not very kind, but at the given moment don't sound very bad.

Stage 3: Roll 1d4
1) You get directly possesed by the weapon for 1d12 days, gaining the trait "I must serve myself and my personal gain before everybody else, and end the lives of everyone who get in my way". Directly informing someone of your intentions gets you 10d10 Psychic Damage, but does not break the possesion.
2) You fall into a state of suspended animation, for 1d12 Years. You are also invisible and undetectable through scrying spells as if targeted by a Sequester Spell (and as if you were a willing target).
3) The curse makes you bleed uncontrolably from past wounds that seemingly randomly reopen. For 1d12 days, you take 1d4 slashing damage per HD you have in your pool each dawn. This cannot result in less than 1 HP.
4) The curse puts a Geas spell on you. Your DM gives you the details of the Geas, which work identically to the spell.

[thoroughlyS]

Have you done any more work on these weapons? Are we able to get more information?

[Vogie]

One is a great axe given by a god that enjoys the suffering of others. I’m thinking maybe a weapon that can hurt the user.

This Greataxe gives the wielder the Rampage ability (When this player reduces a creature to 0 hit points with a melee attack on its turn, it can take a bonus action to move up to half its speed and make a single melee attack) and requires it to drink in some blood daily, or bestows a level of exhaustion.


The second is a scimitar that is given by a god that haunts the part with horrible nightmares. No idea what to do here.

Make this act as a Vorpal sword, but whenever the player decapitates a target, that creature will return to haunt them in a nightmare within 1d4 days. This acts as the spell Dream, and may include reliving the fight, being attacked by the creature, betrayed by a party member, et cetera. If a party member has a body part (even as small as a lock of hair, clipping from a nail, or similar portion of the creature’s body) or some loot from the decapitated creature, the party member makes the saving throw with disadvantage.


Finally I have a rapier that is given by a god that is trying to make the party evil. Once again. No idea.

This would be easier to indicate if you stated if you wanted it to be Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral Evil. I like the idea of this being a sentient weapon, or at least one that telepathically speaks to the player... it may not be fully sentient, maybe just stating a small number of words. "BLOOD!", "HIM!", "THAT is what you NEED!", and the like.

Man_Over_Game's suggestion about encouraging or being empowered by the death of innocents would be perfect for Chaotic Evil.
A Lawful Evil effect would be something like an forced use of Compelled Duel at the smallest slight, to "defend your honor" or "demand proper respect", or whatnot.
A Neutral Evil effect would be something like a compulsion to steal or other type of act they can "get away with". You can pair this with some sort of encouragement when the wielder finds something they want to do. For example, if it is trying get the player to steal things, it may provide an invisibility effect or something more specific, like a "Locate Object (Ruby worth 100g or more)" effect.

[Specter]

As for the scimitar, make the players roll a d20 before a long rest: in a 1 (or higher), the player gets no benefit from that long rest.