Magic Hammer Feedback

[BigPixie]

Hammer of the Sun-Smith
Artifact, greater legendary

This magic hammer glows with the pure power within it. The hammer has 10 (2d4 +2) charges, you can invoke the command word and do one of these 3 actions with it: First you can expend one charge and deal an extra 18 (4d8) radiant damage on a hit, second you can cast heat metal as a bonus action on a sucessful hit, lastly, once a day you can transform the hammer into Sunsmith Armor, (magic +3 plate that deals 5 (2d4) radiant damage on a hit.) The Sunsmith Armor lasts for 1 hour and then transforms into the Hammer with no charges left. The hammer regains (2d4 +2) charges after every dawn.



So what do you guys think? (Note this is supposed to be relatively broken, did the greater legendary, tip you off:smalltongue:)

[Bjarkmundur]

Seems pretty broken, a resounding success ^^

Actuslly looks pretty fun to play with :)

[The Kool]

Hammer of the Sun-Smith
Artifact, greater legendary

This magic hammer glows with the pure power within it. The hammer has 10 (2d4 +2) charges, you can invoke the command word and do one of these 3 actions with it: First you can expend one charge and deal an extra 18 (4d8) radiant damage on a hit, second you can cast heat metal as a bonus action on a sucessful hit, lastly, once a day you can transform the hammer into Sunsmith Armor, (magic +3 plate that deals 5 (2d4) radiant damage on a hit.) The Sunsmith Armor lasts for 1 hour and then transforms into the Hammer with no charges left. The hammer regains (2d4 +2) charges after every dawn.



So what do you guys think? (Note this is supposed to be relatively broken, did the greater legendary, tip you off:smalltongue:)

I would personally make the following adjustments:

This magic hammer glows with the pure power of the sun contained within it. In addition to the base damage of this Warhammer, it deals 1d8 radiant damage on a successful hit. When you make an attack with the hammer, you may expend one charge as a bonus action to gain one of the following two effects: Deal an additional 14 (3d8) radiant damage; or cast Heat Metal on the target struck by the attack. This ability may be activated after the attack is confirmed to hit. Additionally, once per day as an action you can transform the hammer into the Sunsmith Armor. This +3 plate armor lasts for one hour and is automatically equipped when created. When you make a melee attack with this armor equipped, it deals an additional 5 (2d4) radiant damage on every hit. At the end of the duration, the armor transforms back into the hammer. The Hammer of the Sunsmith has 10 charges, renewed at dawn.

[Bjarkmundur]

That is much cleaner, actually :/

[The Kool]

I'll explain the reasoning behind my changes:

Transferred one of the d8's of radiant damage to a constant effect, not on charge usage. Powerful and even semi-powerful magic items have consistent damage boost like this, and if you want it to play like a powerful weapon that gets used on the regular, you want it to have an effect that doesn't burn out. If this still winds up not being impactful enough and you want the item to feel more epic, consider changing "this Warhammer" to "this +1 Warhammer", or even +2 but I think the +1 would have the desired effect. Try it as is first, though.
Set charges to a fixed number, all refreshing at dawn, to be consistent with other magic items.
Declared the Heat Metal effect as using a charge, your version allowed for endless use of this spell. Maybe it was intentional, but these are suggestions after all and not "you must do it this way".
Using either charge effect on an attack is a bonus action. This has an interesting interaction of limiting some other bonus action attack or tactical options such as dash and TWF, but represents the extra focus put into the strike. It also means you can't use it on more than one attack per round. You could remove the text "as a bonus action" if you want, but it will significantly increase the burst potential of this item (consider a fighter using four charges in a single round, on four hits).
The ability can be declared after the hit is confirmed. This is quality of life for players in line with a fair chunk of 5e design philosophy. For example, Paladin smites can be declared after the hit is confirmed.
Charges don't disappear after using the armor, because that didn't make much sense. If it's consuming the charges, it should either last a duration dependent on the charges remaining, or should use a fixed number of charges. I figured it was more in line with 5e design philosophy to just remove that element so that there's less to track; it has two abilities, the on-hit effect and the armor transformation, which work independently of each other.
More clearly defined the armor and how it works. It's equipped when created so that this ability actually sees use (it's going to be used right before combat or on the first round, players won't want to spend time putting it on). I also more clearly defined how it is doing the bonus damage. If your vision was that it only deals that radiant damage on punches, you should change "melee attack" to "unarmed melee attack".

Looking at it now, I can see an alternate way of handling the armor. Players will likely be dissatisfied that using the ultimate ability of this hammer takes the hammer itself out of play for an entire hour. If you want, you could replace the text beginning with "Additionally..." and ending right before the last sentence with the following:

Additionally, once per day as an action you may expend all remaining charges in the hammer to transform your armor into the Sunsmith Armor, a suit of +3 plate armor that provides resistance to radiant damage. This armor lasts for 10 minutes per charge that was consumed. At the end of the duration, the armor reverts to it's former state.