How good is blackrazor in 3.5e?

[Voidstar01]

So I want build Nightmare from Soulcalibur and Blackrazor plays like a slightly less evil Soul Edge. This leads to the question of how good is it actually? I know lorewise it's top tier, but they made it a legacy weapon and those are pretty hit or miss. How good is it? How good could I make it with the legacy champion PrC? For the sake of discussing it with my DM what level would you allow a PC to obtain its un-awakened version?



EDIT: Found in white plume mountain (revised) but wizards took down their download of the PDF, so I guess i'm out of luck unless anyone else happens to have it downloaded since I don't think it's OCG (unless i'm grossly misunderstanding copyright law or somthing)

archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a

[StevenC21]

Where can the stats be found?

[Thurbane]

Stats were presented in the free online adventure White Plume Mountain (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207a) page 30 (3.5 update of a 1E adventure).

TBH, I don't really know enough about legacy weapon rules to comment on how good it is, but at a glance, it looks to be on a par with most of the weapons listed in the Weapons of Legacy source-book - and the general feedback is that they aren't that great.

Consensus seems to be the only way to get the most of legacy items is to make a custom one using the rules at the end of the book.

[Silvercrys]

EDIT: Found in white plume mountain (revised) but wizards took down their download of the PDF, so I guess i'm out of luck unless anyone else happens to have it downloaded since I don't think it's OCG (unless i'm grossly misunderstanding copyright law or somthing)

archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/oa/20051207aI was able to find a copy of it, but yeah it looks like the entire archive of 3.x adventures is missing from archive.wizards.com now. I didn't try the wayback machine, though.


So I want build Nightmare from Soulcalibur and Blackrazor plays like a slightly less evil Soul Edge. This leads to the question of how good is it actually? I know lorewise it's top tier, but they made it a legacy weapon and those are pretty hit or miss. How good is it?Most Legacy weapons are... not really worth it. Including this one.

In this case you're taking a pretty big penalty to your attack bonus and Fort saves in exchange for an intelligent +5 Vicious Greatsword that can cast Death Knell at will, Detect Life 3/day, and Haste you for 10 rounds per day. The save bonus against mind-affecting is nice, I suppose, but it's still only a +6 equivalent weapon with a bonus to some saves and the effect of Boots of Speed. Oh, and it forces an Ego contest with you if you ever try to use another weapon.

Instead of all that, you could just buy a +1 Greatsword to upgrade as you go, or use a feat like Ancestral Relic (Book of Exalted Deeds, see if you can get an Evil version), or take a level of Oriental Adventures Samurai, or use the Kensai prestige class (Complete Warrior) to get a +5 Transmuting Vampiric Greatsword of Warning and buy some Boots of Speed.

Or, even better, get an Item Familiar (Unearthed Arcana, should be available on the SRD) because those automatically become intelligent.

The investment stuff is the cheesiest bit, you can either ignore that or ask your DM to houserule it away. Maybe ask to have the Familiar grant Skill Focus or a small scaling bonus like +1/5 levels to one skill in place of the skill investment thing and have it function as a Pearl of Power once per day that scales a bit in place of investing spell slots. And just do away with the XP investment entirely.

In any case, the problem with one of these is that it never forces an Ego contest with you, which isn't really the flavor unless this is SC 4+ Nightmare in which case the sword created a new body that mimics Siegfried's fighting style so "you" and "the sword" won't have much in the way of conflict. You can eventually give it a special purpose of finding the missing pieces of Soul Edge, though, which should allow it to resist alignment changes if someone else finds it.


How good could I make it with the legacy champion PrC?Weeell. Depends on what class you're advancing with Legacy Champion. You still take the fairly hefty penalty to attack rolls and your Fort save, but you get to progress your old class at 8/10 levels on top of getting to ignore the gold cost of the Legacy rituals after Least Legacy. Most of the Legacy feats you can get as a bonus feat are pretty bad, though. Particularly for this item because it only has the one limited use ability, though getting to heal on top of the Death Knell ability is pretty flavorful and getting to expend the Death Knell effect entirely for a 1-time bonus on attacks is... yeah, still not great.

Main thing Legacy Champion gives you is the ability to swap out a least/lesser/greater powers, which you can use to do some okay stuff like... swap the +1 versus Mind Affecting for at-will Detect Magic, then swap the 3/day Souldrinking ability for Cunning so you can't be flanked or flat-footed, then swap the +5 on saves versus Mind Affecting to get a +6 Enhancement bonus to Strength, or add another +2 to it to make it a +3 Vampiric Vicious Great Sword. As written it might still upgrade to a +5 at level 20, though technically it's only supposed to get +1 from that menu option at level 20 so it might end up a +4 Vampiric Vicious Greatsword.

Overall you can definitely make it "better", dunno if I'd say it's "good" though with such a huge penalty on attack rolls. Think I'd still rather have the +5 Transmuting Vampiric Greatsword of Warning, myself, and take a hard pass on the attack and save penalty.


For the sake of discussing it with my DM what level would you allow a PC to obtain its un-awakened version?Well, it's just a +1 Greatsword until you pass some Knowledge (History) checks and perform the rituals, so probably level 3-5?

As a small aside, it'd be pretty on flavor for Nightmare to be an undead through something like the Necropolitan template. You can then put the Profane enhancement on the weapon to have it deal +1d6 to all living beings and you can ignore the Con damage.

[Voidstar01]

In any case, the problem with one of these is that it never forces an Ego contest with you, which isn't really the flavor unless this is SC 4+ Nightmare in which case the sword created a new body that mimics Siegfried's fighting style so "you" and "the sword" won't have much in the way of conflict. You can eventually give it a special purpose of finding the missing pieces of Soul Edge, though, which should allow it to resist alignment changes if someone else finds it.


I started research how to play a haunted suit of armor for SC4 nightmare since I liked the idea of an item familiar, when I came across the Fiend of possession PrC, it's meant mostly for NPCs but there are ways for a player to get into it. More importantly it let me posses people or objects. So instead of playing nightmare, i'll play as Inferno and posses someone to be nightmare. I am so in love with this idea.