Building Excalibur...

[RaafikSkald]

First time DMing and our group is homebrewing our setting and world together.

To make a long story short, the Big Bad Totally Not-Venger cannot be slain by conventional means as he's got the backing of some nasty eldritch deities. The party must find Silvermist, the ancestral sword of plot, errr I mean Elves. It's the only thing they know of that can kill the big bad. I'm stuck from there. The group isn't supposed to fight Not-Venger until the end of the campaign, once they've hit max level (ideally, but we all know how persnickety and sneaky players can be).

The party is going for a Netural, anti-hero type campaign, so a genuinely holy sword is out (though it would built up as one in game lore).

Any suggestions or anyone have their own Master Swords of plot they'd like to demonstrate to give me an idea of what that would look like stat wise?

[Morphic tide]

The better way to ask the question is what property does the sword have that allows only it to kill the BBEG in question. Given you've described them as a Venger expy, and thus a primarily spellcaster type enemy, one could have the core property be powerful anti-magic, acting as a mix of a Rod of Absorption and Ring of Spell Storing with some manner of on-hit dispel. Perhaps the Venger expy's been given Regeneration bypassed by Cold or Electricity and has, or has been "gifted", an advanced version of Flame Shield to render themselves immune to that particular energy type while inflicting a sizable amount of that kind of damage on any melee attacker.

[GreenDM]

You could steal the "Teeth of the Dragon" concept from Matt Colville/MCDM. Basically there are 6 to 8 swords of power scatter through out the land, with many lost to time. While each sword is powerful in its own way, they become more powerful when they are close together. So you can make an adventure for each sword in the campaign, and only when all swords are within 100 feet of each other, do they get the power of your True Excalibur, and allow the party to defeat their enemy. This means the party always has a short term goal, the next sword, and a long term goal, putting all the swords together. And it let's you give out cool magic swords all campaign long! Some can suit spellcasters with properties like an arcane focus, and others could be great for martial characters like extra damage akin to a flame tongue.

[DeTess]

In a campaign I played in there was set of magical swords we acquired as part of our quest to gather enough power to defeat this ancient god-emperor dragon. Each sword was a +2 sword that also gave +2 to an attribute and could cast a spell as a bonus action 1-3 times a day when the sword was used to hit someone. IIRC we had a sword that could cast bestow curse as a bonus action on its target, another one that summoned a pair of dire wolves, one that cast blindness and one that cast vampiric touch, but allowing it to be channeled through the sword, instead of being a weapon-less standard action attack.

[noob]

It could just be an holy weapon intelligent enough to figure out it should not harm its wielders when they are pursuing the right objectives.
"I do not like associating with people who steals daily the bread of poor people and stomp on the needy but I will lend you my strength in the fights so you can survive because insert bbeg name needs to be stopped and you are the kind of people skilled enough for that" then it would keep quiet.
And since usually people regardless of being evil or good usually meets more evil opponents than good opponents the holyness of the sword would still be useful frequently.
Like maybe it makes a circle of protection against evil and dispel evil magic spells that includes itself or its wielder?
Or maybe it irradiates a light that protects the allies of the wielder making them feel light and keep their clarity of mind even when suffering from the direst afflictions.(The name silvermist comes from the fact the elves were in a place with a lot of fog and when the light of the sword shines it makes the fog look like silver)
Or it just blinds and smites bad people very efficiently.

Or this sword is not an holy weapon and is instead a psionic weapon made for a thief that fills everything in fog that makes so nobody sees anything and then people stumble around in the silvery mist thus allowing quick escape for the thief that made this sword but now the villain is actually vulnerable to fog because it reminds them of their homeland which was humid and filled with fog and you can use this memory to jump in their head thanks to their mental weakness and fight their mind until they collapse like a vegetable because psionics tells "shut up logic I now exile common sense to the nine hells.".

[aglondier]

Sounds like these are not the heroes you are looking for.

I suggest you make the "only weapon that can kill" not-venger be the holiest holy avenger sword ever. That none of the party can use. Seriously. It hates them almost as much as it hates not-venger.

It would require a True Hero, a Paragon of Truth and Justice, a Good, Kind, Generous, Loyal, Honest and generally Benevolent character to wield it. Which describes none of your characters...

...but perhaps there is an NPC...who they can find, train, and equip...but carefully, because we wouldn't want him to pick up their moral code and lose the ability to use the weapon...


...I wonder how many Heroes they will go through before they figure that one out...

[RaafikSkald]

You could steal the "Teeth of the Dragon" concept from Matt Colville/MCDM. Basically there are 6 to 8 swords of power scatter through out the land, with many lost to time. While each sword is powerful in its own way, they become more powerful when they are close together. So you can make an adventure for each sword in the campaign, and only when all swords are within 100 feet of each other, do they get the power of your True Excalibur, and allow the party to defeat their enemy. This means the party always has a short term goal, the next sword, and a long term goal, putting all the swords together. And it let's you give out cool magic swords all campaign long! Some can suit spellcasters with properties like an arcane focus, and others could be great for martial characters like extra damage akin to a flame tongue.

That actually reminds me of Windwaker, in which Link had to go on a bunch of quests just to recharge the sword and bring it back to full power.

[RaafikSkald]

Sounds like these are not the heroes you are looking for.

I suggest you make the "only weapon that can kill" not-venger be the holiest holy avenger sword ever. That none of the party can use. Seriously. It hates them almost as much as it hates not-venger.

It would require a True Hero, a Paragon of Truth and Justice, a Good, Kind, Generous, Loyal, Honest and generally Benevolent character to wield it. Which describes none of your characters...

...but perhaps there is an NPC...who they can find, train, and equip...but carefully, because we wouldn't want him to pick up their moral code and lose the ability to use the weapon...


...I wonder how many Heroes they will go through before they figure that one out...

I'm open to the idea of nudging them toward a "purification" quest in which one of them would make an alignment shift towards good and thus become worthy of the sword. On the other hand the campaign is set up where I'm actively tempting them with "cthulhu magic" to corrupt and blast their sanity. I like giving the player options, so they don't feel stuck on railroad and I'm pretty adaptable to the various way they find to undermine my plans.

[Arkhios]

What sort of creature is this Not-Venger? What is Not-Venger's "cryptonite"? For example, assuming Excalibur were especially effective against the Fey, it should most likely be made out of cold iron. Then again, for it to cut stone like butter, it could also be made of adamantine. Or it could be enhanced with keen. Or it could simply be an artifact that has all those qualities, regardless of it's material or individual enhancements.

Now, I'm not saying those qualities are adamantly iconic to Excalibur, but you get the idea. Have the Silvermist be made in a way that is both very rare and very effective against a specific type of creature applying to Not-Venger, and perhaps as a twist, against any other type of creature, count as a normal sword made out of steel or some such, maybe even described as if it appeared quite ordinary and perhaps a little dull and dented.

[rel]

I recommend not making it the only thing that can kill the big bad. Make it good at killing the big bad; bane, bypasses the big bads esoteric hardness, negates the big bads signature tricks and is just an all round great weapon. But the only thing? nah. If the PC's want to skip the sword and try for an unexpected clever solution let it happen.
Give the sword and the big bad stats and if the PC's are lucky and creative enough to come up with an alternative, awesome.

Also, if the sword has some sort of compatibility requirement the heroes lack then make it no worse than what is available under the regular rules (i.e. completely circumvented by an application of UMD).
The PC's tricking the stupid good sword into doing what its supposed to be doing is at least an acceptable story.
The big bad wins because the PC's don't match the GM's arbitrary requirements for heroics is lame.

[noob]

I recommend not making it the only thing that can kill the big bad. Make it good at killing the big bad; bane, bypasses the big bads esoteric hardness, negates the big bads signature tricks and is just an all round great weapon. But the only thing? nah. If the PC's want to skip the sword and try for an unexpected clever solution let it happen.
Give the sword and the big bad stats and if the PC's are lucky and creative enough to come up with an alternative, awesome.

Also, if the sword has some sort of compatibility requirement the heroes lack then make it no worse than what is available under the regular rules (i.e. completely circumvented by an application of UMD).
The PC's tricking the stupid good sword into doing what its supposed to be doing is at least an acceptable story.
The big bad wins because the PC's don't match the GM's arbitrary requirements for heroics is lame.
You do not need to trick the holy sword: you can just convince it that you are its best wielder to get rid of a great evil.
Being good is not needed for having the skill needed to kill people with a sword.

[Vaern]

If you want to use a holy sword but none of the party are good enough to use it, put them through a whole story arc that offers them a chance for character development and how that at least one of your anti heroes takes that opportunity to shift alignment and become a legitimate force of justice who is worthy of wielding the blade.

Alternatively, give them the holy sword and make it not function for them. Rather than become good to wield the weapon, they must resort to corrupting it. The sword is somewhat less powerful against evil, but is still sufficient for killing not-Venger and can be wielded by your anti heroes. It may also have some unforeseen side effects as a result of its corruption... Perhaps, though it has been sought after to kill the main villain of the story, its corrupted state leaves the sword believing that this villain should be its rightful wielder, for example.

The suggestion of giving the holy sword to an NPC to kill the big bad for the party may seem logical, but in the grand scheme of things the players are meant to be the main characters of your story and I'd personally recommend against taking the spotlight off of them.