Critiques on a cursed weapon for AD&D 2.0+

[Corsair14]

Ok, background, so far this campaign has been going about 6 months and they are effectively in chapter 3 of it. They started as crusaders right at the fall of Jerusalem and they helped a priest get to a hidden chapel and turned out the priest was obsessed with a daemonic book and they all ended up in the dread lands. They started with Mordenheim's monster, took a ghost steam boat to Soureign, fought their way across the swamp, Anton gave them a deal to bring him the book and he will send them home using it and gave them info on how to accomplish this. Ran the Day of the Dead adventure, hopped a ship and ended up in Ravenloft Egypt, spent far too long on a side quest and are finally in the Pharaoh's temple at the end of that. Still to come they will go to Sithicus to find a black rose(going to run the When Black Roses Bloom adventure) then they will bring the rose to the Raven Queen who has all the information in the dark lands in her constantly updating library. Here they will find the location of the Book and the priest who took it. They will then travel to Malosia where they will encounter all kinds of witchcraft, fae, crusaders from the Church of the Nine Rays(think thats what its called) and in the end they will either go home or the Paladin will become the new dark lord of the land.

So yes, its a lot of inspiration from the book The Black Crusade. Read it, best Ravenloft novel out there.

Right now we have an elf druid and dwarf fighter/cleric, both added after the initial start, and a human Paladin, ranger and rogue. All are in their 4s about to be 5s.

The Paladin whose abilities had been somewhat thwarted by being in Ravenloft died to a horde of death dogs. I brought him back with a god call and made him think it was his God telling him he was going to be the instrument of retribution against the unbelievers and false gods and he needed to retrieve a sword from the tomb. It ended with a roaring "I WILL IT!" and brought him back to the fight. In reality this was the dark powers taking interest in him and trying to corrupt the paladin. The sword is a cursed sword that while it wont directly act against him it will constantly be whispering things. So this is my idea for a Cursed Paladin's sword for him

Sword of Faith
It is a white sword with the word “Fidelis” etched into the blade near the cross guard. It is a +2 weapon and will always be in the Paladin’s hand in combat even if he tries to draw a different weapon. The sheath is of white leather with multiple red crosses on it.
The sword is +4 vs magic users and counts as a Nine Lives Stealer against those types of classes with the resultant gain of 9hp when the power activates. The bodies of the dead from this weapon will burn from this effect.

If the bearer says the phrase “God Wills It.” The blade will ignite like a Flame Tongue and has +4 vs flame vulnerable targets. Does not have the standard secondary effects vs cold and undead however. But it does not suffer the half damage effect bladed weapons have against skeletons. This effect he will have to discover in game.

The blade however is cursed and will whisper things only the wielder can hear. It depends on the situation. If in the presence of druids or priests of other religions newly met it will whisper things like “Witches! Heresy! Burn the witches! Suffer not the witch to live” things like that even if they haven’t identified themselves as such. Does not affect party members unless they have been away for awhile

Note to self: DM needs to write and pass notes so that only the paladin can read them when this happens. The goal is to eventually have the player chose on his own to act on these whispers.

I will do dark powers checks if does start to do evil acts and he already noticed his detect evil abilities seem to somewhat work. Also he has an inkling that he can do Inflict Wounds instead of lay on hands when he healed the druid in a fight. Does the sword sound too powerful?

[LibraryOgre]

For 4th/5th? Yeah, I think it's a bit big. At that level, a +4 is almost doubling his level for the purposes of hitting people, and, even with the dark powers pushing him, it's a big boost.

I would, instead, make it part of his Dark Powers development. At the beginning, it's a +1/+2... fairly standard magic item. He fails his first power check? It becomes a +1/+3. Little bit more? +2/+3.

The more he listens to the sword, the more powerful it gets. If he retains his morality, it does not get stronger.

[Corsair14]

This is 2nd edition. I anticipate them making it to 7th average by the end of the campaign.

Thats a cool idea. I might run with that. I am having a black stallion waiting for him at the exit of the Tomb as his 4th level mount. With typical animal/familiar issues that happen in Ravenloft. I plan on having the eyes turn red over time but he wont notice but the party will.

[LibraryOgre]

One thing I like to do in Ravenloft is pick a goal monster for them. What are the Dark Powers turning them in to? A Paladin leans towards Death Knight, obviously, but you could move them elsewhere. That helps guide the transformations.

[Corsair14]

His boss villain will be the priest who brought them there in the first place. I will have the priest fall in the final battle and have him get the choice of killing the defenseless man. But there will be a lot of witchcraft and heresy before they get to that point. The result will be whether they return to Jerusalem or whether he becomes the Dark lord of Malosia forever dealing with a pagan insurgency and leading a holier than though religious order.

[Lord Torath]

I will have the priest fall in the final battle and have him get the choice of killing the defenseless man. I've never quite understood that. If this evil priest is worthy of death, does it matter if he currently has a mace in his hand when you kill him? He's (presumably) done awful things and is worthy of death. Why should it matter if he's not currently menacing anyone? If you don't carry out the sentence, he will be back to menacing people as soon as the paladin is out of sight.

You're going to run into the "orhpan boy" problem from Pirates of Penzance. "You wouldn't kill an orphan boy, would you? I mean, I'm only an orphan because I killed my parents, but I'm still an orphan, so you really can't kill me, right?" "I've killed all these people, and abused and oppressed all these others, and if you don't kill me, I'll go back to doing it all again, but just now I'm unarmed, so you can't kill me without falling." Armed or not, he's still a threat to all you know and love. If you kill him out of revenge, sure, that's bad. But if you kill him because he's a threat to everyone, shouldn't that be a good thing?

I suppose it depends on the specific oath this paladin has sworn, but this type of thing has always felt like a 'gotcha' to me. I suppose this isn't the right place to discuss it, though, and is probably likely to lead to a long, fiery debate and a locked thread. Plus, it's your game, not mine, and the only people who should care how you run your game are your players, and not me.

I really do like the idea of the sword getting more powerful as the paladin acts farther from his ideals, though. That's pretty cool. The original sword was definitely too powerful. Mark's idea is great!