(3.5) Is this new weapon balanced?

[Ianuagonde]

Hello playgrounders,

one of my players has requested a new weapon for his level 1 gnome character. I'm not sure if it would be balanced, so I thought you could give me some advice. Is this OK as a regular weapon? Should it be a custom magic item? Questions, questions...

Gnome Squeaky Hammer - one handed melee weapon. The hammer has two different heads: one of normal metal (1d8 bludgeoning). The other end is inflatable and deals nonlethal damage (1d6) and triggers a Lesser Confusion when it hits (Will save DC 11+Cha mod of wielder negates). This deflates the hammerhead. Once an enemy has been confused, it's immune to the squeaky hammer's confusion for 24 hours. The same joke twice is never funny.

Switching heads/hands is a free action. Reinflating the hammerhead is a full-round action. Damage values are for a medium hammer.

I'm also considering letting him trade the gnome racial proficiency for this thing.

Thanking you in advance for your wisdom.

[Tyrmatt]

With the provisos of it taking a full-round action to reset it and only lasts 1 round, I don't see it suddenly dominating the game. It would clearly be a magical item though. According to the magical item creation rules though, this would give it a base cost of about 2000gp...

Perhaps someone better versed in magic crafting can help you with that.

I'm also assuming the game is less than serious if there's a squeaky hammer involved. :p

[Kaww]

Perfectly fine, just it has to be a magic item (~1000-1500 gp), so a lvl 1 char would have a difficult time explaining how he ended up with it...
Also + charisma to DC is a bit strange for a weapon to have...

[dobu]

true. magical weapons usually have fixed DCs, but sudden stunning (or some other stunning enchantment, i can't remember the correct name) also has a scaling DC... so it's possible.