3.P - Sizing Sword as a Stronghold for the Landlord Feat?

[icefractal]

But even skipping that, it is really not clear you even could have a sword that big. If you could Size a weapon arbitrarily, any flying wizard could litterally crush a country with a Sizing mace. Considering almost everything in regard to weapons (damage tables, prices...), stop at colossal, it is very probable that "changing its size category" goes up to Colossal only. And the hilt of even a colossal sword is 3 to 5 meters at most, way too small to be a stronghold.

This is the main reason I'm not sold on this, on conceptual grounds. Because a sword-tower is cool, but "any sizing weapon is a WMD and could be turned large enough to crush a country" is stupid.

So yeah, Sizing does need a limit. And if you use the natural one of "sized for a Colossal wielder" that's only 16x the dimensions for a medium one. Meaning that even a thick handle will be at best a few feet wide when scaled up. If you chose a warhammer with an extra-large (Thor style) head, and made the head hollow, it could get big enough to be a small apartment.

I don't think that's the only place you could draw the line, but I'd need some explanation for setting it elsewhere.


Balance? I don't think that's a big concern either way.

Getting effectively a free weapon isn't going to break much, particularly since you could already use Landlord to pay for many type of magic items via Wondrous Architecture, and the amount - while significant - isn't infinite and weapons are expensive.

On the other hand, the fact that some classes are underpowered doesn't mean the only solution is allowing anything and everything for them. Like, any class could be good if they ignored their class features, did the Pun Pun trick, and just gave themselves "the right amount" of monster abilities. But I don't think that's a good way to fix things! Fix the classes instead (and for that matter, it's not like already-strong classes can't take Landlord themselves).

[Crake]

This is the main reason I'm not sold on this, on conceptual grounds. Because a sword-tower is cool, but "any sizing weapon is a WMD and could be turned large enough to crush a country" is stupid.

So yeah, Sizing does need a limit. And if you use the natural one of "sized for a Colossal wielder" that's only 16x the dimensions for a medium one. Meaning that even a thick handle will be at best a few feet wide when scaled up. If you chose a warhammer with an extra-large (Thor style) head, and made the head hollow, it could get big enough to be a small apartment.

I don't think that's the only place you could draw the line, but I'd need some explanation for setting it elsewhere.


Balance? I don't think that's a big concern either way.

Getting effectively a free weapon isn't going to break much, particularly since you could already use Landlord to pay for many type of magic items via Wondrous Architecture, and the amount - while significant - isn't infinite and weapons are expensive.

On the other hand, the fact that some classes are underpowered doesn't mean the only solution is allowing anything and everything for them. Like, any class could be good if they ignored their class features, did the Pun Pun trick, and just gave themselves "the right amount" of monster abilities. But I don't think that's a good way to fix things! Fix the classes instead (and for that matter, it's not like already-strong classes can't take Landlord themselves).

This is why i think you should just use an instant fortress effect mixed in with the sword's magical enhancements. The instant fortress could also be customized using the stronghold rules much more readily than an otherwise very limited sizing sword effect, and already has rules associated with it, so you don't need to try and figure out how to adjudicate it all.

[Drelua]

This is why i think you should just use an instant fortress effect mixed in with the sword's magical enhancements. The instant fortress could also be customized using the stronghold rules much more readily than an otherwise very limited sizing sword effect, and already has rules associated with it, so you don't need to try and figure out how to adjudicate it all.

If a player wanted to do this in a game I was GMing, I might make it cheaper than just buying an instant fortress instead of using the regular item combination guidelines. Maybe knock a quarter to half off the price since you have to give up your sword to use it. In game explanation could be something like "the instant fortress feeds off the other enchantments on the weapon to power its transformation."

[Crake]

If a player wanted to do this in a game I was GMing, I might make it cheaper than just buying an instant fortress instead of using the regular item combination guidelines. Maybe knock a quarter to half off the price since you have to give up your sword to use it. In game explanation could be something like "the instant fortress feeds off the other enchantments on the weapon to power its transformation."

I mean, that would already be represented in the fact that the landlord feat gives you a SUBSTANTIAL contribution toward the stronghold. That being said, I would only allow the landlord feat's contributions go toward the instant fortress, and, using the customization rules for strongholds within the stronghold builder's guide, I would allow you to customize the layout and amenities within the instant fortress, of course within the limits of the instant fortress's size restrictions. I would also probably mark up any wondrous architecture to the 0.5x price MINIMUM, though most likely bring it back up to 1x cost, as 0.25x cost is designed for "architecture that cannot be moved without destroying it, as it's built into the foundations" and 0.5x is designed for "architecture that can be moved, but is clumsy and unweildy to move, like a bed". Seeing as the instant fortress makes it all super easy to move, but then at the same time, so does a portable hole. 0.5x minimum it is then I think.

[Bphill561]

I built an epic fortress that had a paired portal that connected to an instant fortress. I was allowed to assume the portal was built in so it did not go against the shrunken fortress rules of not allowing it to contain anything while shrunken. Then I added the mobility option of it gliding through earth to store the instant fortress underground while in it enlarged so it was "safe" while I travel back and forth. I guess you could do the same with a sword instant fortress. Stylize it like a weapon or whatever, might be easier. You can add step 3 below to this concept for more space.

All points being considered, how about this.

Step 1: Fashion your sword with a a door in the hilt that is decent sized at colossal (but craft it as a smaller weapon)

Step 2: Do you sizing weapon and what ever standard weapon properties

Step 3: Add a Perm. Magnificent Mansion spell to an Augment crystal that stays attached to that weapon. Level 7 slot, caster 13, perm. 2000, duration greater than 24 hours 0.5, slotless 2x =182,000 gp. Grants 39 10ft cubes with a floor plan to your liking. No one can enter without your permission. Increase caster level if more space is needed. Maybe the augment crystal is the door handle or the door itself.

Step 4 (Evil/Creepy Part): Get a ring with 2 castings of Wall of Eyes, place on opposing sides of the sword in the blood grove, should cost 72,800gp. Have him watch from across the planes while tucked in your mansion. If you place the walls up high enough no one can touch them and get eaten. This is assuming the wall would go away or be easily disposed of when reshrinking the sword. Don't make the wall bigger than necessary, it will have less hit points.

You could also take a fiend of possession with leadership to possess the sword while you are inside. It can keep an eye out in the surrounding area or animate the sword and run.

Step 5 (The Cheese): Buy an instant fortress, the book even suggests using them as your fortress or part of it's construction. Fashion the fortress so the sword slides into it as a stand at full size. Now it is part of the fortress?!?

Anyway, this is a lot of work to get a cheap weapon. If you are enchanting the sword with stuff beyond weapon properties, you will run into your 200,000gp cap pretty quick. You probably could not get big enough rooms to enchant the sword as wonderous architecture. It might be safer to buy the sword without fortress funds, and treat all the other stuff above as part of the fortress costs. Or just get an actual fortress and portal back and forth through the door in the colossal sword.

[Morphic tide]

So Sizing Swords aren't particularly useful within the confines of true Colossal weapons due to thinness, and Morphing lacks the detail work desired. Anyone recall a borderline gag-weapon that's technically a Medium-sized two-hander but is actually an approximately torso-sized pillar to have a portable fort? Because otherwise we're working with gratuitously stylized Greatclubs.

As for the "Expansion" argument, this would render the Stronghold rules dysfunctional as you would be disallowed to spend it on furnishing existing rooms. I do believe this reading would disallow the usage of DMG traps in your Stronghold, but there's doubtlessly some exterior properties one would appreciate their weapon having even if we ignore using it to cheat weapon enhancements.

Working from the opposite direction, a Stronghold space is 20'x20'x10', so for a single space we require a Medium weapon that is 30"x30"x15", or 2.5x2.5x1.25 ft. By this metric, we can theoretically shrink a 2x2x4 Stronghold into a 5 ft. cube, and a Reach "weapon" of a five-foot wide ten-foot-tall pillar would be able to be 2x2x8. One can use a Barbican's 10 ft. "hole" as a grip location, particularly with a basement-foundation being the bottom layer, and for sensibility's sake reduce to six stories for "only" 7.5 ft. of length, which is still well in line with a Reach weapon, as well as shave 5 ft. from each side to be 30x30 ft. for a less-insane-to-grip 3.75 ft. across.

This upper bound is very much wildly off the deep end for anything that currently exists in D&D, but is not out of the realm of possibility for fantasy weapons, as many a tree would have similar proportions for a Huge creature using it as a club. A perfect example of such would be the Tauren of Warcraft 3, who use totems slightly longer than they are tall and nearly as wide as their entire body as weapons. Even using a cylinder, there's a problem with the normal version of such, as the given dimensions would be in excess of four thousand pounds for a solid oak log, so there's going to need to be vanishingly thickness in the final product.

As for applications, there's quite a few Fortress properties that'd be quite useful to keep with you even without being able to use it to cheat weapon prices, because you have plenty of defenses going 10 ft. out. A Greatclub that expands to a simple two-space longhouse can have the back give bonuses and the front give detriments, so you're swinging around a Solid Fog or such while getting the lovely Warding benefits.

I would personally propose the following statistics for a weapon designed to accommodate this absurd use-case:

Totemic Club
Exotic Two-Handed Melee
Cost: 150 gp, Dmg: 3d8 Bludgeoning, Crit: x4, Weight: 175 lbs.
A Totemic Club is the result of fashioning an enormous log into a weapon, with intricately-carved faces or figures disguising where it was split and hollowed for ease of carrying. Typically, they are created by primal cultures forced from sedentary villages to nomadic life, adapting otherwise immobile religious centerpieces carved from large portions of trees into forms a single strong member can carry a part of alone, often used as weapons against ambushes or predators shortly thereafter on the simple basis of being a large, heavy object intended to be moved regularly, and become reinforced to support this.

The immense bulk of these weapons and the reinforcement to hold them together despite having been split and hollowed allows them to be used to block attacks, giving a +3 Shield bonus to Armor Class, and can be enhanced as such separately, similar to a shield with shield spikes. Alternatively, one can use it to gain Total Cover, either by forfeiting attacks to do so as if it were a Tower Shield, or simply by setting it on the ground and positioning oneself so that enemies are on the opposite side as it is near enough the size of any intended user as to occupy the same space. Furthermore, it uses thrice its Shield bonus to determine its HP as if it were a shield, instead of determining it as a weapon.

A Totemic Club has Reach, so you can strike opponents 10 feet away with it. In addition, unlike most other weapons with reach, it can be used against an adjacent foe.

---

This is still absurdly underselling the kind of mass involved, as three inch walls for a hollow tube of oak with the above-mentioned 7.5 ft tall 3.75 ft. diameter dimensions, lacking roof or floor, still gives a weight of slightly under 470 lbs. There is no check penalty described because the Encumbrance rules are fulfilling this role, since this one thing is heavier than most anyone's entire outfit. This also means you need at least 14 Strength to use it at all with absolutely nothing else on, with 18 Strength reducing it to a Medium load, and Darkwood for 1,750 GP with no more than a Mithral Chain Shirt's weight in other gear at 18 Strength has no penalty. On top of the Proficiency feat.

[icefractal]

Hmm ...
3d8, x4, flexible reach, counts as a better tower shield with no ACP.
Yeah, that sounds balanced.

Super-weapons aside, if we assume a greatclub with a 1' diameter (probably larger than was ever actually used, but viable for characters with superhuman strength, which describes most melee types), then we get a 16' diameter at colossal. Not a huge tower, but legitimately a tower.

[Morphic tide]

Hmm ...
3d8, x4, flexible reach, counts as a better tower shield with no ACP.
Yeah, that sounds balanced.

Again, encumbrance rules. 175 pounds. You'd have to spend 10gp for every one of those 175 pounds and Masterwork and the 150gp base price to get it in Darkwood for half the weight with 18+ Str, be quadrupedal with 20+ Str, or go all the way to 23 Strength to actually have no penalties. The penalties for the Heavy Load you're stuck with at anything less than 18 Str are +1 max Dex bonus and -6 ACP, while Medium Load is still +3 max Dex and -3 ACP. You only get your full movement at a Light load, which is going to take a while for you to pull off.

It is looking to be balanced by mass. You can't carry much other stuff, because your huge frontline Strength score is specifically being targeted by this thing's weight. If you want to wear a Chain Shirt, you have no margin of error on Medium Load at 18 Str, and have to swap for Mithral when you get the totem in Darkwood at 18 Strength for a total cost on par with +2 armor. You don't get to get your magic weapon first because you'll be desperately wanting your Strength item to be able to carry more than the shirt on your back and totem in front of you.

There's definitely workarounds. But if you're talking about actual peak damage? So what if it does nearly triple the average base damage of a Scythe and gives an upgrade over Tower Shields, you have to spend a full feat on it, and can't so much as hold much else until you are well into the Martial/Caster divergence where inflation like this should exist but doesn't. The benchmark for taking Exotic Weapon Proficiency is enabling the Chain Tripper, which is capable of locking down several separate enemies functionally indefinitely while simultaneously dealing decent damage to them, or using Kaorti Resin on a Kukri, which allows for 15-20/x4 in TWF.

For Uberchargers? The Lance gives a multiplier to the Charge value whenever you're mounted versus +x1 on the very occasional crit, doubling damage in the "naked" case and being +50% with one other source, +33% with two other sources, and still +25% if you've dug for three other charge multipliers. Against +2d8 base damage, which takes all of 22 Strength to start falling behind an extra multiplier. I'll go ahead and dock to +3 Shield bonus since it does turn entirely into upside eventually and you can, in fact, have a Chain Shirt which would have been AC 20 without Dex bonus, but I'm not budging on Reach or damage because they're not actually problems in the long run.

[Kitsuneymg]

The Disintegration Finesse feat, from Lord of Madness, would probably work, though, if the spellcaster disintegrates parts of the sword-hold when it is already stronghold-sized.

It would not. Disintegrate destroys riverine. So the second you tried to use that, your sword would be water again.

[Drelua]

It would not. Disintegrate destroys riverine. So the second you tried to use that, your sword would be water again.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like riverine is something you'd want to make a fortress out of. At least when it's a weapon aiming a ray at that takes a decent roll, but for a fortress it's just 'don't roll a 1.' And if it's a tower and someone's in there, there'll be some falling damage, and probably some falling object damage from the furniture. Imagine losing your fortress and your weapon to a single casting of a 6th level spell, and collapsing into a damp pile of furniture and injured people.

[Vizzerdrix]

I think I would use a war spikard as my base weapon. Then I could fire it like a ballista when in tower mode.

[icefractal]

Again, encumbrance rules. 175 pounds. You'd have to spend 10gp for every one of those 175 pounds and Masterwork and the 150gp base price to get it in Darkwood for half the weight with 18+ Str, be quadrupedal with 20+ Str, or go all the way to 23 Strength to actually have no penalties.

So it's a downside ... for non-melee or low level characters. Because a strength-based character will have 23 Strength by mid-level or earlier. Not that they really need to wait, because they probably have Strength 18 from the start and 2200 gets cheap quickly.

Or, you know, Riverine, like this thread is discussing. But even in the absence of that material it would be best in class by a lot.

[Crake]

Super-weapons aside, if we assume a greatclub with a 1' diameter (probably larger than was ever actually used, but viable for characters with superhuman strength, which describes most melee types), then we get a 16' diameter at colossal. Not a huge tower, but legitimately a tower.

A hollow greatclub would be so unstructurely sound that I suspect if you tried to do this, it would just crumple with any significant swing.

[noob]

A hollow greatclub would be so unstructurely sound that I suspect if you tried to do this, it would just crumple with any significant swing.

Just enchant it enough and it fixes the issue.
There is a spell that makes the target object tougher.

[Drelua]

A hollow greatclub would be so unstructurely sound that I suspect if you tried to do this, it would just crumple with any significant swing.

Maybe a combination of darkwood and, since the thread title says 3.P, PF's impervious enchantment, and regular castings of ironwood would make up for this, but even then I'd say you're looking at a reduction to hardness and HP, maybe the fragile quality.

Although maybe a tower shield would be better than a weapon, I don't think there's any weapon that has nearly as much material as 45 pounds at medium, or that's at least 5 feet tall and a couple feet across. At colossal that's what, 80 feet by 32? Maybe more, not sure if there's an official answer on how wide they are. SRD just says nearly as tall as you are. Not very thick though, maybe you could have it bend into four 20' sections, a couple inches thick turns into walls almost 3' thick. Not sure how you'd get walls or floors in there, but there's probably ways you could use extra-dimensional storage for that.

Or maybe have flat sections fold off the walls and lock together, put it together like a dollhouse at medium then grow it to colossal. That's stretching the rules for morphing though, not sure you can wield a dollhouse. Might involve some extra weight, but with darkwood and mithral you could make up for that. I've always wanted to make a weapon out of mithral, but make it twice as big so it has the normal weight and extra HP, so sorta like that. Well outside RAW at that point, but I'd certainly be willing to work with a player to make it work.

[Morphic tide]

So it's a downside ... for non-melee or low level characters. Because a strength-based character will have 23 Strength by mid-level or earlier. Not that they really need to wait, because they probably have Strength 18 from the start and 2200 gets cheap quickly.

...Not everyone has an 18 Strength Martial at level one, and you're actually spending well over 3k if you want a Chain Shirt with a Light load at just the 18 because you have to make the armor Mithral as well. And, of course, "mid level" casually affording it is the point because spellcasters get vastly more spectacular escalations than merely doubled damage when you're able to afford a +4 ability score item.

Or, you know, Riverine, like this thread is discussing. But even in the absence of that material it would be best in class by a lot.

Not universally, Spiked Chain is still highly valuable for Trip, and Lance does more on the charge if you're still two-handing it when on a Mount and have anything beyond base+Str being multiplied right at 18 Strength. Leveraging 20/x4 crit on a Bludgeoning weapon is very difficult, and Riverine is still fairly pricy. The premise is something literally nonexistent to my awareness in first party, being a weapon largely impractical to use at low levels but naturally becomes more useful at higher levels simply on the basis of being more able to afford its detriments.

If you need to be above 5th level to maybe pull it off? Great, the Wizard's got Fireball now and the quadratic equation of caster power has well and truly engaged. It out-moding any existing weapon for blunt force damage is fine because we do not have a remotely worthwhile blunt force damage Exotic weapon. If you just want raw surefire damage, you can now grab this thing. If you want the largest numbers possible, you still get a Valorous Lance and sit yourself on some horrifying monster or get yourself some Kaorti Resin Kukris. If you want to do stuff other than kill things, you still want a Spiked Chain.

It isn't a guaranteed out-moding, because it doesn't actually surpass the options taken by existing builds within those builds. Because it doesn't really have hooks to scale it like the Kukri build being perfectly able to not bother with the EWP because its entire point is the AC-bypassing one-in-four critical threat. Or the Lance giving an extra instance of base damage so it's actually +1d8 per other Charge multiplier, needing only 20 Strength to guarantee inferiority for Ubercharging. Or the Spiked Chain Tripper, one of the few Martial "templates" that does stuff other than damage. The use-case for this thing is single-Strike ToB builds, who's nearest fit for an Exotic weapon is Kaorti Resin Falchons, and those builds can afford to be given a bit of extra base damage because they have a starkly limited ceiling.

And yes, I'm repeating the Kukri, Lance, and Spiked Chain comparison on purpose. Give actual numbers to show it's outright broken instead of just a mild cost-savings over getting ahold of permanent Size increases or piling on the feats.

[icefractal]

And, of course, "mid level" casually affording it is the point because spellcasters get vastly more spectacular escalations than merely doubled damage when you're able to afford a +4 ability score item.

So you solve it by making most people* use this one weapon? If you're going the "better weapons" approach, it would make more sense to:
1) Gate it by permanent BAB rather than carrying capacity - right now a persist-o-mancer who didn't need the help uses this thing as well or better than any martial class.
2) Have a variety of weapons which are that good.

But personally I'd rather improve weapon usage in general, so that it isn't tied to a few specific ones.

Checking the price of Riverine though, I do have to take back the comment that you'd just use that. At 350k to make this thing Riverine, it isn't worth it - not even with Landlord probably. Unless the "also a shield" is meant to skip around that too.

In which case I'd say that homebrew content has a higher bar for balance than printed content does, because we don't have the excuse of not having considered the combinations. Like, given that Necropolitan exists and is a good option in itself, I wouldn't accept a homebrew spell that was way above the curve but "balanced" by seriously harming a non-undead caster.

* Non-mounted, non-trip-focused strength-based types - still quite a large category. And with Aptitude in the mix, even more so.

[Morphic tide]

So you solve it by making everyone use this one weapon?

If you're going the "better weapons" approach, it would make more sense to:
1) Gate it by BAB rather than carrying capacity.
2) Have a variety of weapons which are that good.

Mounted charger with 18 Strength will get more damage out of a Lance with any external bonuses to amplify (2d8(9)+12 vs. 3d8(13.5)+6), crit-fishers have specific on-crit effects begging for 15-20 TWF, and Spiked Chain is still quite a lot better at Opportunity Attacks with Finesse to make Strength fully secondary.

But personally I'd rather improve weapon usage in general, so that it isn't tied to a few specific ones.

Exotic Weapons are a mechanic that exists, so we're kinda screwed out of the chance for that by the fact there's a group of weapons intended to be better as they're feat gated. The fact only the Spiked Chain turns out worth it from core is irrelevant to there clearly existing a framework for superior weapons.

In which case I'd say that homebrew content has a higher bar for balance than printed content does, because we don't have the excuse of not having considered the combinations. Like, given that Necropolitan exists and is a good option in itself, I wouldn't accept a homebrew spell that was way above the curve but "balanced" by seriously harming a non-undead caster.

Can you actually name things that exist in the game able to leverage this base damage that actually out-mode existing builds? Because I'm only seeing the ToB single-Strike characters being particularly interested in it, and they have plenty of issues with their optimization ceiling. The more appropriate example would be a modestly above curve homebrew spell with poor CL scaling and a forbiddance on metamagic.

[Beni-Kujaku]

...Not everyone has an 18 Strength Martial at level one.

Who cares about light load, or even medium load at level 1? Fighters, paladins, clerics, all of the ToB classes wear heavy armor anyways. So they have 16 Strength, can carry your totem, an heavy armor and the rest of their equipment with less than the 230 pounds they can carry. And having a shield and a two-handed weapon at once? You know almost the whole martial spectrum of the game is balanced around the fact that carrying a two-handed weapon doesn't allow to wear a shield or anything in the other hand, right?
So, already, as it is, this is monstrously broken. Yes, it is mildly worse at doing one quite niche thing (tripping a character or attacking during a mounted charge) than specific other weapons, but when something is literally better, in every way, than most of the core weapons, that is broken.

Your weapon breaks every established law. Any weapon with this weight, if it had a x2 multiplier, no reach and no tower shield property, as long as it deals 3d8 damages, would be a staple in almost any martial build as soon as they can use it (which as I said, is probably level 1 for all heavy armor wearers, and probably barbarians too since they don't care about fast movement unless they are raging, and when they are raging, they have +4 Str, and very probably have the totem as a medium load.).
A weapon this heavy dealing 1d10, x2, no tower shield, with flexible reach, would be likewise on every character (after all, this is only -1 damage on average than the greataxe. It is incredible to be able to AoO any medium character charging you for so low a cost).

Can you see the problem here? We are not balancing against casters, we are balancing against other weapons. First, because balancing against casters would require much more than increased AC and damage, and second, because if you create a weapon, it will be useable by everyone, not just core-only fighters, but wildly different classes, from duskblades to warblades. Which means you have no fixed "level of balance" that the weapon should reach, except being balanced with other weapons. And as it is now, the totem is not balanced with other weapons. Hell, it would not be balanced if it only dealt 1d6, just because it has so many other properties.



"So, what if instead we give it a 470 pounds weight! Surely that will prevent low-level characters from using it, and it will be balanced because it will only be useable at high level!"


Are you familiar with Grod's Law? In the words of Grod_the_Giant (on this thread) :

You cannot and should not balance bad mechanics by making them annoying to use. When you do:
-The disruptive munchkin ignores it, argues it, or forces the rest of the group to suffer through it. His power remains the same, and he gets more annoying to play with.
-The inappropriate powergamer figures out how to circumvent the restriction. His power remains the same.
-The reasonable player either figures out how to circumvent the restriction (rendering it moot), avoids the class (turning it into a ban) or suffers through it. His power remains the same and/or his enjoyment goes down.
-The new player avoids the class or suffers through it. His enjoyment goes down.

Having restrictions like that that are easy to go around, and that will only apply to unoptimized builds, will only harm those who do not try to abuse them, and help problem players get even more unmanageable.


(Also, not really related, but your idea of a tauren totem has already been made, in the Warcraft Core Rulebook for 3.5. It's an exotic weapon considered by taurens as a martial weapon, two-handed, wooden, dealing 1d10 points of damage with a x2 critical modifier. Yes it is just a heavier greatclub, not really good.)

[Morphic tide]

Who cares about light load, or even medium load at level 1? Fighters, paladins, clerics, all of the ToB classes wear heavy armor anyways. So they have 16 Strength, can carry your totem, an heavy armor and the rest of their equipment with less than the 230 pounds they can carry. And having a shield and a two-handed weapon at once? You know almost the whole martial spectrum of the game is balanced around the fact that carrying a two-handed weapon doesn't allow to wear a shield or anything in the other hand, right?

When's the last you saw someone speak of a sword-and-board character in optimization? The AC of an actual shield is overwhelmingly not seen as worth the loss of 0.5x Strength modifier to damage and the Power Attack bonus and the extra bonus a number of feats give two-handers. This thing leaves out the hooks the existing superstar weapons use to enable the total overkill strategies, it's just a very blunt block of raw damage without much room to escalate it.

Unless you can find me how this thing's surpassing 15-20/x4 weapons and another x1 on Charge at the levels it actually is a marginal effort to use it, feat included. With actual specific numbers. Do not just complain, prove it is mathematically overpowered in the context of real character builds being significantly improved over what they would be otherwise, and by how much to properly pin down how much nerfing it actually needs.

So, already, as it is, this is monstrously broken. Yes, it is mildly worse at doing one quite niche thing (tripping a character or attacking during a mounted charge) than specific other weapons, but when something is literally better, in every way, than most of the core weapons, that is broken.

Your weapon breaks every established law.

What established laws? And what "quite niche thing"? When is the last you saw discussion of melee optimization that was not TWF, chain tripping, charging, or ToB? Sword and board loses out on so many damage sources that it's a bad joke from what I've seen of the community because there's not anywhere near enough reliability in forcing yourself in front of the attacks. When is the last time you saw meaningful discussion of the Falchion? Of Monks actually using the Monk Weapons that aren't named Quarterstaff? Of Two-Weapon Fighting outside the Kukri or Rapier?

The game already has blatantly superior weapons for every single variant of martial, with few of these being Exotic, and we relentlessly pan the "stand and swing" method that this gives all of +7 damage for (avg. 6.5 Greataxe, vs avg 13.5). Something there are quite the number of other feats that provide a greater bonus over in this notoriously glass-cannon game. Would you seriously take using this weapon over Shock Trooper or Spirited Charge? Because that is the choice you are making using this at low levels.

For someone looking at direct numeric output, mounted lancers are no joke because they're triple damage on a full BAB attack just from core. You keep the extra twice base damage regardless of how many other charge bonuses you have by doing so. That is, to my understanding, an extra 2d6 damage for each +1-equivalent Energy enhancement, because I'm pretty sure the multiplier works on them. You have to reliably hit on three attacks out of a Pounce to outdo it if you don't get a Charge multiplier from somewhere, and this accuracy difference never goes away. And, of course, Ride-By Attack carries you right back out of melee to force movement to catch you.

As for "Grod's Law", encumbrance rules are not annoying. It is very simple addition, with very clear penalties, at very clear breakpoints, giving a very blunt result that I could just as well bake into the weapon itself as a small table of penalties by Strength to spell out exactly the same results at the encumbrance benchmarks. "Annoying" would be stuff like having its attack rolls be affected by ACP, or amplifying iterative penalties, or even using the independent Strength table as its stacking Shield penalties and not just shoving the rather simple Encumbrance rules in the player's face. Spellcasting and Meldshaping are vastly more "annoying" to use in terms of actual bookkeeping.

[Crake]

What established laws?

Existing weapons all have tradeoffs in some degree. Greatsword vs greataxe for example, shows that a crit range value of 19-20 is seen as equivalent to a crit modifier of x3, rapier compared to a longsword likewise shows that 18-20 vs 19-20 is valued at a dice value decrease, so we know 1 crit range = 1x crit multiplier = 1 dice size. This is shown with other items as well, Scythe compared to greatsword trades the crit range and 1 die size for a x4 modifier. Exotic weapons typically either trade the need for exotic weapon proficiency for either a special effect (like spiked chain's variable reach), or +1 of one of those bonuses (like a fullblade getting a dice size over a greatsword).

Your weapon has a damage dice 2 sizes above a greatsword (fullblade is 2d8, +1 dice size on 2d8 is 3d8, ergo 2 dice sizes difference), a x4 crit modifier, and the variable reach of a spiked chain. That is +2 bonus from the dice size, then another +1 from the crit multiplier (since by default, you'd have either 19-20, or x3 before any tradeoffs), and then plus +3 for the variable reach of a spiked chain, since spiked chain trades being an exotic weapon, a reduced dice damage, AND the loss of crit range/multiplier for it's variable reach. So your weapon has an effective 6 bonuses over a standard martial weapon. Making it exotic only trades off one of those bonuses, so you end up at +5 bonuses above a standard exotic weapon.

[Morphic tide]

So your weapon has an effective 6 bonuses over a standard martial weapon. Making it exotic only trades off one of those bonuses, so you end up at +5 bonuses above a standard exotic weapon.

Spiked Chain has the variable reach, Finesse as a two-hander, +2 to Disarm attempts, and can be dropped in leu of tripping, in exchange for all of docking one bit of crit from Guisarme. That's a net of three upsides, and is the only core Exotic weapon frequently taken, generally seen as worth the feat on the basis of its versatility rather than its damage. Double Weapons , and after that it's basically all arbitrarily-Exotic Monk weapons without any real improvements. And Kaorti Resin is used to take 18-20 weapons up to x4 without any tradeoff past the same feat cost as any other Exotic weapon, being "an extra" upside, but actually doubling the effect of what the build that takes it is looking to have happen.

Give me the output numbers, not the genericized theoretical building blocks, because the optimization factors are usually about how deep you get unless you pile on a truly staggering amount of versatility like the Spiked Chain has, which as mentioned above is still outside the norm. An Exotic Weapon shouldn't be defined by being "a bit better than X Martial weapon", they should be defined as being worth a feat.

[Drelua]

Spiked Chain has the variable reach, Finesse as a two-hander, +2 to Disarm attempts, and can be dropped in leu of tripping, in exchange for all of docking one bit of crit from Guisarme. That's a net of three upsides, and is the only core Exotic weapon frequently taken, generally seen as worth the feat on the basis of its versatility rather than its damage. Double Weapons , and after that it's basically all arbitrarily-Exotic Monk weapons without any real improvements. And Kaorti Resin is used to take 18-20 weapons up to x4 without any tradeoff past the same feat cost as any other Exotic weapon, being "an extra" upside, but actually doubling the effect of what the build that takes it is looking to have happen.

Give me the output numbers, not the genericized theoretical building blocks, because the optimization factors are usually about how deep you get unless you pile on a truly staggering amount of versatility like the Spiked Chain has, which as mentioned above is still outside the norm. An Exotic Weapon shouldn't be defined by being "a bit better than X Martial weapon", they should be defined as being worth a feat.

Guisarme has reach and x3 crits, spiked chain has variable reach (count that as 2), x2 crits (minus 1), and the trip and disarm abilities. (2 more) That works out to 2 upsides for the guisarme, 4 for the spiked chain, widely considered the best exotic weapon I think.

Your suggested weapon has variable reach, (2) 2 damage steps, 6 more average damage than a greatsword (2+2=4) x4 crits (1 more, so 5) and counts as a tower shield, which I don't even know how to assign a point value to because that just isn't a thing in all of 3.5, to my knowledge. There's special qualities that give a +1 under certain conditions, like fighting defensively, so counting as a tower shield is like 8 times as valuable as that since it's a +4 without a condition. So 13 points. Being heavy enough that if you're strength based you should probably pay attention to you carrying capacity does not even begin to cancel that out. As someone else already said, it doesn't matter if you're carrying a heavy load if you're already wearing heavy armor. Maybe you'll have a higher ACP, which most Fighters don't care about 98% of the time.

When homebrewing, you should try to make something that fits in with the system or you risk completely overshadowing all pre-existing items, which this does. Every player is going to want this for their Fighter, because it's better than literally every printed weapon except for a few very niche builds, which are now relatively weaker for not being able to use this overpowered weapon. The existence of this weapon unfairly favours 2H builds, which are already the strongest option, making TWF or sword-and-board even less appealing options since TWF has no such OP options, and S&B is strictly worse than using a two-hander that does way more damage, has the reach of a spiked chain, crits like a scythe, and is also a tower shield. It does 12d8 on a crit, with no meaningful downsides and some unprecedented bonus. If someone suggested this homebrew, I would probably just permanently ban any homebrew from that player or the source they got it from.

If you're arguing this is balanced, name one official weapon that's about as good. I've never seen someone demand proof that some homebrew isn't balanced to allow it in a game, any GM I've met would need a strong argument that it is balanced before they'd allow it, not mathematical proof that it isn't to be able to disallow it.

[Silly Name]

Guisarme has reach and x3 crits, spiked chain has variable reach (count that as 2), x2 crits (minus 1), and the trip and disarm abilities. (2 more) That works out to 2 upsides for the guisarme, 4 for the spiked chain, widely considered the best exotic weapon I think.

Just to be pedantic, the guisarme has the same trip ability as the spiked chain too.

[Crake]

Just to be pedantic, the guisarme has the same trip ability as the spiked chain too.

The bonus to trip of a guisarm, or the bonus to disarm from a ranseur seem to be valued at approximately 0.5 each, while standard reach also seems to be valued at 0.5. Glaives are a reach weapon with x3 crit (base standard of a greataxe) but half a damage dice less (1d10 instead of 1d8), and glaives/ranseurs are reach weapons that are another half damage dice less (or a full damage dice less than a greataxe/greatsword) with their trip/disarm abilities with 2d4 damage dice. If we take that into consideration, then the spiked chain has both trip and disarm for 0.5 each, has regular reach for another 0.5, and is finessable. Considering it's "budget" it has -1 for reduced damage dice, -1 for no crit range bonus, and is afforded an extra +1 worth of bonuses for being exotic. That means that finesse + variable reach must add up to 1.5 total. Most likely I would expect variable reach is another 0.5 ontop of reach, while finesse is an extra +1. With all that, spiked chain fits rather well into the conventions of how weaponry is balanced.