One of my players had his PC craft his own sword from an (unspecified) magic ore, had it improved by a dwarven master blacksmith, and then used it to kill a bunch of demonic creatures. I'd like to give him something special for the sword, like a cool effect or a minor magical power, something that makes him feel a progression with the sword. I've thought about having the sword soak up the blood of its victims to get stronger or make it glow in specific circumstances, but that seems a bit generic. What are some cool sword powers from fiction I could draw from?
We're playing a homebrew system, setting is basic low fantasy stuff.
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Make it intimidating whenever he draws it at the beginning of a fight. Smaller/weaker enemies flee or fight with disadvantage out of fear when seeing him.
Make it unbreakable so it can be used as a tool in different situations.
If you wanna be real cheesey with it, give it healing powers.
First two ideas are neat. Dunno about the healing powers.
Death laser is a bit much, but giving some temporary boni every x kills or so could work. Though that would mean I would need to throw larger enemy groups with a lot of minor fodder at the party, which so far isn't my style. That can be worked around. Either I adapt my encounter design, or I pick a low number as an activation threshold. Honestly, "Every time this sword takes a life, the user must pass a will check or he falls into a berserking rage for 5 turns." sounds good.
Probably something I would have initially gone with, but I want it to be a useful trait and I don't know if I'm gonna write another scenario about fighting demons any time soon.
>Make it intimidating
I feel like it should start to get this naturally as a "reputation" factor, a la the Hobbit.
Every X number of kills, can fire a death laser
>magical material, dwarven forged, slaughtered demons
The sword holds a grudge against demons and can detect them in a given range, urging the wielder to slay the fiends. In time it may grow stronger, offering more bonuses against demons but the impulse to kill them all on sight becomes harder to resist.
You can look at the D&D book Weapons of Legacy and see if you'd like to adapt anything.
Is it in da archive?
I have no idea, I just own a physical copy myself so I'd recommend finding it somehow if you're interested.
I thought the punchline would be that he would be ripped off again.
It's not a big issue, I just like to spitball ideas on /tg/ every once in a while when I am running out of creativity myself.
He thought he'd gotten ripped off when he found the starmetal. This scene is almost like a meta-joke in they way that everything works out good for Roy (usually it doesn't).
>This scene is almost like a meta-joke in they way that everything works out good for Roy (usually it doesn't).
The fact pic related was sixteen years ago is blowing my mind. Roy getting the short end of the stick for insisting on being a single-classed MALE HUMAN FIGHTER is a multi-decade endeavor at this point
>Celia's talisman
The joke about how to break that talisman was one of the better long-term punchlines I've seen in any medium.
I wasn't aware OotS actually has fans. I thought /tg/'s relation with that comic was similar to Ganker and Tim Buckley.
People tend to like the earlier OOTS stuff, but around? I want to say the Dwarf Arc people started getting fed up with the creep of detail obsessive dialogue with little progression and no humor exacerbated by the glacial release schedule.
Add on that we are getting so close to the end any yet its still taking forever, and one of the modern focused on tangent threads is fantasy monsters as stand ins for IRL marginalized groups and shit like racial equity, which obviously doesn't get much play here, gets you a wienertail for people turning on the comic.
/tg/ loves everything up until tarquin arc and they get on the airship, after which is kind of becomes a slog and stuff like the godsmoot just drags on forever. Start of Darkness is also well received
Loves is a strong word. Enjoys is probably better.
The second they're in the desert the word count roughly doubles and gets worse from there. Tarquin is such a good villain and the whole arc has so many high points that the WORDSWORDSWORDS kinda gets a free pass. Once they hit Tinkertown though the amount of interesting events plummets but the word count stays steady or even increases.
>stuff this banal
>presented as this big issue that requires consultation
... are you like a first time GM or something?
Or just sliding some other thread?
>how dare you talk about games
>
Maybe figure out a way that the sword either adopts traits of its victims, or adopts traits to protect against or better kill victims.
So, as you kill demons, the sword gets better and better at protecting against their special abilities, and maybe at defeating their damage resistance (if they have any). Stuff like that.
+1 to Sexual Harassment Charges
Does this make you better at sexual harassment or better at evading charges of sexual harassment?
Make it so that the sword absorbs the life force of whatever it kills like you had originally said, except the effect should be a damage spell of some sort that stacks with each absorbed soul. I'd also add in a caveat, wherein the sword will begin to hint at it being "overloaded" with souls if he tries to cheese it and stack a ridiculous damage buff. Maybe it shaking in some way, or pulsating. If they continue to ignore the signs, the blade itself shatters, releasing a demon formed of all the souls trapped in the blade. That's just an idea off the top of my head using tentative terms, if you sharpen it up or change it here or there I could see some potential.
Reading your post and OP using it to kill demons made me think that it could temporarily trap the souls of the people it killed and to get released and go to the afterlife they had to help out the wielder by using one ability they had in life for one round/ action/ etc.
The answer is in the Photo brother, a sword that hits from far away when in Full hp
Prophesies begin to include it, and the player hears about soothsayers referring to it in mystical terms. This does something way cooler than a minor boon, it ties it into the story, and that is crack to players.
Well, tells about the PC.
He's a from a not!viking culture but was orphaned and then found and raised by an idealistic travelling knight. He now apes that mentor figure by being overtly idealistic himself, but in his own brutish and maybe a bit simplistic ways. He sometimes acts like a paladin but without the divine blessing. This often results in him rushing headfirst into dangerous situations, but he is strong, well equipped and also crafty enough to usually find a way out. But it's not like he is suicidal, and setting an ambush or making a plan is not beyond him either.
Perhaps then the sword should give some sort of unseen protection. Like it improves his saving throws significantly. If that seems to weak, you can always add extra effects later on. Have the sword improve with him.
The sword gaining a will to protect its wielder seems thematically fitting. Maybe not via a forcefield, but giving it the ability to block projectiles via intuitive movement? (Blocking projectiles is usually only possible with a shield in this system.)
>sentient seord grows will to live out of concern for its reckless wielder
I like it
shapeshift into any creature you have slain with it
The dwarven smith "Improved" it by making it into a vessel weapon, an blank that can be enchanted with magic but failed to properly explain that in small words your fighter friend would understand so he never had it enchanted.
In the course of slaying all those demons one of them recognized the empty vessel and as it was being banished, possessed the blade instead of going back to the demo plane. Now there a demon in the blade. The demon is malicious but not recklessly so, and is as a lawful evil creature effectively contract bound to the wielder of the blade. The blade doesn't drink blood to gain power, but there is a sentient demon inside it with a minimal ability to direct the blade. It cannot wield it remotely or fly around or anything like that yet? but it can alter its swing slighty, it can tip over from places its propped up, it can pop slightly from its sheathe when it senses danger, and it can whisper to the wielder.
as a combat effect once per encounter it can force a critical hit, though not the effect of that hit, it cannot make your swing hit the heart, but it can take a swing that was a cm from the heart and wiggle it into that sweet spot turning a wound into a kill or a cut into a severed limb.
The demon cannot work against him as its contract bound to aid him. but it can seek to injure other out simple demonic malice. The demon possesed the sword to sidestep the hundred year banishment demons suffer when "killed" in the mortal, and now it seeks to convince one of its weilders to let it back out, for good behavior
If you want it to be extra spicy make the demon in it something like succubus that is now jealously attached to the barbarian and seeks to interfere with his romantic pursuits. By falling, clanking and maybe even cutting the touch of an unwanted hand if chance arises.
as such you make the sword a plot device as well as a boon item.
was going to say pretty much exactly this. it's an empty vessel and it's first drink was infernal blood. it is bathed in it. fill it.
The weapon always flies to his hand when he needs it.
Sword is alive.
Evil creatures and twisted individuals feel scared by the sword, making them uncomfortable around it.