To craft Swords of Power!

[frigidmagi]

"I wasn't about to leave Hellfire down there….Magic swords are harder to come by than honest politicians."

It's always been my personal thought that magic swords should be rare, powerful and perhaps a bit dangerous for everyone. One of my personally favorite ways to do this (although I haven't done in a very, very long time) was to state that a magical sword had to have an enpowering spirit, a demon, an angel, a elemental or even an overly powerful mortal soul. These spirits would be sapient and in various stages of wakfulness (the more awake, the more powerful, the more powerful the more dangerous) and might not always agree with their weilders agenda...

For an example one of my favorites was, what else but a blade of icy magics that turned the very blood into a frozen mush. Powered by an Immoth, who volunteered ironically enough for his own reasons, it is so old the powering spirit as even forgotten his own name...

Another favorite was a fire based sword that held the imprisoned soul of a fire mage, he above all else wanted out! His goal was to convince the wielder of the sword to destory it and release his soul and if he couldn't do that he would plot to get himself a new wielder to start over on.

Lastly a sword I used to taunt and terrorify my players, yes, a demon sword. While bring great power, it would attack it's weilders mind, seeking to turn him into a champion of darkness and a traitor to his own. The demon in question (I changed to type of demon to whatever seemed best to me at the time) enjoied it's time in the sword, after all in the sword it could cause untold desturction and ruin and could not be bnished to hell.

I did hint at the existence of an angelic sword as the counter of the demon blade, but I'm sorry to say that the players never even got close enough to it for me to put that much work into it's background or stats. I would toss out rumors that often clashed completely and caused much confusion and every now and then give them a taste of hope but the campaign ended before they got anywhere. Such is life.

Moving on, I'm wondering what my fellow posters take on magic swords is. I'm also open to suggestions as to new swords on the above formula if that takes your fancy...

[Cynical Cat]

I like them to be special. While minor weapons might be "merely" forged using ancient techniques with spells chanted over them during their making, I like my (greater) magic weapons to be unique and to have a past and a purpose.

[B4UTRUST]

Sword of the Planes... that is all

Actually the Japanese swordsmiths had an interesting belief that swords had souls. They would forge two of the same sword, destroying one and selling the other so as to seperate the good from the bad. What happens when those bad swords aren't destroyed?

[Dark Silver]

Well, it's dependant.

I view magical swords as any which have been enchanted or improved upon by magickal means. A Vorprol Sword which could cut through many things like a hot knife through ashes, is a magical sword to me. As long as a player or person could find someone who could properly work the required magics, the sword could receive some low - mid range enchantments.


The types your speaking about, I always saw as being Legendary Artifacts, or just Artifacts. Items of great power which had thier own intellegence and agenda's. They are rare, because how many beings are willing to bind themselves to mortal items for all eternity? I never let these get in the hands of PC's, to do so would be foolhardy to me, unless the PC earned it.

[B4UTRUST]

No, you just give the matrix out to every Tom, Reaper and Hornet.

[Stofsk]

I haven't played D&D for awhile, but were I to run a campaign I'd opt for a low-magic setting. Magic would be rare, but powerful, and coming with a dangerous risk.

It doesn't extend to swords, but other equipment - armour being a good one - as well.

Not knowing the specific rules for D&D (haven't played in awhile) for item creation, I'd just put down what I think is 'kewl' and let the rules buffs work it out.

Sword - Dragon's tooth - milky white, appears curved and 'bone like', but is nevertheless sharp as shit. Make it treasure for slaying evil dragon or some shit. By 'treasure' I mean have the players act like amateur orthodontists with regards to an irregular tooth in the carcass. However, it might act more like a club with a sharp pointy end than a sword. Irksome Dragons might take exception to a hero wielding a blade fashioned from out of one of their kin, but fuck 'em. What have dragons done for us lately?

Variant: use the tooth as a particularly powerful knife or short sword. Might work better actually, as the edge of a tooth isn't the sharp bit but the point is. Yes, this is from Dune.

Soulstealer - the archetypal cursed sword. Hero wields it, every time he kills a creature he feels something akin to a sugar rush. You get the idea. The sword itself is feasting on the souls of the fallen. In D&D terms this will make a character pretty fallen in terms of alignment, because the soulstealer acts like a drug addiction. Twisted? You bet.

Sir Talks-a-lot - I got this idea from Alan Moore in an issue of WildCATS. Zealot goes to her homeworld and is given a sword with an AI. For fantasy you can say that the sword is a conduit for spirits, has the soul of its creator, or holds the remnant psyche of a vanquished demon - vanquished by the sword, in fact.

Combine this one with Soulstealer and you might get something really cool. The hero hears the wail of the damned in the blade, and feels rather than hears the malicious delight the sword has... Perhaps the sword is possessed by a demon and that's what gives it power.

Armour - some weird Monk thing I thought of, magic tattoos that once inscribed onto the skin can act as natural armour. Pretty fucked up, but Monks are always a bit kooky.

Symbiote armour - something similar to the Witchblade. It is a chameleon, only bonds with people it likes (and tries to control them once it does so), gives enormous protection but it's so strange that there's no way any character has seen it before or knows how to use it. Have learning to use it be a focus for the character.

Robes of healing - these items are kinda like flak jackets bomber crew wore during WW2, when hit by shrapnel they kept everything wrapped up long enough for medical attention to get to the stricken crew member. That was the theory any way... These act in a similar fashion, and I envision stealthy characters or wizards using them. If injured severely they wrap and constrict over the wounds and keep them secure and slowly heal it.

Ok that one was just weird.

[Dark Silver]

No, you just give the matrix out to every Tom, Reaper and Hornet.

.......YOU Were the GM who decided it'd be hilarious to have a "Hornet Prime"

I had to follow precident there after since it WAS your Storyline I had to continue on.

[frigidmagi]

Ah gents while I am a bit of a transformer fan, could y'all take the agruement over an old game to another thread?

[Hotfoot]

I like the idea of giving players equipment that levels up with them. While powerful artifacts are all well and good, I've always thought the idea of champions empowering equipment with their own spirits to be most appealing. Unfortunately, I've never run a game of D&D that had that option, because by the time I came up with the idea, I'd fallen out of love with D&D.

In the magic system I've been working on for Silhouette, magical enchantments are both more and less epic than in D&D. Lesser heroes can enchant weapons that maintain for years or decades, as long as there is need. However, powerful demons or angels, or powerful cabals of wizards can enchant weapons or items for centuries, millenia, or for all eternity.

One idea for an artifact that I had was a sword used by a legendary hero who was slain in a climatic battle between good and evil. As a last ditch effort to avoid allowing the dark foe to use the power of his death to fuel a spell that would allow the legions of hell to storm the world full force, he bound most of his soul to his sword, while hiding other parts of it in his other pieces of gear.

When all of his equipment is gathered, he can manifest him spirit and continue the fight, and if only the sword is found, he will strongly encourage the weilder to go on a quest to recover the armor and equipment and gather it together. Also, having been trapped in a sword for however long and having lost his battle, he has become a bit more ruthless than he was in life. This can lead to a nice internal struggle between himself and his weilder.

[Mayabird]

Actually the Japanese swordsmiths had an interesting belief that swords had souls. They would forge two of the same sword, destroying one and selling the other so as to seperate the good from the bad. What happens when those bad swords aren't destroyed?

Then bad stuff happens. Evil swords have this tendency to lead to lots of pointless carnage and death, according to legend.

There's a myth about two ancient swordsmiths named Masamune and Murasame. Masamune made blades that were meant to protect life, and his blades, when placed in a stream, would never cut leaves that flowed in its path; the leaves would move around the blade. Murasame was one of his students and never understood that point. He thought swords were just meant for killing, and tended to make evil blades. When one of his was stuck in a stream, leaves were drawn towards it and cleft in two.

Now, they were real master swordsmiths who got legends attached to them, and I've gone the long way to say that magic swords had better be made by an actual master (and therefore be rare).

[SirNitram]

Virtually all my games are High Magic, so finding a simple '+1' or whatever sword isn't a major event. I attribute such more to highly advanced, partially alchemical, production methods. A +5 Sword is merely exquisitely weighted, extraordinarily sharp, et cetera.

The more interesting ones, the Holy Avengers, the demonslayers, and so forth, are labours of love, duty, or malice. I don't require them to be found or use ancient methods.. The new ones are better for a reason.. But they aren't just there.