A Five Foot Vorpal Sword vs A Ten Foot Neck

[Diamond Cross]

All right, here's the situation.

Your player has a Vorpal Sword that is five foot in length. He is facing a large Dragon that has a ten foot neck in diameter.

Even if the players rolls a natural 20, would you allow a five foot vorpal sword to cut the head off of a dragon, or any beast, that has a neck diameter of ten feet, or more, would you allow the entire head of the beast be chopped off?

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Yes. Its magic.

Scratch that. If a character had a non-magical head cutting ability, I would still allow him to cut off a head that was a million bajillion feet wide.

 

[DragonLancer]

Absolutely. I'd even let them if they were a halfling armed with a vorpal sword fighting a 30' giant.

 

[Kolvin]

Does it matter? If the character cuts through 5 feet of neck out of a 10 foot diameter neck the dragon will be just as dead.

If you cut halway through a person's or an animal's neck death won't be far behind....

 

[Lancelot]

Yes. But then, I also allow PCs to survive a 100ft fall if 10d10 damage doesn't exceed their current HP... I allow wizards to somehow turn bat guano and mumbled words into raging balls of fire... and I allow giant reptiles whose bone structure would simply collapse in normal gravity to not only walk erect, but even fly.

I laugh in the face of logic.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Your player has a Vorpal Sword that is five foot in length. He is facing a large Dragon that has a ten foot neck in diameter.

If you are going to question the ability of a vorpal blade to decapitate a 10 feet diameter neck, you need to be coherent and question the ability of ANY man sized weapon to cause ANY harm at all to a beast that size.

 

[Chris Knapp]

Cut the back of the neck (top?) and sever the spinal cord. Could probably do it with a vorpal dagger. . .

Its all about the imagination anyway.

 

[Piratecat]

I ask myself: what's the coolest thing that can happen at this very moment? Then I do that. Depending on the stage of the battle it might involve an epic beheading -- or a very, very pissed off dragon.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Yes, if the player makes a Snicker-Snack sound effect.

Look, in the game of heroic fantasy I tend to play, the more severed heads of your enemies there are, the better.

Build a frickin' throne out of 'em.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Yes. If you don't, it's not really a Vorpal Sword anymore. It's the sword of cutting through only the necks of those who are appropriate sizes and that old chart in the back of the DMG 1st ed guide is useless! Errata I say! I demand errata!