D&D 5E Custom Magic Item: Balance Issues?

[Worrgrendel]

I have been replaying all the old Baldur's Gate games on my Nintendo Switch and came across one of the magic items in the game that gave me a good idea for a custom magic item in one of my campaigns and wanted to get your thoughts on it for balance reasons. So without further ado:

The Hydra + 2

Weapon (flail), very rare (requires attunement)

The three heads of this flail look like dragon heads, giving the weapon its fearsome name. As the wielder swings the weapon, its heads seem to blur and divide until a mass of hydra heads whips from the end of the chain. When the wielder ceases attacking, the weapon reverts to its original appearance.

This weapon contains 7 charges. While holding it, you can use a bonus action to speak its command word and expend 1 or more charges. For the next minute, for each charge spent, an extra flail head grows from the weapon and the wielder takes a cumulative -1 penalty to hit for each charge spent and the weapon does an additional 1d4 piercing damage per charge on a hit.

The weapon regains 1d6+1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the weapons last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the weapon loses all charges and becomes a Flail +2.



Design notes:

The cumulative -1 penalty to hit represents the more heads growing out of the flail, the more unwieldy the weapon becomes. The +1d4 bonus damage per charge spent correlates in a similar manner to the Great Weapon Master feat. The feat is -5 to hit for +10 to damage while The Hydra, if a similar amount of charges are spent for the -5 to hit penalty, will get +5d4 bonus damage which averages out to 12.5 damage. Very close, but slightly better. The trade off is that this weapon takes up one of your attunement slots and there is always the chance of blowing that last charge and losing its special ability forever. Plus, depending on the number of charges spent, this ability will not be available throughout the adventuring day like Great Weapon Master will be as you have a limited number of charges, and depending on your die roll each dawn, you may not have the full allotment of charges available each adventuring day. The change to piercing damage was just flavor of the extra heads biting the target.

Thoughts?

 

[J-H]

I would ditch the to-hit penalty. A +2 that deals (at best without risking the last charge) 6-24 bonus damage for 10 rounds once per day is less useful for a typical adventuring day than one that deals 2-12 damage all day long (Flame Tongue).

 

[Worrgrendel]

I hadn't thought of the Flame Tongue when designing this. Sure fire is a very common resistance but would be minor when it came up in the overall scheme of things. I also don't have magic item shops that custom build to order in my campaigns either so, unless I handed out a Flame Tongue it would be a non-issue comparison wise unless a PC were to craft it on their own with downtime (which I allow). I do sorta like the penalty, and I see your point, but what about upping the damage die to a d6 to help offset that? Dunno, maybe back to the drawing board.

 

[J-H]

5e's overall design philosophy is "Simple is better." Complicated magical items are less likely to be used.

 

[Hawk Diesel]

What about this?

The Hydra

Weapon (flail), very rare (requires attunement)

At first glance, this flail looks and functions as any normal flail, though the chain and flail head are stylized to look like a sleeping serpent. However, you can use a bonus action to speak a command word, activating the weapon. Doing so causes the flail head to come to life, and sprout two additional heads. The fall's damage changes from bludgeoning to piercing damage due to the flail biting. In addition, the flail deals an additional 2d8 poison damage. This poison is so potent that those normally immune to poison damage still take half the poison damage.

If you score a critical hit while wielding this flail, an additional head sprouts, increasing the poison damage by 1d8 for each additional head.

These heads remain until you use a bonus action to speak the command word again or you drop or sheath the flail.

The number of additional heads the flail sprouts when the command word is spoken resets to two each dawn.

Reasoning: This brings it more in comparison with the flame tongue. I chose poison damage because the original myth of the hydra said it was very poisonous. This is also the reason I increased the poison damage die, as it is such a commonly resisted damage type and many are outright immune. But I also thought hydra poison should be more poisonous than normal.