New +1 weapon enchantment: Incapacitating

[Epametheus]

Hopefully there isn't some other pre-existing enchantment from a splat-book with this name..

What it does:
While a weapon imbued with this enchantment can no longer take life, it still hurts. Attacks made with the weapon deal normal damage; however, the weapon cannot reduce a victim below 0 HP. A Coup de Grace made with an incapacitating weapon reduces the victim to 0 HP. An attack made against a target at 0 HP or lower deals no damage.

Undead and Constructs, neither of which are actually alive, can be destroyed normally with the weapon.

If for whatever reason a DM allows Vorpal in his or her campaign, and then for some bizarre reason a person makes an Incapacitating Vorpal weapon, a successful critical results in the Vorpal enchantment overriding the Incapacitating enchantment and thus kills the target.

Caster Level: 9; Pre-requisites: Craft Magic Arms & Armor, hold monster, cost: +1

 

[Don21584]

I think FanCC has a feat like this in their netbook of feats.

 

[hong]

Um, what is the point of this enchantment? Yes, there are times when you want to take somebody down without killing them, but they tend to be few and far between in my experience.

Note that enchantments like Merciful (S&F, Magic of Faerun) have the upside of dealing more damage to balance the downside of only doing subdual damage.

 

[Epametheus]

Clarification

The point is that the weapon doesn't actually deal subdual; it allows a person to deal lethal damage (which is a bit more problematic to recover from) without actually killing the opponent. It also conveniently circumvents immunity to subdual damage.

 

[hong]

Re: Clarification

The point is that the weapon doesn't actually deal subdual; it allows a person to deal lethal damage (which is a bit more problematic to recover from) without actually killing the opponent. It also conveniently circumvents immunity to subdual damage.

Note that the Merciful enchantment can be switched on and off as a standard action.

Also, I still fail to see the point of this enchantment. If you want to take someone alive, just knock then down to -1 hit points and stabilise them. You run the risk of killing them if you do too much damage in one hit, but there are ways of minimising the risk (eg dealing some subdual damage to start off with). Considering you can get +1d6 flaming/frost/shock/etc damage for the same price, this enchantment is way too expensive as a solution for something that almost never comes up.

 

[Don21584]

I'm sure Paladins would enjoy this weapon, especially if they get into a barfight in which weapons are drawn.
I wish I would have had that enchantment on my sword so I wouldn't have killed that guy.