Vorpal House Rules

[dema]

Has any one made some house rules to handle Vorpal weapons?

Somethings I have thought about are:

Auto Crit confirmation - so if you roll and hit on your weapons crit range you do not need to roll a confirmation.

Coup De Grace - if the character takes a full round action to attack an enemy and hits the target needs to save or die.

So the Vorpal weapon does not sever heads, it injures/kills creatures.

I suppose if the Vorpal weapon also has a quality that allows it to damage normally non critable creatures you can crit. So an Adamant weapon can crit constructs, a fire weapon can crit vampires etc.


Another option is the the auto crit confirmation can be for those creatures normally subject to crits, however for those creatures that are immune to crits, the vorpal weapon can act normally.

Does this sound like a workable premise?


Thoughts?

BTW, I have no had a Vorpal weapon in my characters hands since 1992 in 2e, it was fun stuff.

 

[Ltheb Silverfrond]

Unless you use the Coup de Grace version, the options you list cheapen vorpal, making it's effective market value less than +5, I think. (To about +1-2 for the auto confirm, which is mechanically equivalent to a 1st or 2nd level spell to ~+4 for the ignore crit immunity, which could be +5 or higher if it totally trumps all crit immunity) and the Coup de Grace version is pretty powerful, but easily countered. Just keep walking away.

My suggestion would be to make vorpal similar to the Burst weapons: Give it some extra (Slashing) damage on each hit (2d6?) and on a crit, the extra slashing damage increases. (to 5d6?) And instead of saying it cuts off their head on a crit, you could simply say it cuts off their head if and when it kills them. (or if they go to 0, it could just deal the 10 more damage to kill them and still sever their head)

Other supplements I have read had different takes on vorpal weapons. Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved had a version of vorpal I based my suggestion off of: Extra damage (alot of it) on a crit and if it kills them, Then it cuts off their head.

Having a sword that instantly kills is pretty scary and quite unbalanced, because it takes the skill out of combat. (With the current vorpal, its best to take classes like dervish that net extra attacks and use 2 weapon fighting. Spam attacks, and wait for a 20)

 

[ValhallaGH]

Why are you wanting to change Vorpal? What are you hoping to achieve? If we know that then our suggestions can be more focused on your goal than on whatever random notion fills our heads.

 

[comrade raoul]

Well, FWIW, I join one of the earlier posters in using a modified Monte Cook version, like so.

Vorpal
A vorpal weapon functions as a keen weapon that becomes impossibly sharp on a critical hit. On a successful critical hit, a vorpal weapon deals an additional 50 points of damage. If you reduce a creature to 0 hitpoints or below with a critical hit from a vorpal weapon, the weapon severs the opponent's head (if it has one) from its body. A vorpal weapon must be a slashing weapon. (If you roll this property randomly for an inappropriate weapon, reroll.)
Strong necromancy and transmutation; CL 18th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, circle of death, keen edge; Price +5 bonus.

So here's the reasoning. The extra expected damage (given a hit) from an effect that only happens on a critical hit is going to be equal to the extra damage (here, 50) times your chance of threatening a critical.

I'm balancing vorpal on a threat range of 15-20, which you can have with a scimitar or a longsword used by someone with Improved Critical (assuming you use the 3.0e stacking rules). That's a 30% chance to threaten, which means that you get 15 points of expected damage from a vorpal weapon. (More generally, vorpal gives you 2.5 points of expected damage per point of threat range.) That's about as good as a +4 enhancement: in a sense it's less reliable than, say, holy and a pair of energy enhancements (which end up giving +14 points of expected damage), because it only kicks in on a critical, but on the other hand it works against pretty much everything. The built-in keen effect (both thematically appropriate and something you'd want anyway, since the synergy is so obvious) makes it a pretty appropriate +5.

With a high-threat range weapon and built-in stacking rules, vorpal becomes an even better choice. But here you're specializing very heavily on dealing critical hits, and I think the high-level play vorpal inhabits can probably accomodate powerful combinations like that.

 

[Rhun]

About the only House Rule I use concerning Vorpal is that the weapon's wielder can opt to sever any limb, not just a head.