Sentient Weapons

[ValhallaGH]

Too bad that doesn't work in 3.5; it went from being one of the most powerful to the least powerful of weapons.

Yeah, Vorpal is an odd duck. It only works if you roll a natural 20, and then you have to confirm. On the other hand, it decapitates anything you hit (regardless of critical hit immunity), killing most of it and discomfitting the rest.

As rarely as it comes up it shouldn't be a +5 enchatment. As powerful as it is, it can't be anything less.

 

[Celebrim]

Yeah, Vorpal is an odd duck. It only works if you roll a natural 20, and then you have to confirm. On the other hand, it decapitates anything you hit (regardless of critical hit immunity), killing most of it and discomfitting the rest.

As rarely as it comes up it shouldn't be a +5 enchatment. As powerful as it is, it can't be anything less.

On the subject of vorpal and sharpness, I've never been happy with the rules for such weapons.

Back in 1st edition, I used the 'good hits and bad misses' table from Dragon Annual 4 (IIRC). The table had entries like, 'double damage', 'triple damage', all the way up to 'remove limb at knee' and decapitation. It wasn't long after playing with it that I realized that it could be used to balance 'sharpness' and 'vorpal' weapons a little better. My rule for 1e was that a sharpness weapon automatically scored a critical on a natural 20 without the need for a confirmation role, and a vorpal weapon scored a critical on any modified 20 or higher without the need for a confirmation roll. (Normally, you had a % chance of a critical equal to the amount you'd exceeded your required to hit target.) Not that this rule ever came into play, because even toned down I considered the weapons too powerful to really come into play.

My feeling is pretty much the same for 'sharpness' and 'vorpal' weapons in 3e, but if I was going to introduce them it would be with the same sort of reforms - ei, the 'sharpness' enhancement means crits would not need to be confirmed. Or alternately (and I haven't play tested either idea) 'sharpness' would mean that every hit threatened a critical. 'Vorpal' would just mean a particular combination of enhancements that was particularly devestating (keen and sharp, or perhaps sharp and brutal).