Intelligent Magic Swords? (2e AD&D)

[Evocatas]

that makes sense. how many people are going to make a CN weapon ?

I know I'm late to the party and zombie-posting, but the breaking the outcomes down to per alignment kinda buries the lead.

The table actually outputs 50% good alignments (C/L/N), 35% neutral alignments (C/L/tN) and 15% evil (C/L/N) alignments. This means that, at a minimum 40% a weapon will be one that's going to sit inside the parties general alignment paradigm, which makes the table a bit more interesting than absolutes.

As I'm converting this table for my NPC generator, the thing that bothers me most is the extraordinarily high likelihood of an intelligent sword being in play. I mean, 1 out of every 4 swords??

However, when taken in combination with the aforementioned %'s on alignments, it really means that 1 out of every 10 (25% *40% = 10%) will be compatible with a given party. Based upon that, the likelihood of a serious problem sword (say, top 3%) is actually (3% * 40% * 1% * 1% -->> Int 16, 17; align 40%; Special Purpose: 1%, Max Languages: 1%) which comes out to 0.00012% or 1 in 833,333 swords. One of these would be nearly impossible to keep control of, frankly. A +1 sword in this category would be an Ego 36 which would require a character with both 18's in Int and Cha if at 1st level, so only likely for a Paladin. This would be a weapon ya just take straight to Mordor without taking it out of the bag of holding (sheathed of course).

Even a toning down of these odds to an ego of 24 (+1 sword with 3 abilities, 16int, 5,6 lang) is still 1 in 2,500. Using average stat rolls (~4 on a d6) means that even a first level character could control an Ego 24 sword (Int + Cha + Lvl = 12 + 12 + 1).

Most of these weapons would be little more than a nuisance or things simply left behind (because no one can pick them up without dying).

My only issue with the whole Alignment damage thing is that there's no way to determine the alignment without actually picking it up. This means, back to the original odds, there's a 10% chance your low level character is going to die just looting, which seems... um... rough.

 

[Evocatas]

(deleted)

 

[James Gasik]

I know I'm late to the party and zombie-posting, but the breaking the outcomes down to per alignment kinda buries the lead.

The table actually outputs 50% good alignments (C/L/N), 35% neutral alignments (C/L/tN) and 15% evil (C/L/N) alignments. This means that, at a minimum 40% a weapon will be one that's going to sit inside the parties general alignment paradigm, which makes the table a bit more interesting than absolutes.

As I'm converting this table for my NPC generator, the thing that bothers me most is the extraordinarily high likelihood of an intelligent sword being in play. I mean, 1 out of every 4 swords??

However, when taken in combination with the aforementioned %'s on alignments, it really means that 1 out of every 10 (25% *40% = 10%) will be compatible with a given party. Based upon that, the likelihood of a serious problem sword (say, top 3%) is actually (3% * 40% * 1% * 1% -->> Int 16, 17; align 40%; Special Purpose: 1%, Max Languages: 1%) which comes out to 0.00012% or 1 in 833,333 swords. One of these would be nearly impossible to keep control of, frankly. A +1 sword in this category would be an Ego 36 which would require a character with both 18's in Int and Cha if at 1st level, so only likely for a Paladin. This would be a weapon ya just take straight to Mordor without taking it out of the bag of holding (sheathed of course).

Even a toning down of these odds to an ego of 24 (+1 sword with 3 abilities, 16int, 5,6 lang) is still 1 in 2,500. Using average stat rolls (~4 on a d6) means that even a first level character could control an Ego 24 sword (Int + Cha + Lvl = 12 + 12 + 1).

Most of these weapons would be little more than a nuisance or things simply left behind (because no one can pick them up without dying).

My only issue with the whole Alignment damage thing is that there's no way to determine the alignment without actually picking it up. This means, back to the original odds, there's a 10% chance your low level character is going to die just looting, which seems... um... rough.

The random tables aren't a very good tool for telling you what the game's magic item distribution should be like.

They don't describe the game as it is- published adventures typically don't have random orcs dropping +3 long swords (even though overall, most such adventures have magic items be more common than treasure tables would indicate). It seems almost impossible not to conclude that curated magic was intended, with an eye for magic items that are both "level-appropriate" (whatever that means) and shore up important weaknesses- many magic weapons, potions, wands for the wizards, and defensive items for AC and saves.

But at the same time, the existence of both the tables and said modules often run counter to the claims of conservative D&D players about how "low-magic" they perceive the game to be by default.

Because I don't think there is a default, really. There's a preference, and until 3e, no two DM's, authors, or game developers really seemed to be on the same page with regards to the frequency of items (the power of items is another matter entirely- I was allowed to join in one AD&D game with a level 7 Paladin and the DM just handed me a Holy Avenger. Meanwhile, another game I played in had a party of level 5 characters bereft of anything but a +1 dagger and some potions when confronted by a pack of Wolfweres!

 

[Evocatas]

This isn't really about the magic distribution, more about the chance of intelligent swords in the campaign and how much of an issue they'll likely be.

That said, "conservative" players are ones that have failed to realize that roughly half the xp a character gets during an adventure is presented not in blood, but coin and magic. Gygax himself admits that he tended to be a bit more generous than what he advices when DMing.

As has been pointed out earlier in this thread, alot of the really good modules, (Temple of Elemental Evil, Giants Trio, etc) have both sentient swords and really good loot. For instance, playing through the Giants (G1, 2, 3) you can come away with Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Hammer of Thunderbolts AND a Ring with 3 wishes on it... and that's what I can recall us missing on our playthrough (I'm the groups accountant and had to balance the books so I ended up reviewing them to figure out what we actually got).

The unusual swords are really as means to assist fighters and other non-casters to pick up abilities they don't normally have, not really as a means to derails things. So having a 10% of a usable sword/weapon show up seems rather appropriate given how little warrior classes can actually use in the grand scheme. As I pointed out, there's a shockingly low probability that a usable high ego sword will appear (unless finagled by the DM)

That game you played in with the werewolves and the +1 daggers at 5th level kind a shows that the DM's lost the plot. I mean, seriously, go look at the xp you get for a monster and then figure out how many you'd have to kill to make a level.

 

[James Gasik]

That game you played in with the werewolves and the +1 daggers at 5th level kind a shows that the DM's lost the plot. I mean, seriously, go look at the xp you get for a monster and then figure out how many you'd have to kill to make a level.

Well, I can probably explain that easily enough. Ravenloft campaign.

(Though curiously, a few years back, a new DM was talking about a potential campaign he wanted to run, and didn't understand why a room of older gamers groaned when he said "Ravenloft", lol).

 

[Evocatas]

Well, I can probably explain that easily enough. Ravenloft campaign.

(Though curiously, a few years back, a new DM was talking about a potential campaign he wanted to run, and didn't understand why a room of older gamers groaned when he said "Ravenloft", lol).

Perhaps, but even I6 assumes that the party is entering with something. 6 to 8 players with a 50% chance from table I and 30% chance from table II (dmg pg 175) still ends up with ~8 magical items in the group, on average.

That said, a quick perusal of I6 makes me wanna never play it. It doesn't seem fun, it seems like a slog. In fact, the 5E version has been a slog. At this point, I have to agree. Groan.

 

[TheSword]

I would say they are more common than you would think and most of the larger published adventures I played in 2e had a magical sword in it. Finslayer from Night Below, The Sword of the Dales, The Lost Sword. Not to mention the BG classics Carsomyr and the Singjng Sword.

 

[Evocatas]

Uh, I'm arguing they're not as common as they're statistically supposed to be. Go through any module and count out the number of +1 (or better) swords there are, and then count the intelligent ones. Again, statistically, 1 out of 4 should be unusual.

If I had to hazard a reason why it's lower than it should be, I'd say that edition creep made it less of a necessity to even out the fighter classes. The Encyclopedia Magica has an enormous catalog of gear for melee that simply wasn't there for 1e.

 

[James Gasik]

There's also the occasional "trap" magic sword, with an Intelligence and Ego high enough to take over most player characters- Blackrazor and Ebonbane are classic examples (to a lesser extent, the Sword of Kas). What should have been a tool to benefit warriors could easily be used against them, and I know a few players who won't touch an intelligent weapon as a result. This might be the reason why such swords found in adventures tend to fall into one of two categories- the Int 13 Ego 6 weapon with the ability to detect precious gems and metals with NG alignment and the Int 16 megalomaniac ready to turn someone into a DM-controlled puppet at the drop of a hat!

 

[Theory of Games]

So I was doing some research the other day and came upon a bit in the DMG where it claimed 25% of all magic swords have some sort of Intelligence.

Woah! One out of four of those generic +1 longswords cluttering up my campaigns were supposed to have extra powers? I don't recall this being that common with weapons found as treasure in published adventures; is this something that the game designers and most DM's either overlooked or chose to ignore?

Chose to ignore probably. Intelligent items come with their own little story and that's extra work. So they just made it a +X Sword of Whatever and got on with it. I have always tried to put powerful intelligent swords in the hands of the Fighters and Paladins because IMO that's how it's supposed to be. The tricky part was intelligent items often had their own agenda and might try to take control of its wielder.

Most players aren't fans of being controlled.