Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 7101460" data-attributes="member: 6787650">History, quirks, and minor powers are the best. You know you're succeeding when your players refer to their magical items by name instead of by power, and when the roleplaying personality-affecting side-effects (like creating greed or lust) come up more often in play than the powers do. Player: "Of course I'm stealing the widow's gold. Flauntiir has been whispering in my mind for the past year about 'gold, glorious gold'!"(That's not a direct quote but it's the gist of what happened with Flauntiir the Staff of Flame on a regular basis--far more often than it was used to actually throw Fireballs or Walls of Fire.)Instead of a bog-standard flametongue, give him something like:Unushgila'a the Dayshard. One day, thousands of years ago, Luru'inili the Last of the Enkidu was looking up at the sun in the middle of the day and he saw a piece of the sun sticking out, like a twig poking out of a bush. Luru'inili got out his mighty longbow and shot it into the sky so that it hit the piece of the sun that was sticking out, and it broke off and fell down to earth. When Luru'inili got to where it had fallen he found that it had burned a mighty forest to ashes where it landed and now there was a desert, and in the desert was a puddle of liquid metal, and in the puddle there was the piece of the sun. Luru'inili liked how shiny it was so he took the metal and bound the sun within it and forged it into a blade which he called Unushgila'a the Dayshard. This 2' long knife is forged from mirror-bright brass. It is sized for a 9' tall Enkidu but can be used by a Medium-sized creature with big hands as a kind of long-handled shortsword (1d6 martial weapon, slashing damage). It is magical, and is at all times enveloped in shimmering flames which cause 2d6 fire damage to anything which contacts the blade. Fortunately, Luru'inili also forged a sheathe for the blade out of elemental chalk which resists heat and always stays the same temperature; as long as Unushgila'a is in the sheathe it will not harm anyone. When plunged into a pool of liquid, it will dry up at least 1 gallon of liquid per round, turning it to a 10' x 10' square of steam with the same properties as the original liquid--so an acid puddle will dry up into a cloud of acid steam, and a poison puddle will dry up into a poison cloud. A cloud of steam will usually dissipate in about a minute.Some of the spirit of the Last Enkidu resides within the Dayshard he forged. Whoever wields and is attuned to the Dayshard will be able to read and write Enkidu engravings; will be able to smell magic as if it were sulfur (harmful magic) or cinnamon (beneficial or healing magic); and will always know which direction to go to find drinking water, as long as there is any such body of water within a day's travel. He will also suffer disadvantage on saving throws against plague or other disease, which caused the fall of the Enkidus; and he will never have offspring so long as he is attuned to the blade.It is only possible to attune this weapon once. Once attunement has been broken, the blade will reject re-attunement from the same wielder.</blockquote>

Verification