Can a Whip be 'Vorpal'

[RUMBLETiGER]

I've got a mental image of the whip wrapping around an opponents neck, than tightening. Grizzly.

 

[emanresu]

I've got a mental image of the whip wrapping around an opponents neck, than tightening. Grizzly.

err howbout same magic as the heart seeker arrow in that the whip targets the neck on its own and on a crit is secures around the neck in a grapple? and must be removed like a necklace of strangulation.

or a whip blade that acts as heart seeker on crit, call it / ewww I just had the memory of the Steve Erwin incident with the manta ray stinger

 

[kitcik]

I've got a mental image of the whip wrapping around an opponents neck, than tightening. Grizzly.

Interesting - my mental image was <snap><pop> if you get my drift...

 

[Water Bob]

Interesting - my mental image was <snap><pop> if you get my drift...

Mine's more along the lines of Rumbletiger's thought. The whip wraps around the neck, like Indiana Jones using it to wrap around a tree limb, but on the jerk backwards, the whip doesn't unravel but instead pulls tight, cutting through the neck.

 

[was]

I don't remember the name, but there was an oriental whip that had glass shards woven into the leather that did slashing damage....I guess that would qualify for Vorpal

 

[Noir le Lotus]

The Whip-dagger from Sword & Fist deals lethal damage.

By RAW, a whip could have the Vorpale property, but a wise move could be to consider that the Vorpale effect can only work if the whip deals damage.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Regardless of the visual method, If I was your DM and you were willing to invest the cash in having your favorite whip enchanted with the Vorpal porpoerty, I'd allow it under the Rule of Cool.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

?..but a wise move could be to consider that the Vorpale effect can only work if the whip deals damage.

Which is not the way the Vorpal power- a +5 equivalent enchantment, might I add- is worded.

 

[Deset Gled]

Means the weapon's magical ability triggers on a hit- specifically, a confirmed crit on a nat20- not upon dealing damage. That the mundane properties of the underlying weapon would prove ineffectual against a particular foe does not mean the enchantment would likewise be nullified.

We had a similar discussion about flaming whips some time ago here on ENWorld:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/d-d-legacy-discussion/138686-flaming-whip.html

Which is not the way the Vorpal power- a +5 equivalent enchantment, might I add- is worded.

I generally disagree with your stance on Flaming weapons (I side with Hypersmurf in that thread), but I think you have a half-a-point when it comes to Vorpal weapons. Things certainly get complicated when you throw criticals into the mix.

There are a lot of arguments in the thread you linked and we don't need to rehash the hole thing, but in my mind the important wording comes down to these two lines:

The Damage columns give the damage dealt by the weapon on a successful hit.

and

A flaming weapon deals an extra 1d6 points of fire damage on a successful hit.

The logical consequence of the first line is that if a weapon does not deal its normal weapon damage (listed on the table), it has not made a successful hit. And since it has not made a successful hit, properties like Flaming don't function. This means that if the whip's is negated due to armor, the Flaming is also negated.

However, criticals are different:

When you make an attack roll and get a natural 20 (the d20 shows 20), you hit regardless of your target’s Armor Class, and you have scored a threat. The hit might be a critical hit (or "crit"). To find out if it’s a critical hit, you immediately make a critical roll—another attack roll with all the same modifiers as the attack roll you just made. If the critical roll also results in a hit against the target’s AC, your original hit is a critical hit. (The critical roll just needs to hit to give you a crit. It doesn’t need to come up 20 again.) If the critical roll is a miss, then your hit is just a regular hit.

The effect of the first bolded statement is: when you roll a 20, your whip scores a hit and deals full damage even if it normally couldn't deal damage to the target because their armor prevents it. And because you have a successful hit, your magic enhancement are also triggered.

However, you must also confirm the critical hit. In order to confirm a critical hit, you must make another roll that also results in a hit. If your second roll beats the AC but is negated because the target's armor, you have failed to score a successful hit, and the critical is not confirmed; you deal your whip's full damage with magic enhancements, but not extra damage from the crit, and not Vorpal damage. However, if your second roll is also a 20, it is once again an automatic hit, confirming the critical and triggering the Vorpal property.

Summary: IMNSHO, by a strict reading of the rules a whip normally deals no damage if a target's (natural) armor bonus negates it, even if the whip is magically enhanced. However, if you roll a 20 you have scored an automatic hit and the whip deals full damage with magic enhancements. In order to confirm a crit or activate a Vorpal enhancement, you must also confirm the critical hit with another natural 20.

Of course, this is a pedantic RAW interpretation. In a real game, I've never seen anyone use a whip instead of a whip-dagger, so it would never come up anyway.

 

[Greenfield]

Talking RAW? Yes, it's possible. RAI? Not at all sure.

On the one hand, the whip can't hurt anything. On the other hand, how many hit points of damage = decapitation?

That is, presuming something that can survive decapitation, such as a Golem, how much extra damage do the rules assign for the decapitation? The answer, of course, is none, zero, zilch, nada.

The fact is, the Vorpal effect neither requires nor inflicts "real" damage. It just decapitates,

Consider the scenario: A Duelist with a Vorpal rapier faces a Stone Golem. Said Duelist strikes, rolls the natural 20, and "backs up the crit", even though no crit is possible.

The critter's DR is easily enough to soak up all the damage that rapier can inflict, yet by the rules the Golem is now searching for its missing head. Nowhere in the description of the Voral property does it require the weapon to penetrate DR.

Now, common sense says that if you can't cut the skin you can't cut through the body, but the rules for "common sense" can't apply quite the same way in a world where a Pegasus is aerodynamically functional.