Dancing weapons

[green slime]

Wow so the no modifiers, str or dex if finesse, really limits the utility of this ability. Particularly since the lack of power attack, str or sneak to damage means that this ability is absolutely worthless against damage reduction.

Worthless?!?!

Hardly.

 

[Darklone]

First magic item I ever acquired in D&D was a dancing sword!

The party (of 13!) was fighting a tough fighter, when all of a sudden his sword leapt up and started fighting us by itself, while he drew another weapon. Yikes!

Having only 1hp I'd pretty much kept out of the fighting and stuck to doing thievey things; the fighter was eventually killed (he was back holding the sword at that time) and the rest of the party went into the room attracted by the glittering gold.

So I asked the DM secretly whether anyone was looking at me or the body, and they weren't, so I asked whether I could replace his magic longsword with my ordinary longsword, and I could... and the rest was history (being about 1976 it was probably ancient history!)

Cheers

Kewl. Reminds me how my first bard got a shortsword +4.

From the poor man's wizard to the best meleedude in the group within one moment

But sheesh, PS, you're OLD

Back in 1976 I had 5 more years to go till I started RPing.

 

[Arabesu]

I too remember dancing to be absolutely fantastic back in 1e/2e. Back then the it was such a big deal because some of the better weapons did MORE damage against larger opponents. Also, I don't even remember if str to damage applied with dancing then either, but I do remember that as a rule str had a smaller impact on damage than the weapon damage die. Which was why proficiency was such a huge deal back then. the cleric weapons weren't just bludgeoning, but they were bludgeoning that didn't get better when you fought large creatures. Unlike a greatsword (called two-handed sword if I recall) which went from 1d10 to 3d6. So dancing was amazing for that greatsword users. Now, PA and str outstrip damage very quickly to keep up with con adding to hp. In most cases thats fine, it just seems like this +4 enhancement doesn't scale with level well...