The sword used by Balors in AD&D were +1 swords. The relevant text is "The favored weapons of these monsters are a large +1 sword and a whip with many "tails"" Balors got vorpal swords in 2E and lost them in 4E.
D&D 5E How to deal with player death?
- Thread starter tglassy
- Start date
The sword used by Balors in AD&D were +1 swords. The relevant text is "The favored weapons of these monsters are a large +1 sword and a whip with many "tails"" Balors got vorpal swords in 2E and lost them in 4E.
The Crimson Binome
Hero
Alright, then, that's one edition out of the last three where a Balor's sword did not behave like a vorpal weapon. Although it still looks like it has a "better crits" effect, and given the immeasurable distances between PC and NPC rules in that edition, I can't even say for certain what their design intent was or if that's their interpretation of what a vorpal weapon would do in the hands of a monster.
To contrast, the Balor's sword in 5E does pretty much exactly what a standard vorpal sword would do in the hands of a PC against a legendary creature - an extra 6d8 damage on a crit. Granted, that could be just a coincidence, but Bayes' theorem suggests that any explanation which offer better odds than a mere coincidence is favored. How likely would those numbers have aligned by chance, if Balors and vorpal swords were designed independently of each other in 5E? How likely would they have aligned by design, if they had deliberately sought out a method for representing this traditional weapon in such a way that it wouldn't unduly frustrate PCs to be on the receiving end?
It seems highly probable, to me, that the design guidelines for this edition are to simply never subject your PCs to one-hit-kill effects; and any ruling which is in-line with that advice is fully supported.
pukunui
Legend
Might I just point out that at 9th level, a barbarian rolls three dice on a critical hit as well. It could just as easily be that the triple crit is a feature of the balor rather than its lightning sword. It is unlikely, I'll admit, but the possibility is there.
I respectfully disagree. The monster stats presented in the MM are a baseline. No magic items or feats or class levels by default. It's up to us as DMs to modify them to suit our individual campaigns.
There's nothing stopping a DM from giving a balor an actual vorpal weapon. I recently played through a 5e conversion of the Age of Worms campaign. The DM gave Kyuss a vorpal weapon, and my 20th level paladin lost her head to it. (Of course, her death was only temporary, but it was still a somewhat fitting result given the number of monsters and NPCs who'd lost their heads to her own vorpal sword prior to that.)
The Crimson Binome
Hero
That's also a valid interpretation, though it would raise several issues. Most notable, since NPCs and monsters have their own abilities - only some of which resemble abilities available to the PCs - we don't really know how they would react with class levels or magic items. Could you hand a vorpal sword to a Balor, and if so, would it triple the extra 6d8 crit damage when fighting against the Tarrasque? Who knows? The books didn't want to bother with covering every unlikely scenario that might come up.
And the DMG has neglected to provide any rules whatsoever on what should happen in those circumstances. All it has is advice on how, after doing whatever it is that the DM decides to do, those changes might affect the level of the monster and its related XP value. It's like they don't even care.
You keep saying that a Balor's sword in 5E is pretty much exactly what a standard vorpal sword is. Except it is not, standard damage bonus for a vorpal longsword is 1D8+3+strenght bonus, on a critical hit against a foe that cannot be decapitated the damage is 7D8+3+strength bonus. A Balor's longsword does normal damage of 6D8+8 and 18D8+8 on a critical.
Balor's sword: Longsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +14 to hit, reach 10 ft., one target. Hit:21 (3d8 + 8) slashing damage plus l3 (3d8) lightning damage. lf the balor scores a critical hit, it rolls
damage dice three times, instead of twice.
Vorpal sword: You gain +3 to attack and damage rolls made with this magic weapon. In addition, the weapon ignores resistance to slashing damage.
When you attack a creature that has at least one head with this weapon and roll a 20 on the attack roll, you cut off one of the creatures heads. The creature dies if it can't survive without the lost head. A creature that is immune to this effect if it is immune to slashing damage, doesn't have or need a head, has legendary actions, or the DM decides that the creature is too big for its head to be cut off with this weapon. Such a creature instead takes an extra 6D8 slashing damage from the hit.
So a vorpal sword does 1D8+3+strength bonus slashing damage on a normal hit, is useless against creatures immune to slashing damage, decapitates on a 20 if the criteria are met, and does an extra 6D8 points of damage on a 20 if the criteria is not met.
A Balor's sword does 3D8 slashing +3D8 electrical damage + strength bonus on a normal hit, does electrical damage to creature immunes to slashing damage, and does 18D8+strength bonus on a critical hit.
How again is the Balor's sword the same as a vorpal sword?
The Crimson Binome
Hero
The fact that a regular vorpal sword is useless against creatures that are immune to slashing damage is not a meaningful difference, since (as far as I can tell) there is nothing that is immune to slashing damage from a magical sword. Plenty of stuff is immune to slashing damage from non-magical swords, but nothing is immune to the damage from a vorpal sword, that I know of.
Note also that a vorpal sword does not have a base damage of 1d8; a vorpal sword can be any type of sword that deals slashing damage, and the base damage of a huge longsword is 3d8.
The fact that a regular vorpal sword can take the head off of any chump, but not anyone cool, is not a meaningful difference from the function of a balor's sword which can also not take the head off of anyone cool. The rules simply don't bother to declare an exception for what happens when a balor critically hits a chump, because there's no reason why they would be fighting in the first place, and in those rare situations where it might come up the outcome is functionally similar to simply dealing an extra 27 damage beyond normal critical damage.
Even if a Balor's sword isn't technically a Vorpal Sword - which is a fair argument, though a bit nitpicky - it still operates as though it was a Vorpal Sword for the purposes of this discussion. Its actual in-game functionality has at least as much in common with a Vorpal Sword as it did in AD&D, where it was explicitly vorpal (adjective, not noun) and also detected evil/good and exploded if anyone else touched it. It doesn't have +3 to hit or damage in 5E, but it probably didn't have +5 to hit or damage in AD&D either. It is a sword which is vorpal, even if it's not the item which is named Vorpal Sword.
pukunui
Legend
[MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION]: I am beginning to get the sense that you are stubbornly sticking to your guns here just so you can maintain your dislike of the 4e/5e tendency to use different rules for monsters and PCs.
Can we maybe just agree to disagree here so as to stop derailing the thread?
Can we maybe just agree to disagree here so as to stop derailing the thread?
The Crimson Binome
Hero
No, because this is highly relevant to the topic at hand: the game doesn't want you to just kill PCs with the roll of one die, and the rules are written from that perspective. One "method to deal with [PC] death" is to not let it happen on a whim. If a DM wants to take that approach to the game, then it's a fully valid interpretation of the material.
My extreme distaste for the mechanics of 4E is irrelevant here, since 5E is written in the style of 2E; if it had been written in the style of 4E, we wouldn't be having this discussion, since there would be very little room for interpretation.
Imaculata
Hero
As a DM you can be as merciful as you want to be. If you want to be merciless, then you can have the dragon slaughter the party. But I get the impression that the DM did not expect, nor intend for the whole party to die... in which case, just be merciful. The dragon is allowed to leave if you want it to.
