AnotherGuy
Hero
Instead of using the Ego rules as provided within the DMG for Intelligent Weapons, below is something I experimented with in our last session – and the players quite enjoyed it, particularly since it occurred at the same time that the rest of the party was in an encounter of their own.
After an epic fight against an Atropal Scion of Death (heavily modified Libris Mortis, Catacomb of the Scion) and its forces, a character (fighter-barbarian half orc) failed his wisdom saving throw when he picked up a mauve-glowing weapon which had been wielded by a Wight Oathbreaker and suddenly fell into a coma.
· Establishing that their companion was still alive, the Medicine proficiency (no roll) revealed their comrade had suffered no other injuries on his body and that his vital signs were not weakening, but that all obvious methods in awakening him failed, including shouting, shaking, slapping and smelling salts;
· It was evident the wight’s weapon had done this: the artificer surmised that the weapon may be Intelligent;
· With a successful Arcana check DC 15, the artificer recalled some lore he had read on Intelligent weapons – While a person was in such a state, forcefully removing the weapon from the hand (which generally the victim gripped the weapon tightly) ran the risk of shattering a victim’s psyche, perhaps causing critical damage, and even death. Furthermore physically harming the body would likely have no effect in releasing a victim from this mental prison;
· The artificer tried tattooing (not proficient, no kit) the sigils of a Protection from Evil spell from a scroll on the character’s sword arm. At the request of the player, I allowed a Sleight of Hand check DC 15 but gave disadvantage and called for an Arcana roll to determine the duration of such tattooed spell, since it was rather unorthodox. All while using his proficiency in Medicine and some healing ointment to ensure the tattoo was clean of infection and to clean up "mistakes". Success, it worked – for a while.
Meanwhile, the half-orc found himself in a hedge maze, hearing the sound of a female laughing in the distance. He decided to head towards the laughter.
· The character discovered relatively quickly that in this world his STR was converted to CHA, DEX was converted to WIS and CON was INT.
This was translated for everything from skill checks, saving throws, attack rolls, hit points (at maximum for the level) and even his class feature unarmored defense.
· The player ranked their character’s Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws (I allow up to for 4 + 1 per every 2 levels although this character only had 7) and then assigned hit point values to them which summed up their psyche hit points (as calculated above) with the limitation that a single TIBF had a maximum of 20% of their total psyche points. I had also told the player to rank the characters in his life (dead or alive) in terms of importance and why;
· All damage dealt in this world was considered psychic damage and thus could pierce through his barbarian Rage resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage;
· I treated the hedge maze similar as a Skill Challenge with the reward being that every successful skill check in exploring the hedge maze, overcoming obstacles and moving towards a woman’s laughter in the distance, gave him an extra psychic point at the start of the encounter with the entity while failures had the potential in reducing his psychic points;
· When the half-orc eventually escaped the hedge maze, he encountered a young woman in her early 20’s (who was the person behind the laughter) whom he was immediately weary of and warned her not to approach him. She was playful at first, attempting to get his guard down through conversation, and every so often testing his patience by inching closer as well as offering promises of power if they could align themselves (whatever that meant). He continued to be mistrusting, abrasive even – and at times during their conversation the young woman began to seemingly age – 30’s, 40’s, 50’s. It caught him off-guard at first but once he noticed it, he began to perceive her changes. When he was blatantly rude, and proved that he was unwillingly to entertain her requests, the woman transformed into a Hag (stats of a modified Green Hag to be what I considered an appropriate challenge);
· When she did damage to him, it was considered psychic and we rolled randomly to see which Trait, Bond, Ideal, Flaw was affected (perhaps even removed). Once a TIBF was depleted of psychic points and excess was halved, and randomly applied to another TIBF (modified cleave). She would appear to relish, as her eyes grew wide with enthusiasm, in her successful attacks against him;
· Every successful attack on him gained her knowledge on one of those persons important in his life and thus she could transform into them, mimic their voices (the Hag's Mimicry power) to cause one additional challenge (think Legendary Action) at the beginning of each combat combat round, using each challenge once to keep things fresh. Examples would included
(i) A dead ally, no saving throw, he'd gain the Hesitant Condition – Disadvantage on Initiative;
(ii) An unlikely close friend releasing a litany of profane words (Vicious Mockery - save allowed);
(iii) A soft spoken friend attempting to diffuse the encounter (Calm Emotions - save allowed) to break him out of his barbarian Rage; and
(iv) ...Etc
· In the third round, he severed one of her arms (i.e. she had gained the Bloodied Condition) thus negating her multi-attack to one claw attack per round, before he dismembered her other arm, dropping her prone and finally when her energy was depleted, she had transformed into a teenager and referred to him for the first time by his real name (this was significant as he had given her an alias and she had used the alias throughout their encounter), pleading desperately with him to stop his aggression. Steadfast believing this was but another of her games, he cut through her face with his battle-axe.
He then awoke, released from the weapon, with all his current hit points intact, however the weapon glowed no more.
(He found himself in the middle of an encounter between his companions and a Wraith Shadow Priest. They had cast Sanctuary on the comatose half-orc in an attempt to protect him from Energy Drain attacks and spells cast by the relentless undead that had been kiting them throughout their attempt to leave a church of Myrkul and its underground network of catacombs. But that encounter is a different story)
· The whole idea with this intelligent weapon was that the character’s TIBF would be erased by the entity and it would recreate the character’s TIBF that would be more closely aligned to its own, corrupting him for its own purpose. I managed to erase 3 out of the character’s 7 TIBF before he defeated her (the combo of our homebrew feat Fell-Handed and the timing of the Reckless attack was beautifully instrumental, first time this ever happened).
With the loss of these 3 TIBF, the character now experienced a sort-of vacuum or hollowness, as if he had lost something but was unsure what - the memory of these TIBF stripped away.
· An Identify spell cast on the weapon after the encounter revealed that although it was still enchanted, the weapon was now dormant. Downtime, likely at Candlekeep, would be required for research in order to gain more information/options.
· A Restoration spell would help the half-orc restore his lost TIBF, one for each casting of the spell.
EDIT: I should add, that if the hag (Intelligent Weapon) had won the fight, and stripped the character of his TIBF, it would have been a TPK. They had already lost their paladin in the fight against the Atropal Scion (the character's body had disappeared after death). It was only because the half-orc succeeded in defeating the hag and waking up, that the remaining two members survived against the spell-casting wraith - as one of them had failed against a Banishment and the other was under the effects of a Hold Person and had just taken a critical Energy Drain dropping their hit points to 26.
After an epic fight against an Atropal Scion of Death (heavily modified Libris Mortis, Catacomb of the Scion) and its forces, a character (fighter-barbarian half orc) failed his wisdom saving throw when he picked up a mauve-glowing weapon which had been wielded by a Wight Oathbreaker and suddenly fell into a coma.
· Establishing that their companion was still alive, the Medicine proficiency (no roll) revealed their comrade had suffered no other injuries on his body and that his vital signs were not weakening, but that all obvious methods in awakening him failed, including shouting, shaking, slapping and smelling salts;
· It was evident the wight’s weapon had done this: the artificer surmised that the weapon may be Intelligent;
· With a successful Arcana check DC 15, the artificer recalled some lore he had read on Intelligent weapons – While a person was in such a state, forcefully removing the weapon from the hand (which generally the victim gripped the weapon tightly) ran the risk of shattering a victim’s psyche, perhaps causing critical damage, and even death. Furthermore physically harming the body would likely have no effect in releasing a victim from this mental prison;
· The artificer tried tattooing (not proficient, no kit) the sigils of a Protection from Evil spell from a scroll on the character’s sword arm. At the request of the player, I allowed a Sleight of Hand check DC 15 but gave disadvantage and called for an Arcana roll to determine the duration of such tattooed spell, since it was rather unorthodox. All while using his proficiency in Medicine and some healing ointment to ensure the tattoo was clean of infection and to clean up "mistakes". Success, it worked – for a while.
Meanwhile, the half-orc found himself in a hedge maze, hearing the sound of a female laughing in the distance. He decided to head towards the laughter.
· The character discovered relatively quickly that in this world his STR was converted to CHA, DEX was converted to WIS and CON was INT.
This was translated for everything from skill checks, saving throws, attack rolls, hit points (at maximum for the level) and even his class feature unarmored defense.
· The player ranked their character’s Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws (I allow up to for 4 + 1 per every 2 levels although this character only had 7) and then assigned hit point values to them which summed up their psyche hit points (as calculated above) with the limitation that a single TIBF had a maximum of 20% of their total psyche points. I had also told the player to rank the characters in his life (dead or alive) in terms of importance and why;
· All damage dealt in this world was considered psychic damage and thus could pierce through his barbarian Rage resistance to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage;
· I treated the hedge maze similar as a Skill Challenge with the reward being that every successful skill check in exploring the hedge maze, overcoming obstacles and moving towards a woman’s laughter in the distance, gave him an extra psychic point at the start of the encounter with the entity while failures had the potential in reducing his psychic points;
· When the half-orc eventually escaped the hedge maze, he encountered a young woman in her early 20’s (who was the person behind the laughter) whom he was immediately weary of and warned her not to approach him. She was playful at first, attempting to get his guard down through conversation, and every so often testing his patience by inching closer as well as offering promises of power if they could align themselves (whatever that meant). He continued to be mistrusting, abrasive even – and at times during their conversation the young woman began to seemingly age – 30’s, 40’s, 50’s. It caught him off-guard at first but once he noticed it, he began to perceive her changes. When he was blatantly rude, and proved that he was unwillingly to entertain her requests, the woman transformed into a Hag (stats of a modified Green Hag to be what I considered an appropriate challenge);
· When she did damage to him, it was considered psychic and we rolled randomly to see which Trait, Bond, Ideal, Flaw was affected (perhaps even removed). Once a TIBF was depleted of psychic points and excess was halved, and randomly applied to another TIBF (modified cleave). She would appear to relish, as her eyes grew wide with enthusiasm, in her successful attacks against him;
· Every successful attack on him gained her knowledge on one of those persons important in his life and thus she could transform into them, mimic their voices (the Hag's Mimicry power) to cause one additional challenge (think Legendary Action) at the beginning of each combat combat round, using each challenge once to keep things fresh. Examples would included
(i) A dead ally, no saving throw, he'd gain the Hesitant Condition – Disadvantage on Initiative;
(ii) An unlikely close friend releasing a litany of profane words (Vicious Mockery - save allowed);
(iii) A soft spoken friend attempting to diffuse the encounter (Calm Emotions - save allowed) to break him out of his barbarian Rage; and
(iv) ...Etc
· In the third round, he severed one of her arms (i.e. she had gained the Bloodied Condition) thus negating her multi-attack to one claw attack per round, before he dismembered her other arm, dropping her prone and finally when her energy was depleted, she had transformed into a teenager and referred to him for the first time by his real name (this was significant as he had given her an alias and she had used the alias throughout their encounter), pleading desperately with him to stop his aggression. Steadfast believing this was but another of her games, he cut through her face with his battle-axe.
He then awoke, released from the weapon, with all his current hit points intact, however the weapon glowed no more.
(He found himself in the middle of an encounter between his companions and a Wraith Shadow Priest. They had cast Sanctuary on the comatose half-orc in an attempt to protect him from Energy Drain attacks and spells cast by the relentless undead that had been kiting them throughout their attempt to leave a church of Myrkul and its underground network of catacombs. But that encounter is a different story)
· The whole idea with this intelligent weapon was that the character’s TIBF would be erased by the entity and it would recreate the character’s TIBF that would be more closely aligned to its own, corrupting him for its own purpose. I managed to erase 3 out of the character’s 7 TIBF before he defeated her (the combo of our homebrew feat Fell-Handed and the timing of the Reckless attack was beautifully instrumental, first time this ever happened).
With the loss of these 3 TIBF, the character now experienced a sort-of vacuum or hollowness, as if he had lost something but was unsure what - the memory of these TIBF stripped away.
· An Identify spell cast on the weapon after the encounter revealed that although it was still enchanted, the weapon was now dormant. Downtime, likely at Candlekeep, would be required for research in order to gain more information/options.
· A Restoration spell would help the half-orc restore his lost TIBF, one for each casting of the spell.
EDIT: I should add, that if the hag (Intelligent Weapon) had won the fight, and stripped the character of his TIBF, it would have been a TPK. They had already lost their paladin in the fight against the Atropal Scion (the character's body had disappeared after death). It was only because the half-orc succeeded in defeating the hag and waking up, that the remaining two members survived against the spell-casting wraith - as one of them had failed against a Banishment and the other was under the effects of a Hold Person and had just taken a critical Energy Drain dropping their hit points to 26.
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