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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9415601" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/Zid98FH.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Given that the Origins of Sentient Weapons are technically their Backgrounds, the mechanic usually used for representing a PC’s pre-adventuring occupation and lifestyle is reflavored to be something else. Thus, a weapon’s “background” represents a preferred mindset in regards to their ideal bearers and how they go about finding them. There’s five such options here who more or less adhere to Background rules. Each one grants the Sentient Weapon two bonus languages of their choice, save for Partner which only grants one.The Beguiler is our first, representing Sentient Weapons who prefer letting their bearers take all the glory, acting as a subtle helper pushing would-be wielders in the right direction. Their unique Feature lets them sow rumors around a population center, where after 8 hours it becomes the common consensus that the Sentient Weapon doesn’t truly exist.Creator represents Sentient Weapons who turn their bearers into extensions of themselves, being little more than mindless automatons. They’re usually created servants of the weapons, and their Feature lets them put their bearer to work during downtime, earning 2 gold per day.Guide represents weapons that have a reputation preceding them, a willful being sending out the call for worthy bearers to take up the call to greatness. Their unique Feature makes the weapon a celebrity, and population centers where their legends are known allow the adventuring party to obtain free lodgings.A Partner is one who treats their bearer as an equal, a trusted confidant who bonds with them on an emotional level. Their unique Feature allows the Sentient Weapon and bearer to freely share memories between each other while in physical contact.A Tyrant is a weapon who holds themselves above others. Like the Creator, their bearer is magically enchanted to not have a will of their own, but the Creator prefers to use artificial servitors rather than treating everyone else as tools. Their unique Feature gives them a contact in each major population center to share news and provide favors.Thoughts: The bonus skills given by the Backgrounds are all broadly useful with a preference for Charisma and “detection” stuff like Insight and Perception, with Creator being the odd one out in not getting purely social skills. And given that all but one of their Features tend to involve some kind of social connections in populated areas, this helps give the Sentient Weapon a reliable pool of backup wielders. Partner excepted, who is more about having a bond with “the one.” I think that these Backgrounds are fine and do the job, albeit Tyrant having one broad kind of contact in each town is a bit more generally useful, narratively speaking, than the others. Creator’s 2 gold per day won’t be enough to be useful for most campaigns and is the clear loser.Earlier Clarification: Sentient Weapons ignore somatic and material components for spells of their class. Which should mean that the Symbol spell from the Dwarf Origin shouldn’t require costly material components, and thus would make its capstone a lot more useful.In fact, the material components waiver can be a useful money saver for “base building” and downtime spells, as its spell list includes a few with consumables. These include Hallow, Magic Circle, Nondetection, and Planar Binding for the base class. For Origins, Githyanki and Warrior’s Soul have Protection From Evil and Good, Dwarven and Giant have Glyph of Warding, Dwarven also has Legend Lore, Celestial can cast Revivify at 10th level once per long rest, and Arcane has Teleportation Circle. While Scrying’s component isn’t consumable, it costs 1,000 gold and the Sentient Weapon has a Major Property at 15th level letting them cast it at will.Spell List, Spells, and Items covers all things magical for the Sentient Weapon. We already went over the default spell list, so here we’ll cover 3 new spells and 5 new magic items. The new spells aren’t on the Sentient Weapon’s spell list and are available to all of the arcane classes. Create Sentient Weapon is a 7th level spell that makes a Sentient Weapon as per the race and class, but it starts with a +1 enhancement bonus. It requires an amethyst worth 2,500 gold to consume and a nonmagical weapon to be enhanced. If cast at 8th or 9th level can start it out with a +2 or +3 bonus but is more costly.Intellect Mirror is a 1st-level ritual where the caster imparts a copy of their mind into a Tiny nonmagical object, letting it speak telepathically with the caster while on their person and can recite information known to them, granting advantage on Intelligence checks made to recall such knowledge. As the default casting time is 1 hour, there’s little reason not to cast it as a ritual given there’s precious few times where this gap in time will matter in campaigns. It also lasts until dispelled and requires a consumable material component worth 10 gold, so a mage can make many such Intellect Mirrors if time and gold permit.One might wonder if such Intellect Mirrors can be made to serve as a personal camera network, but besides the personal telepathy and previously-known knowledge they aren’t mentioned as having any senses beyond that. They do have an Intelligence score equal to the caster, but no mention is made of other mental ability scores. The spell reads to me that they’re more of a magical photographic memory databank rather than a self-aware computerized clone of the caster’s mind.Sunder Attunement is a 4th level spell that can target an object within 60 feet. If it’s a magic item attuned to a creature, it loses said attunement if the creature fails a Charisma save.The new magic items center around use with weapons, and not just Sentient Weapons. Bracers of Weapon Skill are rare items that grant +1 to weapon attack rolls while worn, and since they don’t cost attunement they’re a pretty good item to have and the best of our new ones.Case of Displaying magically preserves whatever object is placed inside to be unaffected by the ravages of time, and the user can cast Dancing Lights and Arcane Lock on the case.Officer’s Knot is tied to a sword hilt and requires attunement, granting advantage on Charisma checks made for “high society” stuff like negotiating treaties and social interactions at formal events. It also lets friendly creatures take a weapon attack as a reaction if the wearer spends a bonus action to command them.Ruby Scabbard requires attunement and can magically adjust to let any weapon fit within it. When a weapon is drawn from it, the wielder can make one extra attack with it as part of the Attack action, and this ability has a cooldown rate of 10 minutes rather than per-rest or per-day.Silk Ribbon is an attunable item that is telepathically controlled by the user, capable of reshaping itself into various forms. If tied to the wielder’s weapon-bearing arm they get advantage on checks and saves to avoid being disarmed.Thoughts: Create Sentient Weapon is actually a pretty cheap way to get multiple NPC weapon companions at high tiers of play, as at 13th level most parties can afford to part with 2.5k gold. The only drawback is that the weapon’s starting level isn’t specified in the spell description. Intellect Mirror is rather limited for reasons I outlined above, and Sunder Attunement is a very situational spell given that most NPC and monsters don’t have attuned equipment in their stat blocks. It’s the kind of thing a PC would save for a rainy day when fighting an archvillain or other big-time baddie, where it would make sense for them to have magic items on their person. The new magic items are nothing really to write home about, save for the Bracers which are really good due to bounded accuracy.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/9lFsu7l.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Extending the Rules is a short chapter of optional rulesets, most of which involve examining how Sentient Weapons interface with facets of the system that more bipedal, living PCs wouldn’t think twice about. One such rule lets the Sentient Weapon absorb attuned magic items into their body in order to “wield” them as a means of overcoming their lack of motor functions. Another rule grants alternative traits for other kinds of Sentient Items, such as a Shield which adds its enhancement bonus to Armor Class and at 5th level can impose disadvantage on an adjacent enemy attacker as a reaction.When it comes to feats, the book gives a list of ones that are plausible for a Sentient Weapon, and those outside this purview need special consideration. Generally speaking, feats that don’t require or represent physical exertion are permissible.Two house rules that give the Sentient Weapon a bit of a power boost include the ability to let their bearer spend spell slots on the weapon’s behalf in order for the latter to cast spell, and another rule where the weapon can swap one known non-Origin spell for another whenever they finish a long rest.For those using the Sidekick rules from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, a new class called the Weapon Sidekick is provided for those gaming groups who want to elevate the talking swords they find in treasure hoards to real party members. The rules differ in that this Sidekick class doesn’t use a default stat block from an existing creature type and determines mental ability scores via the “roll 4d6, discard the lowest” method. Otherwise, it’s like a more streamlined, less powerful version of the Sentient Weapon class. It does gain some Properties as well as an Origin, but only the bonus spells are given when it comes to subclass features and they only go up to 4th level spells rather than 5th. Their 20th level capstone ability lets them add 2d8 bonus damage once per turn when their bearer attacks with them, and said damage ignores all immunities and resistances.Thoughts: Some of the new rules don’t feel optional so much as covering edge cases that can reasonably pop up during a campaign. The non-weapon forms such as shields and magical foci are cool ideas, and actually work pretty well given that a good portion of class features, spells, and Properties don’t require a weapon form or attack. That being said, this may not be suitable for all Origins given that many specify some weapon-based ability, so it’s more of a starting point than a holistic alternative set of rules.The Sidekick class is a reasonable compromise for gaming groups that may not be gung-ho on the Sentient Weapon as a fellow PC, but still like the idea of such an item growing in power along with the party. In fact, it’s tailor-made for a support role!<img src="https://i.imgur.com/3h7VD23.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Concerning Campaigns, different settings have their own history and themes. This chapter groups the various Origins by related subjects, such as ones most suitable for straightforward heroic PCs, which ones are best for social-oriented campaigns, and which ones are strongly tied to certain races or planar realities. The chapter goes on to give advice on how to incorporate Sentient Weapons into existing campaigns, such as a deceased PC’s soul inhabiting a weapon or a living one being transformed into one as temporary punishment. Furthermore, a few adventure ideas mention certain party arrangements, such as every PC save one being a Sentient Item and the odd character out is wielding the rest of them as a highly-equipped hero.As for Failure Without Hit Points, this was actually covered in a sidebar back in the first chapter, but I feel it’s most appropriate to cover here instead. Basically it presents to the DM alternate loss scenarios for a character who doesn’t have to worry about death in the conventional sense. A Sentient Weapon who gets separated from their bearer is at a disadvantage and needs to rely on the rest of the party and/or allies to retrieve them. Additionally, since even artifacts can be destroyed via specific means, the same can hold true for a Sentient Weapon, such as being digested by the Tarrasque or plunged into the River Styx.Our book closes with an Appendix of Spells Referenced, drawing from non-core yet official spells found in other WotC sourcebooks. Such spells are either added to the Sentient Weapon’s default spell list or are given by certain Origins. As this is material that exists elsewhere, I’m not going to cover it.Thoughts: The final chapter feels rather bare-bones. I don’t really need to be told that Drow, Dwarven and Githyanki Origins are racially-themed, and the sample adventure and campaign ideas are more skeletons for a DM to fill. I was expecting more general advice and concerns for Sentient Weapon PCs like in the Failure Without Hit Points sidebar. I feel that examining possible problems and the like for a very unconventional PC class and role would be of more use to gaming groups than setting-based theorycraft.Final Thoughts: When it comes to very off-beat race and class ideas, most such works don’t care much for balance and detailed rules. The justification is often that the concept is either a joke and thus more of something to read rather than play, or are only suitable for very specific types of campaigns and don’t think of how to include them in more conventional adventures. The Sentient Weapon has far more care put into it to make the race and class justifiable for typical campaigns without needing particular setups.* The detailed rules for bearers, recruiting and building your own NPC wielders, and alternative movement types such as transforming into a spider make it so that other PCs won’t have to worry about needing to lug around the Sentient Weapon. Or use it in combat themselves in case they have their own incompatible fighting styles. Beyond just spells, the Origins and Properties are versatile enough to avoid cookie-cutter builds, and help different Weapons feel truly distinct in tactics and playstyle. Having a good amount of non-combat options is also appreciated, for a less imaginative designer may opt to make a Sentient Weapon a combat-focused class first and foremost and call it a day.*Barring the Drow Origin’s sunlight weakness.The Sentient Weapon rates highly for me for these reasons. There are several parts of the product that I feel can use some tinkering or a second readthrough, such as being unclear about NPC bearer’s Challenge Ratings rounding up or down or balance concerns like Celestial’s double-smite. But those have been the exception and haven’t been frequent enough to impact my enjoyment. I recommend this product for those looking for unconventional class and build choices, for those odd times when a player may want to be a legendary sword rather than wield a legendary sword.</blockquote>

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