Mercurial Weapons -- good idea or bad idea?

[Oni]

If I remember correctly one of the weapons from the Chinese martia art of bagua is a hollow staff partially filled with mercury.

 

[Xeriar]

LOL. Do you know that mercury dissolves gold?

Come to think of it, mercury mucks with just about everything, actually, that's why it's toxic after all...

 

[hammymchamham]

I would say you could get away with EWP: Heavy Mercurial Greatsword...just don't ever expect to find a magic one in a treasure trove...

J

I suppose if you only use the random generation of magic items as presented in the DMG, then this would be true, or if you never place magical items you know your PC's would enjoy. Then again, when I randomly roll for treasure, I use a computer generator that include Sword and Fist material, so in my games, it could end up as a random item.

 

[Berk]

First, don't know if this was said or not cuz I hate reading through 3+ pages of the same thing being said over and over again but, where does it say that wielding a weapon adds onto ac? Cuz if you are parrying then we need to get an ac bonus for it. Just wondering where the wielding a weapon automatically means you are parrying thing comes in. =op

Second, this is just purely non game stuff here, for all the weight and unwieldy topics about having to pull the weapon back you people have actually never seen a "greatsword" in use then. Cuz when you use a "greatsword" it is just a bunch of sweeping and spinning motions. I mean come on, think about it. pick up a hunk of metal 6 feet long that weighs like 10 pounds and you start to try and swing it around and see what happens. That was just the way these type of weapons where used when they were used, which wasn't all that much, or for all that long.

 

[Oni]

I think people are prone to exaggeration when it comes to weapons, and how they were used.

A great sword usually only weighed 4-6 pounds with 6 pounds being considered quite heavy. They usually had long unsharpened ricassos which could be choked up on to wield the weapon in quite an agile manner. These weren't great lumps of metal that were just whirled around in barely controlled fashion.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Post-errata, they are balanced. They're also silly.

 

[drnuncheon]

I suppose if you only use the random generation of magic items as presented in the DMG, then this would be true, or if you never place magical items you know your PC's would enjoy.

More like mercurial weapons are incredibly rare. Heavy weapons are incredibly rare. Given that, why would a weapon that was a combination of the two be anything but near-unique? It's not like the magic sword fairy is going around salting the treasure troves with items they know the PCs can use. It could quickly get ridiculous: "Gee, what a coincidence...another magic heavy mercurial greatsword."

J

 

[ColonelHardisson]

Post-errata, they are balanced. They're also silly.

Unlike elves, dwarves, and magic?

 

[Deset Gled]

where does it say that wielding a weapon adds onto ac? Cuz if you are parrying then we need to get an ac bonus for it.

This goes back to the fuzzyness of the D+D combat system. According to the PHB:

The melee rules assume that combatants are actively avoiding attacks. A player doesn’t have to declare anything special for her character to be on the defensive. Even if a character’s figure is just standing there on the tabletop like a piece of lead, you can be sure that if some orc with a battleaxe attacks the character, she is
weaving, dodging, and even threatening the orc with a weapon to keep the orc a little worried for his own hide.

Basically, your AC uses the assumption that you're already going to be doing things like parrying, dodging, and fending somebody off with a weapon. Any bonuses that you get from feats or other places means that you're getting better at doing those things. It doesn't mean that you're learning how to do them for the first time.

I believe that what people have stated before translates into the same kind of Dex penalty to AC that armor does; you can't move like you used to, so you don't get to include any bonus to movement that the basic rules for AC give you. I happen to agree with it.