D&D 5E Sword of Swift Strikes

[Hatox]

Hey everyone,

recently I thought a lot about the Fighter-Samurais ability to turn an attack with advantage into two normal attacks. While I love the flavor of this I hate that its not something you think about using, because its just a straight upgrade. In both situations you roll 2 attacks, the only difference being if both of them are good you hit twice. Theres no downside.

So I thought about creating a magic item for my players with a similar effect, that has more thought put into it. What do you think about this:

Sword of Swift Strikes: Once per turn, when taking the attack action, you may forgo one attack to make two attacks at disadvantage, this disadvantage cannot be canceled with advantage.

The math should be smth like this: Lets say we have a 50% hit chance, so 11+ hits. With disadvantage the chance of an 11+ is only about 25%. The chance that at least one of those hits is ~44% so you loose around 6% chance to hit, to have about a 6% chance to have two hits. Now of course all these numbers get weird if you hitchance is different, so here are examples for 25%, 50% and 75%:
Basehitchance 25% -> one from two hits ~12% -> both hit ~0.4%: Loose 13% hitchance for 0.4% double hit chance
Basehitchance 50% -> one from two hits ~44% -> both hit ~6%: Loose 6% hitchance for 6% double hit chance
Basehitchance 75% -> one from two hits ~81% -> both hit ~31%: GAIN 6% hit chance AND 31% double hit chance

So if your chance to hit is very high, it´s not even a trade, but a straight upgrade again, but thats an example were a PC that rolls a 6 would hit. On lower hit chances its a trade off, and on really low chances its a desperation move, because of that I didnt limit its uses. What do you think? Since its just situational and useless if you have advantage, I would put it at uncommon. Do you think it should need attunement?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

That sounds like a great weapon to use, if you already have disadvantage and no way to get rid of it.

Otherwise, I'm not generally a fan of situational trade-off abilities that are difficult to acquire in the first place. If I go through all of the work involved in finding this sword, then I want it to actually help me when I use it. I don't want to go through all that trouble, and then have it back-fire on me.

 

[MonkeezOnFire]

Generally the only magic weapons that don't require attunement are the simple +X weapons. Characters could pass it around to each other in situations where it is useful which could be abusive (such as when fighting a creature that most attacks have disadvantage by default).

I also can't recall any magic weapons that give damage buffs in the uncommon category. The most powerful uncommon usually just have a +1 bonus and then a utility effect. While situational it still has the potential to make things dead faster which by itself might deserve getting bumped to rare.

 

[Hatox]

You´re right I didnt think of the "already have disadvantage" combo, so it would have to be worded similarly to sneak damage.

Like "Once per turn, when you are making an attack with this weapon, and you dont have disadvantage on the attack roll, you may instead make two attacks at disadvantage, this disadvantage cannot be canceled with advantage."
(But it might even be ok to allow this, because honestly in my games it´s not suuuper often the case that a pc has disadvantage, and even then its just 1 extra attack thats also at disadvantage)

And to the situational items: If I say this is uncommon its about the same powerlevel as a +1 weapon. And I personally would prefer an item were I can think about using it, with trade offs to a boring +5% hit chance, but thats just preference. I would leave the attunement because passing this around would be about as effective as passing a +1 weapon around each turn (and luckily I´ve never seen players do that)

I feel like its not strong enough to be rare (with the no-using on disadvantage), but thats just my gut feeling.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So I thought about creating a magic item for my players with a similar effect, that has more thought put into it.

Sword of Swift Strikes:

Alternate idea:

When you make an attack using this weapon and have advantage, not canceled by disadvantage, you can choose to make the attack without advantage, and make a second attack against a different target as a bonus action.

You're giving up a better chance to hit the first target (and using up your bonus action), to gain an extra attack on a different target. If your attack can kill either of them, that may be great, if not, it may be tactically a poor choice compared to focus fire.