Sword of Truth +2

[Fjodjont]

Me and my friends are just starting with DnD 4e, although we played a lot off board games and other games, we recently completed “Keep on the Shadowfell” and are hooked. With the free program Masterplan I created a quest and this is almost coming to its end. This is not very exciting for you guys but it’s a little intro for you to understand my knowledge and there for my flaws in D&D.

At the end of my encounter, little story about a weaponsmith, I want to give them a custom weapon. I’ve always been a fan of the Legend of the Seeker novels from Terry Goodkind and wanted to create the Sword of Truth for DnD 4e.

It’s based upon a Magic Longsword +2 with a D10 dmg modifier. The first time I had the attack bonus set up to +4 and the power “Dance wih Death” as an at-will power. That’s now changed.

Sword of Truth +2
Dmg: 1d10

Truth seeker
(standard; at-will)
You can use this power whenever you would use an intimidate skill outside combat.
Effect: You immediately succeed the intimidate check. If the target is hostile / unfriendly after the success resolved you kill the target if the target is friendly and were telling the truth you kill the target.

Test of Pain
(minor; encounter)
The Sword of Truth gives you a test of pain; you lose 1/3 of your current HP.
Effect: Until the end of the encounter, you gain a +2 power bonus to attack rolls, and it deals 2d8 + … modifier damage. Increase attack to +4 and damage to 4d8 + … modifier at 11th and attack to +6 and damage to 6d8 at 21st level.
You can now use Dance with Death encounter power.

Dance with Death
(standard; encounter)
Melee weapon
Targets: One, two or three creatures
Attack: modifier vs. Reflex, one attack per target
You can use Dance with Death power only when you used Test of Pain during this encounter.
The memories of its past wielders, teach you the "Dance with Death" that is characteristic of life, war, and magic.
Hit: 2d8 + … modifier damage, and you can shift up to two spaces.


What do you think of it, still to strong or not?

Was also thinking off adding a penalty when using “Test of Pain” power. Something like: the rest of the encounter when you receive HP you only receive 2/3 of the total amount.

Thx for the advice.

 

[BobTheNob]

Hmm...powerful yes

One of the great traps of 4th Ed is actually a leftover from 3.5 days which is "its higher level, so it must be better!!!", which is true for issues of damage. Target have More HP as you move up the game, so more damage is needed. But this is NOT true of rolls against d20's, in this case you +2/+4/+6 bonus. So many things that break this game are things that linked d20's to scaling values.

Take for instance "Righteous Brand" (PHB1, Cleric at will). It was a real game breaker till it got errata'd, because it gave a d20 bonus that kept scaling up due to strength increase. It was fine as a once off+3/4 at heroic, but as a +9 at epic...it was just too much. WOTC recognized this and toned it down to a flat +3.

Why was that a fix? Because, +3 is just as good a bonus at Epic as it is at heroic. It all has to do with how monsters scale against players. Any d20 bonus is just as good at level 1 as it is at level 30. So, for starters, make the to-hit bonus a flat +2

That said, the damage bonus is MASSIVE. Its not stipulated as bonus, therefore its base. So take a 6d8 at epic, combine that with a, say, 5W power, and the player hits for 30d8. Thats just insane...imagine a crit!. Even a atWill, which are all 2W by this stage, will be doing 12d8. This will break the game in a microsecond. Bring the damage back, and clearly stipulate as bonus. A 3d8 bonus at epic puts you on par with any striker, which is very generous, and wont break anything.

As to paying hit points, I would go full Bloodied Value. It puts you into greater danger (as there are so many creatures that will take advantage of it) and is you have a leader of any type with you, getting the hit points back on par would be a doddle. I would even consider Damage Per Round till end of encounter, to ensure the user is feeling conseuqneces

A tad too powerful? I think it is a total game breaker.

 

[Fjodjont]

Thank you very much for your reply this helps a lot, especially because we haven’t played high tier yet (only lvl 4 atm) and therefore I’m not familiar with the complete mechanics off the game.

Little bit of side info. The lore around the weapon says it cuts through anything it hits, that was my reason for the +2, +4, +6 attack bonus but reading you’re explanation what it does at higher level I will make it a flat +2 bonus.

Bringing down the damage. If I understand it correctly a 1D8 bonus, 2d8 bonus and at epic 3d8 bonus sounds fair?

About the losing part of HP’s I think I’ll try trough out playing with it. Starting with the bloodied value idea if this is still too strong at the Damage Per Round to it.

We are also thinking of create a weapon that levels with you, like in the Final Fantasy games and later introduced in LoTRO, this info will also helps with that. In other words, we really need to look at the higher tiers of game play to avoid overkill.

 

[Alex319]

The "Truth Seeker" power is also confusing. What do you mean by "if the target is hostile/unfriendly after the success resolves you kill the target?" I thought the target is automatically (temporarily) friendly after you succeed. And what does "if the target is friendly and were telling the truth" mean? Who is telling who the truth about what? It looks like you are missing some stuff here. And there should probably be a period after the first "you kill the target".

 

[Fjodjont]

Good you asked because this is an essential part of the sword. Like the name says it got something to do whit seeking the truth. We’ll in the novels the handler of the sword can use it to tell if someone is lying or telling the truth. What I mean with the power “Truth Seeker” if an enemy (the hostile / unfriendly) or friend (non hostile / unfriendly) outside of combat and normally you would roll an intimidate check to see if it is lying you can use this power. Then you unveil the same information you normally get with an intimidate check but as a penalty you kill the target. This why it is not something you would do every time instead of an intimidate check because it could be possible that the character would travel with you and because you used this power you killed it. So it should be a well thought choice.