Why was the Sword of Sharpenss removed in the 3.x rule set?

[Ardenian]

im currently trying to get my DM to re-instate that item into our geme setting...

 

[Beckett]

It cut off limbs, an act which carries with it all sorts of reprecussion. Shouldn't someone die from the blood loss? Or shock? What attack penalties, or movement penalties? And how should it be rated plus-wise?

The vorpal weapon is easy. It cuts off heads and the target dies. Instant death effect. Sword of Sharpness is a lot more complicated.

 

[frankthedm]

You'll notice the 3E game designers went through a lot of trouble removing most magic effects / monster abilities that targeted limbs and whatnot. Only the hydra has hit locations out of nessesity.

 

[Mistwell]

I don't know of any good reason why it was removed. I believe there are called shot rules in Unearthed Arcana, and I think those could be adapted to the sword.

 

[green slime]

It cut off limbs, an act which carries with it all sorts of reprecussion. Shouldn't someone die from the blood loss? Or shock? What attack penalties, or movement penalties? And how should it be rated plus-wise?

The vorpal weapon is easy. It cuts off heads and the target dies. Instant death effect. Sword of Sharpness is a lot more complicated.

Why are we worrying about bloodloss when high level characters can fall 200 feet, swim in lava, and never suffer from a large number of other real life effects: Altitude sickness, deep vein thrombosis, nitrogen narcosis, or cancer.

Attack and movement penalties only need to be defined to cover general scenarios: Bipeds, quadrapeds, would probably get you quite far. But this is probably the reason; they didn't want a weapon that might cause large amounts of traffic to cust-serv or "the Sage" from people who are uncomfortable deciding things. Some people just need to be handheld.

Rating it plus wise is hardly an insurmountable problem. I'd hazard a guess at one step lower than vorpal.

 

[Tiberius]

Plus, its reinstatement to the ruleset would give the Regenerate spell something to do.

 

[blargney the second]

It cut off limbs, an act which carries with it all sorts of reprecussion. Shouldn't someone die from the blood loss?

Two words: muscular action.

 

[Felix]

K.I.S.S.

That's why.

 

[Mistwell]

This might be a good place to start:

http://boards1.wizards.com/archive/index.php/t-606837.html

 

[Celebrim]

im currently trying to get my DM to re-instate that item into our geme setting...

The sword of sharpness (and its kindred the vorpal sword) has since 1st edition been a problimatic object. No 1st edition DM I ever met of put one in the hands of a player. It's just too broken.

Even back in first edition, I house ruled the weapon. I used the rules from the old critical hit charts ('Good hits and bad misses'?) in my game. Rather than ruling that the weapon automatically severed limbs on a modified 20+, I ruled that it a automatically allowed a roll on the critical hit chart on a modified 20+ which allowed the same thing but meant that 66+% of the time it just did more damage rather than the problimatic limb or head removed bit. Even then, such a weapon never was put in the hands of a PC.

What I would suggest in 3rd edition to make the sharpness attribute managable is that the 'sharpness' attribute allows you to automatically confirm a critical hit on any target vulnerable to critical hits, and to do critical hits even to targets normally immune to critical hits. Even this is IMO at least a +3 enhancement modifier. Under this system, a 'vorpal weapon' is any weapon that has both the 'sharpness' and 'keen' modifiers, so a +1 vorpal sword (+1 keen sharpness) is equivalent to a +5 weapon.