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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3348323" data-attributes="member: 4937">The sword of sharpness (and its kindred the vorpal sword) has since 1st edition been a problimatic object.&nbsp; No 1st edition DM I ever met of put one in the hands of a player.&nbsp; It's just too broken.Even back in first edition, I house ruled the weapon.&nbsp; I used the rules from the old critical hit charts ('Good hits and bad misses'?) in my game.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Even this is IMO at least a +3 enhancement modifier.&nbsp; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3348323, member: 4937"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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