| Befarr |
Am i right in thinking you have a problem with Vorpal weapons becasue of the frequency it destroys your main NPC bad guy by taking his head?
You mention the persons increased chance of Crit with feats etc well i am sure the vorpal requires a hit of a natural 20 to work otherwise it is just a crit. You could tone it down if you feel it is still unbalancing within your game by only allowing the vorpal effect to occur when the roll to confirm the crit is also a threat role perhaps.
I have a vorpal within my campaign that has been running some 9 years now however it is in the hands of the rogue and although he has taken a few heads in his time it happens much less than i thought it may when i chose to place such a rare and powerful weapon within the parties reach.
Agreed with others comments regarding the removal of items from a overly obvious party by any means at the disposal of a rich NPC ( ie paying rogues to steal or wizards to intervene ) however again this can become tiresome when you resort to it more than once.
Balancing a game with the items we place in it is one of the hardest duties of a DM and even with almost 30 years of DMing i still find it hard yet the look on a players face when he finds out what his new item can do is priceless
Thanks for listening/reading
Befarr