Malako's page

Gamin can activate guidance at his own direction, which means the character need not use an action to command him. The guidance aspect is only possible when a PC wields Gamin, which is to say hold him in a hand. That was a development choice to keep someone from saying that Gamin just casts guidance every round of every hour of every day. My intention is not to weigh in on the definition of wield in other discussions, but this is how our friendly, flawed sword is intended to operate.

Good to know, that makes sense. The question about "holding" vs. "wielding" came up because my wife is thinking about buying Gamin for her monk/paladin; in combat she would always be holding the sword, but not necessarily wielding it (going by the Defending usage of the term) if she's flurrying with her unarmed strikes on that round.

I thought this was a really good scenario and am really looking forward to GMing it. I played it as a LG tengu inquisitor who worships Shizuru (goddess of sun, honor, and swordplay), so of course he loves Gamin. I hope that whenever there's a boon to re-forge Gamin, there's an option to turn him into a different type of sword; I'd love to use Gamin as his primary weapon, but my tengu specializes in two-handed swords, so I can't really justify that over a nodachi or greatsword...

I'm a little confused about how Gamin's guidance ability is supposed to work, however. The description on page 6 says, "when held he can cast guidance on his wielder at will." The rules for an intelligent item's powers say, "All powers function at the direction of the item, although intelligent items generally follow the wishes of their owner. Activating a power or concentrating on an active one is a standard action the item takes." Does Gamin need to actually be held to use his ability, or can he use it even if he's sheathed? There's also been a lot of confusion in the past over exactly what the term "wield" means -- see all of the arguments about the Defending weapon property -- and I believe the consensus there is that you must actually attack with a weapon to be considered to be wielding it in that round.