RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Hi, Jay. You ask a terrific question.
Intelligent weapons are part-and-parcel of the fantasy mileu, and it would be a shame for the game to lose them.
But they were much more common in AD&D 2nd Edition than in 3rd Edition, for a couple of reasons: all the non-artifact magic items in the game became commodities, manufacturable by the players' wizards and clerics, and the designers didn't want PC's to just be whippin' out intelligent weapons; and they were another "semi-autonomous character," like companion animals, familiars, or cohorts (aka "henchmen"), and a party with too many of those gets seriously bogged down.
So it seems like someone's cast a magical aversion field on the rules systems for intelligent weapons.
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To my way of thinking, many of the issues surrounding enhancing intelligent weapons has to deal with just what an "intelligent weapon" is. There seem to be categories:
1) Undead weapons: Yesss... ssshow my mien to your enemies, my master. Let me sssee them while they ssstill live.
I can imagine some sort of necromantic ritual to bring a bone-and-sinew weapon to intelligent unlife. (Imagine a ranseur with ivory fingers that actually reach out to grab and trip its opponents, or a skull-topped mace that bites its targets, bestowing a negative level on a successful critical.)
2) Golem weapons: Guys, I think you need to drop me unconscious now.
I can imagine weapons enchanted much the same as golems, with elemental spirits raging inside them. The longer you use the weapon, the more it falls into the rhythm of combat, the greater its power, and the harder it is to control. Its intelligence might be limited, or not, but it might bear particular hatred for its opposite element.
3) Artificial Intelligence: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't let you sheathe me.
Once you've enchanted your mace to be holy, disrupting, and undead bane, installing a 'targetting computer' AI is only the next logical step.
Artificially intelligent weapons have a purpose, but no personality. They can't be argued out of their directives. They're never cunning about their purpose. They may be "good" or "benevolent," but they are never merciful or "reasonable". Implacable.
4. Remnant Intelligence Hey, who turned out the lights?
The powerful psion who died accessing her cognizance crystal, now the central gem in a greatsword's hilt. The legendary dwarven hero whose personality imprinted onto his custom-made flaming waraxe +3. The experimental armor of agility, designed to read the mind of its wearer and move in accord with his wishes, unable to "erase" a former user. The spiked chain with the kobold skull embedded into the center ring, with the permanent speak with dead effect still running. ...
Remnant intelligences have personalities, and bits of memory. In stressful circumstances, they may get confused, and the imprinted personality might possess the wielder.
5. Divine Agent Intelligence: You're right, beloved. This would indeed be an impossible shot, if not for the guiding hand of Erastil. Now, let us loose the shaft and trust in the Huntsman.
These weapons are gifts from beyond, bound with the intelligence of an extrapanar servant of a deity.
Divine agent intelligences are probably the rarest type, and aren't likely to stick around long outside the hands of a faithful champion. Fully intelligent, capable of initating actions on their own, and completely devoted to their cause.
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So, I'm enough of a "story-telling" DM to have different rules for each of these. Completing a quest for the patron deity might be enough to enhance a Divine Agent Intelligence item. But a necromancer might just build a new power into her Undead Intelligence nunchuku.
Does that make any sense?
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So, I'm enough of a "story-telling" DM to have different rules for each of these. Completing a quest for the patron deity might be enough to enhance a Divine Agent Intelligence item. But a necromancer might just build a new power into her Undead Intelligence nunchuku.
Does that make any sense?
Please, please, PLEASE post the different rules for each! Please.
Please..........
I have played around with Intelligent items before, and favor them remaining in the game.
Back in 2e, I had the PC find a cowardly +5 longsword. It was great fun to RP a sword that was sceaming to stop swinging him and apologizing to the opponent the whole time.
As to Pathfinder, I think Intelligent items should still be possible, but maybe put a caster level requirement on doing so.
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There's also the possibility of animal-spirit imbued weapons.
Composite bows used by the Mongols were made of bone and hide, and a composite longbow assembled painstakingly from dire hawk bones and sinew might have the intellect of that creature, and imbue a predatory nature to the arrows it fires. Such weapons wouldn't necessarily be spoken to and negotiated with, so much as *trained.* Certain sects of Barbarians, Druids and Rangers might be particularly fond of these sorts of weapons (or armors, or hide cloaks, or whatever).
One might have 'spiked chain' made with Dire Wolf teeth, that gives Improved Trip to it's user. Another might wear a lionhide 'cloak of charisma' that can also help it's wearer to hide in the appropriate terrain, and adds bonuses to his Spot and Listen checks as if he had Alertness. One could find a pair of Gnome-sized 'spiked gauntlets' made from Dire Badger claws that allow one to slip into a Rage +1 time / day and to burrow through soft earth.
As these items would still retain residual traces of the animal's spirit, they might not work for someone who cannot communicate with them and 'befriend them' via Speak with Animals or Wild Empathy.
I seem to recall in Lost Island of Castanamir, you could bind ethereal spirits, "Gingwatzim," with various levels of sentience (and hence power) as magical weapons. Maybe Sean Reynolds could elaborate on that; I seem to recall he did a conversion of them at some point.
If they're intelligent, they're typically susceptable to mind-affecting spells. So yes, you can "enchant" them. Now, if you meant craft them, well, that's a different story...
I'm thinking of things like a Brust's Morganti weapons. Things that express hungers or such.
LOVE 'em. Use 'em in all my campaigns. Maybe Brust will eventually clue us in as to how the Serioli make them (other than the vaguely tantalizing hints in "Issola").
Simply put: Great.
This makes much more sense than simply creating them. I like your post, it makes sense, and I'll surely use it on my games when the time comes (there is a problem, however, that one of my players is staring at me while I type this, so I can't ask a question with more detail...).
The DMG has some information on how to create Intelligent Items, page 288 so you could use those, though I do like the diferent types that have been posed here, and the possibility of different creation methods. I alwasy thoughthat the cookie cutter method of creation magic items was a little bland myself. What if one were to extend the types of inteligent items to types of magic items. If anyone has read the adventures of Del and Tiger, Tiger's sword was just a sword, but it was able to slice thoguh even the thoughest demon hides (and then there is of course the runesword he gets later....uggg)
I'm also waiting some more couple days, and bumping this topic up.
For some ideas on incorporating story-elements into the physical process of creating magic items (particularly metal ones), I'd recommend The Anvil of Ice, The Forge in the Forest, and The Hammer of the Sun by Michael Scott Rohan.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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To create an intelligent item, a character must have a caster level of 15 or higher. Time and creation cost are based on the normal item creation rules, with the market price values on Table 7-30: Item Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and Capabilities treated as additions to time, gp cost, and XP cost. The item's alignment is the same as the creator's. Determine other features randomly, following the guidelines in the relevant sections of this chapter.
So, that's no fun. You need to be 15th Level, and you end up with a weapon sporting random features. Let's take each of the types of intelligent magic items in turn, and see how we'd make them.
Undead weapons:
Well, we'd want more than animate dead here, since we want an intelligent result, and animate dead is really only worthwhile for mindless undead. Create Undead, which clerics and wizards can cast when they reach 11th Level, and which can make ghouls or mummies, seems about right. We're deliberately perverting the poor victim's bones and sinew to make ... non-peopley things, so you could make a good case that the simple spell Desecrate could be necessary, as well.
So, the expense for making a weapon out of old body parts is plausibly the same as making a masterwork weapon (not for the material costs, but for the expense of adjusting the binding materials to get the right balance and for the alchemical processes needed to give bone the hardness it needs to function as a weapon.
Create Undead has a special material cost (an onyx gem, 50 gp per hit point the creator wants to give the weapon, with a maximum of 20), and that needs to be paid, in addition to the other costs that come as parcel to dwoemering up a weapon and bestowing its abilities. The undead awakening is part of the enhancement that brings the weapon it's first +1 weapon bonus. An intelligent undead weapon should have the"unholy" property. (This requirement makes the weapons more expensive, and therefore more of a big deal. Let's keep them freakish and rare.)
The creator decides just how sentient the undead weapon will be (Table 7-30, again), but the unholy weapon's weak mental stat must be Intelligence (see the stats for a Mummy). If the creator wants to place any powers in the weapon, this is the time to do that, and pay the appropriate cost.
The damned thing may well have a Special Purpose, as the creator allows, but the particulars of that goal are up to the DM. That has to do with the personality of the particular undead spirit that inhabits the weapon, and isn't under the creator's control.
Example: Lucien is a creepy old necromancer with a lot of Item Construction feats, who decides he wants an intelligent undead whip that can paralyze its victims.
He goes shopping in the local graveyard and collects the little fingers of 30 corpses, stitches them together, and builds a masterwork whip. He then begins the enhancement process. He casts Desecrate, Create Undead, , Unholy Blight (for "unholy") and Hold Person, and creates a whip with a +2 weapon bonus and the "unholy" property with Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 14, capable of speech , with the lesser power of using hold person on enemies 3/ day (Lucien could install a second lesser power according to Table 7-30, but he chooses not to spend the gold for that.)
So, my friends, critique this example. Does it feel about right to you? If so, we'll go ahead with the other types.
I like that. Back in ye olde dragon days (before Paizo took over) I'd sent a proposal in for 2nd Edition magic item creation that used a similar set up. Love the whip story.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
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Thanks. The whip has a keen tableau: Lucien standing there, still and in his power, while his intelligent bone whip slithers and lashes about him, eager for the fight.
(And, really, I'm a sucker for a good tableau.)
Now, the undead are so popular in D&D that the idea of an undead-based intelligent weapon connects with all sorts of other rules:
- Can a good-aligned cleric turn the weapon?
- Do cure spells damage it?
- What about Holy Water?
I'd suggest that Lucien's Whip be treated as a weapon first, and undead secondarily. Are Holy weapons turned by evil clerics? What happens if you throw Holy Water on an Evil High Priest's Unholy Symbol?
How about: necromantic intelligent weapons are not actually undead: that was only the process through which the weapon was created. Most weapons are made in a forge, but they're not hot any more.
So, they might be turned, theoretically, but they don't have hit dice, so the mechanics don't fit right. I'd recommend trying to affect an undead monster of HD equal to the weapons hit points + 4. On a successful turning, any attack with the weapon, either in melee or through its powers, treats the cleric as if she were under the effects of a sanctuary spell. On a result indicating a successful destruction, the intelligence of the weapon is destroyed, but all the other properties still remain. In Lucien's case, his whip would still be +2 and "unholy", but the malevolent personality and the paralysis special ability would be destroyed.
Cure spells, not so much. The weapon doesn't have that kind of hit points.
Holy Water? It corrupts and turns to vapor upon touching Lucien's Whip.
But, of course, I'm just makin' this up 'cause it feels right. Your DMing May Vary.
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Now, the undead are so popular in D&D that the idea of an undead-based intelligent weapon connects with all sorts of other rules:
- Can a good-aligned cleric turn the weapon?
- Do cure spells damage it?
- What about Holy Water?
Under the 'other uses for Turn / Rebuke' notion (in the PHB, but not the SRD), this would be a good place to house rule that a successful Turn attempt on the undead weapon acts as a targetted Dispel Magic, negating it's powers for 1d4 rounds or something.
If Inflict spells don't affect 'normal' (non-undead) Intelligent Weapons, then Cure spells shouldn't affect Undead Intelligent Weapons. Same for Holy Water. Unless there is some specific reason why Holy (or Unholy) water should affect an item (made from ore from the slopes of Mount Celestia, or made from Baatorian Greensteel), they should just make the item wet.
Under the 'other uses for Turn / Rebuke' notion (in the PHB, but not the SRD), this would be a good place to house rule that a successful Turn attempt on the undead weapon acts as a targetted Dispel Magic, negating it's powers for 1d4 rounds or something.
If Inflict spells don't affect 'normal' (non-undead) Intelligent Weapons, then Cure spells shouldn't affect Undead Intelligent Weapons. Same for Holy Water. Unless there is some specific reason why Holy (or Unholy) water should affect an item (made from ore from the slopes of Mount Celestia, or made from Baatorian Greensteel), they should just make the item wet.
I like the Turn=Dispel idea. It makes a good translation from an undead creature to an undead weapon (or an undead item in general).
I just had a thought on the holy water. The SRD states that holy water acts almost like acid to undead, and that could translate well (literally) to its effects on an undead weapon. Just treat holy water as acid and there you go.
To balance out that vulnerability (and to avoid having to do anything with the Inflict and Cure spells), you could maybe rule that an undead weapon is immune to sundering, since it is not quite an item anymore. That might still maintain balance, but this is just off the top of my head with no books handy :)
Great thread. I can't wait to see the rest of Chris' ideas! Now I just need to figure out where to start plugging these into my Rise of the Runelords campaign...
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