Light magical bastard sword

[SimonML]

So, a player of mine is rather adamant about using two bastard swords for her two handed fighter.
It is a bit strange and certainly not optimal but, he, if that's the way she wants to roll...

Now, I was wondering about designing a magic weapon to go with it.
Basically, my idea was, what I call, a shard sword. Essentially, somebody pierced a hole into the fabric of reality and stuck it at the end of a sword hilt. So, the blade is a shard of utter darkness and void.
And, of course, because it is made out of nothingness, it is weightless and treated as a light weapon (I would also probably make it "Keen" and replace its vulnerability to sunder by one to dispelling magic). But, what do you think this enhancement would be worth?

I am thinking about making it a +1 enhancement bonus. After all, the main effect is that the weapon deals 1d10 instead of the 1d6 she'd be dealing with a short sword, so it's effectively a +2 bonus to damage rolls, in average and that's not better than the +3.5 she would get from a flaming sword which is also a +1 enhancement...

Do you guys agree?

[MendedWall12]

Just wanted to throw something at you for frame of reference. 3.5 has a spell called Black Blade of Disaster, that essentially creates (temporarily mind you) almost exactly what it is you are talking about. You might want to take a look at it and base your creation off of a scaled down version of that. It must have been a spell that was not released under the OGL or I'm sure Paizo would have it on their list as well. Perhaps they have a similar spell and I'm not aware of the name of it.

[TOZ]

You may want to reference the sun blade for this.

[MendedWall12]

TOZ wrote:

You may want to reference the sun blade for this.

Yeah, that's much closer than the black blade of disaster. Go with that instead. :) (This is not meant to be snarky, I'm being serious.)

[Charlie Bell]

Artifact-level. That would be like brilliant energy except that it works against anything and probably ignores any kind of hardness/DR. Probably would be shut down by the likes of dimensional anchor or forbiddance.

I created such a weapon many years ago--then saw Black Blade of Disaster and thought, hey, that looks familiar...

[SimonML]

Wow, thanks to both of you.

Both of these are great and fairly close from what I have in mind (I did not believe I was particularly creative, I just couldn't find anything).

Both are quite a bit more powerful than what I had in mind, however.

Let me starts from the sun blade, as it seems closer from what I have in mind:
The price of 50,335 is pretty close from the 50,000gp recommended for a +5 enhancement bonus weapon...
-It is a +2 bastard sword (+2 enhancement)
-It works as a bane weapon against undead (+1 enhancement)
-It works as a bane weapon against Negative Energy Plane creatures (+1 enhancement)
-It generates sunlight like illumination (unknown level enhancement)
-It gives a penalty to evil creatures (useful if you are afraid of your enemy stealing your sword from you).
-It is a bastard sword but use the short sword statistics when more advantageous (unknown level enhancement).

So, based on that, it would seem like both the sunlight illumination and the enhancement I want are too minor to even qualify as a full level enhancement.

So, I guess, I could add "invulnerability to sunder" on top of it and maybe another minor other effect and that'd be about worth a +1 enhancement.
And, as a twist, I might rule that the blade itself is not magical, it is, literally, "nothing", what is magical is the anchor of the blade to the hilt. So, casting "dispel magic" does not dispel the blade, instead, the blade is no longer anchored and stay in position, floatting in mid-air... but that'd mean that you can't bring the weapon within an antimagic field... which might have annoying gameplay effects...

I am also thinking about adding "ghost touch" to the item after all, ghosties do still exist on our plane of reality, so cutting reality in half should affect them just the same...

That'd sounds like a pretty good weapon already, I think... What's your opinion?

Anyway, thanks for your help guys!

[SimonML]

Wow, sorry guys, by the time I wrote that down, there were a bunch more answers...