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The Black Blade
One of the coolest things I think I ever saw come out of Pathfinder 1st Edition was this Class Feature that allowed a handful of Classes/Archetypes to get access to an awesome, iconic, and just downright fun intelligent magical item called (in most cases) a Black Blade. This was done VERY well in my opinion and strikes me to this day as one of the things that Paizo polished to a mirror finish with very few flaws or issues with game balance. I want to see this return to Pathfinder Second Edition but I want to just appeal to the powers that be to innovate here.
The Living Weapon is, in my opinion, at LEAST as iconic a concept as "the sexy bard," the superstitious barbarian, or any particular specialist wizard. This is a popular concept in fiction that dates back a VERY long time, not only in TTop RPGs but in video games, literature, poetry, art, movies, and even music.
Don't be lazy, please don't be lazy. I don't want to see this supported with a Class Feat or even a Class-Path for Magus. PLEASE just make it an Archetype that anyone with 14 Charisma can take starting at Level 2, and create Level 4, 8, 12, & 18 Archetype Feats that improve, refine, and empower it. I'd also like to kindly ask that you consider opening the idea up to allowing ANY Simple or Martial Melee Weapon that the PC has access to instead of just trying to balance it around less than a half-dozen options.
Secrets of Magic is THE place to release this type of option and I wanted to start a dedicated discussion for this to appeal to the Purple Golem, and James Jacobs specifically to consider the idea that the Black Blade/Living Weapon concept should NOT just belong in the Magus wheelhouse and to see what others ideas and views on the topic are.
Thoughts, questions, concerns?
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There's a Pathfinder Tales series* by Tim Pratt in which the intelligent sword is in the possession of** a rogue, who found it on a linnorm's hoard.
So they've already got the concept of "not Magus" and "not Fighter" going for them.
*Liar's Blade, Liar's Island, Liar's Bargain
**or the rogue may be in the possession of the blade. Hard to tell.
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I thought you meant Excalibur Junior.
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There's a Pathfinder Tales series* by Tim Pratt in which the intelligent sword is in the possession of** a rogue, who found it on a linnorm's hoard.
Great point! I own several of the PF Tales novels and personally have bemoaned the lack of recent installments in the series and Liar's Blade is actually one that I have sitting in my "to-read" books on my nightstand for when insomnia hits.
Even if an Archetype ends up being Uncommon to prevent this type of thing from being "too popular" that's totally fine, but having a mechanical structure whereby PCs can invest in and improve their friendly (or not) Living Weapon instead of needing to rely on the Intelligent Item Rules from the GMG and constant manual tweaks and adjustments by the GM I think would be very fun and add FAR more to the game as a whole versus providing rules for the Magus (or potentially MC Magus) alone.
Heck, I remember back in the 3.5 days I ran a 4 session game styled after the early Tales of Destiny games that went over great but I do recall statting up the Swordians (The living Weapons central to the plot) was a bit of a pain.
A possible way is to make the weapon a familiar through an archetype, with some exclusive options for them, we already have a mask one, so it's something possible.
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But why not type up some home-brew?
I covered this above but the reason for this is because it requires extra work by myself or the GM in addition to normal game prep and none of us are professional game designers with experience to actually consider all angles of balance and what it might do. I personally have a VERY mixed relationship with Homebrew and over the years I've found it's been for the best to just trust what is published and stop trying to monkey around with things lest you need to ret-con your story or have some custom features go off rails and become disruptive and/or will often show favoritism toward one or more Players.
But more seriously isn't what you are after like being given an intelligent relic weapon in the GMG? Why do you need an AT to get one?
Not at all, Relics are essentially just items with cool at-will Cantrip effects that are tied to a given Theme which grow in scale and number with level and are "Optional rules" in the first place. I'd much prefer this type of functionality to mechanically encoded in a way that's balanced with Class Feats so that you can actually invest in the concept to improve/empower it instead of needing to rely on GM fiat and whims.
My general point is that I have full faith that a Living Weapon concept is one that is interesting/engaging enough to be worthy of an Archetype, hell, if Acrobat and Linguist are strong enough niches (Both of which were formerly more/less just Backgrounds tied to specific Skills) to warrant an Archetype the "Living Weapon/Black Blade" concept certainly is worthy in my opinion.
I think it is pretty telling that lots of folks came here thinking I was talking about their SPECIFIC favorite talking/living sword and frankly I think that alone says enough about this in that the "meme" of it is certainly popular enough to strongly consider adding official support for well balanced player-facing Rules that 1) Could be used for Organized PLay & 2) Don't require homebrew or 3PP inclusion for home games.