Making truly unique weapons and armor

[Taason the Black]

GMs, have you ran campaigns that you have allowed or taken the time to allow, truly unique magic items in them? Im not talking about a sword +2 with flaming ability. Im talking about weapons with personality (intelligence) and/or backstory.

Im a little torn with this. I am a PC in an AP that many of the players just do not put a lot of time into the game. On one hand, I can understand not getting the attention to detail when no one else does but if they are unwilling to put in the time, why should my game or enjoyment of the game diminish? I like the idea of the halberd that glows sickly purple, drains hit points and basically hates all living (has the essence of a wraith or life hating being inside of it). I want to quest to build or have the weapon built and I want it, once i have labored to finally have it, be something that people look at and say "things wont end well with THAT thing around..."

Do you guys allow this in your games? Have you had much experience with players that wanted more than the typical vanilla armor and weapons?

[I Hate Nickelback]

I'm running a campaign where the party gets weapons I call "Godbane" weapons. They bypass DR/Epic. Story wise, a solar sacrificed his life force for the party to be able to defeat a god. The weapons will cripple the god due to the holy power of an extremely powerful martyred angel.

[Dasrak]

Quote:

I like the idea of the halberd that glows sickly purple, drains hit points and basically hates all living (has the essence of a wraith or life hating being inside of it)

Magic weapons that glow are normal (about 30% of all magic weapons). The rules are mum as to whether this is random or if the crafter controls this at the time of creation. Check with your GM; I'd certainly allow it if a player wanted a specific color glow.

As for the "hastes all living", you can actually treat that as fluff if you don't want to go for full-fledged ego. Magic items have magic auras; they don't need to have an ego or an intelligence to have some kind of an emotional impression that the wielder can field. So long as the effect isn't mechanical, sky is the limit.

As far as I'm concerned, every magic weapon is unique and reflects its creator, its history, and its owners (past and present). Magic items are rare, auspicious things. Even a bog-standard +1 longsword costs more than most people will ever see in their lifetime, and people take note when they change hands. Each and every one of them should have their own unique history and style. While the circumstances may not always merit embellishment, the GM should be ready to describe any magic item in great detail.

Now, as for custom effects like life-draining, that's up to your GM as to how to handle it.

[Mike Franke]

I have always prefered the magic items are unique approach but in Pathfinder where every pc is loaded with magic, it can eventually become an accounting nightmare for a GM to make everything cool and flavorful. I try to at least have a few standout items one for each PC at least. A PC may have a ring of prot, belt of dex, cloak of whatever,etc. but he realy comes to cherish his ebon crystal "Amulet of the Forbidden. It might start out as simply natural armor but over time I add to it based on the campaign and the character. If you played Living Arcanis you get the idea. The magic items all had back stories and a lot of it scaled with level.

[Taason the Black]

I have always preferred the one big magic item and less supporting magic items approach. I do get the point where a PC with so much magic items just loses its luster. Its like giving a kid too many toys and he cant appreciate them.

My GM is very hesitant of intelligent weapons. He feels like they eventually control the person and things turn bad. Do you guys add some kind of fail safe for this?

[Major_Blackhart]

In terms of unique items that do something special, a lot of homemade campaigns I've played in sometimes revolve around such a thing. Even Pathfinder itself is steeped in this, from Rise of the RUne Lords to Kingslayer to the awesome Shattered Star AP.

The truth is, these weapons though should come with a price to wielding them, a curse or a penalty of some sort.
I had a greatsword for my Inquisitor of Gorum in one game that took place in the River Kingdoms (Tymon specifically) to fight against the ever encroaching powers of Razmir.
My weapon's personality basically forbade me from doing anything cowardly or underhanded in combat (can't sneak attack if I had the option to, can't perform dirty tricks) and if I tried to sneak, it would start yelling and bellowing in anger, quite loudly.
Subterfuge would be difficult as well, as it would grant my character a penalty to that, though it gave a monstrous bonus to Intimidation and enhanced my Bane and intimidation based abilities a ton. The weapon also despised assassins, poisoners, cowards, etc, the banes of all good battles.

It basically made me in some ways perform like an Avatar of Gorum would. It shifted my alignment to Chaotic Neutral after a time, and whenever I tried to do something the sword considered outside of Gorum's allowed rules, I had to enter into a battle of wills.

My point is that these weapons can make your GM throw insanely difficult enemies at you, but they can make play outside of combat insanely fun and flavorful, as well as memorable.

You want to create a weapon that despises life? Give it the essence of a daemon that was once a serial murderer, and it forces you to on occasion try to let it wet its beak. It talks back, it fights you on many occasions, even in combat. Make it unruly. They can be really, really fun, believe me.

[RedSectorX]

Anyone here read Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson? Excellent take on an intelligent weapon. (Awesome book as well)

The concept behind it is one can basically infuse their "soul" (I use this term loosely as it is not actually their soul, but their "color", read the book to understand it better) in an inanimate objects and make them move, the closer they are to living creatures (ie: leather, straw, etc) the easier it is to work with. People can give their souls to other people, and the more souls you put into an object the more life like they act, and they act only to your will. Each object can only do one thing when initially being brought to life, the more complex the order the harder to awaken it. Bringing metal to life is considered an impossibility, as it was never living, but after pouring a ridiculous amount of souls into it someone managed to awaken a Sword, the act it was given upon being awakened was "Slay Evil". It wasn't able to move around like other objects in the book, but it was able to speak telepathically to its holders.

The issue was, it was a sword, it had never been alive. It didn't know who was evil or what evil was for that matter. When someone tried to use it, it immediately began to drain the user's color(soul) at an incredible rate, meanwhile it cut through any other person or weapon with ease, but when they ran out of "color" they died. Anyone near it with less than noble intentions felt an irresistable urge to pick it up and draw the blade from its sheath. Whenever someone touched it, it would talk to them, "Do you want to slay evil?"

[Major_Blackhart]

Another example of an end all weapon the GM came up with was for my Gorumite Cavalier. (Yeah, I got a thing for the war god)

Anyway, it was eventually identified as the Blade of the Wrathful Challenger.
It was a +2 Keen Courageous Valiant Mithral Greatsword. In addition, whenever my character challenged a creature, he came under the effects of the Vengeful Outrage and Wrath spells, which affected only the challenged enemy and lasted until the end of the challenge.

Needless to say, thanks to Vengeful Outrage, my character was pretty much compelled to rip any challenger to pieces almost immediately, ending any and all fights pretty damn quickly.

[Lord Pendragon]

I definitely like giving weapons unique backstories and appearances. However, after a lot of experimentation, I think it takes a very experienceed and dedicated GM to start making up unique magical effects while keeping things balanced.

That said, I now prefer to limit my creativity to the backstory and look of unique magic items, while attempting to hew closely to the rules on its abilities. This allows me to create items the PCs will think are cool, without worrying that I've given one PC an item that is vastly more powerful than anything else the others might get.

The exception to this are little fun items that have uses, but aren't really for combat. One of my most successful magic items ever was a belt that doubled your encumbrance limit. The halfling who claimed it absolutely *loved* the thing, and all it did was let him carry more stuff. :)

[Grizzly the Archer]

I've had my fair share of artifacty/ intelligent items. There's always a good backstory and some powerful abilities, but there always seem to be a plot hook. It adds for more roleplay so it's ok either way.