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View Full Version : Artifact: The Twin Blades of Blood and Honour [PEACH]



Aidan305
2010-11-22, 06:49 PM
I've had this idea for a pair of swords for a while now, but I've only recently gotten around to getting them down on paper. They're intended as a set of artifacts for my Pathfinder group to find at some point, but I'm having some issues with working out the balance.

My intention is that the cursed sword, Blood, empowers the wielder to a large extent by continually replenishing their health. The name of the weapon was inspired by the sword from the Final Fantasy series and I'm well aware of the dangers such an item can pose to the balance of a game which is why I want it to have its own risks as well, hence the curse of Blood. Honour exists as a way of relieving the curse to some extent.

What would ideally happen would be that the wielder of Blood would, as a full-round action, be gaining the temp HP from dealing damage to the enemy and immediately spreading it around the party with his other attacks from Honour.

So without further ado, here they are:

The Twin Blades of Blood and Honour

Blood:
The steel of this slim blade seems scarred and pitted. Within it faint red flecks seem to glow with an unearthly radiance.

On it’s own, Blood acts as a +3 Wounding Longsword. It’s true power comes in to being, however, when matched with its twin: Honour.

If wielded by someone within the same group as Honour, Blood’s true nature awakens and it gains the following abilities:

Sanguinary Consumption:
When used to deal lethal damage, Blood grants a number of temporary hit points to its wielder equal to the amount of damage it deals.

Blood’s Curse:
The power of a wielder of Blood is legend. But the cursed blade always thirsts. Every time the wielder enters battle and does not use Blood, the sword punishes him by draining 2 points of wisdom.
Furthermore, should the wielder of Blood ever gain enough temporary hit points to put them at twice their maximum health, it will devour their essence. Within one round of reaching this number they will be fatigued, after the second the will be exhausted, and after the third round, they will die. The only way to prevent this from occurring is to use Honour’s ability Aid the Fallen to transfer the hit points to an ally.


Honour:
The steel of this blade is warm to touch and glows with a faint silver light.

On it’s own, Honour acts as a +1 Brilliant Energy Short Sword. It’s true power comes in to being, however, when matched with its twin: Blood.

If wielded by someone within the same group as Blood, Honour’s true nature awakens and it gains the following ability:

Aid the Fallen:
When used to deal damage to an ally, Honour instead deals the damage to its wielder, granting the ally a number of hit points equal to the damage done. These hit points may not bring the target above their maximum health. Aid the Fallen may not be used on an enemy of the wielder.

Silverscale
2010-11-22, 07:18 PM
As written both swords would have to be used by the same person since Honour's power states that the hit-points come from the one using it.

Aidan305
2010-11-22, 07:23 PM
As written both swords would have to be used by the same person since Honour's power states that the hit-points come from the one using it.

Correct. The "Within the Same Group" clause is there so that players don't hand a sword to someone else in the group so that they don't have to deal with Blood's Curse.

FishAreWet
2010-11-22, 07:35 PM
Healing in combat is almost always a complete waste of an action. Forcing it on someone sucks. What is the real incentive to use Blood? A standard battle will nearly always result in dealing more damage then your own HP. Unless these Temp HP don't stack, and in that case, Blood is an amazing weapon.

Allow HP to be channeled from Honour as a swift action. Which affects multiple allies. From a range. Otherwise it will never be worth it.

Aidan305
2010-11-22, 08:03 PM
Healing in combat is almost always a complete waste of an action. Forcing it on someone sucks. What is the real incentive to use Blood? A standard battle will nearly always result in dealing more damage then your own HP. Unless these Temp HP don't stack, and in that case, Blood is an amazing weapon.

I suppose the point of Blood at the moment is that it effectively negates the need for healing while you have allies around. As long as they're there you can go toe-to-toe with a Balor and stand a decent chance of winning. As such, I need a pretty hefty disadvantage to offset that. I got the idea for the HP going too high from the Plane of Positive Energy where you risk exploding once the temp HP gets too high.

With the suggestion you've made with regard to the temp HP not stacking, I did think about that possibility. As you say, it would be very good, but would (potentially) be less game breaking. As we all know, it's still possible to deal some very large amounts of damage with a longsword. I suppose one of the main problems I had with doing it that way is that I want the weapons to be working in tandem with each other, Blood stacking up the HP and Honour dispersing it among the group.


Allow HP to be channeled from Honour as a swift action. Which affects multiple allies. From a range. Otherwise it will never be worth it.
Again, it's an ability I've thought of adding along the lines of a mass CMW with the wielder losing HP equal to the total healed. Probably in addition to the one it already has. The advantage of the current one is that during a full attack action you can assign one of the attacks from Honour to a player and unleash the others on the enemy, so you're not necessarily having to give up your turn to heal someone when, as a damage dealer, you should be dealing damage.

FishAreWet
2010-11-22, 08:23 PM
Although full round attack does allows you to alternate attacks and healing, range becomes an issue. How often are you in melee with both the monster and the person you want to heal?

Aidan305
2010-11-22, 08:53 PM
I considered that when making the item. It really depends on what sort of creatures you're facing. Against a melee-orientated group, it would probably make them more likely to band together since the threat of a breath-weapon or carefully placed fireball is lessened in those circumstances and they could gain the most benefit from the ability. Against a caster/breath weapon, I suppose it would depend entirely on the circumstances.

For those situations, the Mass cure would be ore useful, since so many caster type enemies tend to specialise in area effects. Perhaps something along the lines of:

As a swift action, all allies within 30ft of you are subject to a CMW spell (CL 5). You take damage equal to the total amount healed.

If Blood is limited to non-stacking temp HP, then the player could have an entertaining time trying to balance out their HP so that unleashing something like this (Average 56 hp healing four people) could prove fairly risky, and would likely take out a substantial chunk of their own health in addition to the temp HP. (I'm certainly starting to come around to the idea that the non-stackign is better.)

I suppose the follow on question from something like that though, is would there be incentive to use it? 56 damage is a lot to any character after all.