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View Full Version : D&D 3.x Other Thirteen Blades of the Necromancer (Artifacts, PEACH)



Jormengand
2016-02-28, 06:57 PM
Over a decade ago, the necromancer Skrittek created a crystal that was meant to poison an entire country. The power of the crystal was so great that any creature who touched it was instantly slain, and became an undead wight. Even wearing adamantine gauntlets only partially protected the creature handling them, and even standing too close could be dangerous.

Skrittek was fortunately defeated by great heroes, although their leader died smashing the crystal. Worse, the crystal's power was not stopped, only divided into the thirteen fragments. Worse, each one still had the power to kill with a touch. To prevent this, the heroes' craftsman encased each one in magically-treated adamantine, specially designed to prevent the crystals from ever again

Later, the adamantine-coated crystal shards were forged into adamantine swords, each one still bearing a shard of the crystal. Recently, the necromancer's power has seeped even through the adamantine. Merely touching one of the weapons swiftly drains a creature to nothingness. Worse, even more power is moving through the adamantine coating every day...

Each of these thirteen magically-treated adamantine short swords is nonmagical in its own right, however, a detect magic aimed at one will invariably detect overwhelming necromancy and a detect poison spell will always consider them poisonous. The items are considered "Active" only 10 years after being forged. Any item that so much as touches the item radiates the following auras:

Strong for 1 round per 10 weeks the weapon has been active.
Then moderate for 1 round per week the weapon has been active
Then faint for 1 minute per week the weapon has been active.
Then dim for 10 minutes per week the weapon has been active.

Even touching one of these weapons inflicts 1d4 points of constitution damage, plus one per week the weapon has been active, to the creature who touches it (Fortitude 15 + 1/week active negates), and this repeats each round the weapon is held or each time it is touched against the creature. This is much like a contact or injury poison except that it affects even creatures immune to poison. Undead who touch the sword are healed at the same rate as they would take the constitution damage (they take negative energy damage instead of constitution damage).

This damage can be prevented by wearing gloves, but for each full two weeks the weapon has been active, the radiation's effect grows by a foot, thereby affecting creatures who approach within that range but only if they remain there one full round (contact still affects the creatures normally). The damage dealt is however reduced by 2 for each full foot away from the sword a creature is (so after 10 weeks, a creature contacting the sword takes 1d4+10 damage but a creature 3 feet away only takes 1d4+4).

In any case, the sword's power instantly turns any creature that reaches 0 hit points into a zombie of the same creature, except ignore the clause about dropping HD from class levels (so a barbarian 3/dragon 4 would become an undead 14, not an undead 8) and the clause that prevents zombies being made from creatures with more than 10 hit dice.

The swords stop getting more powerful after 30 weeks, after which point they are as powerful as the crystal itself. By this point, the swords will start spreading their power to anything they touch. Even after about 10 weeks, even adamantine or lead is no longer quite safe to touch the swords with. A sword left to its own devices will slowly poison the surrounding area and the people who travel with them.

The swords' powers can be regressed. The following spells can be cast on the sword to turn back the swords' powers:

Delay poison: 1 day.
Lesser Restoration: 3 days.
Neutralise Poison/Dispel Magic/Restoration: 1 week.
Greater Dispel Magic: 10 days.
Restoration, Limited Wish: 2 weeks.
Antimagic Field: 18 days.
Wish, Miracle, Disjunction: 3 weeks. Disjunction does not destroy the weapons.

In addition, certain materials will block some of the swords' necromantic power:

Leather, wood, etc.: 1 week's worth of power per inch.
Common metal: 3 weeks' worth of power per inch.
Stone: 5 weeks' worth of power per inch.
Lead: 8 weeks' worth of power per inch.
Adamantine: 10 weeks' worth of power per inch.
Magically-treated adamantine: 5 years per inch. The magical treatment of adamantine requires the use of 10 greater restoration spells over as many days as well as spending the entire time working, to produce as much adamantine as was used in each one of the weapons.

This means that it is safe to hold the swords in leather gloves for a few weeks, but it quickly becomes more dangerous to use them. As is perhaps evident, even the magically treated adamantine is prone to being taken over by the sword's power.

While the effects of the crystals on creatures more than 15 feet away are not dangerous on a round-by-round timescale, they are dangerous over a long time. The crystals' effects spread through water and soil, gradually poisoning people. In general, people within 9 miles of an exposed crystal are endangered within just one day of the crystal's exposure, although this is dependent on terrain type (rocky deserts are less prone than wetlands to this effect). This effect isn't linear: it travels a little less each day: 8 on the second, 7 on the third, 6 on the fourth, and so on. This limits the crystal's influence to 45 miles. Creatures within the range of influence take 1d4 points of constitution damage every day and rise as zombies if they are killed from the constitution damage. A fortitude save negates this effect: the DC is between 40 and 10: divide the distance into 30ths (for example, 1/3 of a mile increments on the first day) and creatures on the very edge of the effect take the DC 10, and the DC increases by 1 for each increment closer they are. You may wish to divide into only 6 increments (each of 4.5 miles on the third day, for example), each of which represents a +5 DC increase, to make it easier to calculate this.

Obviously, the DM should not bother rolling a fortitude save for each and every creature affected! Instead, if it becomes relevant how many creatures are affected, roll a single fortitude save for an entire community. If it is passed exactly or failed by 1, then about half of the creatures are affected. Alter this by 5% (fewer for a higher roll, more for a lower) for each point difference from this. If the roll is failed by 10 or more, all creatures are affected; if it is passed by 10 or more, none are.

The swords only start having this effect after 10 weeks, and they only have 1/15 of the power for each week after 10th. This means on the 11th week the distance is only 3 miles (on this scale, it's much easier to assume that the increase in distance is linear, and so is 3/7 of a mile every day, rather than dealing with even weirder fractions) and the save DC only goes between 10 and 12. However, on a failure, the damage is still 1d4.

The swords themselves are nonmagical even though they are magically treated, and are most certainly not artifacts, so they can be destroyed much as any other adamantine. Then, the following steps must be taken to destroy each actual crystal:


Place the crystal in an overlapping Hallow and Consecrate effect.
Cast Wish, Miracle, Disjunction or Greater Restoration on the crystal
Cast Disintegrate on the crystal (This doesn't actually disintegrate it).
Smash the crystal with a bludgeoning weapon with at least a +5 effective bonus.


Alternatively, it is possible to join the crystals together. Any necromancy spell of at least 3rd level that creates any number of undead creatures can instead be directed at two crystals held together and they will join and their power double.



Obviously, they're a bit complicated, but I'm happy to handle that (and if you want to use them too, you aren't obliged to follow the rules to the letter - better to have more rules and some people ignore them than fewer and some people are looking for rules that aren't there). More to the point, I'd rather PEACHes focus on anything about the items that doesn't work, or that is massively out-of-proportion with the other effects, or that you actually don't even understand, or whatever else.

Asmodean_
2016-03-06, 01:41 PM
Finally found this! My DM has been using it and I'm pretty sure he wanted them to be destroyed by the PCs.
I'm pretty sure that Amnestria (Elf/NE/Drd3) wants them all not so she can rid the world of them but to reform the crystal.
Why?

"But... but... zombie army! I want it!"

Still don't know what happened to her original goal of finding her birth parents. She seems pretty easily distracted. Meanwhile I'm trying to keep at least one of the swords so she doesn't get all of them. It's disconcerting that the one of us who isn't a drow is acting more like a drow than the one who is a drow (Vergil: Drow/CN/Sor2). I mean, I wasn't the one to massacre an entire goblin village with the excuse "No Witnesses".

Jormengand
2016-03-06, 01:46 PM
Finally found this! My DM has been using it and I'm pretty sure he wanted them to be destroyed by the PCs.
I'm pretty sure that Amnestria (Elf/NE/Drd3) wants them all not so she can rid the world of them but to reform the crystal.
Why?

"But... but... zombie army! I want it!"

Still don't know what happened to her original goal of finding her birth parents. She seems pretty easily distracted. Meanwhile I'm trying to keep at least one of the swords so she doesn't get all of them. It's disconcerting that the one of us who isn't a drow is acting more like a drow than the one who is a drow (Vergil: Drow/CN/Sor2). I mean, I wasn't the one to massacre an entire goblin village with the excuse "No Witnesses".

Goddammit man, you're not supposed to read the artifact descriptions of the artifacts that I specifically made for that game!

(Also on the "Do not do" list:

- Picking a fight with an 11th-level paladin.
- Getting kicked out of multiple countries.
- Critically hitting all the things I don't want you to critically hit.
- Okay, that last one probably isn't your fault.)

Asmodean_
2016-03-06, 02:20 PM
- Picking a fight with an 11th-level paladin.


I'll be honest, that was more "let's distract him with a large wolf while I run away as fast as possible" than "yeah I bet I can take this guy".



- Getting kicked out of multiple countries.

Ok so we're not going to:
Drowland: because we've got an elf
Elfland: because we've got a drow
Orcland: because the elf massacred a village and that might be the sort of thing people would get annoyed at
Nezumeland: because they've tried to assassinate us.
Humanland: because we were kicked out of the police force after one day.



You're not supposed to read the artefact descriptions

I wanted to know if making sure Amnestria didn't have all of the swords would mean she wouldn't be able to "but... but.. zombie army!" with it. Also I forgot what you said dispel magic would do to it.

Asmodean_
2016-03-31, 12:43 PM
PEACHing here:
Until the PCs find out how to deal with the all of the above, it's going to be really hard for any of them to handle any of the swords safely unless someone tries out Dispel Magic (or any of the other spells listed above). However, any 5th+ caster (or even a 3rd level druid) can easily keep them under wraps as long as they're always in possession of them, as long as they know what to do with them.

Currently, Vergil and Amnestria have secured two of the thirteen swords for reasons unreasonable. As a 3rd level druid, Amnestria can cast delay poison on the swords once every three days (each) to keep the swords at their current level: dealing 1d4 constitution damage on hit, but nothing to its wielder if wearing gloves. This uses two thirds of a 2nd level spell slot per day on average, easily affordable.

If/when the PCs gain information on how to use the swords safely, the entire campaign becomes much easier. No more attempting (and failing1) to put them in a bag and lead it behind you on a rope like a dog. Just cast a spell every once in a while. Inevitably, the main driving force behind the PCs will become how the hell do I not die from having this thing?

However, making the information here too hard to ascertain would mean the players could lose interest.

Previously, Vergil and Amnestria wanted nothing to do with swords of +5 induce hemorrhoids2 so they wanted to get rid of them as quickly as reasonably possible - in this case, by selling them illicitly to some interested buyers. For a while, they had almost lost two plot tokens for a few thousand gp3.

Of course, if somebody wants to take the swords for reasons other than destroy the last artefact of evil necromancer etc. etc. then they become more precious - but it's all too easy for them to just become vendor trash. "Oh cool another sword of technetium4 I can sell that for like 5000gp!"

1 I rolled a natural one on a use rope check. I FAILED TO TIE A ROPE AROUND AN INANIMATE OBJECT.
2 IDK probably.
3 Not-so-subtle plug for this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?481648-The-One-Sane-Drow)
4 Also not a hat. +20 internet points if you get that reference.