How can a player wield a colossal whip?

[Rezialn]

So how would one go about making a character that can wield a colossal sized whip without having penalties, and, would a whip that size do lethal damage to medium creatures even though they normally do non-lethal damage?

[Divide by Zero]

Easiest way would be to be Colossal yourself (or Gargantuan with Monkey Grip or a similar ability). E.g. getting access to the spell Giant Size by some means.

By RAW, it always deals nonlethal damage.

[TheCrowing1432]

Dagger Whips do lethal damage, Mighty Dagger Whips apply your strength mod.

[Rezialn]

Easiest way would be to be Colossal yourself (or Gargantuan with Monkey Grip or a similar ability). E.g. getting access to the spell Giant Size by some means.

By RAW, it always deals nonlethal damage.

Seems not super practical. You still need to transport the whip around so you'd have to pull it out of a portable hole or something. Any way a medium or large character could just drag the whip around?

[Phelix-Mu]

Nagaika, from Masters of the Wild, is lethal damage, awesome, and still 3.5-usable, since it was never updated, AFAIK.

[Uncle Pine]

So how would one go about making a character that can wield a colossal sized whip without having penalties, and, would a whip that size do lethal damage to medium creatures even though they normally do non-lethal damage?

Combine the Enlarge Weapon spell with the Sizing weapon property (in this order).

EDIT: Remember that wielding a Colossal weapon doesn't increase your reach.

[AvatarVecna]

There's various spells that can increase weapons size and character size. Unfortunately, both almost universally come with penalties: weapons of a different size than you give you a penalty to attack, unless you have an ability (such as Powerful Build) that allows you to do so; similarly, any actual size increases come with a penalty to attack (from your new size). The simplest way to avoid penalties to is to find options that increase the effective size of you or your weapon without actually increasing them. Also, effects that increase your damage die are effectively raising your weapon's effective size without actually increasing your weapons effective size, allowing it to stack with them, should there be a stacking issue. Here are some methods of doing so that can possibly be combined:

1) Powerful build: this is a racial feature of a select number of races: goliath and half-giant come to mind, and I have no doubt that there are third party and homebrew races featuring this ability. What's important for your purposes is that it allows a creature who possesses it to wield weapons as if they were both their true size and the size above it; although the races that possess it are naturally medium, and therefore can wield large weapons without penalty, this ability will size up with them, unless the effect sizing them up says otherwise (such as the Goliath Barbarian racial substitution Rage, which specifically says that it temporarily replaces the Powerful Build benefits).

2) Greater Mighty Wallop increases your weapons effective size by (CL/4), up to a maximum of Colossal. This is the go-to spell for oversized weapon builds. It should be noted that, since this is often a non-permanent effect, it would apply after more permanent effective-weapon size-increasing effects (such as a weapon enchantment).

3) Might Wallop (the lesser version of the above spell) increases your weapon effective size by 1. I only mention it because, unlike its greater version, it has no maximum size limit by RAW. Now, there's certainly a fair number of DMs who would rule that it has the same maximum, but unless the DM rules it to be so, there is no such limit. Now, because of the rules regarding stacking effects, I'm pretty sure that, even by RAW, you can't just give yourself a ton of continuous Mighty Wallop magic items and wield a weapon that is to Colossal as Colossal is to Fine. I'm also unsure of the RAW regarding casting Greater Mighty Wallop and then casting Mighty Wallop; even if some torture of RAW would allow it, no DM would let it fly on general principle. In any case, should you have

4) Forceful Weapon Enchantment increases a weapons damage die by one step each time it's taken (maximum of three).

5) Strongarm Bracers give whoever wears them the equivalent of Powerful Build; it doesn't stack with Powerful Build, though, so just keep that in mind.


With the above information, I believe a Medium character wearing Strongarm Bracers and under the effect of a CL 12 Greater Mighty Wallop could pull it off; this requires no LA, no Powerful Build, and no weapon enchantments, only a couple relatively affordable magic items.

Just a couple things: firstly, increasing effective weapon size doesn't increase a reach weapon's reach (since it's based on your reach); it also doesn't increase the reach of a whip, since a whip's reach is a set number. Also, I've thought of a few ways to use the stuff I've found here in a few rather broken ways...

[Uncle Pine]

2) Greater Mighty Wallop increases your weapons effective size by (CL/4), up to a maximum of Colossal. This is the go-to spell for oversized weapon builds. It should be noted that, since this is often a non-permanent effect, it would apply after more permanent effective-weapon size-increasing effects (such as a weapon enchantment).

3) Might Wallop (the lesser version of the above spell) increases your weapon effective size by 1. I only mention it because, unlike its greater version, it has no maximum size limit by RAW. Now, there's certainly a fair number of DMs who would rule that it has the same maximum, but unless the DM rules it to be so, there is no such limit. Now, because of the rules regarding stacking effects, I'm pretty sure that, even by RAW, you can't just give yourself a ton of continuous Mighty Wallop magic items and wield a weapon that is to Colossal as Colossal is to Fine. I'm also unsure of the RAW regarding casting Greater Mighty Wallop and then casting Mighty Wallop; even if some torture of RAW would allow it, no DM would let it fly on general principle.

Note that Mighty Wallop and its Greater variant only apply to bludgeoning weapons and whips are slashing weapons.

[Gemini476]

Also, note that size categories above Collossal do not exist unless you're an epic dragon. (And even then that's pretty much restricted to their natural weapons.)

[Divide by Zero]

Seems not super practical. You still need to transport the whip around so you'd have to pull it out of a portable hole or something. Any way a medium or large character could just drag the whip around?

Anyone with a sufficiently high Strength score can drag it around, you just won't be able to attack with it unless you're big enough.

[AvatarVecna]

There's ways to change a weapons damage value. If nothing less clunky can be found, take Improved Unarmed Strike, Superior Unarmed Strike, and Versatile Unarmed Strike; now take the Adaptive enchantment on your whip. Now you've got bludgeoning on your whip, and you can make it count as Colossal with Greater Mighty Wallop; in addition, the base damage is now much higher.

As for no sizes above Colossal by RAW for damage, don;t tell me that, tell every Colossal+ fisted monk build ever made. It's ridiculous, whether it's RAW legal or not.

[Urpriest]

The thing is, since a colossal whip doesn't have longer reach and the base damage die is so small there's no reason to use one. You might say you're wanting to use it for flavor of using an enormous whip, but since you can't do anything with the extra length you can't do anything in character that would show off that flavor, so you don't get that benefit either. Plus, Colossal is a very specific size, too specific to come from flavor considerations anyway, unless you stole the whip from a Dragon or something.

[torrasque666]

4) Forceful Weapon Enchantment increases a weapons damage die by one step each time it's taken (maximum of three).

Is that 1st party? Because the sources I'm saying say its from Bastion Press.