Blog

D&D Ideas — Weapons

Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is weapons, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Magical weapons can be transformative treasures for any character and become a core part of their adventuring identity. Glaive of Wizardry is a magic weapon designed for squishy spellcasters to give them a cool melee option. Nerdarchist Ted created our very first Monthly Magic Item Card as the signature weapon of a powerful hobgoblin antagonist in a monthly game he ran on Nerdarchy Live and decided to share it with the D&D community. Beware the wizard wielding this legendary weapon! Find out more about it here. You can get the Nerdarchy Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.

Nerdy News

Invoke the spirits of the week that was! Get all runed up for battle, make contact with the other side and clown around with top 10 homebrew Bard Colleges plus new live chats with creative folks and industry pros and live game play rounding out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.

Delving Dave’s Dungeon

Weapons feature prominently in stories form myths and legends. The Sword in the Stone, Excalibur, lightsabers, the Deathstar, Blackrazor, the Mace of St. Cuthbert and so many more. In a game like fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons it’s easy to emphasize these items as powerful weapons and ignore their greater possibilities as elements of the narrative. These weapons become more than mere objects to obtain — they become characters in the story.

I enjoy incorporating weapons made of unique metals and materials in my games. Sometimes they are magical and other times they aren’t but players love getting cool new gear even if it doesn’t have mechanical benefits in the game. They could easily convey opportunities for exploration and social pillars in the game. Just by possessing a weapon crafted of a particular material or by a specific person it might be a symbol of status among cultures in your world. These items also can create a foundation for future stories to be told about the gear the characters now possess.

Perhaps the adventurers come across a great axe forged of thunder steel, an ore only mined in one place in your world. It’s extremely dangerous to mine it because it comes from the Thunder Tip Peaks. There are forever magical thunder and lightning storms wracking this mountain range. Only the storm giants of the region mine the valuable substance because they don’t fear the lightning. The ore retains a permanent charge when forged through a special process. The steel shines bright and always appears to have lightning dancing upon its surface. For game purposes, our great axe does 1 extra point of lighting damage and isn’t considered magic.

It looks cool and has a bit of a story to it already. When the character comes across another magical great axe they might be hard pressed to give up their first cool weapon. This is why many times I will bestow magic on items rather than just having players find new magic items. The story of these items grows as does the players’ attachment to them.

From Ted’s Head

I had a lot of fun last week writing about a suit of armor for 5E D&D based off of a creature from our world from the Bestiary of Benevolent Monsters. This time around I am going to make a weapon inspired by a different creature from the same source.

I have always loved the craziness of the D&D creatures originally cited as the results of a crazy wizard’s experiments. The chimera is no exception. A while back I spoke on the channel about wanting a good version of this monstrosity. We even had a fan do some art of the creature that has been my desktop picture all this time. That is the Golden Chimera. It is a good aligned monstrosity and I totally dig it. So I preset to you the . . .

“The origin of the chimera is unknown; some believe it was human experimentation that initially caused the interbreeding of a red dragon, a lion, and a goat. The truth is lost in the mists of time; it is only certain that chimeras are now a stable, if rare, species, and can breed with their own kind (to produce chimeras), with red dragons (to produce more chimeras), with lions (to produce lions), with gorgons (to produce the sterile gorgimera), or with thessalhydrae (to produce the sterile thessalmera).” — The ecology of the Chimera, Dragon Magazine No. 94 by Ed Greenwood

Golden Chimeric Mace

Weapon, legendary (requires attunement by a creature of good alignment)

The mace is built with three distinctive faces on the weapon. One each of the creatures upon which this weapon is based — the golden roaring lion, the majestic eagle and the radiant gold dragon. The weapon is gilded in gold and platinum. The shaft of the mace is made from a golden hued wood and looks like it has faint lines of gold running through it. The handle is also gilded in gold. The weapon refuses any stain, dirt or marring of any kind short of a 9th level spell or by an artifact of greater power than the mace.

The majesty of the golden chimera and its deeds inspires those to tell tales and sing songs about them. One legendary craftsman had their life saved by one of these great creatures. She then devoted her life to bringing about the word of them and made this remarkable weapon as a lasting testament to the breed.

This +3 mace bears a number of abilities. While attuned to this mace you are immune to any effect that would give you the frightened condition. You have resistance to radiant damage. During combat you can activate the mace as a bonus action and a golden halo appears above your head. When you do so, choose one of the following visages below and add that ability to your combat options. You can use this feature a number of times equal to your charisma modifier.

• Lion Visage. A spectral lion visage appears over top of your face. On your turn as a bonus action, you can unleash a mighty roar. Any foes within 90 feet of you must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or be frightened of you for one minute. Creatures can repeat the saving throw at the end of their turn, ending the effect upon a successful save. If you charge a creature, using your movement, on the same turn as you use this roar, the creature makes the save at disadvantage. Once a creature saves from this effect it is immune to the fear from the mace for 24 hours.
• Eagle Visage. A spectral eagle visage appear over top of your face. You can use a bonus action to call forth wings. These spectral wings of an eagle come out of your back. You gain a fly speed of 80 feet and can hover.
• Dragon Visage. A spectral dragon visage appears over top of your face. Once, while you have the dragon visage activated, you can use a bonus action to exhale a cone of radiant energy. You unleash a cone of energy in a 20 foot cone. Those in the area of effect must make a DC 16 Dexterity saving throw, taking 40 (9d6) radiant damage on a failed save and half as much on a successful one. The weapon must be activated again in order to use the breath weapon again. While the dragon head is active you are also immune to radiant damage instead of just being resistant.

So there you have it. I really like this weapon and I hope you do as well.

From the Nerditor’s Desk

This morning I listened to a podcast by Mike Shea, perhaps better known as Sly Flourish to the online D&D community. Mike is the author of The Lazy Dungeon Master among many other things and a segment of the podcast addressed challenging players in 5E D&D. He talked about challenge rating, monster damage output and how the game changes as character levels increase.

I mention this because there’s similar circumstances when it comes to weapons in 5E D&D. Nerdarchist Ted and I touched on it during our live chat and I want to explore it further here. The podcast illustrated how monsters’ damage potential does not scale up very well. Creatures beyond challenge rating 4 don’t fall into the range of damage per round indicated in the 5E D&D Dungeon Master’s Guide. (Incidentally the monsters we create typically do.)

Mike compares two creatures to show this contrast, a CR 1/2 thug from the Basic Rules and a CR 16 creature from Candlekeep Mysteries. He chose the latter specifically because it’s from a more recent official source to see if the design approach changed (it didn’t). A thug presents a very dangerous threat to low level characters — two melee attacks for an average 5 damage each and likely made with advantage because of Pack Tactics. This is enough to reasonably take out a low level character in one turn.

Now consider a CR 16 iron golem whose two melee attacks deal an average combined 46 points of damage — not nearly enough to take down a 16th level character in one go around. The DMG suggests this creature’s damage per round ought to be 99–104, which is closer to the mark. But even a character with d8 Hit Dice and no modifiers has 72 average hit points at 16th level, which is more than enough to survive the iron golem’s onslaught.

When it comes to weapons wielded by adventurers I feel the same sensibilities apply. Number crunchers and spreadsheet formulae enthusiasts would almost certainly disagree quite vigorously but I’m of a mind the incremental differences among weapon damage is mostly relevant during low levels. In other words it doesn’t scale — and this is a good thing!

Damage output from characters might begin with the weapon they wield but in my experience it’s not nearly so important. Keep in mind as always these ideas depend on the style of games you play. A game of highly tuned precision combat likely plays out much differently. But for the most part I advocate players prioritize what makes sense for the character and feels cool and fun over gaining another 1-2 points of damage per attack on average.

When I played through Princes of the Apocalypse I did so as a rogue who only wielded a dagger. I can’t tell you how many times people urged me to pick up a rapier but at the end of the day an extra 2 points of damage on average did not seem worth deviating from how I envision the character. A rough half-orc from the streets who became a grim adventurer didn’t seem like the sort of person to flourish with an elegant blade.

The same goes for so many weapons. Clubs, handaxes, slings, flairs, morningstars, whips — all of these face mechanically superior alternatives but those differences only really matter on paper during theorycrafting. In lieu of tracking every single attack made with how much damage came from the weapon damage dice over a period of time would you really ever notice the difference?

My advice to you this week is when it comes to the weapons your 5E D&D character wields before you make a decision based on the what deals the most damage take a moment and imagine what your character would rely on in battle and what seems cool to you.

One last thing I want to mention is how much fun it is when characters name their weapons. Some of my favorite fantasy stories are the tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser from Fritz Leiber and I always loved how they would name their weapons. They lose them frequently but whenever they acquire them Fafhrd names the broadsword Graywand and the dagger Heartseeker while The Mouser calls his rapier Scalpel and his dirk Cat’s Claw. In Those Bastards! my character Vent named his weapons Claw, Bite and Tail. Give it a try in your next 5E D&D game!

*Featured image — There are few in the realms with the skill set to craft weapons and armor from the wild and exotic beasts that lurk in deep dungeons and overgrown forests. Fortunately we found one and they forged a number of exotic weapons from monster parts like the remorhaz spine sword.

Subscribe to Nerdarchy Live and get notifications for live RPG game plays, chats with creators and industry professionals and new video series and content on our second YouTube channel here