The Sword of a Thousand Truths!

[haakon1]

I'm inspired by last night's South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft".

An overpowered sword is critical to the plot -- the Sword of a Thousand Truths, banned from Warcraft and kept on a Flashdrive, until the prophecy could be fulfilled.

According to Wikipedia, it's properties are:
"The Sword of a Thousand Truths does 120.0 DPS, has a mana burn proc, and has a +80 Stamina enchant"

What does/should that mean in D&D terms? I'm thinking it's a cool geeky idea for an artifact sword.

I'm thinking +5 Keen Holy Avenger, with built-in ability to do something like Dispel Magic/Break Enchantment/Disruption/Anti-Magic, and to cast Heal or maybe Heroism on the wielder (I'm not sure if Stamina means HP or something else).

I don't know Warcraft at all, but the sword was shown dispelling everything a much strong unstoppable uber character had cast -- all his buffs, all his magical protections, and I believe also his summoned creatures. He might also have been stunned.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

"The Sword of a Thousand Truths does 120.0 DPS, has a mana burn proc, and has a +80 Stamina enchant"

Good lord.

Well, that translates to an insanely high average damage, it has a chance (probably on a critical hit) of eliminating spell slots/prepared spells from its victim and it adds a ton of raw Constitution to its bearer.

The buffs and everything would be vanishing because the victim didn't have the mana to maintain them (which isn't really how they work in WoW, but this wasn't WoW, it was South Park). I think damaging spell slots is pretty comparable.

The stunning was likely a class ability, since there's nothing in the stats to suggest that's an effect of the Sword of a Thousand Truths.

EDIT: Obviously, this is a very silly sword to begin with, but I'd stat it thus:

+6 anarchic/axiomatic/holy/unholy greatsword
This artifact gains a +10 enhancement bonus to its wielder's Constitution. On a critical hit, the victim loses spell slots/prepared spells equal in level to the amount of damage sustained.

 

[kaomera]

"The Sword of a Thousand Truths does 120.0 DPS, has a mana burn proc, and has a +80 Stamina enchant"

120.00 DPS is 120 points of damage (average) per second, assuming every attack hits. A six second round means 20 points of damage (average) per second. If you assume 4 attacks per round (for a high level item, level 20 seems reasonable), that's barely more than normal longsword damage.

A "mana burn" proc would drain ~200 "mana" on a critical hit. Per UA (assuming spell points == mana) that's about equivalent to four spells each of first through fifth levels, or 60 spell levels.

Stamina would be Constitution.

 

[Sejs]

Let's see...

+5 Keen Shadowcraft (ToM) greatsword with alignment-based enchantments that match the wielder's alignment - Axiomatic and Holy if you're Lawful Good, just Unholy if you're Neutral Evil, etc. Grants the user SR equal to 5 plus their character level, and can use a Greater Dispel Magic once per round with a caster level equal to the wielder's character level.

The weapon is intelligent and has a special purpose (defeat all). Its purpose power grants the wielder a +2 luck bonus on all attacks, saves, and checks. It can do the following 3/day each: Cure Moderate Wounds on wielder (CL 3rd), Haste on wielder, and can deliver a Touch of Idiocy spell via strike. The item constantly benefits from the effects of a Deathwatch spell, and can communicate the information thus gathered telepathically.



So, yeah. Basically an intelligent holy avenger with the paladin requirement sanded off and then turned up to 11. Feels appropriately heinous. Doesn't cover the massive stamina boost, but the healing sort of deals with that.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

120.00 DPS is 120 points of damage (average) per second, assuming every attack hits. A six second round means 20 points of damage (average) per second. If you assume 4 attacks per round (for a high level item, level 20 seems reasonable), that's barely more than normal longsword damage.

Except you're ignoring that it has about 25 percent more DPS than the highest DPS weapon currently in the game (and more than double the DPS of Thunderfury) and that hit points run on an entirely different scale in WoW, unless there are people with 4k hit points at level 20 in D&D.

For comparison, here are the legendary weapons currently in the game.

 

[haakon1]

I'm thinking:

+6 (the classic bonus for an overpowered sword, as Knights of the Dinner Table taught us)
- Axiomatic (it doesn't like rule breakers and truth-not-tellers)
- Greater Dispel Magic 1/rd, as with a Holy Avenger
- Energy Drain 1/day, as the 9th level spell (2d4 negative levels)
- Greater Heroism 1/day, as the 6th level spell (+4 on attacks, saves, skills, immune to fear, and extra hp)
- Zone of Truth, continous, caster level of 20 to dispel it
- Bane against Humans

That seems fair.

 

[Driddle]

This is really the way to "construct" such a sword:

Give the player a small piece of paper with a small set of stats, followed by a special note at the end, such as, "+2, +3 at noon, Vorpal, Wounding, and ??? -- this blade has an eerie magical aura that you cannot begin to fathom." ... And then every time the player uses the sword, you immediately destroy the creature he's attacking without any explanation.

It's meant to be an uber game-breaking artifact. When you reach that level of ridiculousness, it's kinda stupid to try to justify any of the game mechanics.

 

[BryonD]

120.00 DPS is 120 points of damage (average) per second, assuming every attack hits. A six second round means 20 points of damage (average) per second. If you assume 4 attacks per round (for a high level item, level 20 seems reasonable), that's barely more than normal longsword damage.

It is 120 per second, not per hit. So that would be 720 per round or 180 per hit for 4 hits.

 

[Sejs]

Actually, looking at it now, probably more a bastard sword than anything, given we see it used both one and two handed.

 

[paradox42]

Given that it wipes out all of the Bad Guy's buffs with one hit, I'd say Greater Dispel Magic 1/round at will is absurdly weak for a D&D version. Make it a specialized Disjunction instead that can't kill items and takes spell slots away from the victim (probably some effect like losing the highest-level slot once/round until the victim runs out of slots to lose).

And as long as we're bringing KoDT into this, why not go whole hog and make it a +12 weapon? Give it the Truebane ability from Dragon #345 (the Demonomicon article), or go even more ridiculous and make a "True Dread" ability that mimics Truebane for the Epic version of the Bane power. For those who haven't read that issue, Truebane is exactly like Bane except that it switches to match the last creature struck by the weapon. So basically, one hit may not activate the Bane property, but the second and all subsequent hits on the same creature will.

So make it a +12 Truedread Bastard Sword with the Disjunction/slot-killing property that adds a +12 enhancement bonus to its wielder's CON score and you're probably pretty close.