Reforging Dwarkarnytor

The Dwarven Imperative.
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NukeHavoc
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Reforging Dwarkarnytor

Post by NukeHavoc »

I was looking through Unearthed Arcana this morning looking for some variant ranger stuff for my new dwarf, and came across the Legendary Weapons section.

That got me to thinking about D'klar's most excellent axe, Dwarkarnytor (Axe of Our Fathers), which he acquired after the final epic fight with the dragon of Khelaz-Mar.

For those who don't know, this is an exceptionally powerful dwarven waraxe with a number of special abilities and an associated prestige class. Reading over it again, I thought it was a) a little too powerful and b) the associated Ancestral Defender prestige class was hard for D'klar to qualify for (he having the 2nd-edition inspired low Chr score).

At the time Bob created this axe, Unearthed Arcana wasn't out, but I think it has something that fits what he was looking to do almost perfectly: legendary weapons. The link goes to the associated entry in the SRD.

Legendary weapons, like the original Dwarkarnytor, have prerequisites for those who wield them, and require and associated prestige class (the scion class). The scion class is generic to the type of weapon (e.g. warrior scions get bonus feats, faith scions pick up spell level bumps) but taking levels in the scion class unlocks powers of the weapon.

The Faith Scion, and its associated example weapon, the Hammer of the Dwarffather:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/magic ... FaithScion

show how it all goes together. I think this approach would make for a more balanced Dwarkarnytor, allowing it to have impressive powers, but allowing those powers to be unlocked with new levels.

I'm thinking of trying to convert Bob's original write-up to a legendary weapon based on these rules. What do you think Bob?
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EvilGenius
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Post by EvilGenius »

I like the legendary mechanic. I forget what abilities I had given to the Axe prev, but I don't have a problem with retooling it.

I do think that a 10 level progression is a bit much. For truely epic weapons, sure. For "lesser" legendary weapons, maybe a 5 level progression would be more reasonable. After all, D'Klar is 16th now, he's not likely to progress much more, like, ever. So if we key a bunch of cool abilities to higher levels, we may as well say it's just a neato +2 Axe, maybe made it intelligent. Anything else is essentialy flavor text.

If you want to change/ditch the prestige class, that's okay. I don't think you ever actually played after you had claimed the Axe or taken the prestige class, so there's no in-game content to correct. :)
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