I'm spinning this out of my own thread in case there's a wider audiance for the question.

My players recovered a magic hammer wielded by a Black Ork. The Ogre Maneater kept it. I, of course, didn't know what it did when they discovered it… hell, it wasn't even magical until the wizard rolled a chaos star on his magic sight check. It needs to be magical but also a little cursed. After some consideration this is what I came up with:

If you can't read the text it's DR 7, CR 2, Two-handed, Enc 7. (That should be standard Great Weapon stats with +1 to encumberance 'cause it's an orc's.)

It's superior quality.

If the weilder uses it to target a dwarf with a Melee Attack he must replace two fortune dice with one expertize die. (That's benefitial, right?)

3 Boons: the weapon damages the target's armor, shield or weapon. The default is the defender's armor, but if the target blocked it's his shield, or parried its his weapon. (My thought is with one boon more than the CR it wouldn't be used too often, but could help soften up tougher opponents for some team work stuff.)

Chaos Star: Immediately after this attack, before any free maneuvers are taken, perform a Melee Strike against an ally with whom you are engaged. Oh, and in this game? The ally the ogre will most likely be engaged with is the dwarf (which is why that other special ability says "must" instead of "may").

So what do you think? Is it too much? Should it take four boons to damage armor? Does two misfortune die becoming an expertise die make sense? Is it too good and not cursed enough?

I want it to be heplful enough to be interesting and worthwhile without over powering anything else. Basically I want the player to feel there's value to using it over his two handed sword, but not so much that other players become jealous (what with magic items being rare and us playing a low-loot campaign).

well, about the chaos star:

i had a dwarf slayer in my group with a custom build insanity that made him attack a random target in his engagement any time he killed something. in the beginning this was pretty cool and the players had alot of fun with it.
but after some sessions it started really getting old and painfully tiresome. and it overpowers the character alot

so in your case: he has to attack an ally in his engagement. that will eventually lead to nobody wanting to fight beside him anymore of course. once experienced by a PC he will no longer want to come any close to the hammer and/or the ogre himself….

the boon thing is very good! i would leave that in in any case.

overall a nice custom item

nephtys said:

Well, I hope to avoiud the worse of that because the curse is from an item which the player can choose not to use. Plus, I don't think I'd mind if the other players didn't want to get in engagements with him, and if they're not it will be easier for me to beat him up.

Why not allow the user to make a avarage or hard discipline check when a chaos star to resist the urge to attack an ally? If the check is a success the user make the user suffer a stress (or two) due to the mental effort to restrain himself from lashing out.

k7e9 said:

Actually, for that the difficulty and stress suffered should be equal to his reckless stance…

But the intention wasn't that the item forced the weilder to actually attack an ally, but rather a wild swing could accidentally hit an ally. But this might be more fun.

RARodger said:

Some more thoughts:

The Warhammer should also force you to be at least one step into reckless stance, due to it's cursed and bloodthirsty nature. That way the player wielding it can't get away with staying in neutral stance, or even conservative.

Since it forces you to be in reckless though, it should add some neat benefits for being reckless, like 2 boons = deal extra damage equal to your depth in the reckless stance.

That way it becomes even more interesting to see how deep the player dares to go into the stance. Also, on a chaos star result, if no allies are engaged the character should still suffer the points of stress, as if he succeeded on the discipline check.

I think I"m going to just change the chaos star result to:

Wild Swing! Deal normal damage to one ally with whom you are engaged.

You know, I thought it was going to last at least a couple sessions, but twice this week the ogre strolled up to an egagement to help a commrade, killed the enemy and hammered the ally. The dwarf soaked most of his damage up. The second time he took the agent from no wounds to KO'd. I think he won't be using the hammer again (although it sounds like he might be saving it for single combat someday).

Which all in all means, I win. Warhammer shouldn't be about loot anyway.

RARodger said:

You are correct, warhammer should be about cursed loot.