The legendary greatsword Hazirawn is a sentient item with Neutral Evil alignment. However, it has no mental ability scores in the description. How would you resolve conflicts between the wielder and the sword?
I found the below comment in a FAQ pdf from wizards.com
What’s the Deal with Hazirawn ? As clarified by Steve Winter (HotDQ author), this item was misprinted in the adventure. When unattuned, this item deals an extra 1d6 necrotic damage on a hit. All other magical properties require Hazirawn to be attuned to the character. Sentience. Hazirawn is a sentient magic item, therefore if the wielder is not acting in accordance with the swords motivations (neutral evil alignment), it may suppress any of its attuned properties at-will. Hazirawn seeks to destroy users of arcane magic at every opportunity. As Hazirawn lacks mental ability scores, DMs should not perform contests of wills when resolving this conflict, nor should they create ability scores for the weapon.
Looks to me like, when conflict arises Hazirawn just suppresses it's attuned properties.
/e Obviously I side-stepped your question, apologies for that, I haven't dealt with a sentient item yet, just started DMing. I would probably just have Hazirawn suppress it's properties until the wielder fell back in line so to speak.
I don't think I agree with Jusblazm's assessment. I think the link supplied from the FAQ, is from the Adventurer's league. (Note how it says Hazirawn isn't tradeable?) Which seems designed to put people on a level playing field. So not having any contests is a simple way to do that for an Adventurer's league setting. If you want to run it this way, feel free. But I don't think you should have to. Having a sentient item in the party can be fun. Treating it like it's just stats for the holder to maximize their DPS seems far less interesting. And while DMs can always override any rule, this isn't even a real DM rule. If you think it is, are you going to ensure that the item doesn't get traded?
How would I resolve conflicts? Well, I'm solidifying the character of Hazirawn in my head, and acting the way I think he would act. As a sentient weapon, he doesn't have the ability to swing himself, which sure, for characters diametrically opposed to him that might just mean yelling and only being a +1 weapon with 1d6. But do what you think is most appropriate.
Raw there are no contents for Hazirawn, the sword doesn't really have the power to try to charm its owner or anything like that nor can it be targetted but I can give you some ideas.
Magical weapons who want to thwart their owners sometimes try to attract others to wield them, suppress their magic properties or some times even bless attackers of their wielders with their powers.
Some ideas specific to Hazirawn:
The sword prevents you from healing as per it's wounded property
The sword lies about the nature of magical creatures to have you attack them ( gives the wrong answer with detect evil or good)
The sword plants false thoughts when you cast detect thoughts ( gives the wrong answer when you use detect thoughts)
Refuses to let you cast any of it's spells
Chooses to cast one of the spells itself and maybe gives a false answer
The sword gives it's attuned properties to an attacker when they strike you
ends atunement or atunes to another monster to fight you
How to challenge Hazirwan? RAW there is nothing but there are some effects I think are flavorful and cool to do it.
Charm creature to prevent the sword from using offensive abilities on you
Bestow curse specifically the effect that make it make a wisdom save if it acts against you. If another creature wield the sword against you for the duration they have to make a wisdom save first, if its the sword attempting and effect on its own it automatically fails as it cant make wisdom saves.
Dominate creature or geas. The sword is forced to do what you
Remove curse. Suppress, the swords sentience for a period of time
Technically none of these spells can target a sword so you may decide to say they need to cast a special sword version or something that they need to research.
The legendary greatsword Hazirawn is a sentient item with Neutral Evil alignment. However, it has no mental ability scores in the description. How would you resolve conflicts between the wielder and the sword?
Agree that there are no RAW stats for Hazirawn, the build seems to be incomplete, so most of the guidance for handling conflicts is unusable.
A workaround might be to complete your version and provide the Int, Wis, and Cha scores as well as Characteristics and Special Purpose. (Depending which lore site you go to might define the purpose for you, don't have my hardcopy available to me at the moment.) And once complete, your answer might be: Just like the DMG suggests.
Otherwise, you might simply assume that the stats are all 10, run the conflict off of that, and handwave the rest. If the player manages to loose the contest, simply force the item to drop attunement properties. Those are the big draw for owning the item, IMO.
Neutral Evil beings might not care too much about how, why, or the purpose that death and destruction are had, just that death and destruction are part of its continued existence. But, as with all things, YMMV.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Raw there are no contents for Hazirawn, the sword doesn't really have the power to try to charm its owner or anything like that
Sorry, what rule as written says that Hazirawn can't charm the wielder? Sentient items specifically have that power. Can you cite a rule that says, for some reason it can't?
I didn't realise it was a general rule I thought they could only do it if the weapon stat block said they could. Though in Hazirwarn's case it has no charisma to make a check with or have a dc with. So you could assume 0 or that it cant do such charms
I didn't realise it was a general rule I thought they could only do it if the weapon stat block said they could. Though in Hazirwarn's case it has no charisma to make a check with or have a dc with. So you could assume 0 or that it cant do such charms
I don't know why you make the assumption that it can't do such charms.
But you do raise a good point about how the item block doesn't have a charisma score listed on the item description. But just because it doesn't have one listed, doesn't mean it doesn't have a score. In fact, the rules state the opposite:
So what we can therefore conclude is that the Hazirawn item description is incomplete. How the DM wants to resolve that state of incompleteness is up to the DM.
Solarsyphon's presuming a Cha stat of +0 is a reasonable resolution to that.
But you do raise a good point about how the item block doesn't have a charisma score listed on the item description. But just because it doesn't have one listed, doesn't mean it doesn't have a score. In fact, the rules state the opposite:
So what we can therefore conclude is that the Hazirawn item description is incomplete. How the DM wants to resolve that state of incompleteness is up to the DM.
Solarsyphon's presuming a Cha stat of +0 is a reasonable resolution to that.
You come across as the one making assumptions into conclusions. How are you able to conclude that the printed results for a specific item in a specific campaign are incomplete? That's not reasonable, it's assumptive. And how does using the DM's rules for creating a sentient item overrule the RAW for a specific item? As far as I have ever seen if an item has it's specific rules, they overrule any other RAW. Hazirawn does not have control of the user, nor does it have stats, nor are there conflicts because that is how the item was written. You assuming the description in the published material is incomplete is far from a reasonable conclusion.
The 5.1 rules state that sentient items both can charm and have a cha score. Haziwran does not have a stated cha score. There is very clearly an inconsistency. No matter what you do, there will be assumptions.
I didn't say I wasn't making assumptions. I merely questioned the reasoning why someone else made the assumption they did. I did also pointed out, using the available information we have, that the incomplete module is what I believe to be the most likely assumption.
How do you resolve that inconsistency? What assumptions are you making?
You asked "how does using the DM's rules for creating a sentient item overrule the RAW for a specific item?" That's an interesting question. You quote the rules for making items, then use "RAW" to describe an item, as if that has some power of over the rules. Items aren't "rules", they're items. They have descriptions. Yes, they can override rules, but this doesn't does explicitly state any rules that it overrides. And in fact, it breaks the rules. Yes, the rules can be overridden If someone writes an item, they're allowed to say "Fakeiwran can't charm." That would be overriding the rules. That's not what happened here. We have an ambiguity.
I think Haziwran is incomplete. That's my assumption.
I guess someone else could also make the assumption that Haziwran isn't a "sentient item" as described by the rules, and that therefore the module made a confusing "error" by using the word "sentient".
I guess someone else could also make the assumption that the module writer or was implying that the lack of a cha modifier means that the sentient item (implicitly) breaks the rule of sentient items. (Or that they intended to be more explicit and say that Haziwran can't charm, and forgot to be more explicit.)
I think these other assumptions are weak. But maybe I'm missing something. So I'll ask again, why do you make the assumption that, despite RAW about sentient items, Haziwran can't charm? I think it's a reasonable question.
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The legendary greatsword Hazirawn is a sentient item with Neutral Evil alignment. However, it has no mental ability scores in the description. How would you resolve conflicts between the wielder and the sword?
I found the below comment in a FAQ pdf from wizards.com
What’s the Deal with Hazirawn ? As clarified by Steve Winter (HotDQ author), this item was misprinted in the adventure. When unattuned, this item deals an extra 1d6 necrotic damage on a hit. All other magical properties require Hazirawn to be attuned to the character. Sentience. Hazirawn is a sentient magic item, therefore if the wielder is not acting in accordance with the swords motivations (neutral evil alignment), it may suppress any of its attuned properties at-will. Hazirawn seeks to destroy users of arcane magic at every opportunity. As Hazirawn lacks mental ability scores, DMs should not perform contests of wills when resolving this conflict, nor should they create ability scores for the weapon.
https://gyazo.com/484349b0a4dc807f3b59b68e0acd90fa
The gyazo link is simply a screen grab of that exact paragraph.
Looks to me like, when conflict arises Hazirawn just suppresses it's attuned properties.
/e Obviously I side-stepped your question, apologies for that, I haven't dealt with a sentient item yet, just started DMing. I would probably just have Hazirawn suppress it's properties until the wielder fell back in line so to speak.
I don't think I agree with Jusblazm's assessment. I think the link supplied from the FAQ, is from the Adventurer's league. (Note how it says Hazirawn isn't tradeable?) Which seems designed to put people on a level playing field. So not having any contests is a simple way to do that for an Adventurer's league setting. If you want to run it this way, feel free. But I don't think you should have to. Having a sentient item in the party can be fun. Treating it like it's just stats for the holder to maximize their DPS seems far less interesting. And while DMs can always override any rule, this isn't even a real DM rule. If you think it is, are you going to ensure that the item doesn't get traded?
How would I resolve conflicts? Well, I'm solidifying the character of Hazirawn in my head, and acting the way I think he would act. As a sentient weapon, he doesn't have the ability to swing himself, which sure, for characters diametrically opposed to him that might just mean yelling and only being a +1 weapon with 1d6. But do what you think is most appropriate.
Raw there are no contents for Hazirawn, the sword doesn't really have the power to try to charm its owner or anything like that nor can it be targetted but I can give you some ideas.
Magical weapons who want to thwart their owners sometimes try to attract others to wield them, suppress their magic properties or some times even bless attackers of their wielders with their powers.
Some ideas specific to Hazirawn:
How to challenge Hazirwan? RAW there is nothing but there are some effects I think are flavorful and cool to do it.
Technically none of these spells can target a sword so you may decide to say they need to cast a special sword version or something that they need to research.
Agree that there are no RAW stats for Hazirawn, the build seems to be incomplete, so most of the guidance for handling conflicts is unusable.
A workaround might be to complete your version and provide the Int, Wis, and Cha scores as well as Characteristics and Special Purpose. (Depending which lore site you go to might define the purpose for you, don't have my hardcopy available to me at the moment.) And once complete, your answer might be: Just like the DMG suggests.
Otherwise, you might simply assume that the stats are all 10, run the conflict off of that, and handwave the rest. If the player manages to loose the contest, simply force the item to drop attunement properties. Those are the big draw for owning the item, IMO.
Neutral Evil beings might not care too much about how, why, or the purpose that death and destruction are had, just that death and destruction are part of its continued existence. But, as with all things, YMMV.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
Sorry, what rule as written says that Hazirawn can't charm the wielder? Sentient items specifically have that power. Can you cite a rule that says, for some reason it can't?
I didn't realise it was a general rule I thought they could only do it if the weapon stat block said they could. Though in Hazirwarn's case it has no charisma to make a check with or have a dc with. So you could assume 0 or that it cant do such charms
I don't know why you make the assumption that it can't do such charms.
"If its wielder refuses to comply with the item's wishes, the item can . . .Attempt to take control of its wielder."
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/magic-items#Conflict
But you do raise a good point about how the item block doesn't have a charisma score listed on the item description. But just because it doesn't have one listed, doesn't mean it doesn't have a score. In fact, the rules state the opposite:
"A sentient magic item has Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores."
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/magic-items#Abilities
So what we can therefore conclude is that the Hazirawn item description is incomplete. How the DM wants to resolve that state of incompleteness is up to the DM.
Solarsyphon's presuming a Cha stat of +0 is a reasonable resolution to that.
You come across as the one making assumptions into conclusions. How are you able to conclude that the printed results for a specific item in a specific campaign are incomplete? That's not reasonable, it's assumptive. And how does using the DM's rules for creating a sentient item overrule the RAW for a specific item? As far as I have ever seen if an item has it's specific rules, they overrule any other RAW. Hazirawn does not have control of the user, nor does it have stats, nor are there conflicts because that is how the item was written. You assuming the description in the published material is incomplete is far from a reasonable conclusion.
The 5.1 rules state that sentient items both can charm and have a cha score. Haziwran does not have a stated cha score. There is very clearly an inconsistency. No matter what you do, there will be assumptions.
I didn't say I wasn't making assumptions. I merely questioned the reasoning why someone else made the assumption they did. I did also pointed out, using the available information we have, that the incomplete module is what I believe to be the most likely assumption.
How do you resolve that inconsistency? What assumptions are you making?
You asked "how does using the DM's rules for creating a sentient item overrule the RAW for a specific item?" That's an interesting question. You quote the rules for making items, then use "RAW" to describe an item, as if that has some power of over the rules. Items aren't "rules", they're items. They have descriptions. Yes, they can override rules, but this doesn't does explicitly state any rules that it overrides. And in fact, it breaks the rules. Yes, the rules can be overridden If someone writes an item, they're allowed to say "Fakeiwran can't charm." That would be overriding the rules. That's not what happened here. We have an ambiguity.
I think Haziwran is incomplete. That's my assumption.
I guess someone else could also make the assumption that Haziwran isn't a "sentient item" as described by the rules, and that therefore the module made a confusing "error" by using the word "sentient".
I guess someone else could also make the assumption that the module writer or was implying that the lack of a cha modifier means that the sentient item (implicitly) breaks the rule of sentient items. (Or that they intended to be more explicit and say that Haziwran can't charm, and forgot to be more explicit.)
I think these other assumptions are weak. But maybe I'm missing something. So I'll ask again, why do you make the assumption that, despite RAW about sentient items, Haziwran can't charm? I think it's a reasonable question.