Recently I started to develop a new homebrew for some of my friends, I am going to use the vestige system to make this campaign unique compared to what we have already run. Upon looking over the items and reading the info about creating them, I have been left with a bit of a question about them. For the majority of the items, after a rather thorough reading of them, I struggled to find any detrimental properties outside of the sentient Items that have the presence of an evil aligned creature inside of it. I don't know if I missed something, if I did please let me know, because again I did carefully read them and the only one I saw that specifically stated a negative property was Grovelthrash. Personally it makes sense that the Vestiges don't have negative properties since they were artifacts aligned with neutral or good gods. The arms of the betrayer's on the other hand could potentially be cursed or otherwise detrimental to non-evil aligned characters, which would make sense for giving it detrimental properties. My question is simply was this a typo or do you think the evil sentience alone is what's replacing additional detrimental effects as it progresses from one stage of power to the next? Would you add them if the artifact didn't have evil sentience? Thank you in advance and I look forward to hearing your thoughts :)
All the arms of the Betrayer have the same beneficial/detrimental property progression outlined in the box below Grovelthrash's description. I don't know about the Vestigies.
You might want to looks at the some of the legacy weapon systems from legacy, so to speak, D&D systems, I think at least one person on DMs Guild has done a magic weapon or item that grows with the character system.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thank you for the insight, that's what I was confused about because the text at the bottom stated they'd have negative traits, but only one of them seemed to have a negative, unless the evil sentience was counting as the detrimental property. I'll take a look at the legacy weapon system and the DM guild to see what else I can find, thanks again
When they say negative traits, they're talking about generating one from the table in the DMG under artifacts. I was actually surprised Mercer went that route, but the negative (and beneficial) traits generated by random roll or DM whim off the table is a tradition that goes back to AD&D. It takes some getting used to because by their origin the traits are obviously not necessarily tied into the operation of the artifact. I sort of think of them as the odd side effects that are listed on prescription warning (like why is my face breaking out if I'm taking meds for my colon? type stuff).
Glad I could help. But yeah, that line of weapons was a new concept for me too when I first came across it, didn't know there was a tradition of sorts it's in line with in games. But speaking of that there's a YouTuber, LegalKimchee, who has a vid on magic items worth checking out:
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
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Recently I started to develop a new homebrew for some of my friends, I am going to use the vestige system to make this campaign unique compared to what we have already run. Upon looking over the items and reading the info about creating them, I have been left with a bit of a question about them. For the majority of the items, after a rather thorough reading of them, I struggled to find any detrimental properties outside of the sentient Items that have the presence of an evil aligned creature inside of it. I don't know if I missed something, if I did please let me know, because again I did carefully read them and the only one I saw that specifically stated a negative property was Grovelthrash. Personally it makes sense that the Vestiges don't have negative properties since they were artifacts aligned with neutral or good gods. The arms of the betrayer's on the other hand could potentially be cursed or otherwise detrimental to non-evil aligned characters, which would make sense for giving it detrimental properties. My question is simply was this a typo or do you think the evil sentience alone is what's replacing additional detrimental effects as it progresses from one stage of power to the next? Would you add them if the artifact didn't have evil sentience? Thank you in advance and I look forward to hearing your thoughts :)
All the arms of the Betrayer have the same beneficial/detrimental property progression outlined in the box below Grovelthrash's description. I don't know about the Vestigies.
You might want to looks at the some of the legacy weapon systems from legacy, so to speak, D&D systems, I think at least one person on DMs Guild has done a magic weapon or item that grows with the character system.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Thank you for the insight, that's what I was confused about because the text at the bottom stated they'd have negative traits, but only one of them seemed to have a negative, unless the evil sentience was counting as the detrimental property. I'll take a look at the legacy weapon system and the DM guild to see what else I can find, thanks again
When they say negative traits, they're talking about generating one from the table in the DMG under artifacts. I was actually surprised Mercer went that route, but the negative (and beneficial) traits generated by random roll or DM whim off the table is a tradition that goes back to AD&D. It takes some getting used to because by their origin the traits are obviously not necessarily tied into the operation of the artifact. I sort of think of them as the odd side effects that are listed on prescription warning (like why is my face breaking out if I'm taking meds for my colon? type stuff).
Glad I could help. But yeah, that line of weapons was a new concept for me too when I first came across it, didn't know there was a tradition of sorts it's in line with in games. But speaking of that there's a YouTuber, LegalKimchee, who has a vid on magic items worth checking out:
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.