I don't know what's your character but in general i'd take your Moonblade over any vanilla +3 longsword as i find it more fun. It has minimum of 5 out of typically 7 runes as you have at least one more to come growing with you, if not more. Your DM didn't mention exactly how many runes it had on the blade before you became its master?
Okay, your blade seems to fit the level of play for the player you gifted it to.
I also believe I said it was a fine weapon I got, although it's a +2 weapon with finesse, so a +3 weapon with finesse would be an upgrade - so that's why I said if I could swap it out with the other gear we found, I likely would have for that portion of the campaign.
I'm also well aware that a Ring of Three Wishes with all charges spent turns non-magical. It was merely to make a point; that just because an item has potential to be strong, doesn't mean jack shit if it turns out that it isn't strong. If a merchant tries to sell a player a Ring of Three Wishes and it turns out all charges are spent, then there's going to be some frustration, some brow beating and possibly bloodshed about to happen.
Except handing someone an expended ring as a reward is overtly cheating the player. A Moonblade should always be at least a +1 and the DM has discretion to slot in one or more specific properties ahead of the roll. The hypothetical potential for an underwhelming weapon exists, but it’s not comparable to being handed an objectively useless item. And, again, rarity is a mixture of mechanics and narrative, with the narrative weight of sentient weapons skewing heavily towards Legendary.
I ain't actually the master of the Moonblade yet - that happens with the attunement. I'm more a tolerated wielder. I doubt my DM has put too focus on the numbers of runes - just that its powers fits the level of play. I also know that this is the first "stage" of my relation with the weapon - but so far I'm led to believe I cannot realistically attune to the weapon within the campaign. The DM has stated the relation building can take upwards of a hundred years. I cannot communicate with the blade as it stands, so it literally functions as a plain +2 longsword with finesse and an uncertain quality additional power. The versatile property of a standard longsword is useless to me, as I'm a Bladesinger, so two-handed attacks disables my class features. So for the purpose of this campaign I doubt I'll get attuned. But more powers might still be unlocked later, smaller or larger.
I'm not sure if the purpose is to save it for another campaign where we might time-skip until the beginning of that campaign and possibly my character might turn up as an NPC for that campaign. Or that some circumstances in the current campaign means it will still be possible to attune, or that the plan is that this campaign will last literally hundreds of years - for which there are human and other mortal races in our party who cannot live that long - at least not naturally.
For now I'm just happy that in a party who has at least a couple of magic items per person, I get a pretty decent weapon as well.
For the sake of brevity, I'll put the next part in a spoiler to clean up the post, as it is off-topic:
Even with the decent weapon I'm still pretty close to bottom of the barrel in terms of damage between our DPS classes, to the point where I technically should just turn fully to spell casting and ignore my weapon xD. At least until I get to level 14 and can apply my INT modifier to my damage rolls. We have 3 other DPS characters in the party (Barb, Rogue, Fighter) who all have multiclassed Rogue (well except the actual Rogue) for the Sneak Attack damage boost and... it is brutal to compare to. The fact that Sneak Attack's conditions are met merely from nearby allies being near the target means it is basically always active.
My character is functionally more a balance between defense, attack, and some utility, as a Bladesinger it is very hard to hit me between Bladesong adding my INT to AC, and Shield to pad it if needed. However the flip side is that I don't have that much HP and occasionally we face enemies with save-or-suck spells or AoEs (spells or physical attacks) that bypass AC. We have three spell casters, all with [Tooltip Not Found]s so any mid-level spell caster is just garbage around our party. It also means the DM can't effectively use groups, as we have a Wizard, Sorc and a Cleric with AoEs that is likely to make quick work of groups between Fireballs and Spirit Guardians.
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
I wonder if they actually made them roll 1 million d6’s.
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
I wonder if they actually made them roll 1 million d6’s.
The wind told me today they're still rolling dice (just kidding!)
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
I wonder if they actually made them roll 1 million d6’s.
The wind told me today they're still rolling dice (just kidding!)
This story actual happened in 2e and they are waiting for combat to resolve so they can update their characters to the new editions.
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
Sounds like the problem is less the Moonblade and more a GM who lets their players run roughshod over them.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Agreed. Now, lore wise no new moon blades should be being created. Further no non elf ( or half elf) should ever be wielding one. They were created, one for each major elven clan, as a means of choosing which clan should the king come from. That decision was made long ago. Most moonblades are dormant and would act as a standard +1-3 blade unless an elf of the clan picked it up. Then it ( the moon blade) would judge the PC and decide if the PC was worthy of carrying it. If so then that PC would be able to carry it and a new rune would be added. Just how many were made is not known. Further, how many have gone dormant or been destroyed/lost is not known. In theory there are ( sort of) 3 known active moonblades - Arylin’s, the queen of evermeet’s, and Nimensien’s which is waiting for his daughter to grow up ( it rejected him). Yes some are fairly weak - those are the ones that went dormant early. None should be more powerful than the three known active blades.
Agreed, buts the best guideline to start off with. Obviously (I hope) if your using them in a nonFR world the FR lore is, at best, a guide for the DM not a requirement.
Revisiting this thread on a whim. Seeing the new 2024 DMG has completely removed the minor properties as part of the rolling table and all Moonblades comes with a minor property... I feel somewhat vindicated.
The fact it also expanded on the weapon type, instead of 2014 that was always a Longsword, you can now have Greatsword, Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar or Shortsword variants. Each type granting their standard weapon traits like Light, Finesse, Heavy, etc.
Revisiting this thread on a whim. Seeing the new 2024 DMG has completely removed the minor properties as part of the rolling table and all Moonblades comes with a minor property... I feel somewhat vindicated.
The fact it also expanded on the weapon type, instead of 2014 that was always a Longsword, you can now have Greatsword, Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar or Shortsword variants. Each type granting their standard weapon traits like Light, Finesse, Heavy, etc.
They also took a few abilities away (including the highly popular ability to make it a Finesse weapon) and the expansion to various sword types is far from unique.
It honestly makes sense to remove the finesse ability if it's now capable of being any sword type. three out of five swords in the PHB are already finesse weapons, and we don't need a finesse greatsword.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
It honestly makes sense to remove the finesse ability if it's now capable of being any sword type. three out of five swords in the PHB are already finesse weapons, and we don't need a finesse greatsword.
Counterpoint: Longsword has a mastery property unique to it among the eligible options and the lack of finesse as an option makes the original form unable to be used as a Dex weapon with Sap.
That's a point, but probably not a particularly relevant one to the weapon design. The point of it gaining finesse as a special property was effectively so that any weapon user class can be given a Moonblade back when they were sticking with it being a longsword. Now they opted to include every sword template in the baseline, so that niche is covered. Access to weapon masteries is a whole other dynamic, and one that's supposed to specifically favor Fighters.
Since iteration is back I thought I’d rejoin with some thoughts on those “poor randomized moonblades”. When they were made (FR lore) @14k years ago (-12,000 DR) at the end of the crown wars there were several remaining elven nations. All of them had noble families so a lot of moonblades were created if every noble family of every nation got 1. Today there are somewhere between 3 ( known “active” blades and possibly upto 20 ( my guesstimate) active blades. All the others have gone dormant. At least so says the FR lore. So why did they go dormant/ get lost/etc? Many simply because the properties attached proved insufficient to the tasks their wielders attempted. A Moonblade with poor randomly rolled properties is simply one of these being reawakened by a new wielder. That, or the blade could find no quality members of the family after a generation or 3 and went dormant with the low quality abilities of few wielders it did have before going dormant.. In the end most moonblades are from families that proved insufficient to the task of being noble elves and were either lost or went dormant. What makes them valuable is their ability to gain improvements based on the needs and personalities of their wielder. Romberg, the blade chooses or rejects you not you the blade. Following FR lore to wield one you have to be either elven or half elven, from a noble elven family and of good alignment. Otherwise it may choose to act as a nonmagical or +1 weapon and you might never know it’s a moonblades if your told by someone who knows. As an example I have an expected now NPC that wields a moonblades if your. He was from a minor Evereskan family on a different prime material from the one he is on now. On his home world the moonblades was wielded by an older cousin so he had no opportunity to get it. When he finally made it to the present Faerun he is on and visited Evereska the dormant moonblade here awoke. After some discussion he was allowed to try and the moonblade accepted him as a family member worthy of wielding the blade so he Carrie’s it now for the family.
It honestly makes sense to remove the finesse ability if it's now capable of being any sword type. three out of five swords in the PHB are already finesse weapons, and we don't need a finesse greatsword.
Agreed. It's overall a nice change that most magic items seems to now be based on a weapon type and have those traits on top of any magical properties. In contrast to earlier versions of magic items that were their own category and requiring their own non-standard weapon proficiency.
I don't know what's your character but in general i'd take your Moonblade over any vanilla +3 longsword as i find it more fun. It has minimum of 5 out of typically 7 runes as you have at least one more to come growing with you, if not more. Your DM didn't mention exactly how many runes it had on the blade before you became its master?
Except handing someone an expended ring as a reward is overtly cheating the player. A Moonblade should always be at least a +1 and the DM has discretion to slot in one or more specific properties ahead of the roll. The hypothetical potential for an underwhelming weapon exists, but it’s not comparable to being handed an objectively useless item. And, again, rarity is a mixture of mechanics and narrative, with the narrative weight of sentient weapons skewing heavily towards Legendary.
I ain't actually the master of the Moonblade yet - that happens with the attunement. I'm more a tolerated wielder. I doubt my DM has put too focus on the numbers of runes - just that its powers fits the level of play. I also know that this is the first "stage" of my relation with the weapon - but so far I'm led to believe I cannot realistically attune to the weapon within the campaign. The DM has stated the relation building can take upwards of a hundred years. I cannot communicate with the blade as it stands, so it literally functions as a plain +2 longsword with finesse and an uncertain quality additional power. The versatile property of a standard longsword is useless to me, as I'm a Bladesinger, so two-handed attacks disables my class features. So for the purpose of this campaign I doubt I'll get attuned. But more powers might still be unlocked later, smaller or larger.
I'm not sure if the purpose is to save it for another campaign where we might time-skip until the beginning of that campaign and possibly my character might turn up as an NPC for that campaign. Or that some circumstances in the current campaign means it will still be possible to attune, or that the plan is that this campaign will last literally hundreds of years - for which there are human and other mortal races in our party who cannot live that long - at least not naturally.
For now I'm just happy that in a party who has at least a couple of magic items per person, I get a pretty decent weapon as well.
For the sake of brevity, I'll put the next part in a spoiler to clean up the post, as it is off-topic:
Even with the decent weapon I'm still pretty close to bottom of the barrel in terms of damage between our DPS classes, to the point where I technically should just turn fully to spell casting and ignore my weapon xD. At least until I get to level 14 and can apply my INT modifier to my damage rolls. We have 3 other DPS characters in the party (Barb, Rogue, Fighter) who all have multiclassed Rogue (well except the actual Rogue) for the Sneak Attack damage boost and... it is brutal to compare to. The fact that Sneak Attack's conditions are met merely from nearby allies being near the target means it is basically always active.
My character is functionally more a balance between defense, attack, and some utility, as a Bladesinger it is very hard to hit me between Bladesong adding my INT to AC, and Shield to pad it if needed. However the flip side is that I don't have that much HP and occasionally we face enemies with save-or-suck spells or AoEs (spells or physical attacks) that bypass AC. We have three spell casters, all with [Tooltip Not Found]s so any mid-level spell caster is just garbage around our party. It also means the DM can't effectively use groups, as we have a Wizard, Sorc and a Cleric with AoEs that is likely to make quick work of groups between Fireballs and Spirit Guardians.
one of my players used a moon blade to decimate one of my campaigns, they had a good backstory so i gave it to them, but they made it do 1d6+1 million d 6 damage, my campaighn was screwed.
Sorry to hear your campaign was screwed by a Moonblade, i wonder how the PC did 1d6+1 million d 6 damage?
I wonder if they actually made them roll 1 million d6’s.
The wind told me today they're still rolling dice (just kidding!)
This story actual happened in 2e and they are waiting for combat to resolve so they can update their characters to the new editions.
How to add Tooltips.
Sounds like the problem is less the Moonblade and more a GM who lets their players run roughshod over them.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Agreed. Now, lore wise no new moon blades should be being created. Further no non elf ( or half elf) should ever be wielding one. They were created, one for each major elven clan, as a means of choosing which clan should the king come from. That decision was made long ago. Most moonblades are dormant and would act as a standard +1-3 blade unless an elf of the clan picked it up. Then it ( the moon blade) would judge the PC and decide if the PC was worthy of carrying it. If so then that PC would be able to carry it and a new rune would be added. Just how many were made is not known. Further, how many have gone dormant or been destroyed/lost is not known. In theory there are ( sort of) 3 known active moonblades - Arylin’s, the queen of evermeet’s, and Nimensien’s which is waiting for his daughter to grow up ( it rejected him). Yes some are fairly weak - those are the ones that went dormant early. None should be more powerful than the three known active blades.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
DM can have Moonblade be as much or more powerful than the ones appearing in Forgotten Realms campaign setting lore.
Agreed, buts the best guideline to start off with. Obviously (I hope) if your using them in a nonFR world the FR lore is, at best, a guide for the DM not a requirement.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Revisiting this thread on a whim. Seeing the new 2024 DMG has completely removed the minor properties as part of the rolling table and all Moonblades comes with a minor property... I feel somewhat vindicated.
The fact it also expanded on the weapon type, instead of 2014 that was always a Longsword, you can now have Greatsword, Longsword, Rapier, Scimitar or Shortsword variants. Each type granting their standard weapon traits like Light, Finesse, Heavy, etc.
https://www.dndbeyond.com/magic-items/9228858-moonblade
They also took a few abilities away (including the highly popular ability to make it a Finesse weapon) and the expansion to various sword types is far from unique.
It honestly makes sense to remove the finesse ability if it's now capable of being any sword type. three out of five swords in the PHB are already finesse weapons, and we don't need a finesse greatsword.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Counterpoint: Longsword has a mastery property unique to it among the eligible options and the lack of finesse as an option makes the original form unable to be used as a Dex weapon with Sap.
That's a point, but probably not a particularly relevant one to the weapon design. The point of it gaining finesse as a special property was effectively so that any weapon user class can be given a Moonblade back when they were sticking with it being a longsword. Now they opted to include every sword template in the baseline, so that niche is covered. Access to weapon masteries is a whole other dynamic, and one that's supposed to specifically favor Fighters.
Since iteration is back I thought I’d rejoin with some thoughts on those “poor randomized moonblades”. When they were made (FR lore) @14k years ago (-12,000 DR) at the end of the crown wars there were several remaining elven nations. All of them had noble families so a lot of moonblades were created if every noble family of every nation got 1. Today there are somewhere between 3 ( known “active” blades and possibly upto 20 ( my guesstimate) active blades. All the others have gone dormant. At least so says the FR lore. So why did they go dormant/ get lost/etc? Many simply because the properties attached proved insufficient to the tasks their wielders attempted. A Moonblade with poor randomly rolled properties is simply one of these being reawakened by a new wielder. That, or the blade could find no quality members of the family after a generation or 3 and went dormant with the low quality abilities of few wielders it did have before going dormant.. In the end most moonblades are from families that proved insufficient to the task of being noble elves and were either lost or went dormant. What makes them valuable is their ability to gain improvements based on the needs and personalities of their wielder. Romberg, the blade chooses or rejects you not you the blade. Following FR lore to wield one you have to be either elven or half elven, from a noble elven family and of good alignment. Otherwise it may choose to act as a nonmagical or +1 weapon and you might never know it’s a moonblades if your told by someone who knows. As an example I have an expected now NPC that wields a moonblades if your. He was from a minor Evereskan family on a different prime material from the one he is on now. On his home world the moonblades was wielded by an older cousin so he had no opportunity to get it. When he finally made it to the present Faerun he is on and visited Evereska the dormant moonblade here awoke. After some discussion he was allowed to try and the moonblade accepted him as a family member worthy of wielding the blade so he Carrie’s it now for the family.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Agreed. It's overall a nice change that most magic items seems to now be based on a weapon type and have those traits on top of any magical properties. In contrast to earlier versions of magic items that were their own category and requiring their own non-standard weapon proficiency.
What?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.