So what are some actually cool or creative curses a weapon or other magic artifact might have to discourage a sap from...

That's a cool idea, too. I suppose you could do other permutations on it, as well, like making it slow wound healing.

He has a serious martyrdom and hero complex. Plus he still clings to the idea that his quest will've empowered him enough to win out. Here's a spoiler, it won't work out. Phyrric victory at best

That sucks that he won't get a chance to defeat it

That'll be up to his niece to defeat his lifeless husk being puppeted around by the dark power

>The weilder has to feed it body parts in order to wield it. It won't accept anything smaller than a finger.

>Every time it's drawn the weilder ages a year, or racial equivalent.

>The sword is blood hungry, and don't care about your well-being. The bonus to hit applies as a penalty to avoid being hit to.

>Sword will abandon you, slipping from your grip, if it thinks it has found a more worthy leader.

>The said was made by a powerful death Knight, and it constantly attracts the undead. It doesn't grant any ability to command or protect yourself from the undead.

>Hurting people with the sword feels good, really good. Killing is even better. After killing an opponent, make a save to resist collapsing in orgasmic bliss.

Get outta here, Slaanesh.

The info the DM has given me about the weapon/Dark Power is such;
The weapon is called the Tooth of Ba'al. The actual polearm is long and powerful, with a wavy pointed blade of cold steel. To either side of the blase, flanking like the side-spikes of a trident, are the blood-stained fangs of a vampire.
As for it's properties it's starts off as a +0 magical weapon, but it's Devour Soul function is what makes it shine. If you use this weapon to kill a living creature with a soul, the weapon upgrades in bonus and healing per turn. Also the subject's soul can not be brought back unless a Wish spell is used. It's Bonus modifier caps out at +4, where other legendary weapons cap out at +3.
For it's last ability, it grants the wielder advantage on Intimidation checks as an aura of shadow begins to emanate from the wielder.

Ba'al has many names... The Marquis of Teeth, The Soul Eater, The Gilded God, The Malefactor, and even The Crimson Hatred all being a few to name.

With each life he takes, he slowly loses more and more of himself as Ba'al grows closer to owning his soul.

>sword has a soft blushing white skin grip with inlayed pink and red details
>the grip is warm and seems to grip you back when you hold it
>as you fight, the grip sends a bunch of veins into your skin and to your blood stream
>it behaves like a growing zygote in the womb, constantly bullying the mother's bloodstream for its own gain
>Makes you feel calm and relaxed when you hold the sword
>when enemies are around it helps keep you focused and rewards you with dopamine when you make a kill
>When a fight ends it drugs the fuck out of you with some aphrodisiac that makes you docile and orgasmic while the blade basically pukes out a giant disgusting gut worm that spills into a bunch of tiny veins that drinks the body of your enemies.
>If the blade drinks too much the chitan plates(the blade) are open on the backside and you can see the parasite wriggling around and digesting inside.
>After it feeds for awhile you have the option to make it spit digested fecal black blood at someone, or have it spill into a hit opponent's wound poisoning them.
>Eventually even letting the sword go becomes a difficult task as your drug addled and broken mind struggle to want to let go, and the parasite becomes bolder, digging into your muscles and your veins with greater need.
>If you ever die or stop killing for a long time the sword decides its life is in danger and sneaks a vein into you(or the nearest living thing) and lays a bunch of parasite eggs that eventually drink out the host and create a pile of little flesh daggers that crawl away on tiny legs
>Most adventurers end up castrating themselves and cutting off other erogenous zones, becoming entirely dependent on the sword
>Murder hobos would still use it because of muh high damage bonuses even though they had to cut their dick off

>Cleaning the sword magically heals the wielder.
>The sword must have blood on it for cleaning to have any effect
>Other methods of healing become ineffective over time. Eventually, even sleep will offer nothing in terms of health

Being a cursed weapon, it can harm certain cursed beings that normal weapons cannot.

In addition, it curses those it inflicts damage against. The curses are quite weak at first and don't last long, usually just a feeling on uneasiness, but the more the blade is used the more powerful they become, inflicting bad luck, long lasting aches, hallucinations, diseases, numbness, delirium, and more.

That doesn't sound like a cursed weapon at all. The only drawback is that it starts off barely better than a regular sword.

A mace that is a relic to a God of civilisation -
Tithe. Larger damage die, and good enchantment. When you hit an enemy carrying gold with the weapon, they are stunned for 1 round, no save. All gold they are carrying disappears into the nether.
Additionally, the carrier of Tithe cannot carry coin or gem currency, directly or otherwise. If you do, it disappears into the nether.

The sword's incredibly powerful, but for each enemy you kill, you have to kill someone you love. Alternatively, you have to kill an innocent.

There was an entire Visual Novel based around this concept.

The sword has a bevy of magical powers (sundering, being able to harm spirits, obviating weather effects), but using these powers has a cost in HP or Wounds. This gradually increases over time and tends to spike in specific situations.

Summons sir bearington lol

So a reproducing semi-symbiotic sword mimic? That's really cool

If you toss it, your dick and balls fall off.

>actually cool

>actually cool
>balls fall off

The Cold Sword

a really cold sword, its so cold that everything else becomes cold and then your balls fall off

Axe of Avarice.

You can't unequip it mid battle

You feed it gold in exchange for extreme damage that scale with your level. but it keeps wanting more and more for the same buff. If you don't have enough gold and still attack with it, it'll take blood equivalent to the debt. If you die and the debt is still not fully payed it will seek the one you love most and collect.

No balls falling off.

>A holy greatsword that cleaves through anything.
>It allows you to sense evil
>It can cut even the space between you and your enemies
>If you see any evil being it will take control your body and make you kill it.
>Criminals and incompetent/corrupt nobles are considered evil beings.

Behold the curses of inconvenience:
The weapon will insist on telling you about it's amazing legend that began in the 12th century whenever drawn, in the voice of Fran Drescher.
The weapon yells racial slurs at anything not .
The weapon will tell your most embarassing secret for everyone to hear when drawn.
The weapon needs 2 minutes of rubbing before it's sufficiently strong to attack.
The weapon has a 1/20 chance of some bullshit happening.
The weapon requires the player to make a particular stupid facial expression whenever they attack, or they miss.
The weapon glows, all the time.
The weapon instantly falls off any scabbard or knot.
The weapon requires that you cast your spell backwards.
The weapon requires that you resharpen it after every hit.
Your balls fall off.

A sword of light that directly becomes more powerful with the player's magic and strength stat, even more so than any conventional weapon.

however, once swung it takes quite the force to stop since it is wielded by the souls bound to it with the player just giving directions.
this causes any missed attack to drag the player around, leaving him without ability to act or defend some bit into the next turn

I made this.
pastebin.com/AgZJbvWK

Chaos dragon, if memory serves.

And it was shit.

Chaos Dragon was an anime based on Red Dragon - the campaign journal of an RP played by a bunch of professional writers (including Nasu and Urobuchi).

Except it was a very, very loose adaptation. Among other things, despite being central to the plot of Chaos Dragon, that sword didn't exist in Red Dragon at all.

Red Dragon was hilarious, Chaos Dragon was shit.

Learn how to fucking format. Don't sneak rules into the middle of big fluffy paragraphs. It was shit in 3.5e, it was shit in every White Wolf product, and it's shit now.

This should not be hidden, as it's the only important part of the paragraph:
>"For the duration, the wielder gains a bonus to damage on melee attacks equal to the weapon's concordance, and advantage on strength checks."

Clean up your wording. You take way too long to get to the point. Yours:
>The wielder may use this ability an unlimited number of times. However, every time the wielder does, starting with the second time, the wielder must make a charisma saving throw, or be possessed by shadows. The check to resist this starts at a DC of 12, but increases by 2 every time the wielder uses Investiture of Shadows. If the user fails their charisma save to resist the shadows' influence, they are possessed for a number of minutes equal to the DC of the save they failed, minus 10, plus the weapon's concordance at the time.

Mine:
>Every time you use Investiture of Shadows after the first, make a Charisma saving throw at a DC of 10 + (2 * uses past first). Failure means you are possessed for Concordance + (DC-10) minutes.

See how much cleaner and to the point that is?

Quantify how concordance increases and decreases. Give it actual rules, like "+1 Concordance if you use it more times than its current concordance before a long rest, -1 if you don't."

>While possessing the wielder, there is a chance that the shadows may still do essentially what the wielder would have wanted to do anyway, but they could also do any number of things.
What is this based on? Is it "GM is given free license to fuck you over", or is there a table?

Beyond that, it's a shitty cursed weapon. Damage is the single most boring thing you can do with magical weapons. Make it do something interesting instead, or in addition to the damage. It's got a ton of shadow fluff, give the wielder concealment or stealth bonuses.

Well shit. Thats something i wasn't aware of.

Either way, chaos is shit, not so much because of the sword, but because of the fact that its his only ability. He has no redeeming skills otherwise, which meant characters getting offed was gonna be a common occurrence.

Basically, no show can be good if you can't even get attached to the characters.

These are actually good pointers and I will take them into consideration.

There's a translation of Red Dragon if you're interested
forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread.php/3472-Red-Dragon

Make the wielder utterly convinced the weapon is way more powerful than it actually is.

>planning all this beforehand with your GM

What sort of game are you even playing?

GM gave a character a weapon that could assume the shape of any other weapon at will. It was an intelligent blade as well, and was benign most of the time. However, it absolutely hated arcane magic users and would take control of the character to try and destroy them. The character was a Paladin, so was very good at maintaining control of the weapon... until he didn't. Ended up sinking 3 arrows into a comrade, then tossing itself (the weapon that is), into the back of that character as a dagger (giving control back to the Paladin just in time for him to realize he killed his companion). Things like this happened several times, but because the Paladin won 9/10 of his mental battles with the sword, he always thought he could handle it.

One where my character gets fuckled by fate (Fate being a big thing in Curse of Strahd).

That's not to say everything has been following a perfect guideline, I'm personally trying to get to that outcome and I could very well die and that would be the end of it.
I don't know who my character would hate more, me of the DM? Both of us have made his life a Shakespearean tragedy upon tragedy

Had a sword that granted a significant bonus to combat skill, but forced a will save whenever a friendly character did something my character found irritating. Nobody but myself and the GM knew and there was a jackass kobold who lived to get on peoples' nerves. Only failed the roll once and fortunately all that happened was I chucked the barrel he was hiding in a lot harder than was strictly necessary.

There was also a sword and shield set had some sort of memetic enchantment on it that prevented anyone who looked at it from identifying it as a sword and shield. It obviously was, but you would be literally unable to say that it was, or react to them as if they were. The best you could do is define it as a "weapon" for the purposes of knowing that you needed to get out of the way if it was swung at you. The cognitive dissonance imparted a hefty penalty to anyone trying to defend against, or attack the wielder. They would have been detrimental to the wielder too, but my character was a golem and after a few experiments I found that I was able to forcibly reverse his perception of the sword and shield, allowing him to not only use them without frying his "brain" but also allowing him to describe them as a sword and shield.

Actually, I was talking about Fullmetal Daemon Murasama. I agree that Red Dragon was fucking shit, though.

> youtube.com/watch?v=ubqKVXqJRIc

>sword
that's a cudgel

I dunno, it's a contract that only gets completed if he kills Strahd. I think he's in the clear.

yo if it's second edition remind the DM to use the optional vampire age rules. Strahd's an old fucker.

Thread theme
youtube.com/watch?v=4C2K889u_90

I think the spelling and grammar issues within the weapon template make me cringe more than the weapon itself. Jesus fuck, man.

Bonus: youtube.com/watch?v=5fPl4ZVkSfc

Sword of Emasculation
>Everyone thinks it's meant to be used to cut off dicks and balls
>Actually it cuts off own your own dick and balls if you use it
>Nobody dares question the legend in fear of having the bearer cut off their dick and balls
>Bearer is in constant state of panic in confrontation for fear of someone actually questioning it
>As a result he's also deathly afraid of being anywhere women because they have no dick and balls to cut off

This sword cannot be knocked out of the wielder's hand(s).
In fact, putting the sword away at all is extremely difficult

This whole thing reads like a very lonely man's fetish.

2/10

With some modification, I think it'd fit Tzeentch, Nurgle, or Slaanesh well.

Sounds like a Slaanesh curse weapon