The Holiest Avenger: Designing a Targeted Magic Item

NB: this post was written prior to the last play report which you can read here. We’re playing 2014 D&D 5e.

I have been designing a magic weapon for my paladin or ranger this weekend. They’re currently in the final act of the campaign and its time for these characters to get a weapon upgrade – lock in their final loadout. The other PCs already have unique special artefacts tied to their characters and backstories and I wanted to give these two some love. Although I think it’s ultimately most likely the paladin will take the weapon, I tried to ensure the ranger would also be able to use it so the party can decide for themselves who wants to wield which weapon according to their build preferences.

When designing magic items for specific party members, I always try to take the extra time to build something that will complement their existing playstyle. I know many folks dislike the idea of deciding ahead of time which items their players will receive, but I find when magic item discoveries in a plot driven heroic campaign like ours are intentional, the players get a bigger kick out of it. Although it eliminates the possibility of emergent, unexpected item builds and uses, wacky or zany random item placements really don’t mesh with the style of this story.

In the end, receiving a unique historical artefact clearly aimed specifically for their character seems to really fire up my players. They can see their character turning into a hero on their character sheet, and getting to wield the legendary sword Soulcleaver, the Blade that Severs Souls is just cool, god damn it.

Author’s Note: I have a lot of thoughts about intentional vs random items, character-backstory-tie-ins vs coincidental discoveries and the like, but that’s a topic for another post. For clarity, I like to have a mix of all things. In another game I’d love to pull out the random magic item tables, but the style of this campaign was set a long time ago.

For completeness: my bard discovered Soulcleaver early on (which ‘just happened’ to compliment his playstyle as it leveled up), the barbarian has been steadily upgrading his battleaxe to the point it is now a legendary artefact, the ranger took a liking to a buried flaming bronze glaive, and now the paladin is inheriting my version of a Holy Avenger.

Marked Enemies

I had a couple of goals in mind with this weapon. Something I desperately wanted to avoid was complexity: the party are now at 14th level and have plenty of magic items already. Their bonus actions are extremely cluttered (there simply aren’t enough rounds of combat to use all their options) and they each have something like 3 or 4 resources to track (e.g. ability uses per short rest, or magic item charges which recharge daily). That’s a lot to remember! It's too much man!

The other thing I wanted to enable – which is always one of my goals – was tactical gameplay. Although my group aren’t min-maxers, they are by this point very skilled at 5E’s combat system and enjoy playing it optimally. Giving this weapon something which would engage with their other abilities and allow interesting and powerful emergent choices was important to me. (I had to be careful here to not let this clash with my first goal though.)

The key mechanic I eventually landed on was the idea of marked enemies. My paladin has three levels in warlock, and considers Hexblade’s Curse one of their main abilities. They also wield a homebrewed White Dragon Mask (the concept for my campaign was inspired by what Hoard of the Dragon Queen could have been) which enables them to place dragon marks on enemies in combat (see below). Similarly, the ranger is using a homebrew version of the class (which we’re actually super happy with; designed by the ranger's player, a GM himself and burgeoning game designer) and one of its principal abilities is called Favored Foe; basically a reworked Hunter’s Mark that doesn’t require concentration (again, see below).

Homebrew Favored Foe
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The White Dragon Mask
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I thought it would be neat to group all these abilities together and define them as marking enemies, an unoriginal concept I know, but one that hasn’t been formally defined in 5E (to my knowledge). Since both characters have access to abilities like these it fit nicely for the weapon to play off and encourage their use.

This is something I often like to do. Identify how one of my players has built their characters, the tactics that player likes to employ (are they a fast, mobile striker? are they a slow, lumbering tank?), and aim magic items at them that either reinforce their fantasy, or shore up their weaknesses. In this case both players like to single out enemies and focus them down, using their ‘marks’ to boost the effectiveness of spells like Divine Smite or Zephyr Strike, and so encouraging this gameplay was an obvious choice.

Turning my attention next to the issue of complexity, I knew I didn’t want to add any further resources that required tracking to either character sheet, and also didn’t want to further bog down their already overloaded bonus actions. That ruled out item charges, short/long rest refreshes and bonus action attacks or spells. I also didn’t want anything too noodly or situational that would require the player to have to remember a complex niche scenario at all times just in case it came up and they could eke out an incremental bonus.

This basically left me with just actions to play with. Giving my players extra ways to use them, provided they’re balanced, is a nice way of increasing their versatility in combat without directly affecting their total power output (although improving versatility is an indirect buff), and minimizes complexity by reducing the choice to: do I use Action A or Action B? Or do I just Attack?

So, what did I land on?

Well, both characters have Extra Attack. Since this magic item is a sword of some kind, its primary use case should also focus on attacking. I decided I would allow the wielder the chance to sacrifice their second attack when targeting a marked enemy in exchange for some additional effect. This item is called Balance in the common tongue (one of several unique legendary swords like Carver, Biter and Pain which exist in my setting) and so, like the original GM I am, I liked the idea of a healing effect and a harmful effect.

The healing ability was easy. A very simple mechanic, ‘regain hit points’, applied here.

However, in order to make this ability worth using, the amount of HP regained had to be large enough to balance out the potential sacrificed damage (and if you’re aware of high level 5E, you know this is not as simple as it seems). Here I thought of a fun twist. How about the wielder regains hit points equal to the amount of damage they deal to their target? Except that’s boring and overplayed. So, how about instead: hit points regained equal to the total amount of damage dealt to the target before the end of their turn?

On the surface this seems the same. The wielder makes an attack, their turn ends, and then they regain hit points equal to the damage they just dealt. Except, with this wording the wielder is also able to use their bonus action to deal damage to the target, which contributes to the HP they regain. And then, if the target takes damage from any other source before the player’s turn ends, that also contributes to the total HP the player regains.

See, this is that emergent tactical gameplay I was talking about. Now the player gets to use Divine Smite or Zephyr Strike or any other bonus action spell or attack to deal extra damage and boost the amount healed, which is the intended use of this ability and encourages strategic choice (rather than locking them into a boring flat heal). But in addition, if the players are smart and in need of giving the weapon’s wielder an extra healing boost, they can hold their actions or time their reactions to trigger on the wielder’s turn, thus adding to the healing pool.

There are layers of complexity here, but they’re not hard to remember or figure out, and entirely optional. To finish the ability I added a lower limit to the amount of healing, so even if the player misses they don’t waste their turn.

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For the harmful effect, I kept it even simpler. Instead of attacking twice, the player attacks once but deals an increased amount of burst damage on that attack. This is a simple equation: less damage reliability (two attacks gives you two chances to deal damage, one attack is riskier), for a greater damage average. High risk, high reward.

To make it an even higher reward I added minor burst damage to all enemies within reach of the target and increased the chance for the attack to crit.

Finally, as a nice little bonus, you’ll notice I tied the two abilities together. The first ability gives the wielder advantage on attacks for the duration of their next turn, which can then be used to reduce the risk of the second ability missing – encouraging intelligent tactical choices!

It’s fair to say these numbers are untested and may need tweaking. This is something I’m not afraid to do, and you shouldn’t be too. My players understand if I need to nerf something because it’s unbalancing the game.

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With these two abilities I have effectively given the player two extra options they can use their action for: sacrificing damage reliability for an increased damage output, or just sacrificing damage itself for some self-healing. Some pretty basic game design concepts, all things considered, but with a few twists to make things a bit more interesting.

Giving the weapon some bonus damage against fiends and undead (my version of a Holy Avenger), a thematic description and a couple of spells (here I broke my rule and added charges, but kept it extremely simple – I wanted the spell to effectively be ‘usable once every three days’) and we’re done!

You can see the completed weapon below. I borrowed an artist’s rendition of a Holy Avenger from ArtStation for the item card – I don’t have permission to use this art so I’ve omitted it from the post, but you can find the art here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YKzayY

As a side note, if you want to use this magic item in your campaign, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. My bard and barbarian already have character-specific unique magic items and I know they won’t be tempted by this new weapon. However if your party is different, be aware the way the weapon is written it will be much more powerful if used by a character without Extra Attack. Consider changing the wording to be more explicit about the need to 'sacrifice' an attack.

Zyríva / Balance
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