Post/Author/DateTime	Post
jclown 11-07-03, 04:44 AM	My human cleric recently came into possesion of his fathers magic bastard sword. Along with its magic enhancements it carries a curse in ther form of a voice in my head. This voice drove my father to attack his best friend and attack two strangers before he was brought down by a demon in the first layer of hell. Now my cleric knows of this and wants to fight the sword and banish the demonforce from the blade, but what I need are some ideas to roleplay the fight against possesion by the blade. What the voice says is that people around me are demons and need to be killed. Any ideas would be greatly appriecated as I am stuck for what to do. jclown
Trydan 11-07-03, 07:14 AM	There are two ways I can see that such a battle would take. Eihter a battle or wills or a battle of strength. In the first case, the battle would be where the sword is trying to do something, and the character something else. There would be dice-rolls based on things such as Intimidate, Sense Motive or even just a straight Will saving throw. I would suggest that the DM roleplays the sword, who would then put voices into the head of the character. The character can also contribute by incorporating his attempt to dominate the sword. This might mean anything from shouting discipline at the blade, to phrasing all actions with guarded caution. E.g. "I swipe at the orc, yelling at my sword to strike true and not to veer off, or else I'll reforge it as a ploughblade!" or "I swipe at the orc, carefully guarding against any unforeseen ideas that the sword might have on its own". The other way to do this - via a battle of strength - would be to actually have the sword become animated and attack the character. This could then result in roleplaying where the character must make a point of tying it up in its scabbard each night, lest it escape and slay someone. And should it escape, then combat using all the "attack weapon/sunder/etc." rules could be deployed.
TheBlackBart 11-07-03, 01:32 PM	I would use the same rules in the DMG for intelligent weapons, with the demons stats, of course... Plus, the demon might have spell-like abilities like charm-person, for example, which would call for will saves... Ultimately, it falls on your DM how he wants to run things...
nick012000 11-08-03, 08:16 AM	Umm... In the standard cosmology, devils live in the Nine Hells of Baator, not Demons. Demons live in the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, and are in a never ending war with the devils over what kind of evil is better... :rolleyes:
Arthur_Pendragon 11-08-03, 10:18 PM	You could have a ritual to try to banish the evil from the sword, only to have it result in bodily releasing the demon/devil in the blade. :devil: Then the party must fight it (if they weren't smart enough to cast Protection from Evil before starting the Ritual). And worse, if the demon/devil slays one of the PC's it could (at DM's evil discretion) perhaps possess one of the PC's....BWAHAHAHAHA! Fight the demon/devil and the possessed PC's body....
Morka 11-09-03, 08:04 PM	It reminds me the battle of will between Cyric and Godsbane in the third novel of the Avatars serie, when Cyric was a mortal... Spoiler: The sword had a cute female voice. But Cyric didn't listen to her. So they were teleported (or Cyric was dreaming, I don't clearly remember) somewhere, and instead of the sword it was a woman. Cyric and the woman fighted a bit and finally Cyric won. (Or it is what we were supposed to believe).