Silencer
Description: Hefty 9" blade with "brass knuckle" style handguard and an oversized ball pommel, clearly designed to do as well in a punch-up as a knife fight. Radiates a clear enhancement aura typical of enchanted weapons to the magically aware. Stronger identification charms will detect the silencing augmentation easily enough, but the caster will be struck dumb by backlash for about a minute afterward.
Powers: Typical enchanted weapon of its type, sharper, stronger, and faster than a mundane blade. Its design allows the user to choose between using the blade (which deals lethal slashing/piercing damage and draws blood) or the guard/pommel (which deals bludgeoning nonlethal/subdual damage) when striking.
If Silencer hits a target with its blade, the victim must resist its magic using whatever system your rules support (save vs. magic item or a Will save, for D&D style games) or be unable to utter a sound for 1d3+1 combat exchanges/rounds. This will obviously interfere with some spells and vocal abilities, including most sonic attacks.
Possible Origins: The arcane formula used to create these weapons is old and fairly well-known, but most wizards refuse to make them due to their obvious utility against traditional spellcasters. If they could they'd conceal or destroy all record of the process, but too many alchemists, sages, artificers, and the like know of it to put that horse back in the stable.
Complications: While drawn, the wielder cannot speak above a hoarse whisper, and even that is tiring and makes your throat hurt after a while. You can just barely cast your own spells, but forget any bardic songs or shouted commands, and your allies may have difficulty hearing you over the din of battle.
You could always just sheath the thing and talk normally, of course.
Design Commentary: Anyone whose abilities rely on being able to speak in combat is going to hate these daggers. Others will mostly just have to miss out on their usual line of combat banter. You can "turn off" the silencing effect by just beating on a target with the blunt parts of the weapon, which may be helpful if you're trying to get the target to yell for help and lure their friends into a trap or something.
I liked the idea of a small blade that might even things up against a powerful mage and then I saw that you have to be quiet when you use it and I like that even more.
ReplyDelete