abyssalbrews

Sir William

Added 2024-09-19 15:00:06 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

Every once in a while you come across an odd item that requires some measure of explanation, but then there are some that explain themselves. While sentience in magicked items is nothing new to me, it is odd to find one so pervasive in its personality while also being relatively um… less that extremely powerful lets say. I came across this during an estate auction after the passing of a local. One of the crates there spoke to me. No literally as in I could hear talking inside it. I bought the crate immediately as I had to know what was inside only to find this ceremonial sword with a mind all its own.

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Design notes from Matthew:
Designing sentient weapons is usually something reserved for higher rarities in 5E and I find that to be a shame. While PF2E is a bit better on that front with other examples of lower level intelligent items, I really wanted to create something that could join the adventure early. One of the chief problems I find with sentient items is that you often get them so late in a campaign that their personality barely has time to shine and there’s not much ability to see them impact the game they’re in.
I set out with this one to be kind of a sequel to Billy the Club in some ways. Since we made Billy before, he’s been one of our more popular items and I wanted to see what other fun exercises I could put into lower level items that are intelligent.
I think one of the better ways to design lower level rarity/level items is to give them a defined purpose first then design around that. Only include things that suit the purpose and in this case, Sir William’s function as a noble’s ceremonial sword told me that he should have a mind for the nobility and what they’re up to at all times. He pays attention to these innerworkings and gains into the way nobles think. So much so that he considered himself one.

I’ve been putting more and more time into thinking of the character behind the items that we design of late. In this case, that “character” was more literal than perhaps I initially meant when I started this exercise, but I think it ended up for the better. Hopefully you enjoy our third entry for Swordtember because we have one more left!

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