Artifact: Hell Dagger

[Gold Bearer]

..Great weapon for the Wizard.

This weapon fits perfectly on a Thief classed hero, especially played by a gambler!

Yea true, but a thief would have more affective choices. This would be the Wizards best option.

[Goblin-King]

..Great weapon for the Wizard.

This weapon fits perfectly on a Thief classed hero, especially played by a gambler!

Yea true, but a thief would have more affective choices. This would be the Wizards best option.

Depends on which weapons you allow on a thief though.

[Teldurn]

This is a pretty sweet weapon. I had never considered using exploding damage dice (the actual name of this concept) before! While it might sound like it might be OP, a couple people have mentioned that half the time you're missing. The other half the time, you're on fire!

However, it might work better as a shortsword or other 2CD weapon, where you can assign one of the dice to be the exploding die. If that die rolls a skull, you keep rerolling until you stop rolling skulls.

[torilen]

I think I might make the determining die a separate roll.
If both dice roll a skull, then continue with the "explosion of damage" until no more skulls are rolled.
I think that would offer a possibility of not causing any damage...having to roll two skulls to be able to
continue, or just one damage is caused and a normal dagger.

[Goblin-King]

Also don't forget that EVERY... SINGLE... TIME... you are on fire, it will be against a goblin!

[JasonMCM]

So here are some numbers... (These are end results so the 1 skull result is achieved with a skull on the first die and then a shield on the second die.)
0 Skulls: 50%
1 Skull: 25%
2 Skulls: 12.5%
3 Skulls: 6.25%
4 Skulls: 3.125%
5 Skulls: 1.5625%
6 or more Skulls: 1.5625%

As you can see the chances for getting the high number of skulls are crazy low. I personally have never rolled anything higher than 3 skulls when playing around with this. I have a couple of friends who will probably get at least one 5+ hit per night though... Maybe this isn't such a good idea.

[TMU]

But you roll one die for skull, so doesn't that just mean that all the dice rolls are 50% chance to get a skull?

[Goblin-King]

Doesn't it go more like this?

0 = 50%
1 = 50%
2 = 25%
3 = 12,50%
4 = 6,25%
5 = 3,13%
6 = 1,56%
7 = 0,78%

But so what if a player rolls 5 or even 6 a couple of times during a quest?
That's the whole point of this dagger, right? You'll feel lucky when you can even roll 3. And it will completely miss half the time.
This is a chance weapon for gamblers. It's good as is.

[Sotiris]

Every time i read this thread makes me love this weapon/idea more and more! I must hurry to finish all of my new heroes and add this artifact.

Don't change the type of weapon or the dice mechanic. To balance things add this text:
While using this weapon, any kind of potion you drink will have no effect on you.

[Tott]

i would change the wording to say that you may only reroll one skull, that way if you do have courage or heroic brew you can still only reroll one skull.
again its a fairly common concept, if you're lucky AND the enemy your facing is very tough it could feel like an incredibly over-powered weapon, but the maths used here is fundamentally wrong, e.g
against a goblin:
0 skulls = 50%
1 skull = 50%
2 skulls = 25%
3 skulls or more = "F@££$ng typical! it only ever works against bloody goblins! ARGH!

against a tougher enemy:
0 skulls = 80%
1 Skull = 20%
2 or more skulls = hah. yeah right.

maths; no-one ever takes into account murphys law.

i made a hero class called assassin that had a similar concept, but as a trained assassin he could reroll any skulls. never got to play test him but i think rerolling one skull only would be slightly more balanced, even taking into account murphy's law.