Artifact: Hell Dagger

[Goblin-King]

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.

Who... What... Are you insane?! How is that balanced?! No more healing potions? No more antidote?
Is it to prevent drinking potion of strength to gain extra dice? I mean... jeeze... It's not like it's game breaking to be able to make a one-use extra strong attack. Okay, sure you can save the PoS for the final boss. But you can do that with Genie too.

What is it about this weapon that seems overpowered compared to BattleAxe and Spirit Blade? It doesn't need nerfing at all!
HALF... THE... TIME... It misses completely! Try to say it out loud.



Sorry for outburst... That time of the month...

[torilen]

Goblinking - calm down...take a breath...count back from 10.
You're gonna bust a capillary, man.

I think sotiris was...drunk, yeah, that's it. Drunk out of his mind when he wrote that.

[knightkrawler]

Sotiris got it right.
His goal was to not let a potion have any effect on USING THE DAGGER, that means you start with 1 AD always, unmodified thorugh potion of strength and similarly attack dice enhancing effects.
And his wording doesn't imply otherwise. Read carefully.
You can drink a healing potion because you don't do it "while using this weapon". This part is crucial to understanding what Sotiris wanted to achieve.

You can say you use a weapon when you roll the attack dice assigned by said weapon, and not by just owning it. Do we agree on this? Yes, we do.
So, drinking a potion that has no effect on the attack dice you're allowed to roll - even if during the same turn (because drinking a potion is not an action and thus not connected to the attack) - means you drink it NOT "while using" the weapon. So, by Sotiris' wording, this potion does have an effect if it does not affect your attack dice.

Sotiris, please say I'm right, else I'm gonna be the arrogant busybody again. Daedalus, pretty please?

[The Road Warrior]

Why is it so important not to combine potions (or spells/courage) with this weapon? What really changes if you do? With the Potion of Strength you get a 75% chance of rolling a skull with your first throw instead of 50%. Big deal. Even in the 1/4 chance that you roll and you allow the player to construct two chains of additional dice rolls*, 1 from each skull, The odds of rolling excessively high numbers of skulls is still pretty low.

I really like this. It would make a good Quest Treasure for a Wizard that is part of a group of advanced Heroes.

* I actually wouldn't allow this as the card says 'Continue to do so until a skull is not rolled on an additional die. So once a shield has been rolled no more additional dice rolls during this turn whatsoever, right?

[Sotiris]

..His goal was to not let a potion have any effect on USING THE DAGGER, that means you start with 1 AD always, unmodified thorugh potion of strength and similarly attack dice enhancing effects..
..this potion does have an effect if it does not affect your attack dice.

Exactly, you're right!
With no effect i meant the attacking potions: battle potion, heroic brew and strength potion. My wording is wrong anyway cause i forgot the Courage spell (+clarification of potions).
So GK's disagreement was absolutely logical.
If i play this card to my games this restriction will be written.

[chaoticprime]

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.

I agree with this so much that I think I might accuse JasonMCM of having raped my mind of it. J'accuse!

I think the potion problem may be self-fixing. On the Artifact's description if there is specification that "when using this dagger you immediately make an attack using one combat die against an adjacent monster"--that supersedes even a potion--you are using the artifact--which takes the place of an attack action, not making an attack action.

[Count Mohawk]

Why does the potion fix even need to occur? An exploding die has, statistically, twice the power of a normal die (just with a lot more variance!). So if you drink a Potion of Strength and attack with the Hell Dagger, you get 3 exploding dice, which is statistically equivalent to 6 normal dice. This is no stronger, on average, than a +Potion Battle Axe swing.
Alternatively, just make it so that only the Hell Dagger's 'natural' die is classed as exploding, and bonus dice act otherwise as normal. Problem solved!

[Malcadon]

If I used that weapon in my game, it could be a nasty crowd-cleaner. As a house-rule, an attack that fell a monster with hits to spare, can be used to attack another adjacent (and/or diagonal) monster. Although, I would rule that a suped-up dagger cannot transfer extra hits as it is not a slashing weapon.

I hate the English language. It is messy, cluttered and full of confusing, archaic and/or foreign rules. Dyslexia makes things even worst! Hell, even the spelling of "dyslexia" is a spit in the eye to anyone who has it! (aybeMay Iyay ouldshay earnlay igPay atinLay, oryay omethingsay? )

Oh, here is a rewording of your text into standard US English:

Hell Dagger

[place picture here]

When using this small black blade, you roll one combat die to attack. If you roll a skull, you may roll an additional combat die. You may continue to add dice until you roll anything but a skull.

Its a neat, if really powerful item. I hope you like the rewording?

[Sjeng]

This would make an awesome artefact for the 25th quest pack
What happens if you throw it? Is it lost or can you retrieve it? Or can't it be thrown?

[chaoticprime]

This would make an awesome artefact for the 25th quest pack
What happens if you throw it? Is it lost or can you retrieve it? Or can't it be thrown?

It flies to another enemy like the Klaive.