Thus Spake Zarataylor/InfiniteWeapon
izzylobo - 02/08/2004 08:11:02
(On an infinite weapon with five weapon slots devoted)\\ > HappyHappyJoyJoy > "He wants to use the remaining forms to have Warstrider-sized weapons available, because he maxed-out his Artifact background to get a Royal Warstrider (along with several other nice toys)."
My initial reaction would be to say no - that it's restricted to basically human-scale weapons. I'd imagine there probably is some sort of Warstrider equivalent, but it would be more expensive (Artifact 4, most likely), or otherwise restricted in some fashion.
If you *do* want to allow this, I'd suggest (as some others have) limiting it to two or three slots per Warstrider scale weapon, and I'd also eliminate the weapon bonuses - it gets bog standard Warstrider scale stats, possibly without even the MM bonus. I might kick the attunement cost up a notch or two as well.
The reason for this is mainly balance - one of the balancing points for Warstriders is that even their weapons are gimundous, and require giant wheeled carts (or bunches of slaves, or zombies, or whatever) to carry them around if the Warstrider isn't carrying them. Having a ready arsenal available - that conveniently shrinks down to pocket size when not in use - removes one of the limiting factors on Warstriders, and suddenly it's carrying a giant bow, lance, axe, and sword along for the ride, with the perfect weapon for any occasion just a mote of Essence and a reflexive action away.
Basically, it's not so much that the Infinite Weapon might not be able to handle it, so much as letting the IW do it removes one of the (unstated) weaknesses of the Warstrider design, which is something of a no-no without introducing other weaknesses.
Scott Taylor
izzylobo - 02/08/2004 21:31:33
It's not carrying a single weapon that's the problem - obviously you just walk around with it in your Warstrider's hand, or prop it up against the thing while he's riding in the (very large) wagon.
It's carrying not just the Sword, but the sword, the axe, the lance, the bow, the javelins, and whatever else.
Basically, it's a question of how long the supply train for this Warstrider is - you've got wagons to carry supplies and workshop gear for maintenance for the warstrider, a wagon (and a big one) to carry the warstrier itself in, and then a couple of more to carry the supplies all those people guarding, maintaining, and etc. the warstrider need to survive. Removing the one for all the spare weapons - either by choosing the limitation of only having a single weapon, or by having some artifact that allows you to suplicate a number of weapons, should have some sort of payout of some kind.
Now, this isn't admittedly, very *heroic* - but, then again, the practicalities of Warstrider deployment very rarely are, up until you get to the part where you bash your enemies' head in repeatedly with a steel fist the size of a small boulder... If you want to ignore, that's cool (and the same applies for maintenance requirements, etc) - you can just handwave, say it's a First Age design that requires no maintenance, and move on.
On the presto-chango thing - yeah. Changing into a form is a Simple action (for the weapon - it's reflexive to will the change, but the weapon takes an entire turn to shift). Changing back to the base Mace form is reflexive, however.
Scott Taylor
izzylobo - 02/08/2004 22:17:25
Let me check the exact text -
With th expenditure of one mote of Essence, however, the wielder can cause the weapon to shift to any of its other forms as a simple action. (The weapon cannot be used in the turn that it is shifting shape).
So I'm wrong twice (eeep!) - it does use up an action to shift, as well as just being unusable for that turn.
(Yeesh. Wrong twice in one day. Horrors!)
Scott Taylor
