Talk:Jaw of the Abyss (3.5e Equipment)

Vorpal
"It deals 1d12 damage for a Medium creature, and is considered to have the vorpal property."

Wat.

I know this is one of those Libra Demonica things where the sanity of pricing was apparently thrown out the window, but.... wat. -- Eiji-kun 04:52, 8 August 2011 (UTC)


 * This is tagged as a level 10 MIC item and costed appropriately for that. It is out of line with normal vorpal pricing, but I think normal vorpal pricing is totally screwed up so that doesn't strike me as a bad thing. Given that a)Vorpal is shut down by fortification or being crit immune (not hard to get at level 10), b) is not an active ability but a totally random one, and c) is limited to a 5' reach here when the owner is likely to be fighting creatures with reach, I don't agree that it's a big deal to pass it out for the cost here. If they were using a good version of vorpal (like the LD Balor does actually, I'm not sure why this one isn't) I'd be slightly more concerned about the level, but the regular vorpal just isn't all that awesome at the level they expect you to acquire this. - Tarkisflux Talk 04:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Being immune to crits is not immunity to vorpal. It's just the things which can survive with no head tend to be also immune to criticals.  I'm gonna have to disagree with you, that while yes, vorpal on its own isn't all that great, vorpal is also rather unbalanced being an all or nothing thing that few things can survive.  That and that was just one of the several powers you get with this.  I'd argue about those too for their price, but the vorpal one just stood out like a sore thumb. -- Eiji-kun 04:10, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * From the SRD: "Upon a roll of natural 20 (followed by a successful roll to confirm the critical hit), the weapon severs the opponent’s head" [emphasis added]. My reading of that is that if you do not confirm the critical hit and actually get one, you do not activate the vorpal ability. The implication there is that it requires an actual critical hit to activate, though I suppose it's somewhat unclear whether that is the case or not. If it doesn't require a crit to activate, just a successful confirmation against a creature that is immune to it or that may negate the crit anyway, then you'd be right and this would be a bigger deal than my premises suggest. It just doesn't look like that's the case to me.


 * I'm not sure how I feel about it as a package though. The extra attack is weak and limited in range but the grapple is nice (assuming you enlarge yourself or are fighting tiny things), vorpal on top of it seems unnecessary but not like a big deal. I might feel differently if I let vorpal work on crit immune and fortification'd creatures though. - Tarkisflux Talk 04:35, 9 August 2011 (UTC)


 * Firstly, Eiji, as has been previously established, your understand of 'sanity' on pricing is severely impaired. However, the vorpal-related questions raised by Tarkis are significant, and thus, I've hard-coded Tarkis' intepretation of vorpal into this ability. - MisterSinister 21:43, 15 August 2011 (UTC)