Darkblade Weapons

[Warshield73]

Do we have answers to these questions:

1-Can Darkblades kill/damage Vampires? (I have always said yes but I don't know if I read that or just house ruled it)

2-In a recent game I had a player asked if he could take recovered Darkblades and melt or grind them into other things. He wanted to make shotgun shells out of them and maybe arrows. The book says that they are "nearly indestructible" but not totally. Has anyone else allowed this or is it covered in a book I haven't read.

[jaymz]

1 - as far as I know yes as they are considered "magic/supernatural" weapons to some degree.

2 - Well.....depends....to tie into 1.....I do not think you can "grind down" and "magic/supernatural" weapons to do so, so I'd say no but it really is a GMs call.....I'd argue the what made it "magic/supernatural" could be lost as you are not deconstructing and effectively undoing whatever made the weapon what it was.

[Shark_Force]

1) damage, yes. darkblades are magical weapons, magical weapons damage vampires, therefore darkblades can damage vampires. kill? last i checked, only a few very specific things do that. having a weapon that can damage the vampire into unconsciousness will certainly help, but to finish the job will require more than that imo.

2) i would say that if you don't have the knowledge to make a darkblade, you don't have the knowledge to modify it in useful ways. you might be able to take smashed bits of darkblades, shove them into a potato gun or blunderbuss, and shoot it at someone, but you aren't going to be able to make it into something other than smashed up bits of darkblade. frankly, i rather suspect the nightlords make it out of something horrible, probably just using the PPE from the tormented souls of the people they consume to materialize the weapon as an ability granted by the Dark. i'm not entirely certain they can be melted or for that matter ground up (normally they just vanish when the hound/hunter dies, so i'm inclined to suspect that breaking one will get you nothing. literally. as in, it will simply vanish without a trace because it is a construction of pure magic and does not have a conventional physical existence once the mystic bonds that force it into being are removed, and you will no longer be holding anything in your hands - but i don't have any firm evidence that's what would happen, i'm just speculating).

[Warshield73]

1) damage, yes. darkblades are magical weapons, magical weapons damage vampires, therefore darkblades can damage vampires. kill? last i checked, only a few very specific things do that. having a weapon that can damage the vampire into unconsciousness will certainly help, but to finish the job will require more than that imo.

2) i would say that if you don't have the knowledge to make a darkblade, you don't have the knowledge to modify it in useful ways. you might be able to take smashed bits of darkblades, shove them into a potato gun or blunderbuss, and shoot it at someone, but you aren't going to be able to make it into something other than smashed up bits of darkblade. frankly, i rather suspect the nightlords make it out of something horrible, probably just using the PPE from the tormented souls of the people they consume to materialize the weapon as an ability granted by the Dark. i'm not entirely certain they can be melted or for that matter ground up (normally they just vanish when the hound/hunter dies, so i'm inclined to suspect that breaking one will get you nothing. literally. as in, it will simply vanish without a trace because it is a construction of pure magic and does not have a conventional physical existence once the mystic bonds that force it into being are removed, and you will no longer be holding anything in your hands - but i don't have any firm evidence that's what would happen, i'm just speculating).

WB 2: Nightlands, Pg. 76-78 describes the process of creating Darkblades and it does say that it feeds off the psychic energy of the people dying while making them but it lack specifics.

[Axelmania]

Wasn't the nature of darkblades actually expanded upon in the Heroes Unlimited Game Master Guide?

[Warshield73]

First, I should explain that this is part of my use of the Nightlords in Heroes Unlimited and also in Rifts. The player in question runs a Hardware Weapons Genius. I also think he watches too much Supernatural.

He was talking about using the Darkblade metal to create bullets to damage supernatural creatures or prison cells to contain them.

2 - Well.....depends....to tie into 1.....I do not think you can "grind down" and "magic/supernatural" weapons to do so, so I'd say no but it really is a GMs call.....I'd argue the what made it "magic/supernatural" could be lost as you are not deconstructing and effectively undoing whatever made the weapon what it was.

See I would never allow this with a rune weapon (indestructible anyway) or any weapon that requires symbols on it. You melt it down, symbols go away, the magic goes with it. The only reason that I have considered it is that the Darkblades appear, from all descriptions, to be plain.

Wasn't the nature of darkblades actually expanded upon in the Heroes Unlimited Game Master Guide?

Pg. 111 gives some modifications that one can make to it's ability to cut through all armor but that is all I have ever seen.

[Axelmania]

and something else about harming those with the intangibility power or invulnerability?... or maybe that was particle beam weapons.

[The Beast]

and something else about harming those with the intangibility power or invulnerability?... or maybe that was particle beam weapons.

That's in the HUGMG, and AFAIK only applies to the superpower, not to other forms of invulnerability.

[Nekira Sudacne]

HU GMG says that Darkblades do half damage to characters with Invunerability and only 1d6 damage to those with Intagibility.

[Warshield73]

HU GMG says that Darkblades do half damage to characters with Invunerability and only 1d6 damage to those with Intagibility.

It does give some damage modifications but nothing about the nature of the weapons themselves.

Since there doesn't seem to be anything in the books has any other GM allowed players, or NPCs, to melt down these weapons and use them for other purposes?

I have to admit that It had never occurred to me to do anything like this. I used Nightlords in my rifts campaign for more than a decade, one player had a stash of over 20 Darkblade weapons, but he never asked to do anything with them so I am just wondering what people think. I could see groups like the ADA trying find ways to turn Nightlord weapons into something they could use but has anyone done it?

[eliakon]

HU GMG says that Darkblades do half damage to characters with Invunerability and only 1d6 damage to those with Intagibility.

It does give some damage modifications but nothing about the nature of the weapons themselves.

Since there doesn't seem to be anything in the books has any other GM allowed players, or NPCs, to melt down these weapons and use them for other purposes?

I have to admit that It had never occurred to me to do anything like this. I used Nightlords in my rifts campaign for more than a decade, one player had a stash of over 20 Darkblade weapons, but he never asked to do anything with them so I am just wondering what people think. I could see groups like the ADA trying find ways to turn Nightlord weapons into something they could use but has anyone done it?

For my games my ruling is that the forging process, in which the pain of victims is bonded to the blade is critical.
Thus to reforge the blades into new forms (A weapons master wanted to make a Darkblade masterwork Katana) it will need to be reworked in pain again or it looses its 'mystical temper' and simply becomes a weapon of an unearthly alloy.

Yes, I know this is house ruling the subject. But it helped to explain several of the issues. It also explained why the weapons came in certain 'stock forms' most of the time.
Most of the Nightlords "Pain-smiths" only knew certain forging techniques and thus could only make a limited number of weapons. To make unique specialized weapons took extra time by a master smith... which let my players know just by seeing, for example, that the fact that the head of the local Tong had a Darkblade butterfly knife... that someone important felt that he had earned a really special reward... and that he was probably not someone they wanted to mess around with, at least not with out a plan. (the Warlord in the group though coveted that knife and spent most of the rest of the game trying to figure out how to get his hands on it)

[Warshield73]

For my games my ruling is that the forging process, in which the pain of victims is bonded to the blade is critical.
Thus to reforge the blades into new forms (A weapons master wanted to make a Darkblade masterwork Katana) it will need to be reworked in pain again or it looses its 'mystical temper' and simply becomes a weapon of an unearthly alloy.

Yes, I know this is house ruling the subject. But it helped to explain several of the issues. It also explained why the weapons came in certain 'stock forms' most of the time.
Most of the Nightlords "Pain-smiths" only knew certain forging techniques and thus could only make a limited number of weapons. To make unique specialized weapons took extra time by a master smith... which let my players know just by seeing, for example, that the fact that the head of the local Tong had a Darkblade butterfly knife... that someone important felt that he had earned a really special reward... and that he was probably not someone they wanted to mess around with, at least not with out a plan. (the Warlord in the group though coveted that knife and spent most of the rest of the game trying to figure out how to get his hands on it)

Thanks for this. Like I said I had never given the construction of these weapons much thought but I always figured it was less about forging the weapon and more about the material.

Do you have the psychic pain from the construction of the weapon radiate from the weapon itself to be detected by psychic sensitives? That was my major add on to the weapon that is not in the statistics.

[Axelmania]

I wonder, if you used blood loss rules as losing 1 HP / minute per wound, and since we know vampires bleed from the heart, if you stabbed them enough times in the heart fast enough could they possibly bleed faster than they could regenerate the HP needed to close up their wounds and stop bleeding?

[Warshield73]

I wonder, if you used blood loss rules as losing 1 HP / minute per wound, and since we know vampires bleed from the heart, if you stabbed them enough times in the heart fast enough could they possibly bleed faster than they could regenerate the HP needed to close up their wounds and stop bleeding?

In a way this is what you do with vampires. You do more damage to them then they can regenerate then when they are weak you stake them.

[eliakon]

For my games my ruling is that the forging process, in which the pain of victims is bonded to the blade is critical.
Thus to reforge the blades into new forms (A weapons master wanted to make a Darkblade masterwork Katana) it will need to be reworked in pain again or it looses its 'mystical temper' and simply becomes a weapon of an unearthly alloy.

Yes, I know this is house ruling the subject. But it helped to explain several of the issues. It also explained why the weapons came in certain 'stock forms' most of the time.
Most of the Nightlords "Pain-smiths" only knew certain forging techniques and thus could only make a limited number of weapons. To make unique specialized weapons took extra time by a master smith... which let my players know just by seeing, for example, that the fact that the head of the local Tong had a Darkblade butterfly knife... that someone important felt that he had earned a really special reward... and that he was probably not someone they wanted to mess around with, at least not with out a plan. (the Warlord in the group though coveted that knife and spent most of the rest of the game trying to figure out how to get his hands on it)

Thanks for this. Like I said I had never given the construction of these weapons much thought but I always figured it was less about forging the weapon and more about the material.

Do you have the psychic pain from the construction of the weapon radiate from the weapon itself to be detected by psychic sensitives? That was my major add on to the weapon that is not in the statistics.

I ruled that it was the material AND the technique.
Darksteel is made by refining a special kind of 'black iron' found in the Nightlands...
The refining process though is rather horrific in and of itself.
Once you have the raw Darksteel you can make good, even superb tools and weapons out of it..
...but if you want to get the most out of it you need a painsmith to properly forge it into a Darkblade.


I have any psychic sensitive that touches the blade could feel some of the pain that was used in its creation.
It is, to put it mildly, highly unpleasant unless your a sadist or the like and very few psychic sensitives were willing to use them (which explained why none of the Guardians in my games had Darkblades for instance)

It also had the bonus feature of making the weapons less appealing as loot. Which was good because with every Hound and Hunter being armed with one it wasn't hard for PCs to get their hands on stockpiles of them...
...which some were willing to use, and some were not. It was an ethical choice each person had to make on if they were willing to use something forged via the torture and murder of innocents.
Some would
Some would not.
Some said it was their duty to use the weapons for good so that torture suffered by the victims was not in vain.
Some said that by using the weapons they condoned the creation.
There was no right answer and no wrong answer.
But then I run my Nightbane games as Dark, Low Contrast horror. Psychological dilemmas, moral choices, descents into anti-heroics, the ends justifying the means, and finding out what is meant about those warnings about 'those who fight monsters' and 'those who stare into the abyss'
My Nightbane games are not funny looking Superheroes in a dark world.

[Slight001]

But then I run my Nightbane games as Dark, Low Contrast horror. Psychological dilemmas, moral choices, descents into anti-heroics, the ends justifying the means, and finding out what is meant about those warnings about 'those who fight monsters' and 'those who stare into the abyss'
My Nightbane games are not funny looking Superheroes in a dark world.

Nice... sounds like my kind of game.

[Warshield73]

I have said this in a few posts but just to clarify I have never run a Nightbane game. I love the books, I read the first 5 books including Shadows of Light cover to cover, but I have never had a desire to run a straight Nightbane game. I also have never had enough player interest for one.

Most of what I have used Nightbane for has been the occasional Heroes convention game and a lot in Rifts.

I ruled that it was the material AND the technique.
Darksteel is made by refining a special kind of 'black iron' found in the Nightlands...
The refining process though is rather horrific in and of itself.
Once you have the raw Darksteel you can make good, even superb tools and weapons out of it..
...but if you want to get the most out of it you need a painsmith to properly forge it into a Darkblade.


I have any psychic sensitive that touches the blade could feel some of the pain that was used in its creation.
It is, to put it mildly, highly unpleasant unless your a sadist or the like and very few psychic sensitives were willing to use them (which explained why none of the Guardians in my games had Darkblades for instance)

It also had the bonus feature of making the weapons less appealing as loot. Which was good because with every Hound and Hunter being armed with one it wasn't hard for PCs to get their hands on stockpiles of them...
...which some were willing to use, and some were not. It was an ethical choice each person had to make on if they were willing to use something forged via the torture and murder of innocents.
Some would
Some would not.
Some said it was their duty to use the weapons for good so that torture suffered by the victims was not in vain.
Some said that by using the weapons they condoned the creation.
There was no right answer and no wrong answer.
But then I run my Nightbane games as Dark, Low Contrast horror. Psychological dilemmas, moral choices, descents into anti-heroics, the ends justifying the means, and finding out what is meant about those warnings about 'those who fight monsters' and 'those who stare into the abyss'
My Nightbane games are not funny looking Superheroes in a dark world.

Like I said in a previous post the big thing I added to Dark Blades was the radiating of psychic pain. In Heroes I not only have psychic characters able to feel the pain but any character of good alignment actually feels a sense of unease when next to or holding one. In all the Heroes con games I have run in the last few years this was the first year a character even asked about picking up a Darkblade.

In Rifts my players encountered the Nightlords for over a decade collecting almost a hundred Darkblades. All they ever did was keep them in a vault, along with a few evil rune weapons, and tried to destroy them.

After the player request last month I was just wondering if anyone did it any differently.

[Axelmania]

I wonder, if you used blood loss rules as losing 1 HP / minute per wound, and since we know vampires bleed from the heart, if you stabbed them enough times in the heart fast enough could they possibly bleed faster than they could regenerate the HP needed to close up their wounds and stop bleeding?

In a way this is what you do with vampires. You do more damage to them then they can regenerate then when they are weak you stake them.

Vampires AFAIK can regenerate an unlimited amount of damage given enough time, but I guess if you kept hitting them with magic spells you could keep them in a coma (negative HP) for weeks on end until someone found a stake to put them into permanent stasis or just decapitated them using a fireball and then buried it separately.

It feels like separate burial should be as temporary as staking, really only water and sun should be permanent since it reduces them to goop/ashes.

[Warwolf]

People have largely hit the nail on the head here, but I'll go ahead and offer my own perspective.

1-Can Darkblades kill/damage Vampires? (I have always said yes but I don't know if I read that or just house ruled it)

Damage? Yes. Just like hand-to-hand attacks from other supernatural creatures or magic weapons (which is what Darkblades are, after all). They can't be used to "kill" a vampire though, unless perhaps you're at the point where it is staked and you use it to remove the head and burn it separate from the body.

2-In a recent game I had a player asked if he could take recovered Darkblades and melt or grind them into other things. He wanted to make shotgun shells out of them and maybe arrows. The book says that they are "nearly indestructible" but not totally. Has anyone else allowed this or is it covered in a book I haven't read.

Darkblades are similar to rune weapons in that normal means will not destroy them. However, they can potentially be "unmade" or otherwise destroyed by supernatural means. That hasn't been detailed as of yet, but might be in the future. In the meantime, perhaps look to rune weapons for inspiration on how you might handle it in your games.

Oh, and eliakon, it sounds like you and I might look at the world of Nightbane in similar ways. You call them "Pain-Smiths" whereas I dubbed them "Forge-Masters." And, yes, it's a full NPC class that's sitting in a partial manuscript as we speak. If anyone here was one of my convention players for Tales from the Crypt, they might be able to vouch for how horrific they are. Whatever the case, I'd agree that unless you've learned how to forge Darksteel (hint: it's not with a hammer and anvil) you won't be able to effectively modify the weapons or armor made from it.

Hope that illuminates things a bit more for folks.

[Axelmania]

The book says that they are "nearly indestructible" but not totally.

HM...

Nightlands (1996) pg 76 "which makes all Darkblades nearly indestructible"

Heroes Unlimited Game Master Guide (June 1999) pg 111 "enchanted to be indestructible"

AFAIK they are never assigned SDC or AR which you'd think you'd do if you wanted a weapon to be destroyable under normal circumstances.

I'd just assume they're as (nearly) indestructible as standard lesser rune weapons are: you don't bother with SDC (or MDC) at all. Either Odin needs to shatter them with his special spear ability, or Scathach Druids need to boil them for hours at a ley line nexus in their special cauldron.

If that's too much, pg 44 of Rifts Japan has another option with the "Living Samurai Sword". They are called "minor rune weapons" which I assume is like a step below "lesser". They are (like darkbladeso n Nightlands 76) described as "nearly indestructible". Pg 46 lists MDC (hundreds, heals at an hourly rate) but there aren't any notes on how to convert this to an SDC setting.

Darkblades could be a step below this though, because they don't retain a personality inside them. One key difference in how they're created is that samurai blades are empowered by a single death, while darkblades don't have any particular death linked to them, instead it's just the death of the slave gangs in general (one in twenty die each day) which might help forge the blades (incline them to accept PPE).

Pg 152 of Rifts Book of Magic has "Enchant Weapon (Minor)" which makes MDC weapons. They're assigned MDC values, do the same MD as SDC would normally do, and weirdly have an AR of 18 despite MDC things usually not having AR (like in terms of natural AR to avoid damage if you roll below it) with AR usually just being coverage-only like NGR clothes...

This is a good match since we know Darkblades do MD in MD settings... Dark Conversions 131 actually says "is itself indestructible" which agrees with HU over Nightlands...

Perhaps there is something about Darkblades which makes them indestructible in other dimensions, but they are not wholly indestructible in the Nightlands because they are vulnerable in the world that forged them, similar to how Living Nightmares get half stats in the Dream Pool that birthed them? I'm liking this idea.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Starting at the top…

Warshield
1a no, they cannot kill traditional vampires. They are not daylight or running water.
1b yes they can damage traditional vampires, they are magic weapons.

2 If they are broken that ends the magical effects within the darkblades. As like with all magic stuff.

When I looked into dark blades when I was doing research for my Psi builder power cat. I looked over the the text for the making of the dark blades it says that the reason that there is a save a psionic char has to make if they touch the char is that the blades had absorbed the emanations of the psychic environment that they were made in.
As to say that the NLs are intentionally making the foundries that make the dark blades as despicable and psychically horrible so the dark blades absorb the psychic badness so psychics can’t use them. Besides that they (the NLs) are evil and like to hurt people.
As such, if the dark metal iron ore was harvested and forged without the horribleness they would not have the same effects as the NL made darkblades. There is not text in PB canon covering the use of the dark metal iron other then the way the NLs use it.

Axel
HUGMG page 111… This text says that they could be unbalanced in an HU game. And the GM may want to NERF them and gives an example of a NERFed Darkblade stats.
Note this HU text Does Not Change the basic DB stats for the PB game system as a whole, it only says GMs Might want to change/NERF them for their games.

Then it after suggesting the NERFed sats it goes further in the nerfing. So.. the talk about what they do to invulnerable chars and intangible chars are a part of the NERFing

Note that Invulnerable chars normally take full damage to magic weapons, and DBs are magic weapons. So the talk about DBs doing only half damage says that that sentence is a part of the NERFing.

Then it talks about how DBs effect Intangible chars is technically a part of the NERFed DB text. The effects to intangible chars looks like are based in the psychic nature of the psychic terror the dark metal iron has absorbed while being forged into DBs. In that intangible chars are fully vulnerable to psionics.
[While this text is technically a part of the NERFed DB stats, to me this one part should be considered to be a part of the DB canon of what they do.]

eliakon
Eli is correct, in that if there is no terror imbedded ing the dark metal iron the resulting product in not a darkblade.

But there is no text about what would happen if it was worked in place of joy or any other emotive setting.
[In the psi builder power cat text I wrote up, I made the dark metal iron to be psychoactive much like psylite is. The difference being one is iron and the other is quartz. And as such is easy to imprint a psi power into it. Conversely it is easy for the imprinted power is easily overwritten/degraded/corrupted by later psychic overtones of a person/place/thing. It might be that the magic in DBs fixes the psychic emanations it has absorbed. *shrugs*]

Axel
I do not believe traditional vamps follow the blood loss rules because they do not have blood flowing in them.

Warshield
Yes, psychics would think they are evil magic weapons if they touch them, but to anyone else they are just magic weapons. Yes, how they are made is horrible, but no they are not rune weapons.
England, caldron of destruction. If they truly want to destroy them, make them a traveling quest to the British isles. Or to find a Sathach, the builder mage in the England WB.


WS/Axel
Near indestuctablity makes them more like the indestructible & super sharp normal magic weapons who have their text in the PF2 core book and supplemented in the Western Empire.
Psychics might make the mistake that they are minor rune weapons because they can feel the horror of the place they were made.

Axel
Pg 152 of Rifts Book of Magic has "Enchant Weapon (Minor)" which makes Mega-Damage weapons. *said the person who is OCD about words*

MDC weapons are those that can be used to parry MD attacks.

[Axelmania]

I seem to recall vamps bleed from heart-stabs only, but yeah from nowhere else. I guess their hearts are like their blood-stomachs where blood is kept however long it takes them to digest it.

What Western Empire stats are you proposing we use for darkblades?