The HiltThe Hilt is a broken sword blade, honed down to be usable as a short-bladed weapon in its damaged form.
Nonlegacy Game Statistics: +1 punching dagger; Cost 2302 gp.
Omen: When wielded while in a martial stance or used to perform a martial strike,
The Hilt's balance shifts, feeling as though it was another melee weapon from among that maneuver's discipline's favored weapons. This does not impose any penalties, and in fact feels more natural to the maneuver than wielding the broken weapon should.
History The Hilt's origins have been lost to myth and legend. There are a great many stories about how the blade came to be, broken as it is, most of which are mutually exclusive. The majority, however, have at least one thread in common:
The Hilt was once a fine and functional sword, destroyed as the result of allies and fellow followers of the Sublime Way turning upon each other.
(DC 15)One of the many stories told about
The Hilt is that it was broken when the Shadow Tiger horde attacked the Temple of the Nine Swords. This version of the tale purports it to be a new sword forged to replace the missing
Supernatural Clarity and restore balance and unity to the Temple. At the time of the horde's attack, the blade had only just finished being forged, and had yet to be imbued with the magical enchantments that would make it a worthy blade to embody the Diamond Mind discipline. Seeing that the battle was lost, some of the Temple's students sought to protect and escape with the remaining swords. The unfinished blade that would become
The Hilt was used by those escaping students during their retreat, passed from one to the next as each fell in battle. Many hands wielded
The Hilt in this, its first battle, each wielder using it with his or her own preferred style. Such was the ferocity of the fighting that each skirmish left a scar upon the blade, with the accumulated damage causing it to shatter in the final exchange of the students' escape. Yet, in its destruction,
The Hilt was tempered in battle and imbued with a fragment of the warrior's will from each of its wielders. Rather than become a replacement blade to represent Diamond Mind, it was instead invested with a mixture of all nine disciplines of the Sublime Way.
(DC 20; From Hand to Hand)Another story claims that
The Hilt was created by the same hobgoblin chieftain who forged
Kamate, the first sword. With weapons of such power in their hands, the chief and his tribe spread out, conquering all those who would stand before them. As their victories grew, the hobgoblin warriors grew brash. They had the power of death itself. Why should they pay tribute to their chieftain and not keep all they could take? In the aftermath of yet another victory, a group of these warriors turned upon their still loyal fellows. The battle was fierce and bloody, more so than any before it, as it was the first time that deadly iron fought against itself.
The Hilt was but one of the many swords wielded that day to clash upon the edge of its brothers, but it was the first to shatter, leaving only fragments of the broken blade behind.
(DC 25; Infighting's Price)A third such tale claims that
The Hilt was Reshar's sword, which he used in his travels after leaving the Temple of the Nine Swords. When he left the Temple, Reshar gifted the nine swords, brimming with magic and honed by decades in the hands of masters, to his nine greatest disciples. For himself, Reshar took only a simple sword, forged for novices of the Sublime Way to use when first training with live steel. A lifetime later, the very same blade at his side, Reshar returned to the Temple, now a ruined husk after the Shadow Tiger horde had sacked it. Understanding at a glance the battle that had taken place, the disunity that had lead to it, and the death of his dreams for the Sublime Way, he went to the rubble-strewn hall where he had once gifted the nine swords. There, without a word, Reshar shattered the simple blade he had wielded ever since leaving the Temple's grounds decades prior.
(DC 31; Reshar's Last Blade)Legacy RitualsThe following three rituals are required to unlock all the abilities of
The Hilt.
From Hand to Hand: You must survive an encounter with an EL equal to or greater than your character level + 1. During this the course of this encounter, you must initiate at least 4 maneuvers, but no two consecutive maneuvers may be from the same martial discipline. Cost: 1500gp. Feat Granted: Least Legacy (
The Hilt).
Infighting's Price: You must fight and defeat a martial adept with CR equal to or greater than your character level - 2. Your allies can assist you as long as you do not outnumber the opposing martial adept and his or her allies. After the battle, you must spend one night in meditation. Cost: 13,000gp. Feat Granted: Lesser Legacy (
The Hilt).
Reshar's Last Blade: You must return to the place in which you learned your first martial maneuver or stance, or a location at which you received a formative revelation or understanding of the Sublime Way that shaped your development along it. There, you must plunge
The Hilt into the ground and meditate uninterrupted for 24 hours. During your meditation, you will be confronted by visions of your greatest failures. To complete the ritual, you must neither shy away from nor succumb to despair at these visions. Cost: 39,000gp. Feat Granted: Greater Legacy (
The Hilt).
Wielder RequirementsBase attack bonus +3
Martial Lore 4 ranks
Knowledge of martial maneuvers or stances from at least 3 different disciplines
Legacy Item AbilitiesAll of the following are legacy abilities of
The Hilt.
Shifting Discipline (Ex): When you first unlock the least legacy of
The Hilt at 5th level, you find that the weapon's weak form somehow makes it surprisingly easy to flow between disparate maneuvers. When you initiate a martial strike maneuver, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls with
The Hilt as part of the next strike you initiate. This bonus only applies if the strike is from a different discipline from the first maneuver. A strike that benefits from this bonus can still trigger it for a subsequent one, so you effectively gain this bonus continuously as long as you don't use two consecutive strikes from the same discipline.
When you have unlock the lesser legacy of
The Hilt at 11th level, the bonus granted by this ability improves to +2. When you have unlock the greater legacy of
The Hilt at 17th level, the bonus granted by this ability improves to +3.
Morphic Stance (Su): Beginning at 6th level, whenever you enter a martial stance, you can will
The Hilt to take on the form of one of that stance's discipline's discipline weapons. You can select from any of the manufactured melee or thrown weapons you are proficient with from among the discipline weapons of that stance's martial discipline.
The Hilt's statistics change in nearly all ways to match its new form, such as damage type, critical threat range, reach, and other properties inherent to the type of weapon it becomes. The only exceptions are that its weight, material, and hit points do not change.
The Hilt retains this new form for as long as you wield it, even if you leave the stance used to transform it. If you throw
The Hilt, it remains in this form for the duration of the attack, reverting to its normal form only after the attack is resolved.
Martial Foil (Ex): Beginning at 12th level, while wielding
The Hilt, you gain a +2 bonus on all saving throws against martial maneuvers. Additionally, once per day when you witness a creature that you threaten with
The Hilt initiate a martial maneuver and you successfully identify the maneuver being initiated, you can expend an unexpended maneuver that is not withheld as an immediate action. If you do, you and the creature make an opposed initiator level check. If you succeed, you use
The Hilt to spoil the creature's maneuver, causing it to fail and have no effect, wasting both the expenditure of the maneuver and the action used to initiate it. If the maneuver you expended was from the same discipline as the maneuver you attempted to spoil, you gain a +10 bonus on your opposed check. If the maneuver you expended was the same maneuver as the one you attempted to spoil, you instead gain a +20 bonus on your opposed check.
Reactive Style (Ex): Beginning at 14th level, once per day, you can change your readied maneuvers as a free action. Your new selection of maneuvers become readied and unexpended (and possibly granted or withheld) as though you had just readied your maneuvers normally (and as though you had just begun an encounter, if you use this ability in the middle of an encounter).
Shattered Yet Whole (Ex): Beginning at 18th level,
The Hilt becomes immune to rusting effects and gains a +4 bonus on its saving throws and to its hardness while in your possession. If damaged,
The Hilt repairs itself at a rate of 1 hit point per hour when not being wielded in combat.
Share Stance (Ex): Beginning at 20th level, once per day as swift action, you can share your current stance with nearby allies, instructing them in its intricacies and allowing them to mimic it under your expert mentorship even without dedicated knowledge and training. Each creature within 10 feet of you can enter your current martial stance as an immediate action. If you have multiple stances active, you must choose only one of them to share. Each ally can maintain this stance for up to 1 minute.
Table: The HiltLevel | Abilities |
5 | Shifting Discipline +1 |
6 | Morphic Stance |
7 | +1 aptitude punching dagger |
8 | -- |
9 | +1 aptitude Sublime Tapestry punching dagger |
10 | -- |
11 | Shifting Discipline +2 |
12 | Martial Foil |
13 | +2 aptitude Sublime Tapestry punching dagger |
14 | Reactive Style |
15 | -- |
16 | -- |
17 | Shifting Discipline +3 |
18 | Shattered Yet Whole |
19 | +4 aptitude Sublime Tapestry punching dagger |
20 | Share Stance |
Change Log
6/4/2024: Small wording changes. Dropped enhancement bonus at higher levels by 1 (+2 at 13th, +4 at 19th).
5/4/2024: First posted.
Notes
The Hilt
Legacy weapon for Sublime Tapestry.
Story: Destroyed by the Broken Blade legacy weapon. Diametrically opposed philosophies. Broken Blade sees Sublime Way destroying itself as the natural order of things. The Hilt just sees that as a tragedy.
Broken sword. Still usable as a weapon though. Short blade? Punching dagger?
Possible abilities
For the version of Weapons of Legacy rules that I'm using (specifically, ignoring the legacy item costs that apply permanent penalties to your statistics), should I drop the power level of the weapon a bit? Like, instead of going up to a +5 enhancement bonus, only rise to +3 instead?
- Aptitude weapon. Very important with weapon shifting so you can still use your abilities in all forms.
- +3 on attack rolls with strikes from disciplines other than your last. Doesn't stack with martial discipline weapon. (Think of it as martial discipline with everything you haven't used last.)
- At higher levels, when the wielder enters a stance, they can change The Hilt's shape to any manufactured favored weapon of the stance's discipline. Shape remains while wielded, but wielder doesn't have to remain in that stance.
- Possibly let you enter a 3rd-level or lower maneuver you don't know 1/day? Choose maneuver at the beginning of the day, or maybe when you change readied maneuvers, otherwise players encouraged to pore over all the disciplines that exist all the time in case this is the perfect situation for some obscure, forgotten, niche maneuver.
- 1/day, Adaptive Style effect as a free action.
Grant ability to learn maneuvers from Sublime Tapestry during level up as though you had access to the discipline. Limited to lower-level maneuvers, based on the legacy unlocked (least: 1-3, lesser: 4-6, greater: 7-9).
Martial Possibilities (Ex): Beginning at 19th level, you can expend a readied, unexpended, non-withheld maneuver while wielding The Hilt to initiate one of the following maneuvers: salamander strike, castigating strike, avalanche of blades, finishing move, hydra slaying strike, death in the dark, ancient mountain hammer, hamstring attack, or swarming assault. You can use this ability no more than three times per day, and you can use it to initiate each available maneuver only once per day.
Echoes of Legacy: 1/day when you transform The Hilt into the shape of one of the nine swords with morphic stance, lock it into that form for the rest of the day. It gains one of the legacy abilities of that weapon.
- Scimitar (Desert Wind): Flaming Burst
- Falchion (Faithful Avenger): Holy (if your alignment is good) or Unholy (if your alignment is evil). No benefit if you are neither good nor evil.
- Rapier (Supernatural Clarity): Keen. Gain haste (CL 10th) for 1 round as a swift action up to 5 times per day.
- Bastard Sword (Kamate): Shocking Burst.
- Short Sword (Eventide's Edge): Sting like a bee +2d6.
- Dagger (Umbral Awn): Ghost Touch. Sneak attack +1d6.
- Greatsword (Unfettered): Enhancement bonus improved by +1. Light fortification (25%).
- Kukri (Tiger Claw): +1 to crit multiplier (x3).
- Longsword (Blade of the Last Citadel): Gain a +2 enhancement bonus to AC while wielding.
... Eh. I don't really like this.
Possible lore
A third such tale claims that The Hilt was only forged some time after fall of the Temple of the Nine Swords. Survivors of the final battle came together months later and attempted to reform the temple and recreate its glory days. These stories say that The Hilt was forged in an attempt to replace the missing nine swords. Different tellings argue over the details. Some claim it was a mighty greatsword forged as a replica of Unfettered, others that it was a subtler knife made in Umbral Awn's image. The stories abound, and for each of the nine swords there are at least three versions of the story claiming The Hilt as an intended successor to it. Most agree, however, that the internal conflicts that led to the original temple's fall had not truly healed, and the replacement of a single discipline's weapon before all others stirred up those lingering rivalries and jealousies. Before long, those resentments grew into open conflict once more, with The Hilt being destroyed in the battle, along with any future for the nascent successor to the first Temple of the Nine Swords.
One lesser known variant of this tale goes somewhat differently. Like the more common tellings, a group of martial adepts coalesced from the survivors of the Shadow Horde's assault and the original temple's fall. Here, too, they attempted to reform the temple and replace the nine swords, yet were stymied by old wounds and rivalries coming to the surface. In this version, however, cooler heads prevailed. The new temple's leaders, recognizing that they were not truly ready to work together once more, amicably agreed to separate.
- Amicable separation. Each of the masters put a bit of themselves into the unforged The Hilt and buried it, symbolically burying the To9S, but also promising to return some day in the future when they and their hostilities were dead and their successors could work together again to restore the ideals behind the temple properly.
(DC 31; Hope of Reformation)