How to make a magic sword?

[Altheus]

My recipe for a magic sword is:
1. Forge a sword from the finest Iron available
2. Drain all of the blood from a skilled warrior (you get +1 for every 5 levels the fighter has, level 11 gets you +2)
3. Heat the sword in dragon fire or a fire elemental (spells will interfere with the enchantment process
4. Quench the sword in the blood you drained earlier.

How are they made in your games?

 

[Necrozius]

OOh great idea for a thread.

My list for the forging process:

- use metals from the crown or scepter of a murdered monarch
- quench in the blood of a specific creature or victim-type
- made only during certain moon phases, or under a rare comet
- perpetually laced with arcane or religious magic spells
- the forger themselves must be personally, emotionally invested (their loved ones were killed/victimized and they want the blade to be used for vengeance)

 

[Skarg]

When playing The Fantasy Trip, the process is to learn one of the spells for making magic items, and get the instructions for the type of enchantment you want to make, and then get (or rent) a magical laboratory together, and enough apprentices and/or other wizards and ingredients besides the sword itself as needed for the specific enchantment desired, and then spend the requisite amount of enchanting time, making rolls as described in the rules to do it right.

The GURPS process is quite similar though the details and additional options vary.

 

[AsenRG]

My recipe for a magic sword is:
1. Forge a sword from the finest Iron available
2. Drain all of the blood from a skilled warrior (you get +1 for every 5 levels the fighter has, level 11 gets you +2)
3. Heat the sword in dragon fire or a fire elemental (spells will interfere with the enchantment process
4. Quench the sword in the blood you drained earlier.

How are they made in your games?

I'm much simpler. But in my defence, I was playing it out.
There would be many other options in different settings, if I am running it.
(My character was a blacksmith-warrior named Donal Noyah in conscious tribute to a certain literary character. He was nothing outstanding stats-wise: I could have made him much better. But I used real-world tactics, again, which were well-supported...and soon everyone knew he's one you avoid fighting if you want to live).
By the end of this game, the GM kept saying that Donal is the only one of the PCs who makes demons scared.

0. Take a bath. You don't do important stuff like this all covered in blood and brains.
1. Make a saber from part of the available elven steel. Because you feel your elven archer would like* one. Feel the flow and focus on becoming one with the hammer as you do it.
3. Quench it in the heart of a living goblin prisoner, captured during the attack we repelled earlier in the day.
4. Maintaining the focused state, now relax. Let the hammer guide you. Pour your heart into it...because you have just poisoned yourself earlier in the day with slow-acting poison, and might not live another week or so (because the female elf that you like has been poisoned with it, and of course you decided that you either find the antidote together, or die together).
5. Forge a longsword. Quench in the second goblin prisoner. Rest and recover. Gift them freely to your friends. Go to your quest to find the antidote. Find it and marry** the elven girl.


Oh, and rolling a critical to the forging roll, while being as good a weaponsmith as the system allows, also helps!

*And like it he did: merely switching from his sword to the saber improved his attack and the active parry defence...due to the system (Acsiom 16) prioritizing his stat distribution this way.
**And did I mention she's from a family that considers other races impure and might kill an elf's husband for "sacrilege"? No? She was exactly that, yes. But then nobody wanted to really anger Donal, at this point in the campaign. Not even xenophobic elves. He had given multiple proofs that his reaction is to avenge any damage caused to him or his friends...hundredfold. And they really couldn't afford that, given that in this setting the elves had constantly-dwindling numbers.

 

[Brock Savage]

With the exceptions of scrivenery and alchemy, the manufacture of magic items is largely a lost science in Hyperborea.

In my campaign, sorcery draws upon alien science, extradimensional mathematics, and cosmic forces beyond mortal understanding. Unfortunately, humans have lost the ability to create magic items beyond one shot items like scrolls and potions.

That being said, the world is an animistic one so I inferred that most magic weapons are imbued with a spirit of some kind. This encompasses a wide range of incoporeal beings including daemons, aliens, and ancestral spirits.

Materials are important and related to the enchantment. Starmetal (meteoric iron refined into steel) is particularly prized.

I don't do generic magic weapons, each one has an identity and history.

 

[Baulderstone]

Lord Dunsany provides solid instructions on how to make a magic sword.

Then spake Leothric, son of the Lord Lorendiac, and twenty years old was he: 'Good Master, what of the sword Sacnoth?

And the village magician answered: 'Fair Lord, no such sword as yet is wrought, for it lies as yet in the hide of Tharagavverug, protecting his spine.'

Then said Leothric: 'Who is Tharagavverug, and where may he be encountered?'

And the magician of Allathurion answered: 'He is the dragon-crocodile who haunts the Northern marshes and ravages the homesteads by their marge. And the hide of his back is of steel, and his under parts are of iron; but along the midst of his back, over his spine, there lies a narrow strip of unearthly steel. This strip of steel is Sacnoth, and it may be neither cleft nor molten, and there is nothing in the world that may avail to break it, nor even leave a scratch upon its surface. It is of the length of a good sword, and of the breadth thereof. Shouldst thou prevail against Tharagavverug, his hide may be melted away from Sacnoth in a furnace; but there is only one thing that may sharpen Sacnoth's edge, and this is one of Tharagavverug's own steel eyes; and the other eye thou must fasten to Sacnoth's hilt, and it will watch for thee. But it is a hard task to vanquish Tharagavverug, for no sword can pierce his hide; his back cannot be broken, and he can neither burn nor drown. In one way only can Tharagavverug die, and that is by starving.'

Then sorrow fell upon Leothric, but the magician spoke on:

'If a man drive Tharagavverug away from his food with a stick for three days, he will starve on the third day at sunset. And though he is not vulnerable, yet in one spot he may take hurt, for his nose is only of lead. A sword would merely lay bare the uncleavable bronze beneath, but if his nose be smitten constantly with a stick he will always recoil from the pain, and thus may Tharagavverug, to left and right, be driven away from his food.'

Then Leothric said: 'What is Tharagavverug's food?'

And the magician of Allathurion said: 'His food is men.'

 

[Ghost Whistler]

Capture the heart of the First Dragon
Use its fire to light the hearth at the Worlds End
Restore the Great Machine built by the Mithril folk
Weave steel with the kiss of a princess
Bind the blade with the promise of a returning god
Get Ian Anderson to play flute

 

[Dumarest]

Depends entirely on the setting. If I started a new fantasy game today, the answer would be "nobody knows, the art was lost in a bygone age of wonder and glory, that's why they're so rare and desirable and you'll be lucky to lay eyes on one, let alone possess one." Learning the art might become a quest if a player chose to pursue it.

 

[AsenRG]

When I run games, I tend to assume that magic swords used to be ordinary swords...until they were used to commit a great deed of valor, heroism, or villainy and depravity. Once that was done, the sword "awakens".
And then it tries to keep up his or her* reputation.

OTOH, in my current game the above might be true, it's not known (proof is suspiciously lacking)...but generally there are only 5 swords in the world that are definitely magical.
They chopped the world out from the Chaos, and created men and women to wield them.

*Yes, my swords identify as male or female, with a definite tendency for sabers to identify as female, which applies conversely for straight swords!