+1 sword
Mundane swords only cut your meat suit on a material plane. Lots of pain, but most of the times it can be healed. But those deadly weapons swing through higher plane of existence as well. How would you undo the harm to your very life essence?
+2 sword will cut through three planes at once and hack the soul to pieces, and so forth.
I don’t like the idea of +X swords, even if we attach cool descriptions to them. IMO, instead make it the blade of soul cutting, etc, and describe what they are capable of. No stat bonuses.
Anthony Giovannetti has a good point.
Keep in mind that on a 2d6 curve an additional +1 or +2 bonus is pretty sizable, and DW doesn’t through around a lot of penalties to offset this.
If the Shadow Cutting Sword can cut through the Umbra, or the Demi-Plane of Dreams, or whatever you’d like, then make *that* its magical power. And if you want to give it another trait — Piercing, say — well, that’s up to you as the GM.
Or “When you are struck by an astral blade take -1 on your next Move”? Lower rolls mean more danger, less direct damage, more trouble.
Or “When you are struck by an astral blade the GM holds 1. If untreated, the GM can spend 1 hold to have the wound open further and you take N damage.” N being equal to what you can afford to lose times by how the GM is feeling.
or going of that if a blade does rend souls it could take away “souls”{ from necromancers and grave knights?
Anthony Giovannetti Those swords don’t give any bonus on attack or damage rolls.
It’s kinda obvious that flat bonuses are boring in DW, so I’ve made +N swords that do something else: cut through N more planes of existence.
Has the “+2 sword” the powers of a “+1 sword”?
I think so, yes.
Vasiliy Shapovalov fictional bonuses are always better than mechanical ones.
The Messy tag doesn’t give you any bonuses, but fictionally it assumes that you’ll be cutting off hands left and right.
Thats one heck of a bonus.
Vasiliy Shapovalov
I agree, “+” bonuses are pretty powerful on the “to hit” rolls and mundane. I don’t understand what you mean by “swing through higher planes of existence”. I will say that if you want to make weapons like this then do so, don’t let other people’s distaste of mechanical benefits get in your way.
If you want a hierarchy of magic swords I would look into other fictional descriptions and mechanics. Simply adding only to damage would “solve” the issue with messing with the 2d6 curve. You can toss on a tag or two as well, such as piercing 1.
To paint a more evocative picture of the weapon, maybe think about creating a descriptive hierarchy for the “+’s”. Maybe you can call the various +’s something like “Champion’s Sword”, “Hero’s Sword”, “Legend’s Sword”, etc…
Since I don’t understand what you mean by “higher planes of existence”, I’m not sure what sort of picture you are trying to paint. Is it supposed to be a weapon that is effective against creatures “not from this plane”? Like angels, demons, alien like creatures?
The idea was to bring the iconic D&D magic weapons into the game without them being boring. So what can “+1” mean beside plain bonus? Why not multiple levels of existence?
What exactly does that mean is to be established by the DM and the group, because the idea several layers of souls/chakras/auras is of eastern origin and won’t fit nicely in any generic fantasy.
e.g. Wizard spouts lore: why mundane weapons can’t hurt the ghost? because it exists as a manifestation of tainted life force. So +1 sword that cuts through life force, will work.
Why is troll regenerating that fast? Because he constantly rebuilds body from platonic idea of himself. You need to harm the idea: that’s no less than +4 weapon.