How does Hazirawn work in Hoard of the Dragon Queen? [Spoilers]

Question

NOTE: This question contains spoilers regarding Hoard of the Dragon Queen!

I'm about to finish up running a playthrough of Hoard of the Dragon Queen. One of my player's characters prefers greatswords, and I have a few questions regarding Hazirawn, the magical greatsword wielded by Rezmir, as the player will no doubt want to keep the weapon.

The full text for Hazirawn is as follows:

Hazirawn

Weapon (greatsword), legendary (requires attunement)

A sentient (neutral evil) greatsword, Hazirawn is capable of speech in Common and Netherese. Even if you aren’t attuned to the sword, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls made with this weapon. If you are attuned to Hazirawn, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage when you hit with the weapon.

Increased Potency. While you are attuned to this weapon, its bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls increases to +2, and a hit deals an extra 2d6 necrotic damage (instead of 1d6).

Spells. Hazirawn has 4 charges to cast spells. As long as the sword is attuned to you and you are holding it in your hand, you can cast detect magic (1 charge), detect evil and good (1 charge), or detect thoughts (2 charges). Each night at midnight, Hazirawn regains 1d4 expended charges.

Wounding. While you are attuned to the weapon, any creature that you hit with Hazirawn can’t regain hit points for 1 minute. The target can make a DC 15 Constitution saving throw at the end of each of its turns, ending this effect early on a success.

1. Okay, first question is how much additional necrotic damage actually gets applied if the person wielding the weapon is attuned to it? Because in the first paragraph it says 1d6, and then in the next paragraph (Improved Potency) it contradicts itself and says 2d6 instead of 1d6. How many d6's of necrotic damage actually get added on to the damage?

2. All of the charge-based magical items that allowed you to cast spells in the Starter Set contained a clause that would allow the item to be destroyed if all of the charges in the item were expended and you rolled a 1 on a d20. Hazirawn does not have such a clause. Does that mean you can repeatedly use all of Hazirawn's charges without risking its destruction?

3. When Hazirawn speaks, does it do so telepathically or is it just a disembodied voice? If it's the latter, would it be appropriate to assume that keeping the blade sheathed 'muffles' (for lack of a better term) the voice, allowing for some humorous instances in which the PC can end a conversation with the sword by angrily sheathing it in a hastily manner? I'm well aware that given the lack of specifics provided in the text I probably have carte blanche to really do whatever but I'm genuinely curious to see how others have handled this situation. Advice here need not fit this exact situation, but can instead be about the behavior of sentient magical weapons in general.

Answer 1

1. On the Wizards of the Coast forums there is a thread regarding this issue. The response from the authors is as follows.

Hazirawn: The magic item (page 94) has inconsistent damage when attuned. In the first paragraph, it says that you deal an additional 1d6 damage when you are attuned with the weapon. In the second paragraph under Increased Potency, it says that when you are attuned, "you deal an extra 2d6 necrotic damage (instead of 1d6).

Authors Responce

​Steve Winter: The error is in the the last sentence of the first paragraph. It should state, "If you are not attuned to Hazirawn, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage when you hit with the weapon." Then everything else falls into place and makes sense.

So it would be, you deal 1d6 additional necrotic damage if you are not attuned and you deal 2d6 necrotic if you are attuned.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?1909-HOARD-OF-THE-DRAGON-QUEEN-Author-Steve-Winter-Clarifies-A-Few-Points!#.VFH_YBa3ffE#ixzz3HcMJrMut

2. As DM Nailz said. Specific beats general. As there are no rules stating that at 0 charges the weapon has a chance to be destroyed, it should be taken that any attempt to use abilities that would reduce it below 0 charges simply fail, and at midnight charges would restore. DM's choice whether the weapon decides to inform the player of how many charges it currently has or no.

3. I have not seen any rules on speech at this time. I'm sure there will be some once the full DMG is released. Most intelligent weapons/items are telepathic from the older versions of D&D, and I would assume that this trend would continue unless the item has something that logically would represent a mouth. At this stage DM's choice.

Answer 2

Bonus Damage

Tashio's got the right answer on that one. I have nothing to add here.

Charges

The starter kit seems to have a strange rule about magical items!

Except for potions and scrolls, in most cases magical items are really hard to destroy. There are also wands that have a limited number of charges. For example, if you give a Wand of Fire Balls, but consider that's generally too powerful, you could give the wand only 3 charges. Once used up, the wand becomes normal wood again or disintegrate to dust (DMG p. 141, bottom right box "Variant: Wands that don't recharge.)

In this case, the possibility of destruction of the Hazirawn weapon is described in the DMG, p. 221, under the heading Destroying Artifacts:

An artifact must be destroyed in some special way. Otherwise, it is impervious to damage.

The special ways include things like throwing the object in the very volcano where it was forged (like the Ring...) or getting blood from a God (Tiamat, maybe?) and putting the weapon in a bath of that blood.

Using all the capabilities of the artifact is never a solution to destruction of the object.

Speech

I think that since the sentence just says "capable of speech" it means the object speaks aloud.

A sentient (neutral evil) greatsword, Hazirawn is capable of speech in Common and Netherese.

The DMG has a table on page 214 that has 3 entries:

d100	Communication
01-60	The item communicates via emotion
61-90	The item can speak, read, and understand one or more languages
91-00	The item can speak, read, and understand one or more languages. In addition the item can communicate telepathically with a character that carries or wields it.

Since the description of the item does not say "telepathically", it mustn't have that capability. And telepathy is only a 10% chance, compare to aloud speech which is 30%.

Answer 3

1. Bonus Damage

It seems, logically deducing from the wording of the first paragraph, that the intent was to give a non-attuned user of the item bonus to both attack roll, damage and additional necrotic damage. That is most likely due to the wording of the Increased Potency instead of 1d6, which signals that while NOT attuned - you still deal bonus 1d6 necrotic damage. I think they just misspelled the phrase in the first paragraph, although to be 100% sure an official erratum is in order.

2. Charges

As far as I remember my experience with D&D editions, specifics beats general. There is no rules in the item regarding the destruction of the item on 0 charges, nor is there a general rule about it. So, noting that it restores the charges every midnight, I'd rule that it does not suffer any ill effects when out of charges and whatnot.

3. Speech

I don't see any specific rules about it in the item description, so I think it is something for you ad the DM to decide. I might be wrong, though, in case if there is some general rule about intelligent items.

Answer 4

Extra 1d6 when not attuned, extra 2d6 when attuned (fixed in errata)

This error was corrected in the errata for Hoard of the Dragon Queen:

Appendix C

Hazirawn (p. 94). In the first paragraph, “If you are attuned” is now “If you aren’t attuned.”

As a result, the first paragraph of the description now reads:

A sentient (neutral evil) greatsword, Hazirawn is capable of speech in Common and Netherese. Even if you aren’t attuned to the sword, you gain a +1 bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls made with this weapon. If you aren't attuned to Hazirawn, you deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage when you hit with the weapon.

Increased Potency. While you are attuned to this weapon, its bonus on attack rolls and damage rolls increases to +2, and a hit deals an extra 2d6 necrotic damage (instead of 1d6).

The description of the item on DNDBeyond has been updated accordingly for those that own the adventure.