Sword Charms

A sword charm is a small, painted, wooden icon that can be fastened to a weapon with cord or thin chain. They used to be produced exclusively by the church and were considered holy artefacts, until the academies began making their own and undercutting the church monopoly about sixty years ago. This was popularly felt to be a blow to the authority of the religious leaders, and has been blamed (among many other things) for the relative secularism of the Baronial population. 

A sword charm is something like an entity, but simplified to the point of non-sentience. They possess language-processes that function in complicated series, but that never cohere into anything capable of systematic thought. This makes them relatively cheap to build and purchase, but dangerous to operate - it is your own mind that completes the 'circuit' that allows the charm to function, and this process can be traumatic. Users will find their thinking drastically slowed, their coordination shot, their limbs weak, and their sense of self tapped. 

Many duelists consider the benefits to outweigh the disadvantages.

A sword charm can be amateur, professional, or masterwork, and has a single quality. You can attach as many sword charms as you wish - all penalties are additive. Despite the name, a charm can be attached to any melee weapon. 

An amateur charm drain d6 stats, a professional d4, and a masterwork d3. This drain only effects you while you are wielding the weapon - when you sheathe it, you get the stats back. At the start of combat assign one of your core stats to each number, roll as many d6s as you are losing stats, and subtract as indicated.

Qualities can be whatever you want. The charm is a bloodthirsty almost-mind and has a powerful urge to hurt things, so get creative. Some boring options: 

• Doubles your STR bonus when calculating damage.
• Changes STR to DEX bonus when calculating damage.
• Grants the bonuses of a +1 weapon.
• Increase crit range by 1.
• Increases number of dice rolled on a crit by one.
• Adds one point of psychic, fire, or electricity damage to your hits.
• Forces those wounded by it to check morale.
• Heals you for a single point of hp whenever it kills something. 

Cursed or defective charms steal stats permanently. If you want to fuck around with multiple charms, you should be prepared to lose a character to bad rolls on the stat drain (intentional). Weapons with innate magical properties of their own will not play nicely with sword charms (at a minimum the charms won't work, and there may be other consequences).

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