Magic Swords Use Their Wielders

Fighters are strong and resistant and overcome mundane opponents in mundane means. As they grow in skill, they become more resistant and more lethal. However, as lethal as they can be, they still are mundane and can’t harm enchanted beings.

Enemies that can’t be harmed are awesome. As in, literally, terror inducing. Because we mundanes have no way of defending ourselves from them.

For those, fighters need a magic weapon.

Crucially, magic weapons, and especially magic swords, are the most common permanent magic item in [Original D&D]. Magic swords can only be used by fighters, and magic swords are pretty much the best magic weapon in the game: beyond giving the capacity to hit magic beings, they often give extra powers, like detection of invisible or magic, or even more, which are incredibly useful and not easy to come by (at least they require casters to spend precious spell slots).

Magic swords also have the habit of having intelligence and big personalities and taking sides in the Eternal Struggle between Law and Chaos. They can also possess their fighter, and shift from being an empowering tool for the fighter into a master for the fighter, their body and limbs mere tool for the Sword.

This might seem like a douche move. However, these swords are quite the equivalent of having a Faustian deal with the devil: great power comes at a great cost. Sure, they lead you to gems, and let you vanquish vampires, but what do the Swords ask in return?

And the Faustian deal usually generates buckets of solid, engaging drama at the table: for example the sword can force a noncompliant fighter into giving itself away to a fighter more worthy of the sword mission, and more compliant. If you want to keep the sword, you need to make the sword want to keep you.

So when you find an intelligent magic sword in a dragon trove ask yourself what kind of reckless sucidal action the sword must have forced on the fighter wielding it. The sword is in the dragon hoard because either it forced the fighter into fighting the dragon, or it let the fighter believe it could.

Magic swords use their fighters to leave a trail of death until they lead their own fighter to death. Then they lay unused in a hoard until their new owner is killed by a fighter. And the trail of death can start again. And again. And again. And again, until the timeless magic sword, and its unquenchable bloodthirst, is no more.

Good luck with that. Magic swords are much more resilient than the countless arms that bear them. Beside dragonfire and powerful magic, they have little to fear.

D&D Magic Swords are awesome as the creatures they can harm. As in, they inspire terror. Not only when facing them, but also when wielding them.

Because, mostly, what fighters do to fight the supernatural is wielding supernaturally angry steel that has a proven history of leading previous bearers to death.

— A few disordered thoughts on writing magic, starting from a detour on magic swords – Lost Pages