One thing I would want to see changed, if given from a list of items, would most likely be the coveted Hammer of Life from the Vault of Night series. Now you ask, "What exactly do you want changed, and why do you want it changed?" To be honest, being able to wield something that has the power of life should have some unique traits associated with it. If you wield something that contains the power of life, you should be able to either renew or restore the very essence of life. While I think the spell effects from both the regular and epic hammer of life are in the ballpark, they could definately use my fine tuning. Here is what I propose be changed for the Hammer of Life and the epic Hammer of Life:

Hammer of Life:


  • Change spell effects to behave similarly to the Staff of Arcane Power: In addition to being able to cast restoration, 2 more spell effects should be given as an option: Raise Dead, and Heal.
    • Heal is a bit of a controversial one; if its too powerful, it can be replaced with cure critical wounds instead, but considering the fact that you still can only pick one of these spells per rest, and considering at most, it heals 110 base, I think you can agree it would be alright to put on the hammer of life.
  • Replace Natural Armor Bonus with Disruption.
    • The natural armor bonus just doesn't seem fitting for a weapon such as the hammer of life, and since the epic version has greater disruption, why not replace natural armor bonus with normal disruption instead?

Epic Hammer of Life:

  • Again, much like the normal Hammer of Life, add a 'spell selection' feature for the hammer, where you can choose more than one spell. The two spells that I would suggest to put on the hammer, in addition to heal,mass, would be Greater Restoration and True Resurrection.
    • The greater restoration is a great way to encourage people to upgrade their hammer of life, since they will not lose out on being able to restore one negative level per rest, and while the True Resurrection may be a bit controversial to add, the 1 charge/rest and the fact that the item is epic should balance things out.
  • Make Greater Disruption behave a bit differently than other versions of it. Rather than having a % chance to occur, or subjecting the monster to a will save, allow it to occur when the weapon scores a critical threat(20, or 19-20 with improved critical: Bludgeon).
    • Granted, its not much of a change, and one could say its the same as disruption, but those who have better critical range with bludgeon weapons will benefit most from this.
  • Again, remove the natural armor bonus from the hammer and this time, since disruption is on the weapon, replace it with greater undead bane.
    • While holy burst could also be a suitable replacement for the Hammer of Life, I believe it is best that this weapon remain neutral in terms of alignment since Life itself should be wielded by anyone who is worthy of possessing such a weapon. There are many scenarios for such a cause: One such scenario would be if a group of beings with a specific alignment were about to be eradicated, and needed something to turn their sour loss around.

Yes, I know, I know, it may seem to be a lengthy list of things to fix on the hammer of life. But I believe that if such fixes were made to this weapon, it would be even more of a weapon to have, and not to mention would be useful against undead and for restoring yourself/your allies. While some things can be cut out, the #1 thing I would like to see improved on the hammer of life are the spell selections, considering that people lose out on the ability to restore negative levels when they upgrade the Hammer of Life in its current form.