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[Radiance] Item - That-Which-Hungers-For-Light
🕑 Added 2024-05-20 14:00:03 +0000 UTCIs this thing a cloak? A portal to another plane of existence? An open maw poised to consume? All answers shall be revealed once the cloak is donned...
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That-Which-Hungers-For-Light
Wondrous item, artifact (requires attunement)
Sentience. An unknowable eldritch being from the darkness before light speaks through this weapon. The End of Radiance is a sentient neutral evil item with an Intelligence of 18, a Wisdom of 15, and a Charisma of 16. It has darkvision out to 120 feet, and magical darkness does not impede its darkvision. It can communicate telepathically with its wielder. The eldritch being has lofty goals of returning the planes to the darkness of void, but is patient with its machinations. It seeks out other evil creatures and trades forbidden knowledge for assistance bringing its physical form into the mortal realm.
Eye of Void. While you wear this cloak, you have darkvision out to 120 feet. Magical darkness does not impede this darkvision.
Devourer of Light. While wearing this cloak, you can cast the dispel magic spell from it at will, targeting only spells that create light. The spell uses your spellcasting ability. If you are not a spellcaster, your spellcasting ability modifier is +0. When you dispel a spell this way, you gain temporary hit points equal to five times the level of the spell.
Hungry Shadows. The cloak's shadows expand your reach like a hungry void. While wearing this cloak in an area of dim light or darkness, you are always aware of the vague presence of creatures within a radius of you that have an Intelligence score of 4 or higher. This radius is 10 feet if you are in dim light, 15 feet if you are in darkness, or 20 feet if you are in magical darkness. While aware of such creatures, you always know their surface thoughts — what is most on its mind in that moment. Additionally, when a creature you are aware of in this way ends its turn within this radius, you can choose to deal 1d6 necrotic damage to it (no action required).
Spellcasting. The cloak has 5 charges and regains 1d4+1 charges daily at midnight. While you wear the cloak, you can cast one of the following spells from it by expending the necessary charges (save DC 19): black tentacles (4 charges), darkness (2 charges), fear (3 charges), fog cloud (1 charge).
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Legendary Variant. The legendary version of this cloak has these changes. The Hungry Shadows property does not inform you of creatures' surface thoughts, and its necrotic damage is 1d4 instead of 1d6. The cloak has 3 charges instead of 5, regaining 1d3 expended charges daily at midnight, and lacks the black tentacles spell. The spell save DC is 18 instead of 19.
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DESIGN COMMENTARY
Like how Shadows of the Blighted Sun had a light-based artifact that would destroyed the friendly shadows, I figured this theme should have a similar artifact that destroys light.
The base ability to see through magical darkness is very powerful, especially when coupled with the cloak's darkness spell and the Hungry Shadows property (the radiance expands in magical darkness). If there's a strong magical light in the way, Devourer of Light helps even the field.
The magical darkvision would already be a Rare item due to how it combos well with darkness spells.
Devourer of Light brings it halfway to Very Rare. It is generally situational (how many enemies even cast spells?) and only grants 5 temporary HP per spell level (so it's not worth the spell usage for generating the temp HP). Dispelling pure magical light, while useful for your own shadow tactics, still requires an action. The cost of this action is high since the dispel doesn't really benefit your allies (who would normally be unaffected by said light anyways, e.g. light or daylight). Other spells that create light, such as moonbeam or flaming sphere, are dispellable and more common, but once again fairly rare in normal play.
Hungry Shadows is the meat of the item, bringing it directly to Legendary level. The "rogue blindsense" helps you detect most invisible or Hidden creatures within a small radius of shadows, as well as learn surface thoughts for roleplay encounters. Not that many enemies use invisibility or Hiding tactics, so it's not the most broken of abilities (Hiders often use ranged attacks anyways, from outside the range). The bonus damage is nice too, and combos well with casting darkness.
The cloak's spells bring the item to the Artifact level, particularly when its darkness spell is used well. I intentionally limit that to twice a day for non-invested characters, though any appropriate mage can still make great use of it. Remember that the magical darkness only generates within a radius (so enemies can just stay out of it) and can impede allies (so they either get focused on by enemies if they're outside or they bumble around blind if they're inside).
On paper it all seems to be within the Artifact limit, and I nerfed it several times just to be sure it won't break most games.
The Legendary version removes the constant detect thoughts spell (which is worth a lot) and nerfs the damage and spells. Only 1 darkness per day is a good nerf to get it to level.
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