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[Radiance] Weapon - Stoplyte
🕑 Added 2024-02-05 15:00:15 +0000 UTCDecorated leadership of the Luxwatch are expected to forge their own signature weapons by hand. Each one is outfitted with three enchanted colored lamps, each with the mystical power to exert different forms of control over a quarry.
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Weapon (maul or morningstar), rare (requires attunement)
While you wield this weapon, creatures cannot move you against your will.
Control Lights. This weapon’s three lamps are normally unlit and can only be lit using this property. When lit, each lamp sheds bright light in a 20-foot radius, and dim light for an additional 20 feet. This light bears the same color as its lantern. Depending on its color, the bright light produces an effect described below:
- Green Lamp. While in the area of bright green light, creatures you designate (including you) can take one additional action on each of their turns. This action can only be used to make one weapon attack or take the Dash action.
- Yellow Lamp. While in the area of bright yellow light, creatures you designate are slowed. Their speed is halved and they have a -2 penalty to AC.
- Red Lamp. You can command a target within the area of bright red light to stop. You can do this as a bonus action, or as a reaction when the target enters the area. The target must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or its speed is reduced to 0 until the start of your next turn.
While you wield this weapon, you can use an action to flip a switch and light one lamp of your choice from the weapon. While a lamp is lit, roll a d6 at the start of each of your turns. On a roll of 3 or lower, the lit lamp extinguishes and a new lamp lights, in the following order: green to yellow to red. If the red lamp extinguishes, no new lamp is lit.
You can use the switch to light each colored lamp once. It can’t be lit using the switch again until the next dawn.
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Uncommon Variant. The uncommon version of this item has these changes. The DC of the Red Lamp is 13, and the light automatically changes at the start of each of your turns instead of being determined by a d6 roll.
Very Rare Variant. The very rare version of this item has these changes. The DC of the Red Lamp is 17, and the weapon deals an extra 1d6 radiant damage to targets it hits while one of its lamps is active.
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DESIGN COMMENTARY
Welcome all to a new theme! I have to be honest, I'm a little surprised Technomancy III didn't win, but I'm all for the Reign of Radiance. It's pretty interesting that we're going from Shadows directly to Light, too. It would be fun to pit the world of Azira against Ellumara, but alas, Azira is just too specific of a setting. This weapon is the first in the batch; I plan to have a couple general application light-themed items, plus a couple for each of the four Lumenguilds I'm developing (the sunstar, emberheart, corespark, and phosphora).
The Stoplyte is based on one of the most common light sources we see in a city, and each lamp color is related to that idea. The calculations return power values in the Rare mark, varying depending on how long an average battle lasts, but I used an average of 3 rounds. Green is designed to be more powerful than the others, slowly stepping down in utility until you reach Red. With a 50% chance of changing lights, each color should last 2 rounds on average. In some cases, you might not see Red light used in a battle at all.
- Green allows you to make one more attack, which is great if used effectively in a large party. For this, I took an assumed average of 3 extra attacks (including yourself), which is slightly higher than the usual expectation of 2 melee or ranged characters. Note that the 20-foot radius is usually fairly limiting to melee range, and that the extra action allows you to attack on the turn you activate the green lamp. Note that this is pretty far below the haste spell, which grants many more benefits including an AC boost, a bonus to Dex saves, and doubled speed that compounds with the extra Dash action; plus the spell lasts a full minute while this one lasts 2 rounds on average.
- After the green lamp, there's a 50% chance of the change, so you ideally should be within range of enemies, effectively making the green light more useful in close range.
- Yellow slows enemies; reduced speed can potentially keep distant enemies from approaching for an attack, but the -2 AC is also a boon against high AC enemies. It's kind of like slow, except without many of the other effects. You might get 1-3 enemies in the aura at most, as any adversely affected enemy would eventually dip out and attack another more vulnerable party member (or use ranged attacks).
- Finally, Red light lets you reduce enemy speeds to 0. These uses are mainly limited to zoning creatures escaping or moving to attack your allies, or preventing creatures from entering melee with you until you're ready. The reaction cost is very good for that; the bonus action version requires a little more setup. This doesn't do anything against enemies that have ranged attacks/spells/effects (of which ~86% of enemies do), so it's not ranked that powerfully.
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