[Shadow] Item - Pointe of the Shadowdancer

A popular cultural display on the streets of Zelkarth, shadowdancing combines fluid, graceful stances with intermittent teleportation through the darkness. Zelkarthi master dancers wear especially lavish pointes custom designed for each routine.

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Pointe of the Shadowdancer
Wondrous item, rare (optional attunement)

While you wear these shoes, when you start your turn in an area of dim light, your walking speed increases by 5 feet until the end of your turn. If you start your turn in an area of darkness, it increases by 10 feet instead. You also gain darkvision out to a range of 30 feet, if you don't already have it. 

Optional Attunement: Gloomstep. You gain this property if you attune to these shoes.

These shoes have 5 charges and regains all expended charges daily at dusk. When a hostile creature ends its movement in a space within 5 feet of you and you are in an area of dim light, you can use your reaction to move up to teleport up to 10 feet to an unoccupied space you can see. If you are in an area of darkness, you can take this reaction to teleport up to 15 feet instead. The target space must be in dim light or darkness.

Immediately after you teleport, you can make one melee weapon attack against a target within reach, and you have advantage on this attack.

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Uncommon Variant. The rare version of these shoes have 3 charges instead of 5, and you cannot make an attack after you teleport using the Gloomstep property.

Very Rare Variant. The very rare version of these shoes have 7 charges instead of 5. Additionally, when you teleport using the Gloomstep property, you can expend 1 additional charge to teleport up to three times the normal distance.

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

For many, darkness is all about mobility, so shoes related to darkness are a must. The rare Boots of Swiftness already grant a blanket +10 to speed, so the variable speed increase and +30 foot darkvision roughly equates the Rare version without attunement. When attunement is included, advantage on five attacks per day is relatively minimal, nowhere close to as devastating as a Shadow monk. Though the benefits all require dim light or darkness, I typically assume players are using it most optimally (i.e. planning for an underground campaign).

I had initially envisioned the shoes as boots, but later felt that I had drawn too many boots and needed something different. Shadowdancing later came to be and I moved toward pointes or ballet shoes. I probably should have identified a proper material to render first, or a viable color scheme, but it still turned out alright. Nothing "big" to capture the eye, though.