[Shadow] Weapon - Shadow Blade

Light and shadow: where one exists, the other must follow. While the mystical Blighted Sun Blade sears poisonous radiance across Azira's surface, its counterpart rises from the depths to challenge it.

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Shadow Blade
Weapon (dagger, greatsword, shortsword, or longsword), rare (requires attunement)

This weapon appears to be a blade hilt. While grasping the hilt in an area of darkness, you can use a bonus action to condense shadows into one of the following blade forms: dagger, greatsword, shortsword, or longsword. Once summoned, you can use another bonus action to dismiss the blade or change its form to another from the list. While the hilt has a blade, it reduces any bright light other than sunlight in a 5-foot radius around it to dim light.

You gain a +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls made with this weapon, which deals necrotic damage instead of slashing damage. The weapon is nearly weightless; it always lacks the Heavy property. If you are proficient with longswords, you are proficient with this sword in all its forms.

Each weapon form grants one special benefit. While using the weapon in that form, you can gain that benefit once; then you can’t gain that benefit again until the next dusk.

• Dagger. Immediately after you throw this weapon at a target within the weapon's normal range and you hit or miss, you can teleport to an unoccupied space within 5 feet of the weapon's target (no action required). You then catch the weapon in your hand.
• Greatsword. As an action, you can whirl the weapon around you, making a separate melee attack roll against each target within 5 feet of you.
• Longsword. Immediately before you make a melee attack with this weapon on your turn, you can change its reach to 20 feet until the end of your turn (no action required).
• Shortsword. When you take the Attack action and attack only with this weapon, but miss all of those attacks, you can take the Attack action again.

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Uncommon Variant. The uncommon version of this weapon lacks the weapon forms' benefits, and you do not become proficient with it if you are proficient with longswords.

Very Rare Variant. The very rare version of this weapon has these changes. You can use each weapon’s benefit twice between dusks. Also, while you wield the weapon, you can cast the darkness spell from it. This spell does not require concentration to maintain. You can cast the spell once, and can’t do so again until the next dusk.

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

Welcome all to the latest and possibly the most unique theme: Shadow of the Blighted Sun! On this planet of Azira, a dying sun god and its Blighted Sun poisons all who dare stand on its surface, as do the two moons at night that reflect the sun's light. Driven below the surface, people turn to the darkness to survive.

The theme was a pain to sort out and find unique ways to play with darkness, but it all came together. Still on the radar are tentative player ancestries (bat and/or fungi-based) and backgrounds, whose existence will depend on whether they are interesting or not. The Blighted Sun rules are already complete, and will probably be included with the Zenith Catalyst artifact post.

This item, the Shadow Blade, was designed to be a counterpart to the Sun Blade (or a Blighted Sun Blade on this planet). Like the counterpart, the Shadow Blade (flavorfully?) appears as a hilt, summoning alternative forms later on; the lack of Heavy and the proficiency exceptions allow characters to make full use of all its forms. The Shadow Blade's bonus is a +1 instead of a +2, but makes up for it with its limited-use weapon benefits. The dim light effect (be prepared to see this a lot) is of questionable power because it would make hiding easier from creatures without darkvision, but I figured it's probably fine.

Also, I'm starting to generate rarity variants for items! This will let players use the item for more play tiers and could even be a fun "evolving item" a character could stick with over a campaign. Big improvement to flexibility of play.