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Lysander
2009-10-29, 09:25 AM
Does a magical quality like this exist yet? If not, how much do you think this should cost to be applied to a bow?

Shadowbow

A shadowbow requires no ammunition, instead creating functional arrows made out of shadows. Pulling back the string creates a smoky translucent bolt that can be fired as normal, except it deals only a fraction of a real arrow's damage (20% lesser shadowbow or 60% greater shadowbow). The arrow vanishes after one round. A Shadowbow can be used in conjunction with all archery feats and special abilities as if it were a normal bow.

It is possible to fire real arrows from a shadowbow. In that case no shadow arrow is created, and the real arrow's full damage is applied.

Solaris
2009-10-29, 09:32 AM
I'd recommend dropping the damage dice (1d4 for shortbow, 1d6 for longbow) and/or a numeric penalty rather than doing percentages. Most people appreciate not needing to do more than basic addition and/or subtraction each time they attack.

DracoDei
2009-10-29, 02:12 PM
Yeah, but then the +5 Flaming Burst Shadowbow gets a bit cheesy... but you are correct that the multiplication is sub-optimal. I suppose if people tolerate it with Shadow Conjuration and Shadow Evocation (which this is obviously based on) then this is just as good.

All in all, what it most saves you from is having to carry hundreds of arrows around, which the Efficient Quiver also does, and without nerfing your damage. That means it should cost noticably less than that. But the spells involved are pretty high level (of course, so could the spells for the Quiver... is it Secret Chest? I don't feel like looking it up since my computer is lagging ATM.). Now if you could declare any given arrow to be Silver, Cold Iron, Adaminitine etc that might help(although even firing nothing but Adamintine, the time to recoop the cost of the bow is going to be long-ish I think), and if they counted as all of those simultaneously, that might actually put it back on a par with the Quiver... MAYBE.

Solaris
2009-10-29, 02:15 PM
Mayhaps capitalizing on the part-real thing and having it ignore/negate cover as well as being more efficient about hitting incorporeal targets would be a good place to start.

SurlySeraph
2009-10-29, 02:16 PM
Since arrows already do low damage, I'd say this should either be very cheap or should receive some improvements. Solaris's solution is good.