Bladeshimmer [3.5]

[Zaq]

So, as I was looking through Complete Scoundrel recently, I noticed something cool. There's an item called Bladeshimmer, which is basically a liquid that can make an object invisible. It includes rules for making a weapon invisible in order to catch your target flat-footed, which doesn't really seem worth it for 750 gp per swing. However, the only time that it says that wears off is after one attack. There's no mention of it wearing off naturally if you put it on anything other than a weapon. Before this, I had glanced at it, but I had never realized that 1) it worked on non-weapons and 2) it didn't wear off on its own (just keep away from drunken masters). It's relatively cheap, too . . . you can't sling it around like alchemist's fire, certainly, but at mid-to-high levels, it's cheap enough to coat even large objects with it. What kind of cool things could be done with this? I could see rubbing it on a door to see what's on the other side (revealing yourself as well, to be sure, but that's not always important), turning some or all of the planks of a bridge invisible, hiding your spare house key, making your light sources appear to float in midair just to look cool, or all kinds of things. What other cool tricks can you come up with for this interesting substance?


(Oh, and the stupidest trick I came up with was to smear it on a door and attach a Silent Portal Disk to it, then animate the door. Invisible and inaudible ghost door! Bonus points for making Animate Objects permanent, and/or if you give it a weapon, so you don't have to argue with your GM about whether its slam attack makes the Bladeshimmer wear off.)

[HunterOfJello]

Rub it on the tent you sleep in at night. You could also rub it on a big sheet and walk around underneath it like Harry Potter.

[Zaq]

Rub it on the tent you sleep in at night. You could also rub it on a big sheet and walk around underneath it like Harry Potter.

I think that doing that would just make you visible. The item's invisible, not you.

[HunterOfJello]

Invisible Tower Shield then. Get Cover behind it and weird out your enemies.

[J.Gellert]

If you coat a door with it, can you really be seen? Presumably the door is shut, so you only covered one side - perhaps it's a one-way window!

Coat trap components - Rogues can't find the tripwire unless they can See Invisible.

Coat your helmet - Head protection, and you look badass in battle (is that what space marine captains are doing?)

If you are a halfling, coat your magical boots so the other halflings don't laugh at you for wearing footwear.

Swap it with your party cleric's shampoo.

[Fizban]

The way it's written, it sounds like anything touching the item at all can wipe the stuff off. That severely limits what you can do except in a very controlled setting, and since you can't use anything less than 750gp worth, there's not much I can think of to use it for. In fact, I wouldn't even use it for what it's intended: a scroll of invisibility works on objects just fine, lasts for 3 minutes, and costs 150gp. An oil version would cost 300gp. Either way, the weapon can't attack, so the invisibility doesn't wear off until the spell expires. It probably shouldn't give you more than one attack against the same person, but Bladeshimmer is just ridiculously overpriced.

[Asheram]

Hm. Making very cheap and wipable peep-holes?

[Moogleking]

Make a maze of something that would harm the players, but not all passage (e.g Acid coated stone, Force, Electrified metal) and turn it all invisible. Now they keep bumping into random parts to reveal them; chuck in a bunch of ghosts, to travel through the walls and you have a trippy dungeon. You'd need a way to stop true seeing though... Make it all one big anti-magic field? Would the ghosts still exist?

[Zaq]

The way it's written, it sounds like anything touching the item at all can wipe the stuff off.

I would disagree with this. It gives relatively detailed rules for what happens when you hold the item, which implies to me that it can be handled without removing it, as long as you're not swinging it through the air and striking someone or something hard enough to hurt them. (I certainly can't interpret "Anyone holding an affected object appears to have an empty hand" as "if you touch this, it will not work," can you?) As written, only attacking with the object will actually render the Bladeshimmer ineffective.

[Yukitsu]

Inversly, if you have invisible spell metamagic, you can get multi-swing swords with the same effect by forging your swords from invisible iron. Even more fun if it's shadow conjured.