Ritual of Shadow Walking: how's it do?

[Jowgen]

The Ritual of Shadow Walking from Lords of Darkness p. 125 "bestows upon the recipient the ability to use shadows as a means of conveyance", as a supernatural ability at will.

You enter an area of shadow as a standard action and immediately emerge from another area of shadow within 100 ft.

It is described as a "journey through numbingly cold shadowstuff", which deals HP and Con damage whenever you do it, and one can also "hide within the shadowstuff, rather than emerging" at the cost of a higher rate of damage per round.

If you drop to 0 or less HP, or you Con goes to 0, your body is "claimed by the shadowstuff and remains trapped within forever.

So this ability raises a bunch of questions I wanted to pose to people to get some opinions, as I doubt they can be nailed down by RAW (but here's to hoping).

1. Is it Planar travel?

This question boils down as to whether this shadow walk is blocked by Forbiddance, Dimensional Anchor, Weirdstones et al., and also whether it works away from the material plane.

It shares superficial similarities to the Shadow Walk spell, as well as the Tree Stride spell, but its also quite different.

Like the Shadow Walk spell it transports you using shadowstuff, but at no point does it mention planar boundaries or the quasi-real illusion aspect of it all.

Like Tree Stride you enter a medium, your range is reliant on the presence of equivalent mediums, and can choose to remain in that medium.

But since it isn't tagged as a teleportation effect, it isn't a given that it uses the astral for transport any more than the plane of shadow, so one could also reason that it works more akin to a Master Earth spell (a transmutation).

A complete alernative would be that the ability creates its own extradimensional space made of shadow stuff, which would make it subject to Forbiddance et al. but let it work on other planes, although there is no text basis for this any more than the other options.

I've had a look to see if anything clarifies this point in any way, but didn't find anything.

Which brings us to...

2. If it ISN'T planar, what's it do?

If it isn't a planar travel effect, that still leaves the question how it works, as in where are you while inside the shadows?

This is relevant mainly for line of effect questions and other targeting effects, like a locate city bomb dropping on the shadow your hiding in, or someone casting Locate Creature on you while you're in that shadow.

Other questions that derive from this (and might also apply even if it IS planar travel):
what happens to objects you drop while inside the shadow?
Is there any way to retrieve the corpse claimed by the shadow stuff?
What happens if someone hits the shadow you're in with a widened Daylight spell (destorying all shadows within 120 ft)?

So yeah, hoping anyone has any RAW-approximating answers to any of this, but also welcoming opinions/conjectures. :smallsmile:

[Seina]

Well by raw it lacks the descriptor so it's probably not subject to phenomena that blocks dimensional travel (similar to treestride as you said).

As for where you are? I guess... inside the shadow.

[Falontani]

I think tree stride is definitely the best comparison except perhaps, fire stride. It's a transmutation spell with the teleportation descriptor. This tells me that it doesn't rely on the plane of fire, and it hurts being inside the spell unless your resistance to fire

If no exit location exists, then what happens?

Rai one of three options
1) follow the rules for teleport, when they have chosen an illegal spot to exit from
2) they are kicked out randomly somewhere in range, perhaps in pieces through any flames that do exist, but are too small
3) they are trapped, and remain until a fire opens up that they can travel through, or the duration ends, at which point I think they would be claimed by the fire

[ExLibrisMortis]

In the absence of clear RAW, I'd rule that the ability doesn't call on the Plane of Shadow, but uses shadowstuff that extends into the Material Plane naturally (like elemental fire drawn from Material Plane matter). The main reason is that I like the idea of a secret and highly dangerous ability bypassing dimensional locks and so on. Could be a good twist in a murder mystery.

If the ability did use the Plane of Shadow directly, I would say that the shadow you're in would be to the Plane of Shadow what the Near Ethereal of a specific plane is to the Deep Ethereal. That is, each shadow would have its own little shard dimension that opens up to the Plane of Shadow at one end. That would mean that dimensional lock becomes a problem, but on the plus side, you might gain some benefits from being on the Plane of Shadow (CL increases for shadow spells, and whatnot).

[Mr Adventurer]

Whether it's near-Shadow Plane, or a demiplane the ability allows you to access, I think 'planar travel' is the only real answer for abilities that move you between points without crossing intervening space. (Master Earth is clear you move through the mass of the earth of the planet.)

Fire Stride, Tree Stride, City Stride, and Swamp Stride all have the Teleportation descriptor, for what it's worth. Shadow Walk and Shadow Fade do not, but have the Shadow subschool, which references "extradimensional energy".

In the absence of more textual evidence, I would say it's an expression of the near Plane of Shadow. So my answer to your other questions would be:

If you drop objects, you can probably pick them back up if you do so during this instance of your use of this ability, but once you exit, the items are adrift somewhere on the Plane of Shadow and you'd need an extradimensional search to find them.

If you die while using the ability, it would take a trip to and search of the Plane of Shadow to find your body. Given the nature of the plane and it's inhabitants though, there's a decent chance you'd be eaten or turned into something else.

If you're using your ability to wait in the shadow and nearby shadows disappear, yes, you'd need to find another one within range that does exist or else be trapped in the shadow until you do - quite possibly dying from the penalties from the ability. On the other hand of course, it's not too hard to be resistant to cold and immune to ability damage, so you might be alright indefinitely. In such a case, I'd say you could try to find your way deeper into the Plane of Shadow and make your way elsewhere that way, though once you do that you no longer count as using the ability and can't use it to return as normal - you're on a planar excursion proper at that point.