Did I balance these options correctly?

[Boci]

So some background, I gave my armourer artificer a kinda OP item Lightning Net Glvoes (mostly intentionally, the other players got similar stuff) that augment their Lightning Launchers. They now crit on a 19-20, and whenever they crit a creature with lightning damage the target is restrained for 1 round. Back at level 6 they encounter a banshee created when a woman was stabbed through the heart with a black iron knife. They suppressed her manifestation long enough to put her soul to rest, but some of the necromantic energy remained, and the player wanted to have that worked into the Lightning Net Glvoes. I said okay, but it would take a few levels, since the it was a complex magical item and weaving the two together would be tricky. They agreed and now they're almost at level 8, ready to complete it. I said they had 3 options for how to augment the gloves.

1. Hidden Blade of Black - 1/short rest as a bonus action you can cause the blade to manifest at the tip of your fingers until the end of your turn, attacking as a melee weapon instead of range. These attacks have advantage and deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage, but are otherwise treated as attacks with the Lightning Launchers.

2: Black Lightning - Whenever you deal lightning damage, as a non-action part of the attack you may choose to shift half or all the damage into necrotic damage. If all the damage becomes necrotic, a crit frightens the target for 1 round instead of restraining them. If the damage is half necrotic, you can choose whether to restrain or frighten a crited target when you make the crit.

3: Ruins Scream - As an action you can lift your Gloves to obscure your mouth, then drop them just in time to utter a lightning infused scream. All hostile creatures within 20ft take 1d8 lightning and 1d8 necrotic damage + extra damage equal to intelligence modifier, and a single creature of your choice takes an extra 1d6 of lightning damage. A successful dexterity save halves the damage, but if they roll a 1 in addition to full damage they are restrained or frightened (dealer's choice) for 1 round.

Are these options roughly balanced with each other, or does one stand out as too strong or weak?

[Amnestic]

None of them particularly stand out to me over the others. You've got a single target damage option, a condition option, and an AoE option.

I will say that it's pretty rare that I'd prefer Frightened over Restrained. Necrotic is generally more often resisted than Lightning (your campaign may vary!) so the 'full necrotic' option for #2 seems perhaps on the weak side. Maybe tack on a healing reduction/removal for a round on top of the Frightened, Chill Touch style?

[Unoriginal]

So some background, I gave my armourer artificer a kinda OP item Lightning Net Glvoes (mostly intentionally, the other players got similar stuff) that augment their Lightning Launchers. They now crit on a 19-20, and whenever they crit a creature with lightning damage the target is restrained for 1 round. Back at level 6 they encounter a banshee created when a woman was stabbed through the heart with a black iron knife. They suppressed her manifestation long enough to put her soul to rest, but some of the necromantic energy remained, and the player wanted to have that worked into the Lightning Net Glvoes. I said okay, but it would take a few levels, since the it was a complex magical item and weaving the two together would be tricky. They agreed and now they're almost at level 8, ready to complete it. I said they had 3 options for how to augment the gloves.

1. Hidden Blade of Black - 1/short rest as a bonus action you can cause the blade to manifest at the tip of your fingers until the end of your turn, attacking as a melee weapon instead of range. These attacks have advantage and deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage, but are otherwise treated as attacks with the Lightning Launchers.

2: Black Lightning - Whenever you deal lightning damage, as a non-action part of the attack you may choose to shift half or all the damage into necrotic damage. If all the damage becomes necrotic, a crit frightens the target for 1 round instead of restraining them. If the damage is half necrotic, you can choose whether to restrain or frighten a crited target when you make the crit.

3: Ruins Scream - As an action you can lift your Gloves to obscure your mouth, then drop them just in time to utter a lightning infused scream. All hostile creatures within 20ft take 1d8 lightning and 1d8 necrotic damage + extra damage equal to intelligence modifier, and a single creature of your choice takes an extra 1d6 of lightning damage. A successful dexterity save halves the damage, but if they roll a 1 in addition to full damage they are restrained or frightened (dealer's choice) for 1 round.

Are these options roughly balanced with each other, or does one stand out as too strong or weak?

If Ruin Scream is at will, it's head and torso above Hidden Blade of Black.

[Vichaous]

IMO here's a bit more balanced idea for them.

First of all, give the item "necromantic charges", it can have up to 6 charges max, recovering up to 1d6 per long rest. You can adjust it as needed.

As for the choices of ability, here's some more balanced changes:
1. Hidden Blade of Black - by expending a charge you can make your next melee weapon attack at advantage and all melee weapon attacks deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage. This effect lasts until the start of your next turn.

2. Black Lightning - by expending a charge whenever you use your Lightning Launcher ability (or equivalent Lightning Net Glove ability) you can add an extra 1d6 necrotic damage and instead of restraining the target for one round, the target must make a DC (8+Relevant Modifier is scaling, or DC13 if static) Wisdom save or be struck with fear and must use their reaction to move up to their speed away from you.

3. Ruins Scream - As an action you can lift your Gloves to obscure your mouth, then drop them just in time to utter a lightning infused scream. By expending a charge you can force all creatures within a 20ft radius of you to make a DC (8+Relevant Modifier is scaling, or DC13 if static) Dexterity save. On failure they take 1d6 lightning and 1d6+(relevant modifier) necrotic damage, or half as much on a save. If a creature fails the save by 10 or more, they will be struck with fear and must use their reaction to move up to their speed away from you.

These seem to be of the same power level, with a little bit of wiggle room on some of the DC's/Damage dice. You can change some of the damage dice to 1d8 if you want to do a little more damage, or make it scaling based on level/subclass feature gain.
Just some food for thought.

[Boci]

None of them particularly stand out to me over the others. You've got a single target damage option, a condition option, and an AoE option.

I will say that it's pretty rare that I'd prefer Frightened over Restrained. Necrotic is generally more often resisted than Lightning (your campaign may vary!) so the 'full necrotic' option for #2 seems perhaps on the weak side. Maybe tack on a healing reduction/removal for a round on top of the Frightened, Chill Touch style?

Could add that certainly, its a niche ability but useful when it comes up. And yes, its pretty rare you'd choose to frighten rather than restrain, though some creatures are immune to that, but mostly it might just be a feels bad moment when the enemy is immune to lightning so you have to shift it all into necrotic and then get the lesser debuff condition.


If Ruin Scream is at will, it's head and torso above Hidden Blade of Black.

It was meant to be at will, so you might be right, but it is two attacks, with advantage, and crits matter since they restrain. So two attacks with advantage, criting on 10 and 20s vs. needing the opponent to roll a nat 1 on their save, I feel that a big enough difference to not make one head and torso above the other, but Ruins Scream may well be the better one. Do you think I should limit the uses? What would be fair then?


IMO here's a bit more balanced idea for them.

First of all, give the item "necromantic charges", it can have up to 6 charges max, recovering up to 1d6 per long rest. You can adjust it as needed.

That might make balancing things easier but I would like to avoid adding charges, character are already complicated enough with multiple extra abilities and items to remember, some with charges, others with synergy/situational bonuses, so adding it to this as well might be too much.