[Giants] Weapon - Astranaphora (Patreon)

A Mandate Cannot Be Ignored.

Kormuun’s deicidal crusade rages, ceaseless, an Astral Horde of zealots thundering in his wake. There shall be no gods, he proclaims. There shall be no kings. The star giants revere him. As they should.

A Mandate Cannot Be Ignored.

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You gain a +2 bonus to attack rolls and damage rolls made with this magic weapon.

The Cruel Drive of a Fanatic. If you move 20+ feet in a straight line directly toward a creature of your size or smaller and immediately hit it with this weapon, you skewer it. A creature is immune to this effect if it has Immunity to the Grappled condition. While a target is skewered, the target can’t willingly exit its space, you can't attack another target with this weapon, and this weapon's attacks deal an extra 1d8 Radiant damage. The skewer ends if you release the weapon or target, if the target takes an action to succeed on a DC 18 Strength check, or if, at the start of each of your turns, you fail to move as far as possible in a straight line toward the target—pushing it with you—and move 10+ feet this way.

None Shall Escape Kormuun's Sight. While holding this weapon, you can invoke its rune to cast a level 2 Guiding Bolt spell from it (+10 to hit). While this spell's target glitters, it is also bathed in sunlight. This property can be used twice, regaining expended uses of it daily at dawn.

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Giants Wake. This weapon gains the following improvements while your size is larger than Medium:

Large. This weapon's bonus Radiant damage becomes 1d10.

Huge or Gargantuan. This weapon's bonus Radiant damage becomes 1d12.

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

This is the first item to introduce the Giants Wake mechanic (and namesake of this theme). Essentially, while your size is larger, you gain some minor benefits! That's why this theme started out with 3-4 items that allow you to grow in size. A party can also prep Enlarge, make use of the Goliath ability, or really use any published content that interact with Giants. Thematically this also explains how Giants can be more powerful despite using the same magic items.

The Star Giant is also one of the four new Giants I'm looking to introduce. Their history is implied by the flavor text - mounted raiders of the stars above led by a zealous fanatic.

As for the mechanics: the lance finally gets some love. The skewer mechanic is functionally a free grapple per turn, allowing you to isolate and lock down enemies, granting you bonus damage against it per hit. Its main strength comes from locking down enemies outside your reach to really pin them, but this won't work every time since there's a lot of ways to fail (pitiful size restriction, you have to keep pushing the target so you'll eventually run out of space, or you might provoke OAs during a push, etc). In combination with the lance's Topple mastery, you should get a decent amount of bonus damage per turn from it.

Guiding Bolt is always a good spell to keep in the arsenal and as a setup for a skewer. The light is also sunlight (negligible at that level anyway).

Overall we're looking at a minimum base rarity (+2 weapon) of Rare. The other properties increase its rarity: the bonus damage (Attunement), Guiding Bolt spells (Very Rare), and the extremely powerful lockdown (Legendary).

Once you get larger, however, the pool of enemies you can skewer also expands.