Dark Blade of Illir (Twilight’s Knife)

Given that option 1 is essentially only adding a Fine quality to a Gladius of Light, I will go with Option 2. It bypasses the AR of the specified creatures and gets the bump vs. Entropics. Otherwise it is a Speed 4 Fine dagger that loses the Gladius of Light effect if thrown/disarmed.

At least to the weapon damage, you are still using a single weapon and not two, so there would only be one weapon die.

The spell creates weapons, not an energy damaging effect. As such combining spell damage doesn’t make sense in the same way that combining something like mental scream and telekinetic bolt would.

I don’t understand exactly what you’re asking about bypassing AR. The only time the damage bypasses the AR is against the specific limited set of targets proscribed by the GoL spell. AR is still in full effect vs all other targets.

Rules should be applied using common sense.

With a sweep of his hat,

Paul

It creates a weapon fused from two different magic sources, there is absolutely no reason why they can’t both do damage. That’s like saying that if you fuse two elemental fire spells together you should only use the damage from one, because its all just fire. when you combine two spells, there damage combines. That makes plenty of sense, and you can make plenty of arguments for the magical weapon you make from the combined spell being more deadly than either base weapon would have been.

I agree with you a little on the AR question, because as the rules are written right now, the blade is insubstantial and only effects the specific target creatures (since that is a restriction of the GoL spell), but the combined spell would still allow AR (since the manipulate shadow allowed AR, and if one does the combined spell must). Logically that doesn’t make much sense, either it is solid and can effect everything or it is just composed of light and it should ignore AR, but that is the rules as currently written, and unless Matt specifically addresses it I think that’s how it should be run.

If I had the option to create this spell to “make sense” I would say that it makes a solid dagger with a nimbus of light around it. The dagger would do the normal manipulate shadow weapon damage to any of the non-special creatures (since the nimbus would have no effect) while the “special” creatures would take the combined damage of both spells and AR would apply (since it would still apply to the solid dagger portion of the spell). But I don’t have the option to modify the rules for this spell, only Matt has that, and I think some of these things have to be thought out very carefully since it sets a precedent.

If the damage for these two spells combined does not equal the combined damages as spelled out in the current rules for advanced spells, than we need another major revision to the FAQ to cover why and how it is should be done, because one can easily make arguments for why different things should or shouldn’t combine, or whether a spell creates a weapon or “effect.” I really don’t want every table’s ruling (on anything) to be different, as it destroys the feel of the shared campaign to have everything work differently at different tables. It worries me when I post and everyone posts on “how they would run it” when they are so wildly different and very wedded to their way. That is why we need things to be run by the rules, until there is a ruling that there is an exception.

If the campaign rules that when GoL combines with manipulate shadow, the spell only one spell’s damage rather than both, is that a universal rule now? If it rules that the combined weapon is insubstantial and ignores AR, is that universal for spells that combine with GoL? Do these need to go into the errata?