In Ultimate Options: Power of the Ninja, one of the introduced ninja tricks was Shadowblade:
Shadowblade (Su): As a swift action the ninja can create a weapon made of solid shadows (this can be any light weapon with which she is proficient). This weapon is treated as magic for purpose of bypassing DR, and has an enhancement bonus to attack and damage equal to +1 for every three full levels of ninja. It has the same hardness and hit points as a normal magic weapon of its type, and dissipates at the end of any round it is not held in the ninja’s hand. A ninja may dissipate the weapon at will. A ninja must have at least 1 ki point left to use this trick.
While a strong option for the Ultimate Combat ninja, or a core rogue with a ki pool, it wasn't overpowered because of those classes' overall subpar offensive capabilities.
Now that the unchained rogue has been offensively empowered with finesse training, debilitating injury, and getting sneak attack damage on concealed opponents, shadowblade seems like it needs an adjustment. Any opinions on how to nudge it down without completely nerfing it?
- Slow the autoscaling enhancement bonus to +1 for four full levels?
- Eliminate the enhancement bonus entirely and just let it bypass DR as a monk's ki strike (bypass cold iron & silver at 7th, bypass lawful or chaos element matching rogue's own alignment at 10th, bypass adamantine at 16th)?
- Break it into two separate tricks?
- Something else?
In Ultimate Options: Power of the Ninja, one of the introduced ninja tricks was Shadowblade:
Shadowblade (Su): As a swift action the ninja can create a weapon made of solid shadows (this can be any light weapon with which she is proficient). This weapon is treated as magic for purpose of bypassing DR, and has an enhancement bonus to attack and damage equal to +1 for every three full levels of ninja. It has the same hardness and hit points as a normal magic weapon of its type, and dissipates at the end of any round it is not held in the ninja’s hand. A ninja may dissipate the weapon at will. A ninja must have at least 1 ki point left to use this trick.While a strong option for the Ultimate Combat ninja, or a core rogue with a ki pool, it wasn't overpowered because of those classes' overall subpar offensive capabilities.
Now that the unchained rogue has been offensively empowered with finesse training, debilitating injury, and getting sneak attack damage on concealed opponents, shadowblade seems like it needs an adjustment. Any opinions on how to nudge it down without completely nerfing it?
- Slow the autoscaling enhancement bonus to +1 for four full levels?
- Eliminate the enhancement bonus entirely and just let it bypass DR as a monk's ki strike (bypass cold iron & silver at 7th, bypass lawful or chaos element matching rogue's own alignment at 10th, bypass adamantine at 16th)?
- Break it into two separate tricks?
- Something else?
If you do go with your 2nd option, I would give something back. Maybe allow the character to make any weapon OR 2 light weapons (for TWF'ing) similar to how a psionic Soulknife can with their mindblade.
It becomes a decent choice early on to deal with magic DR, mid game it probably loses out to real magical weapons which are customizable. But it still has the "always there" and occasionally niche opponents your magic weapon won't effect, aspects. It becomes a safety net, which is probably in line with what a trick should do. It doesn't have uses per day or limitations, so design wise it should be in the realm of "it is nice but not necessary, and will occasionally make life easier".
A free scaling magic weapon for a trick is pretty much a no brainer, no rogue would not take it unless they were focused on range or natural attacks (and even then it would be a contender probably, for things that might be bad to touch, stuck in melee, etc). Even at two tricks it is a super strong contender, which is bad.