Hey guys,
I was running an encounter against a Shadow (bestiary 1 pg 245) and one of my PC's casted "Light" upon the Shadow itself with a touch attack. I had the Shadow dissipate for the spell duration.
The question is, would "Light" make a Shadow dissipate or would it have no effect? Help would be most appreciated.
Thank you.
No effect.
The Shadow is a powerful negative energy undead and light is a cantrip. If you note they don't actually take any damage from light spells even more powerful light spells.
At a minimum it would get a Will save against any effect.
On the other hand if it made a good story it's fine but you have made that type of undead very weak in the future.
Yeah. Thank you for the help
Also, Light can’t be cast on creatures. The target is ‘object touched.’
As best, you could have it flinch and take a step back before renewing its attack. Flavorful, thematic for the situation and rewarding for the player. But if you even go so far as to have the shadow lose its action, you've gone too far in terms of granting power to a spell that doesn't do that.
This said, when the PCs are in dire straights, I often juggle the monsters' tactics a bit. Why should they *always* just try to inflict maximum hit points? Maybe they want to disarm or trip their foe for their own amusement, or simply take a combat round to gloat, boast and threaten?
So don't worry about what you said happened to the shadow. It doesn't mean that the light cantrip will have the same result on other shadows. It's just that this particular shadow was especially touchy and emo.