Bow of the Lantern King

[Jn_henry]

I’m my campaign the Lantern King will give one of my players his bow. They will be at lvl 5. I’m wondering If this bow is balanced or over powered?

Bow of the Lantern King (+1 weapon)
(Saving throws against DC of 10+your lvl+your key ability modifier)

At the start of each encounter roll a d20:
1- Your bow is disabled for the encounter
2- You take 1 point bleed damage when you shoot.
3- You have a 25% chance to miss
4- Minus 1 to attack and damage
5- Nothing happens.
6- Creatures you hit are deafened for 1 round (DC)
7- Creatures you hit are clumsy 1 (DC)
8- Creature you hit are encumbered for one round. (DC)
9- Creatures you hit are flat footed for one round. (DC)
10 Plus 1 to attack and damage role.
11- creatures hit take 5 additional damage of your elemental choice.
12- Creatures you hit are slowed 2 (DC)
13- Creatures you hit are immobilized. (fortitude to break free each turn)
14- Creatures you hit are stunned for 3 rounds. (DC)
15- Teleport to where your arrow lands.
16- Your shots ignore damage reduction.
17- Your shots ignore concealment.
18- Critical hit multiplier increase by 1
19- Critical hit on +5 or more.
20- Pick any two powers of your choice.

At lvl 10 it will be a +2 bow

At lvl 13 a +3 bow

At lvl 15 the player will role twice and chose which role to take.

[Taja the Barbarian]

So, the player rolls a d20 at the start of each encounter and gets the appropriate bonus? Or is the roll per attack?
Is this for a 2nd edition game or 1st edition? The 'crit multiplier increase' entry sounds more like PF1e.
Assuming this is Pf2e, what about striking runes? Does the weapon gain those as well, do PCs need to add them, or is it restricted to only one weapon die?
The 'slowed' and 'stunned' entries are ridiculously powerful (our group pretty easily took down a minor aspect of a dragon deity last week because we restricted it to only 1 action per round).
The 'teleport' option is just weird
+3 weapon at level 13 seems early.

[Jn_henry]

It’s for Pathfinder 2e and its roll at the start of each encounter.

[shroudb]

My 2c:

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Slowed 2 is incredibly powerful. Can easily end encounters.
Stunned for 3 rounds, on every shot, is way beyond the powerlevel of PF2, i think not even 9th level spells can reach that so efficiently and repeatedly.

Both those power are 1/10 (since on 20 you can pick those at will), double that on level 15+, meaning that they will trivialize stuff quite often.

I suggest changing them to "slowed 1" and "stunned 1". Even then they are really strong but not going to break encounters.

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"you take 1 bleed damge" is bound to cause confusion since for the most part "bleed damage" is persistent damage in PF2. If you want them to just take 1 point of damage without the persistent effect i think it will be much better to simply change it to "1 piercing damage"

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No 18+19 should also be changed imo.

Critical multiplier isn't a thing in PF2. You can instead have it like "increase deadly dices by 1-2" (so instead of rolling +`1d10 they are rolling 2-3d10)

Criticals on 5+ is eually busted imo, think of it like giving them a critical range of 14-20 on their first shot, which is extremely powerful.

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No 10 you should really say what kind of bonus it is. Status or Circumstance. I'd heavily advice against "untyped" since those are extremly rare and always tied to specific class abilities if they do exist at all.

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apart from +1/+2/+3 the bow should at the right internvals (4/12/19) also give striking/greater striking/major striking

and i would push the +3 a bit firther ahead. Since normal +3 is around level 16, having it 3 levels earlier is a bit too strong. Maybe push it to like level 15, still earlier than normal, but not by that much.

[Castilliano]

Unbalanced, overpowered many times over, game-changing.

That beginning die roll would predetermine the outcome of most battles, maybe to the point where the party intentionally retreats to reengage (and reroll) later. And most of the abilities are not even close to being suitable, even at the highest levels much less getting it at 5th. Apologies.

[pauljathome]

Castilliano wrote:

Unbalanced, overpowered many times over, game-changing.

That beginning die roll would predetermine the outcome of most battles, maybe to the point where the party intentionally retreats to reengage (and reroll) later. And most of the abilities are not even close to being suitable, even at the highest levels much less getting it at 5th. Apologies.

Not to mention that the character will just discard the bow and use their back up bow if they don't like the result. Losing 1 action per encounter is no big deal

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the biggest flaw in the item design is that too many of the options do something. A lot of the random effects of a lantern game should be fun and random, but not really that impactful, like "you can only speak in the voice of the last creature you shot" or "you can only speak by asking questions" or "you leave a colored trail behind you when you move".

It's more thematic for the lantern king to like "grant you concealment" than to debilitate your enemies.

[Arcaian]

I definitely agree with the above issues with the effects, but I'd also like to point out the DC is fairly weak - it's less than a trained class DC, and doesn't increase. I'd recommend toning down the effects, as outlined above, but I'd also change the DC to be equal to your Class DC or Spell DC, whichever is higher.