Gloomblade Archetype (WIP)

[CrackedOzy]

EDIT: Reposted from my original thread in Rules Discussion because I’m a doofus and didn’t see Homebrew was a option.

So I just talked my players into switching over to 2e, but one of them was playing a Gloomblade Fighter and I wanted to preserve his character idea. I’ve done a little work so far and cribbed a bit from the Magus, but I’d love input as we’re new to this edition. I also have plans to cover the rest of the Gloomblade abilities and even add some new stuff, but let’s see what y’all think of what I have now.

Gloomblade Archetype

Gloomblade Dedication - FEAT 2
A gloomblade can create a shadowy weapon in a free hand as a single action. This can take the form of any common simple or martial melee weapon with which he is trained. A gloomblade can have only one shadow weapon in existence at a time; creating a new shadow weapon causes an existing shadow weapon to vanish.

Potent Shadows - FEAT 4
You can boost the accuracy and deadliness of your shadow weapons. You learn the “magus potency” battle spell. You gain a focus pool of 1 Focus Point.

Dual Shadows - FEAT 8
You can now summon two one handed shadow weapons. Each can be affected by your battle spells, but they are treated as being 1 step lower for purposes of being Heightened.

Runic Shadows - FEAT 8
Prerequisite: Potent Shadows
You can temporarily replicate the effects of a property rune for your shadow weapons. You learn the “runic impression” battle spell. Increase the number of Focus Points in your focus pool by 1.

It was pointed out that there is a Fetchling feat that does a similar affect, but that’s at 9th level and has more versatility than just some weapons, so hopefully this isn’t unbalanced. Gloomblade was an official 1e archetype, so I think it should be good? Idk. Also I don’t want to make this limited to a single ancestry.

[Arachnofiend]

I'm a bit iffy on needing to use magus potency for the shadow weapons to stay relevant - on one hand it's an enormous amount of gold saved to never need potency runes, on the other hand you have to use this spell for the archetype to function at all and it effectively turns dual shadows into a trap (the way focus spells work you generally only expect to use one per combat). I think it would be better to just make the gloomblades use the striking and potency runes from Handwraps and focus more on getting free property runes with the later feats.

[CrackedOzy]

The Handwraps are irrelevant as the Gloomblade can only apply the benefits of the two Focus spells on the shadow weapons, not their unarmed attacks like a Magus. I didn’t have that explicitly mentioned, but I’ll add it into future versions for clarity.

[Ventnor]

So, a thought; what if the Gloomblade could etch runes onto their shadow that could empower their shadow weapons every time they manifested? Kind of like how a Druid with the verdant weapon feat can etch runes onto the seed that they grow into their weapon.