Workshop Week 04 — Meet the Lightning Pylons! (Patreon)

Thank you heroes for coming out last night and helping make these crazy cool rods! Below is the initial draft of their functionality, which is subject to change between now and when they're officially added to the Saddlebag on Tuesday!

And remember: no Workshop next week! I'll be at GenCon, if you want to meet up and say hi!

Lightning Pylons
Rod, rare 

These 3-foot long rods are made using a blend of magic and science and normally come in sets of 3. The pylons are tipped with a fragment of a blue dragon's horn. Each pylon channels the latent electrical energy within these horn fragments and can extend that energy to neighboring pylons to create an electrical barrier between them. Each pylon has an electrical charge. Once that charge has been lost, It takes 12 hours for it to recharge.  

You can set up a pylon in an unoccupied space adjacent to you as an action. While touching a set up pylon that has an electrical charge, you can speak its command word as a bonus action to electrify it. A pylon remains electrified for 1 minute and loses its electrical charge at the end of that minute. If there is at least 1 other pylon with a charge set up within 20 feet of an already electrified one, electricity jumps and arcs between them. A pylon becomes electrified once it receives electricity from a neighboring one in this way. You can have up to 6 pylons connected like this at once. Electrified pylons are magically bound to the ground until they lose their charge.

The electricity between the pylons forms a wall 10 feet high and 1 foot thick. The wall is opaque and casts bright light out to 10 feet and dim light for another 10 feet. When the wall appears, each creature within its area must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a failure, a creature takes 5d8 lightning damage and has its speed reduced to 0 until the start of its next turn. On a success, it takes half as much damage and has its speed halved instead. Creatures who are made of metal or are wearing metal armor have disadvantage on this saving throw. A creature that ends its turn within the wall or enters it for the first time on its turn must also make the saving throw. Setting up a pylon does not force you to make this saving throw.

Each pylon has AC 15 and 20 hit points. A creature that touches an electrified pylon or hits it with a melee attack using a metal weapon takes 1d8 lightning damage for each pylon connected to it, including itself. Once a pylon is reduced to 0 hit points, it loses its electrical charge and ends the connection it may have to other neighboring pylons.

He had been left alone for too long and given too many resources. His tower had become an impenetrable fortress of traps and wonder. The soldiers' hair stood on end not only out of fear, but for the snapping arcs of lightning that barred the path before them.

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Here's the (possibly copyright claimed/blocked) VoD of the stream, in case you missed it! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kSJ5PRv1sc

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Wow! Total knockout by something electric this week! Thank you for your votes and suggestions this week, heroes!

I'll be updating this post just before 7:30pm EDT tonight with the exclusive YouTube link to the stream. You should get an email alerting you to the change!

For this week, we'll be making something electric. If you voted for the other options, don't worry! They can come back for other weeks in the future. More on that below the items.

No stream or vote next week, heroes! I'll be heading to GenCon Wednesday morning and won't be able to stream. If you'll be at the event, come say hi!

Item Ideas

Loose ideas from the comments, both from those that suggested them as well as other non-related ones, have given me these three ideas we can work on tonight:

• Battery Buckler — A shield that absorbs nearby electric attacks and releases them back at will. Something along the lines of a lightning rod mixed with a Tesla Powerwall. You can absorb lightning damage and hold onto it as charges to release them against foes who attempt to strike you. Expect some benefits when the foe is wearing or wielding metal.

• Starmetal Boots — A set of metal boots that let you climb freely along metallic surfaces (and probably unworked stone) and may give you lightning resistance. If these require attunement, you could probably make a pretty mean kick with them, too.

• Rods of Chained Lightning — Plantable rods that make an electric wall! These rods would be modular, so you may find 1 or 2 (1d4-1, minimum 1) at a time to keep extending the range and complexity of your barriers over the course of a campaign! Electric effects that pass through the walls could either enhance the wall or stop short.

Runner-up Brackets

I'd like to make the first week's vote of every month a chance for the runner-ups of the previous month to come back for another vote! If your favored direction didn't pull through, come out and support it again for a second chance!

I'd also like to make that first stream of the month free to watch. You still have all the say in the direction through here on Patreon, of course!

There are lots of adventurers out there who may not know what they're missing each week, so this would be a fun opportunity to interact with the rest of the community and maybe welcome some new heroes to the party. I know of several new Elite Heroes who made the jump because of these weekly votes and streams already, so I think it would be a nice event to hold each month and get to know the wider audience a bit better.

So how do you feel about that? Let me know in the comments below!