New Spell: Shining Armor
This content can now be found at its most updated version in The Elements and Beyond, a free 246-page compendium that you can download right here, filled with 23 subclasses, 8 spellcasting feats, 134 spells, 213 spell variants, 85 monsters, 30 magic items, 4 races plus 12 new subraces each with racial feats, and even more goodies for both players and DMs!
“Fear not. The enemy blades cannot harm me, for I am armored by my Lord’s great light.”
- Oren Blanche, Priest of Apollo
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Shining Armor
The figure of a knight in shining armor may be one of the most archetypal paladin figures out there, but can your paladin character truly make their armor shine? Perhaps you are a cleric radiating with protective golden light, or you could be an Oathbreaker paladin warded by a twisted evil light — a sickly green or shadowy violet. You could even be a wizard such as a bladesinger who hurls yourself into melee combat, armoring yourself in planes of prismatic rainbow light. However you glow, you’ll want to use today’s previewed spell!
Though it bears some similarities to fire shield and frost armor, today’s spell shining armor is self-only and one level higher, making it normally inaccessible to eldritch knights and arcane tricksters as well as characters below level 9. Besides the possibly longer duration, the spell has a number of upsides over fire shield, including that it deals damage to enemies attacking with 10 foot weapons (such as pikes and glaives), that it deals damage to all nearby enemies instead of only the attacker, and that it deals the almost-never-resisted radiant damage instead of the highly-resisted fire damage. Someone with the War Caster feat or proficiency in Constitution saving throws (none of the three classes its given to do) can make especially good use of this spell, combining its many effects to become not only highly protected against enemies, but to punish them for grouping up on the caster as well. And even though the spell’s disadvantage makes critical hits against you less likely, enemies with advantage may still manage to threaten you with a massive blow that will certainly end the spell — and there’s no better time to end it yourself to blind the foe and save yourself from the critical hit!
Like any spell that provides value when the caster is attacked, the fact that it requires concentration can be particularly troublesome when those attacks cause the spell to be broken early, meaning the spell is a little weaker than it appears at first glance. Disadvantage means that enemies have a harder time breaking it, but those misses being more common also means not as much radiant damage as it seems to deal at first. In addition, one of the benefits of the spell is its extended duration, so maintaining it for as long as possible becomes desirable — yet the spell encourages it to be broken and even gives the caster a means to do so early. These trade-offs give the spellcaster a handful of interesting choices while the spell is active, but the effects all combine in one consistent way that fits with the theme of the spell: you want to be attacked. As a knight in shining armor, you want to charge bravely into combat, surround yourself with foes, and take their hits instead of your allies!
This spell also works wonderfully as an enchantment that can be activated on a magic item, especially magic armor, enabling the effect to be used by characters who can’t cast 5th level spells for whatever reason. You can expect at least one magic item of that style in the same compendium that this spell appears in, The Elements & Beyond (which focuses on light magic and the other primordial forces of creation), to ensure that even those without any magic, like a Cavalier fighter, can still be a knight in literal shining armor.
Links: PDF | D&D Beyond: Shining Armor
