D&D 5E Bullseye Lanterns without Facing!

James Gasik

We don't talk about Pun-Pun
So in my game, the players found what I thought was a neat item, a magic sword that projects light in a cone like a bullseye lantern, but this quickly turned into a bit of a problem- I don't use facing rules, and characters can change facing pretty much at will in the game. How then, is this just not a better lantern, since it projects light out further in whatever direction you happen to be looking in?

Because the light is attached to a melee weapon, any rulings like "you can set the cone at the end of your turn" or "it's an object interaction" seem very silly or arbitrary, and it makes me wonder if the bullseye lantern should be disallowed if you're not using the optional facing rules!

Also, it was pointed out to me that because the light is a cone, that means that the user is not in it's light, and could potentially be standing in darkness!

Curious how other people would or have ruled on this (I can't remember anyone in a game I've been in ever using a bullseye lantern, and I wonder if that's a unique experience)!
 

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aco175

Legend
It provides bright light in the cone, but the cone shoots longer than other lanterns (60ft). This may be handy in some situations, but also trades off in others. Kind of like having someone shining a flashlight at you in the dark, or someone standing under a street light.

An optional rule could be that shooting at someone shining a bullseye lantern at you grants disadvantage to attacks. There is also the trade off for melee where someone has advantage to sneak up to you. Maybe rogues get free backstab without needing advantage or another ally.
 

CM

Adventurer
I would let characters change the direction of the cone at the start and end of their turn, and again outside their turn using a reaction to another creature taking an action.

If you're spinning it around much more often than that nobody's really going to see anything other than brief flashes of light.
 

If they are actually fighting with it, migh just make it a 60' radius of dim illumination to represent it briefly flashing all over the place. There would still need to be some way of dealing with them not doing so on turns they don't attack. That would require some thought, but I'd keep in mind that everyone is actually acting at the same time.

Just last night I was pondering a similar issue that I've never noticed but had been with us since 2014: closing your eyes while attacking someone with mirror image substantially increases your chance of hitting them.

Now, it also increases opponents chances of hitting you, and theoretically decreases awareness of your environment (though that part is difficult to represent even if a player tries), so it isn't necessarily a useful default choice, and I think that's why it's never come up.

But...there are definitely situations where a tanky character could effectively sacrifice hp to more quickly chew through a casters defense making this an excellent option. How would it work without essentially allowing a character to gain the benefit of ignoring mirror image when they make attacks but still having their eyes open the rest of the time?

What I think I will do is say that it takes a bit of effort and getting used to holding your eyessentially shut to do this. Therefore to benefit from voluntarily keeping your eyes closed on your turn, you have to have had them closed since the end of your last turn, and to benefit between your turns it has to have been since the start of your last turn. A Constitution save (like concentration) to keep your eyes shut when you are hit by an attack is probably also called for.
 


MarkB

Legend
Have it provide a bonus to active perception checks, but an equal penalty to passive perception, because the fact that you're shining it around like a flashlight means that you're paying more attention to whatever you're deliberately aiming it at, and less to everything in your periphery.
 

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