Oathbow 5e
Weapon (longbow), very rare (requires attunement)
When you nock an arrow on this bow, it whispers in Elvish, "Swift defeat to my enemies." When you use this weapon to make a ranged attack, you can, as a command phrase, say, "Swift death to you who have wronged me." The target of your attack becomes your sworn enemy until it dies or until dawn seven days later. You can have only one such sworn enemy at a time. When your sworn enemy dies, you can choose a new one after the next dawn.
When you make a ranged attack roll with this weapon against your sworn enemy, you have advantage on the roll. In addition, your target gains no benefit from cover, other than total cover, and you suffer no disadvantage due to long range. If the attack hits, your sworn enemy takes an extra 3d6 piercing damage.
While your sworn enemy lives, you have disadvantage on attack rolls with all other weapons.
Proficiency with a longbow allows you to add your proficiency bonus to the attack roll for any attack you make with it.
Commentary by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
This thing is one chatty piece of timber! Oathbows don’t just compel you to hold grudges, they reward you for acting on them and punish you if you opt to ignore it. A vindictive, chatty elvish weapon? Neat!
The weapon is magical, meaning it overcomes resistance to non-magical piercing damage many monsters have.
The command phrase doesn’t require any actions to use; it occurs as part of whatever action, reaction, or bonus action you’ve taken to attack with the Oathbow.
Longbows come with a range of 150/600-, if you can see something while wielding an Oathbow, you can hit it if you swear an oath to end its existence.
Sharpshooter shares two elements with an Oathbow- you attack within the long-range with no penalty, and you ignore half and three-quarters cover.
The Oathbow imposes its penalty when attacking other creatures only to other weapons; you can still fire it as a magic longbow at other creatures normally.
Because the sworn enemy benefits remove the long-range penalty and grant advantage on the attack roll, you will have advantage on attacking your sworn enemy agnostic of distance away from it.
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
