Ring of Shooting Stars 5e
Ring, very rare (requires attunement)
While wearing this ring in dim light or darkness, you can cast Dancing Lights and Light from the ring at will. Casting either spell from the ring requires an action.
The ring has 6 charges for the following other properties. The ring regains 1d6 expended charges daily at dawn.
Faerie Fire. You can expend 1 charge as an action to cast Faerie Fire from the ring.
Ball Lightning. You can expend 2 charges as an action to create one to four 3-foot-diameter spheres of lightning. The more spheres you create, the less powerful each sphere is individually.
Each sphere appears in an unoccupied space you can see within 120 feet of you. The spheres last as long as you concentrate (as if concentrating on a spell), up to 1 minute. Each sphere sheds dim light in a 30-foot radius.
As a bonus action, you can move each sphere up to 30 feet, but no farther than 120 feet away from you. When a creature other than you comes within 5 feet of a sphere, the sphere discharges lightning at that creature and disappears. That creature must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a failed save, the creature takes lightning damage based on the number of spheres you created.
Ring of Shooting Stars Damage Table
| Spheres | Lightning Damage |
|---|---|
| 4 | 2d4 |
| 3 | 2d6 |
| 2 | 5d4 |
| 1 | 4d12 |
Shooting Stars. You can expend 1 to 3 charges as an action. For every charge you expend, you launch a glowing mote of light from the ring at a point you can see within 60 feet of you. Each creature within a 15-foot cube originating from that point is showered in sparks and must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 5d4 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
Commentary by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Some rings grant you +1 AC or a small boon to some kind of ability checks; a Ring of Shooting Stars gives you a battery to blast enemies with electrical energy and explosions. I’ll take one of these over a Ring of Protection any day of the week!
The Ball Lightning mod requies you concentrate on it like a spell; you can’t concentrate on any spells or other concentration based effects without ending the effect.
The total damage each mode the Spheres offer are close, with the 4d12 being the total highest average damage, and the four 2d4 options totalling to 20 damage, but being potentially spread over multiple targets.
Shooting Stars does way more average damage than Ball Lightning is likely going to do, as it hits multiple creatures in a 15-ft cube, multiplying the 5d4 damage by the number of hit creatures.
You can target the same space with the stars when firing multiples at once, having creatures around the chosen point make multiple saves or take multiple instances of the 5d4 damage.
The originating point of a cube is the center of one of its walls; you determine its facing and positioning otherwise.
Faerie Fire cast this way doesn’t specify its DC; it will use any of your classes spell save DCs if you have them, and if you don’t have a spell save DC from a spellcasting feature, will use 8+ your proficiency bonus as its save DC.
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