Name: Tendrils of Darkness Fields: Disable, Shadow, Any others the mods find suitable PWC: Leaning towards Wisdom Description: Upon gaining this ability the user gains direct control on the direction their shadow falls. It takes little to no concentration for the user to move their shadow. Upon casting the ability itself the users shadow takes the shape of many tendrils that have the ability to temporarily bind any being caught in the grasp of the tendrils. Limitations: The tendrils can only successfully bind a being if the tendrils themselves can completely wrap around. If the tendrils cannot fully wrap around the extremities at the very least then the binding effect will not work. If used to bind a being to retreat the effect will only hold so long as the user remains close enough that his natural shadow would still be touching the target. Most dungeon bosses would be immune to this ability simply due to being to large for the tendrils to wrap around. The spell can only be used in the prescience of a light source, and cannot but used in total darkness. The user of the spell can only create tendrils from their own shadow, and not any available shadow.
This is a cool idea, but, I fear there is a significant problem with how powerful it could potentially be. The user can move their shadow in any direction seemingly nigh-instantly, so all it takes to hit someone with this is be within say--depending on the height of the user and the angle of the light--at least a couple feet, and it practically can't be dodged. Almost any opponent wouldn't be wary of a shadow, and thus likely wouldn't try to dodge it anyway. (This isn't even considering the user could easily make a very low-to-the-ground lightsource, potentially causing their shadow to extend dozens of meters or more.) It isn't specified how strong the tendrils are, but almost anyone tied up with arms pinned to their sides can't escape... so the caster is free to make any kind of killing stroke with impunity. Even for a strong character, it would presumably take at least a few seconds to break free, and for that duration he would be completely helpless (unless he, too, had a potent attack that did not require movement or speaking). This treasure could be abused to instantly trap a Lv100 Darknut with no believable chance of failure, allowing the user to obliterate him with nearly any attack in the precious seconds it would presumably take to escape. Even if the Darknut does escape, there's nothing to prevent him from just being trapped by the shadow again. And it could be used repeatedly without consequence. Tl;dr - In the vast majority of non-boss battles, this treasure could be abused as an unavoidable one-hit-kill. (Sorry if I seem ranty. I just want to be clear on this. Mildly similar binding treasures have been suggested in the past, and I was unfortunately forced to reject them for similar reasons. Anything that can completely prevent an enemy's movement will be overpowered unless it has a very harsh drawback or a very harsh limitation.)
Can add a restriction to where the tendrils can only be used from a shadow created from a non magical light source sun as the sun in the sky, or a torch on the wall. Can also add a restriction to the speed the shadow can move at similar to the Law of Speed on the control spells. I completely blanked on specifying the strength of the tendrils, and in light of everything else you've said they need to be weak enough that your average Hylian would be able to at least free themselves rather quickly since this spell requires them to be on the opponents shadow to be bound. Though instead of weakening the vines could instead limit the length of the tendrils to only be able to bind the legs of a standing opponent leaving their arms free to block. That could help to alleviate the chance of a guaranteed kill at least against standing opponents. Totally understandable since we don't totally over-powered spells getting passed back. For a harsh limitation we could restrict it to once an hour? I'm hopeful about this, so I hope your willing to work with me to make a more evened out treasure.
How does this version of it look? For anyone else reading this, most of the details were discussed between DS and I in the shoutbox.
