An arrow of slaying is a magic weapon meant to slay a particular kind of creature. Some are more focused than others; for example, there are both arrows of dragon slaying and arrows of blue dragon slaying. If a creature belonging to the type, race, or group associated with an arrow of slaying takes damage from the arrow, the creature must make a DC 17 Constitution saving throw, taking an extra 6d10 piercing damage on a failed save, or half as much extra damage on a successful one.
Once an arrow of slaying deals its extra damage to a creature, it becomes a nonmagical arrow.
Other types of magic ammunition of this kind exist, such as bolts of slaying meant for a crossbow, though arrows are most common.
Notes: Damage: Piercing, Damage, Combat, Bane
"type, race, or group"
What does it mean by "group", like the Red Wizards, Acq Inc, or Vox Machina, or something else I'm not thinking of?
Or to introduce some undead bugbears.
Imagine hyper specific arrows as "bullets with your name on it", Arrows of Slaying for a single individual.
"Group" is probably just a catch-all for "other collection of entities with some through-line that the GM deems acceptable"
Yeah that's pretty much it. You could have an arrow of humanoid slaying for the race, or maybe you get an arrow of Knights of the Green Order slaying for the group. Or an arrow of Knights of the Black Rose slaying. It's the sub type of the race similar to a Dragon slaying vs a White Dragon slaying.
As a DM, I would only use this type of magic item as a plot device.
The players have only one arrow gifted to take down the main monster that is otherwise too strong for them.
Other types of magic ammunition exists… I mean Giants Boulders are ammunition right :P
Arrow Of Cow Slaying
My DM just gave me 20 arrows of humanoid slaying. No joke.
THIS! An assassin would get an auto crit, meaning double all dice, right? This is BRUTAL. I love it. My the PC's in my game are gonna be pissed after they carelessly leave something of theirs behind and get NAILED.
Poison it then use a buff like Flame Arrow. Now have a ranger fire it from a Oathbow. Watch the target get wrecked.
I know you posted a year ago but I think that it refers to group as in how their are subraces to elves or how there are arctic owlbears and regular. So it would kind of be like this
Humanoid, Elf, High or Aberration, Owlbear, Arctic
But as for Dragon, White, ___ I don't know what that would be, perhaps young or adult?
White Dragon should do fine.
If you eant to be really spacific.
Dragon(Chromatic, White)
You can trigger this by shanking someone with it using tavern brawler.
You could say the fletching is harpy feathers and the points are manticore spines, with mithral shafts.
me four
That's what I did. In my last session, my lvl9 rogue assassin character made a one-hit-kill on an adult brown dragon using his Oathbow (without nemesis part though) and an arrow of slaying. It was a stealth attack.
Assuming the creature fails the save, which it probably wont, especially if it has legendary resistances, and that you hit with the arrow, which you might not. This is not a good item unless your dm just kindly gives you a few for free. A wand of magic missiles does as much damage as this thing and you cant miss and its reusable.
Piranhas be real quiet since you said that, Dudhhr. Probably the most useless arrow ever created as sure, you can one-shot a Quipper, which has like 2 HP. However, this could work if you ran a Giant Quipper or Gargantuan Quipper Homebrew statblock like a frigging River Monsters episode.
Uh, a bit overpowered my dude. What are you going to take down with all that damage? Mecha-frigging-Godzilla made by Kitnorsk?? Check it out, though. Still, that's a lotta damage and that is one way to piss your DM off definitely.