Spirit Weapons
A spirit weapon is the rarest thing in the world, and when you find one it is worth nothing at all. No enhancement, no elemental damage, no properties — just a weapon with something asleep inside it.
What it becomes, it takes from what you kill with it.
Binding
The first character to equip a spirit weapon is bound to it permanently. It cannot be dropped, sold, traded or stored after that, and no one else can ever use it. Its progress belongs to that character alone.
Think carefully before you equip one. There is no way to unbind it.
Growing
Spirit weapons grow by kills made while wielding them. Nothing else feeds them — not XP, not quests, not time.
Only creatures worth the weapon's attention count. Each rank has a minimum challenge rating, and anything below it contributes nothing no matter how many you kill.
Every kill that counts tells you so, in the combat log, with your running total and what the next rank asks for. For the whole picture — rank, sockets, what it will awaken as, and how far off the next rank is — type /spirit while holding it.
Early ranks come quickly. Later ones do not.
| Rank | Kills needed | Minimum CR |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | 1 |
| 5 | 95 | 7 |
| 10 | 490 | 17 |
| 12 | 890 | 21 |
| 18 | 5,000 | 37 |
| 30 | 20,000 | 50 |
| 57 | 53,750 | 50 |
What each rank gives
Every rank grants one upgrade, chosen at random from what the weapon can still improve:
- Enhancement bonus, to a maximum of +8
- A new element — acid, cold, fire, electrical, sonic, divine, negative, positive or magical — added to an empty socket
- An existing element stepped up, from 1d4 through to 2d10
Because the choice is random, no two spirit weapons finish the same way, and two players with identical weapons will not have identical weapons for long.
Enhancement is guaranteed to keep pace. A weapon cannot fall so far behind on enhancement that it stops being able to hurt things — there is a floor at every rank, and a weapon below it spends that rank on enhancement regardless. You will have +5 by rank 11 and the full +8 by rank 20, whatever the dice do. A lucky weapon can run ahead of that; none can fall behind it.
A keen edge arrives free at rank 12 and costs no upgrade. Ordinary whetstones will not bite on a spirit weapon; it sharpens itself.
At the final rank a spirit weapon carries +8, a keen edge, six elements at 2d10 each, and its awakened strike — comfortably beyond anything that drops.
Spirit gloves are the exception to the two lines above, and they have their own section below.
When a weapon outgrows you
A spirit weapon grows on kills, and kills are not the same thing as levels. Take your killing blows alongside much higher-level company and the weapon climbs while you do not — you earn no experience from those fights either, so it is possible to end up holding more weapon than you can carry.
If that happens, the weapon unequips itself and tells you the level it now wants. It is not lost and it is not reset: every rank, element and point of enhancement stays exactly where it was, and the moment you reach that level it answers again.
Nothing is taken away from you here. A weapon grown honestly, on things you could kill yourself, will never do this — your level climbs alongside it.
Awakening
At rank 18 a spirit weapon wakes up, and from then on it answers your blows with an area attack of its own.
Which one it becomes depends on the weapon. There are eleven, and they differ in shape, not just in damage:
| What it does | |
|---|---|
| Cairnbreaker | Stone falls in scattered impacts, knocking down what it hits |
| Cinderbrand | Columns of fire, leaving what survives vulnerable to burning |
| Skysunder | Lightning strikes that leave the struck reeling |
| Hallowmaul | Divine hammers that flatten what they land on |
| Blightmaw | Bursts of negative energy that rot the defences of the living |
| Dawnpeal | Bursts of raw positive energy |
| Threadcutter | An arc of death that leaps between enemies, draining half of what it deals back into you |
| Bramblebind | A chain of thorns that roots what it touches and strips its guard |
| Rimeshroud | A freezing cloud that lingers, and freezes solid what fails to endure it |
| Prismrend | Marks the ground, then detonates in every element at once |
| Graveblade | Marks the ground, and a blade falls out of the sky onto it |
The strike fires on its own as you fight — you do not aim it, and it costs nothing. Each has its own chance to trigger and its own recovery time.
Everything a spirit weapon's strike deals ignores resistance and immunity. There is nothing in the world that shrugs it off.
What sets the strike off
An awakened weapon's strike answers to your own blows — a real hit with the weapon in your hands. It does not answer to a damage shield, to an on-hit property, to a rider on your weapon, or to anything your summons do. Those are not you swinging.
A staff is the exception. A spirit quarterstaff is fed by spellcasting, because a staff is what a caster fights with — cast a damaging spell and the strike can follow. An area spell rolls once for each enemy it hurts, but the strike's own cooldown means only one of those can land, so it comes out at the same rate a weapon user sees from a full round of attacks.
Kills work the same way: a kill fed to your weapon has to be yours. What your animal companion or your summons bring down does not count toward it.
Sigils
Spirit sigils are found in the chests of bosses, and they are the only way to influence what a weapon becomes.
A sigil does not grant a property. It claims a socket and declares what the next element will be, and the weapon grows into it at its next rank. A weapon has six sockets, all open from the moment it exists.
- Damage sigils name an element — seat a fire sigil and fire is next
- Proc sigils are rarer, and choose which of the eleven strikes the weapon will awaken as
Seating a sigil is permanent. A weapon with no proc sigil will choose its own strike when it wakes.
Fighting with your hands
Monks and anyone else who fights unarmed get spirit gloves. They are found the same way, bound the same way, fed by the same kills, and they awaken at rank 18 into the same eleven strikes. If your hands are empty when a spirit weapon drops for you, gloves are the likeliest thing to turn up.
They only answer while your hands are empty. Draw a weapon — or pick up a shield or a torch — and the gloves go quiet for as long as you hold it: no kills counted, no strike, and the pair sits there doing nothing. This is the rule a spirit vessel already lives by, and the rule the rest of your monk abilities already follow.
Two things work differently, and both come from what a pair of gloves is allowed to carry:
- Attack and damage instead of an enhancement bonus. Gloves cannot take an enhancement bonus at all, so the same track is paid out as its two halves — +1 attack and +1 bludgeoning damage per point, up to +8 of each. The one thing you do not get back is the ability to bite through damage reduction that demands a magic weapon. A monk's Ki Strike covers that from level 10.
- No keen edge. Gloves cannot hold one, and nothing stands in for it — a maxed pair sits at +8 attack and +8 bludgeoning alongside its six elements, exactly matching what a weapon's enhancement bonus is worth. A monk loses nothing here: Fracture Point already widens your critical range further than a keen edge would, and it does it on your fists.
An awakened pair also carries no glow — there is no blade for it to run down. The strike itself is identical.
Bows, crossbows and thrown weapons
A spirit weapon has to be swung, so archers and throwers get a spirit vessel instead — a quiver, bolt case, bullet bag, dart pouch, shuriken case or axe sling.
A vessel grows exactly as a weapon does, and once per rest it draws a full stack of soulbound ammunition carrying everything it has earned. The ammunition is bound as the vessel is: it cannot be dropped, sold or handed over, and it is replaced rather than topped up each time you draw.
Only kills made with its own ammunition feed a vessel, so carrying one while you fight with something else does nothing.
Two differences worth knowing:
- Ammunition cannot take an enhancement bonus or a keen edge, so quivers, bolt cases and bullet bags grow elements only — and they grow them twice as fast to make up for it.
- Dart pouches, shuriken cases and axe slings hold weapons rather than ammunition, so those do gain enhancement, and grow at the ordinary rate.
Your bow is unaffected and stays whatever you found. The vessel is the part that grows.
Shifting and wild shape
A spirit weapon follows you into any shape that fights with a weapon. It does not have to be the same kind of weapon: a spirit longsword arms a Risen Lord's scythe perfectly well. The form's weapon carries its enhancement, its keen edge and every element it has grown, its strike still fires, and kills made while shifted count on exactly the same terms as kills made in your own body.
Shapes that fight with claws, bite or slam are the exception. Those take your gloves, never a weapon, so a spirit weapon is stowed and stays silent there — it neither grows nor strikes until you return to your own body.
Spirit gloves are the mirror of that rule. A form that fights with claws, bite or slam is fighting with your gloves, so a spirit pair comes with you into a bear or a dracolich in full — its attack, its damage, its elements, its strike, and kills that count. A form that equips a weapon is fighting with that weapon instead, and your gloves lend it nothing at all.
A change from before
Gloves used to stand in for a missing weapon on any shape that carried one. They no longer do: a shape that equips a weapon takes the weapon in your hands, and takes the attack and damage on your gloves in no case. Everything else your gloves carry — armor class, ability scores, saves, skills — still comes across as it always did.
The one shape to think about is Medusa, the only form that draws a bow. A spirit melee weapon still arms it, but not in the obvious way — the bow gains attack and pull from your enhancement while the damage rides your arrows. A rank earned while you are in that shape will not reach the bow until you shift again. The full list of which weapon each shape carries is on the Druid & Shifter Shapes page.
Two smaller details:
- The weapon has to be in your hand when you shift. Shifting empty-handed and pulling it out later is not possible, and the spirit stays quiet for that shape.
- A rank earned mid-shape takes hold immediately, including on the shape's own weapon — you do not have to drop the form to feel it.
Spirit vessels do not shift at all. Shapes do not draw bows, so a vessel stops counting kills for as long as you are in one.
Finding one
Spirit weapons are rarer than legendary gear, and are their own roll rather than part of the normal loot tables — they can come from anything worth killing, and from the chests of bosses, where they are noticeably more likely.
Expect to hunt for one. A character killing steadily might turn one up in a week or two; a casual one can easily go a month without seeing a single one, and there is no way to make it happen faster than killing things worth killing.
Sigils come from boss chests only, and are the scarcer find of the two — most spirit weapons will choose their own path simply because their owner never had a sigil to seat.