Spontaneous Weapon Creation

"None of your skills will be of any use against a Servant. In that case, at least imagine it. If it is an opponent you cannot match in real life, defeat it in your imagination. If you cannot defeat it yourself, imagine something that you can defeat it with."

— Archer, to Shirou Emiya, Fate/stay night

A character has the ability to create or summon a weapon, either directly, or as only one application of a power they already possess.

One character could conjure a weapon out of thin air, while the other creates his weapon by clever application of his fire control. This sometimes results in a Storm of Blades.

One common use of this trope, especially among the second type, is frequently seen in Tournament Arcs where weapons would otherwise be banned. The person who crafts the weapon will be able to use Loophole Abuse to claim that, since what they're doing is simply an extension of the power they came in with, it's allowed. It usually is.

People who do this will generally possess Elemental Powers. Can often come about by characters who possess Imagination Based Superpowers, or by an Art Attacker. Compare Natural Weapon, which can also fall into the Tournament Arc Loophole Abuse noted above. Shapeshifter Weapons are formed from the wielder's body itself.

Compare Instant Armor and its subtropes for when this sort of thing gets used for defense instead of offense. See also Elemental Punch, when weapons are not in use. A form of Shaping Your Attacks and may or may not involve a Person of Holding. See Summon to Hand for calling existing objects as opposed to creating them — weapons are the most popular application.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: A few Stands throughout the series take the form of weapons or other mundane objects like a revolver and fishing rod that are instantly brought out when convoked.
• A few times in One Piece, with Logia users Aokiji and Kizaru Shaping Their Attacks.
  • Aokiji is An Ice Person, and by taking a few blades of grass and breathing onto them, he freezes himself up an Ice Saber.
  • Kizaru manipulates light, essentially enabling him to wield a Laser Blade.
  • Baby 5 has the Arms-Arms Fruit, a Devil Fruit that allows her to turn herself into various weapons.
  • Even Ceasar Clown gets in on the action, using his Gas-Gas Fruit powers to create a burning blue blade that's essentially an oxygen-torch.
• Chainsaw Man Part 2: Asa and Yoru can turn anything or anyone in their possession into a weapon, for instance making throwing spears out of pencils.
• Hiei in YuYu Hakusho Plays with Fire, and at one point uses this ability to create a sword made out of Dark Fire. He's reluctant to use this more than he can help though, since it reminds him too much of Kuwabara's Spirit Sword, which is, or more accurately became, an example of this trope as well (it started as him drawing the true power out of a piece of a blessed wooden sword, which became his Spirit Sword's handle; as he got stronger he eventually could just pull the sword out of midair, without the chunk of wood). Kuwabara shows the most flexibility with this power, his Spirit Sword can stretch lengthwise to increase its reach or expand sideways to flatten people (called the Spirit Flyswatter). Bui could make axes and Karasu could make bombs. Touya can makes swords out of ice.
• When dueling Touma in A Certain Scientific Railgun, Mikoto Misaka uses electromagnetism on the sand and dirt around her to create a Whip Sword out of iron sand. Harumi Kiyama briefly draws an energy blade while fighting Mikoto.
• Spike the Devil Man from Dragon Ball used his magic to create a pitchfork. Later on in Dragon Ball Z, Dabura used magic to create a sword and a spear.
• Alchemists from Fullmetal Alchemist can transmute weapons using the mass of floors or walls, although not many alchemists ever actually do so. They can also turn other objects into weapons as needed—in the 2003 anime, Russell Tringham counters an attack by Ed by turning a lamp into a sword.
• The "sword of one's heart" from Revolutionary Girl Utena might qualify. It's a regular old steel sword, but you draw it out of your own chest (or your Love Interest and/or creepy stalker figure does it for you).
• Many characters in Beet the Vandel Buster can conjure weapons called Saiga. Beet is unique in that he can create five, which were given to him by the heroes he admired.
• Bleach:
  • Quincies are capable of producing weapons out of reishi, the spiritual equivalent of "atomic particles". They usually need a physical object as a focus for creating the weapon and the weapon itself tends to be an Energy Weapon, traditionally an Energy Bow, made of Hard Light. However, they can generate these weapons whenever they feel like doing so. Advanced Quincies can make their weapons such a condensed form of energy that the weapon looks solid and physical.
  • When in his resurreccion and segunda etapa forms, Ulquiorra is capable of producing a lance made of energy whenever he likes.
  • Fullbringers are similar to Quincies in that they use a physical object as a focus to producing weapons. However, Fullbringers tend to be more limited in the range of weapons they can produce, usually producing the same weapon every time. Their weapons become physical rather than energy.
• While she may appear to be an example of conjuration, Erza from Fairy Tail is, in fact, weapon summoning. She has everything stored in a separate location and brings it up to her in battle. The straighter example is Gray and his Ice Make magic.
• Some Second and Third generations in Fire Force use their pyrokinesis to do this. Downplayed with Arthur Boyle: if he has something he can perceive as the hilt of a sword, he can create a plasma blade out of it.
• In Puella Magi Madoka Magica most Puella Magi possess the ability - each summons a specific kind of weapon, though they can apparently be created in any size or quantity. Mami instead has the power to summon ribbons, but is so skilled with them that she can create "ribbon constructs" in the shape of fully functional musket-rifles and cannons. Homura is another exception, having a Bag of Holding she must stock manually, but she switches to summoning a bow in the epilogue.
• Pretty Cure:
  • Cures Rouge, Lemonade, Mint and Aqua of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! create weapons out of their elements - a ball of fire, energy whips, energy disks/barrier and water bow and arrows.
  • In Smile PreCure!, Cure Beauty can make an ice sword, which she used to fight Joker.
• Galvatron does this, supposedly through pure Energon power, in Transformers: Cybertron.
• The titular character from Toriko can do this, creating knives and forks of varying sizes composed of Appetite Energy which he uses as projectiles, the latter is also used as a shield.
  • Chin Chinchin also creates a spoon, also of varying sizes and composed of Appetite Energy, to scoop things up, use as wings and shields and even make a dome to seal himself and his enemies inside.
  • Coco can use his his poison to create weapons, such as a sword, a bow and arrow, a spear and even a suit of armor, by combining said poison with the clotting agents from his blood.
• This is a fairly common trait for super robots, ranging from growing a drill on your forearm to fully functional melee weapons such as axes or swords. Then again, this is just another way they like to screw over the laws of physics.
• In Naruto the Sound Ninja Kimimaro and Kidomaru can do this by creating weapons out of bone and hardened spider's silk respectively.
• Inuyasha: Sesshoumaru spends a lot of the manga searching for a sword that is suitable for channelling his vast power. He causes a lot of trouble by thinking the only weapon strong enough is his brother's sword Tessaiga. Eventually, it's revealed that Sesshoumaru has possessed all along the power to spontaneously create a sword out of his very soul as the physical manifestation of his true power. However, very specific conditions have to be met before Sesshoumaru can unlock this power and it's only a one-off ability that creates a permanent, physical sword.
• In Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, Sephiroth forms the Masamune out of tainted Lifestream just in time to block Cloud's attack.
• In Claymore, Priscilla consumed her Thunderbolt Iron claymore after she Awakened. She is able to recreate the sword at will whenever she feels up for a swordfight.
• Nen users in Hunter × Hunter can do this depending on their ability. This is primarily the realm of Conjurer-types like Kurapika (who creates chains), but Transmitters and Emitters fashion weapons out of their aura if so desired, such as the 'scissor' form of Gon's Jajanken or Pokkle's rainbow themed arrows.
• Symphogear:
  • One of the standard powers of the Symphogear system is to summon a Morph Weapon known as an Armed Gear.
  • Tsubasa specializes in this among Gear users and can even manifest swords from a distance, up to BFS and Storm of Blades levels.
  • Hibiki, uniquely, cannot summon Gungnir's Armed Gear. She initially has an inferiority complex over this, believing that she's too weak/dumb to use it properly, but eventually she comes to view this as a blessing in disguise. Her true Armed Gear, as she puts it, is her own hands - because she doesn't hold a weapon she's free to hold hands with others. She does gain the ability to summon an Armed Gear later, but she prefers to form it into a giant gauntlet rather than the standard spear.
• In Endride, certain people in the world of Endora have the ability to call forth Warp Relics. Nobody knows what dictates who gets them, but they are weapons of all descriptions that may level up with use, and are generally considered a prestige item. However, their usefulness can vary and ultimately depends on the wielder.
• Mizore from Rosario + Vampire uses her ability to create ice to create weapons.
• In Attack on Titan, this is the specialty of the Warhammer Titan. The Titan is especially adept at the Titans' Hardening ability and is able to create massive spikes from the Earth around it. True to its moniker, it is also able to create a long-handled war-hammer strong enough to smash through hardened Titan skin.
• In Get Backers, Akabane Kuroudo/Dr. Jackal is a Deadly Doctor able to use an infinite supply of scalpels from nowhere. It turns out they're not summoned from thin air, but are stored inside his body. When Ginji realises this, he brutally dispatches him by using his electrical powers to magnetize them right out of him. Akabane recovers eventually, and has decided Gin is a Worthy Opponent worth messing with and teaming up with at different times during the remainder of the series.
• Some mages in Black Clover spontaneously create weapons when they use their spells, the main character Asta himself being an example by summoning his anti-magic swords and pulling them out of his grimoire. Asta's teammate Magna Swing has fire-based spells which he uses to conjure baseball bats and projectiles made out of flames, which he hits like baseballs, and Fanzell Kruger's "Emperor of Slashing Winds" spell creates a huge sword made of wind.
• Pokémon:
  • This is how certain attacks are depicted in Pokémon: The Series. An example is Lucario's Bone Rush, which looks like a cross between a staff and a Laser Blade.
  • In the Pokémon Omega Ruby and Pokémon Alpha Sapphire Animated Trailer, Mega Diancie is shown creating a sword out of diamonds.
• EDENS ZERO: Homura can create bladed weapons made of Ether.
• My-HiME: HiME can materialize weapons known as Elements to their side at will. These tend to based on Personality Powers or elemental powers.
  • Heroine Mai Tokiha, with her Fiery Redhead personality has a set of rings that form around her arms and legs that allow her to Kill It with Fire and fly.
  • Natsuki Kuga is an Action Girl who can summon a pair of pistols that have Bottomless Magazines and shoot ice bullets at her targets.
  • Student Council President Shizuru Fujino, who lives by Tea Is Classy, dresses in kimono when not in school uniform, and speaks in a Kyoto-ben summons a Whip Sword version of a naginata.
  • Nao Yuuki has a set of gauntlets that give her Femme Fatalons and a Razor Floss attack.

Comic Books

• As noted in the description, the rings of the Green Lantern can create anything the wearer can imagine. Weapons are just but one of many things they can do.
• Psylocke's "focused totality of her psychic power" in X-Men is a psychic blade that's able to fry the brain of any foe. At maximum intensity she can kill but it's seldom used this way. After a Re-Power that made her powers telekinetic instead of telepathic, it went from a wedge-shaped field of Kirby Dots to a detailed energy katana that could function as an Absurdly Sharp Blade that could slice through anything (yet still have its stunning effect if it hit flesh and blood).
• This is one of the many possible uses of Invisible Woman's force fields. In one X-Men/Fantastic Four miniseries, she had a Mama Bear moment and used a force sword to slay a Brood queen in close combat, leaving the males of both teams rather shocked.
• This was the super-power of the minor DC hero Gunfire, who could turn any object into a blaster or bomb weapon with his touch by channeling energy into or through it.
  • Hitman #1,000,000, the Hitman (1993) issue tying into and sending up the DC One Million crossover, mercilessly spoofed Gunfire and, by extension, this power, with a particularly inept future counterpart of the original version.
    Gunfire One Million: Pain — so bad! If I can just reach — Medipak — *BLAM* Aaaaahh!! Aaaah, no, I turned the Medipak into a gun!
    Gwant: That really is kinda lame...
    Hitman: Imagine his personal life.
    Gunfire One Million: Oh God, I turned my ass into a hand-grenade — *FOOOMM*
• The Punisher had this power briefly for two miniseries (Purgatory and Revelation), pulling any kind of angelic weapon from his overcoat.
• This is the primary ability of the Thor villain Gorr the God Butcher. He wields an ancient weapon known as All-Black the Necrosword, which is capable of creating all sorts of weaponry and armor. It is later revealed that All-Black is a proto-symbiote, of the kind made famous by Venom.
• Jules from Bazooka Jules has this ability due to a micro-robotic weapon fusing with her body. The weapon placed small dimensional gateways around her body that lead to a dimension filled with nanomachines. When she needs a weapon like a gun, one of the gateways open up, the nanomachines flood out and they manipulated to form that weapon.
• Quentin Quire takes a page out of Psylocke's book in Wolverine and the X-Men (Marvel Comics), using his powers to form a psychic shotgun.
• X-Men: As of her solo series, Jean Grey manages to do this, if entirely by accident, while fighting orcs alongside the Odinson. It is, predictably considering her company, a 'big frigging magic hammer'. After being unsure how to repeat the trick, she goes to Psylocke for lessons.
• Maya, from Justice League Europe, is able manifest a mystical bow. She has used it as a conventional bow, able to fire sometimes devastatingly powerful projectiles usually made of mystical fire or water.
• Pete Wisdom of Excalibur (Marvel Comics) can create knives made of solar energy.
• Deceased Spider-Man villain Demogoblin has the ability to project and manipulate hellfire as an inherent trait, due to being a demon. Whilst certainly capable of projecting fire in more straightforward manners, he preferred to create flaming constructs in the shape of the Green Goblin paraphernalia, most notably a bat-shaped "hoverboard" made of solid flame, razor-edged bat-like fiery projectiles, and exploding fireballs in the shape of flaming jack-o-lanterns.
• Blood Syndicate: Tech-9 has the ability to materialize guns.

Fan Works

• One of Armani's most useful powers in Broken Bow is summoning a silver bow and infinite arrows at will. He doesn't seem to be able to create more specialized arrows with his power however.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Betsy Braddock a.k.a. Psylocke can do this, as per canon, and has taught Harry - though he rarely bothers, as he has a sword of his own and has sufficient raw psychic and magical power that he doesn't usually need it.
  • In the sequel, Harry Dresden displays his canonical ability to create an energy whip made of soulfire - though a little earlier than canon thanks to tutelage by Wanda.
• Past Sins: Nightmare Nyx and Princess Celestia can generate blades out of magic. Princess Luna can do this too (two no less), and so can Twilight Sparkle (in the form of a dagger).
• In The Hill of Swords, naturally this is Shirou's shtick with his tracing, though Guiche gets in on it, too. Shirou eventually performs the logical conclusion of this trope by pulling out Unlimited Blade Works.
• In the Pony POV Series:
  • There seem to be a number of spells capable of doing this in various ways, most basic being 'make a weapon appear'. However, like many spells, being able to do this seems to depend on the Cutie Mark.
  • In the Dark World Arc, Fluttercruel has this power as her Personality Power with the Element of Cruelty. She's capable of generating nearly any weapon she wants from her body, such as her hair, feathers, and bones. Rarity gains this power after stealing the Physical Element with her Element of Desire, though due to the spiritual aspect of it, Fluttercruel retains it after performing a Body Surf.
  • According to Loose Canon, Fluttercruel's Redeeming Replacement as bearer of the Element of Cruelty Diamond Tiara has a different Element of Chaos power (namely turn the emotional pain of her words into physical pain), she still possesses the ability to generate weapons out of nowhere due to having cartoon powers.
• In some fanfictions of The Mortal Instruments, fairies can transform leaves, earth, and other things in nature into weapons. Or they have an object, such as a ring, which can be quickly turned into a weapon.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami: Ami can use her Dungeon Keeper ability to create anything she can think of, and have the material / magic for, to produce swords, mainly BFS, larger than herself, wielded with telekinetic power.
• Vow of Nudity: How Spectra's pact weapon works; she can summon it from nothingness, and it can assume the form of any nonmagical weapon type.

Film — Animated

• In the animated Doctor Strange movie, the sorcerers frequently use their powers to manifest swords of magical energy.

Film — Live-Action

• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Thor, the Frost Giants can form weapons out of the ice covering their body.
  • In Doctor Strange (2016), the Ancient One fights with shields and fans made out of Instant Runes. The antagonists of the film are eventually empowered by the Big Bad to warp space into blade shaped planes.
  • Hela in Thor: Ragnarok can spontaneously manifest blades, which is the result of her being made into a Composite Character with the villain Gorr.
  • Iron Man's new armor in Avengers: Infinity War is made of nanomachines, and one of their many applications is to let him create a wide variety of weapons throughout the film, from knives to cannons to missile launchers.
  • Thena in Eternals can create any handheld weapon from cosmic energy. This ranges from swords, shields, axes and polearms,
• In Spaceballs, it's possible that this is how schwartz weapons like schwartz swords work. Yogurt claims that the rings from which the schwartz weapons appear to come are really a Magic Feather.

Literature

• Chivalry of a Failed Knight: Any Blazer regardless of rank can materialize a <Device> from their own soul, and these aren't just limited to medieval ones (i.e. swords, spears, & bows); but also to modern weaponry (i.e. guns) and mundane objects (i.e. A brush and palette).
• Cradle Series: This is the primary purpose of Forger techniques. It's typically just easier to use actual weapons, but there are plenty of advantages to being able to create a disposable weapon out of thin air rather than relying on your extremely expensive custom-made weapon. One of the first things Yerin does when she goes to sleep is create a bunch of invisible Forged blades around her as traps for anyone trying to sneak up on her. Lindon quickly learns to knock.
• In The Dresden Files, Harry Dresden displays the ability to create a whip from soulfire in book 11, Turn Coat. Later, after becoming the Winter Knight, he develops the ability to create claws out of ice.
• In High School D×D, Yuuto Kiba's Sacred Gear "Sword Birth" lets him create demonic swords with different elemental attributes in order to counter his opponents' powers. Jeanne's Sacred Gear "Blade Blacksmith" is Sword Birth's opposite as it lets her create holy swords. It is later revealed that Kiba also gained a copy of Blade Blacksmith, giving him access to holy swords as well.
• The titular hero from Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a ballpoint pen that turns into a sword if he wants to.
• In A Practical Guide to Evil Catherine, after becoming the Duchess of moonless nights, often forms swords out of ice when she loses/ breaks her steel weaponry.
• The Queen of Ieflaria: Esofi can create a sword using magic to fight with instantly.
• In Reborn to Master the Blade, the protagonist Inglis is so ridiculously strong that normal weapons keep breaking on her from the sheer amount of force she can output and how much ridiculous punishhment she can take but normal metals cannot. As a result, she eventually starts using her magic to create ice swords to fight with—not that they're more durable, mind you, it's just that when they inevitably shatter, it's easy for her to make a new one.
• Renegades:
  • Captain Chromium can create weapons out of, you guessed it, chromium, most famously pikes and javelins.
  • Durng the Age of Anarchy, Nova's father was forced to use his Power of Creation to make guns for a gang running his district.
• The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses: Zesca's power allows her contractor to manifest any weapon or other equipment that she has previously forged.
• The Sacred Blacksmith: Luke can create metal swords on the spot, but the process is a little more involved than snapping his fingers. That's why he needs Cecil to protect him in the meantime.
• One of Grumph's spells in Spells, Swords, & Stealth is the ability to conjure a magical weapon whose shape he can morph to suit his needs. Using the spell takes a lot out mana, so unless he needs that trait he's just as liable to his slightly more mundane shortsword made of demon bone.
• The Stormlight Archive: A Radiant of the Third Ideal or higher can pull their spren fully into the Physical Realm, causing them to materialize as a powerful magical weapon. The weapon traditionally takes the form of a Shardblade but the spren is able to reshape the weapon to the wielder's needs. So far we've seen them take the form of daggers, spears, shields, rods and a fork.
• The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign:
  • Summoners can create their Blood Signs, the tools they use to summon. This usually takes the form of the Blood Sign rapidly assembling itself from its components (e.g. coins stacking on top of each other to make a metal Blood Sign). However, one summoner is able to pull it out of his shadow.
  • The White Queen can shape her dress into an unlimited number and variety of weapons.
• Both angels and demons in Wars of the Realm have the power to translate physical objects from the human world into their realm and use them as weapons. They do it plenty, too.
• In The Wheel of Time, Rand occasionally creates a sword made of fire, though this is a rather inefficient use of the One Power, something that Lanfear complains about. The Amyrlin Seat demonstrates the ability to create a sword out of air, then explains that a strong man wielding a steel sword would be more useful.
• The characters in World Break: Aria of Curse for a Holy Swordsman are able to utilize this, summoning weapons they used in the past when they were heroes of a different time era.
• Several characters in Worm have this ability. Examples include:
  • Miss Militia can conjure weapons as her sole power. These weapons can be anything from knives to bazookas, dual-wielded assault rifles, and in one case what seemed to be a nuclear bomb.
  • Circus stores a sledgehammer in an extradimensional space, allowing for what appears to be this trope.
  • One of the Butcher's powers is limited terrakinesis, which is used to create arrows for her bow and a spike which she killed herself on.
  • Glaistig Uaine has a number of powers; at one point, she uses a material-creation power, a telekinetic power, and a Tinker power to create weapons out of thin air.
• In The Zombie Knight, Hector does this frequently. Presumably, any character with materialization of a material with a crystalline form could do the same, but he is the only one who uses the technique regularly.

Live-Action TV

• Kamen Rider Gaim's Super Mode, Kiwami Arms, allows him to summon the weapons used by any of the other Armored Riders out of thin air; in addition to wielding them normally, on a few occasions he simply launches the weapons telekinetically at his enemies.
• Willow and Lindsey from Buffy the Vampire Slayer can create weapons. Apparently this ability is not uncommon for warlocks and witches.
• In Power Rangers Time Force, Ransik has the power to pull swords and other knife-like weapons out of his body, meaning he's never unarmed. The crossover special in Power Rangers Wild Force reveals he got this power from three Orgs that he set free in the year 3000.
• Starting in season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery, characters can materialize Hand Cannons (seemingly) out of thin air by using programmable matter.

Manhua

• Zui Wu Dao: Advanced enough martial artists can create "artifacts", items unique to the one that manifests them that improve combat ability.

Roleplay

• In Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues, Kev's superpower allows him to call forth light from his body that he can form into a variety of weapons. Though initially constrained to just guns, his power was later retooled so that he can form any sort of weapon.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons in general has had a number of spells that created weapons (usually swords). They include Mordenkainen's Sword, Dimensional Blade, Enchanted Blade...
  • Greyhawk has a few more, such as Nystul's Crystal Dagger and Jaran's Prismatic Blade.
  • Forgotten Realms adds Acid Lash, Bone Blade, Chromatic Blade, Decastave, Fellblade, Flamespin, Forcelash, Vampiric Lash, Ghost Blade, Whisper Blade, and Black Blade of Disaster. Thunderlance looks and is wielded like a spear, but doesn't act the part (it explosively discharges on touch).
    • Al-Qadim has Sand Jambiya, Sand Sword and Wind Blade.
  • Dark Sun sourcebook The Will and the Way added Psychic Blade — semi-tangible effect shaped and wielded like a sword and doubling as a mental attack.
  • In 3.5 version Psionics, the Soulknife can create a sword using psychic power. (Psychic warriors can also call weapons, but it's not clear if that's creating something or psychoporting it from some abandoned armory or what.)
  • Fifth Edition Warlocks have Pact of the Blade at 3rd level, allowing a Warlock to summon a weapon to his hand. The Warlock is proficient with the weapon while he wields it, it counts as a magical weapon for bypassing defenses, and disappears if it goes more than five feet away from him. Also doubles as a Morph Weapon, as the Warlock can reshape it into whatever form he wants in mid fight.
• Rifts:
  • Both Cyber Knights and Mind Melters can create Psi Blades.
  • Also possible for tattooed men, as some of their magic tattoos can provide such a power; and conjurers, which also have this ability to manifest things from thin air, though they appear to be more solid than the T-mens' manifested weapons.
• Shadowrun. In older editions, a number of fans developed spells that created a sword (or other weapon) made of energy. One type was called a "Power Sword". There have also been varieties that are made of a specific element (e.g. fire, cold, etc.) and have the appropriate elemental effect (e.g. fire setting flammable objects on fire).
• Ars Magica. The spell "Tooth of the Staff" can create a spear with a polished flint head.
• Mage: The Awakening: The Phantasmal Weapon spell creates a weapon, piece of armor, or other bit of functional equipment out of Mana. The Marionette spell, available at the same level of skill, can be used to create a person-or-animal-shaped construct out of Mana as well.
  • There is also the "Shadow-forge" spell, which uses different Arcana than the above (Death & Matter vs Prime) to create things out of solid shadow. It's somewhat easier to cast, but is penalized by being cast in brightly lit conditions and the objects can be damaged by light.
• Princess: The Hopeful: Several of the most basic Hopeful combat Charms allow a Princess to conjure various weapons while Transformed, which can be given a wide variety of magical properties via Charm upgrades.
• Exalts of most types are capable of creating magical weapons out of Essence, though Solars and Abyssals are generally the best at it. The other Exalts are either too specialized in the weapons they create, or prefer other methods of fighting without a weapon at the ready.
• In Feng Shui, one of the effects for the Blast sorcery schtick is "conjured weapons".
• The shugenja of Legend of the Five Rings can use their Elemental Powers to conjure weapons such as a katana of fire, a bo of water, a yari of air, or a tetsubo of earth.
• Chaos Obliterators in Warhammer 40,000 can mutate their limbs into various weapons, though some depictions have the weapons already present on their arms.
• Starfinder:
  • The basic solarion power is to spontaneously form weapons or armor in combat.
  • Fifth-level or higher technomancers can spontaneously create weapons or armor if they know the Fabricate Arms magic hack.

Video Games

• ANNO: Mutationem: Absalom possesses the ability to materialize an energy sword directly into his hand when he's about to directly battle an opponent. Amok, being a supernatural entity, also possesses a similar ability with her own sword.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Throughout the series, one can find various "Bound Weapon" spells and enchantments which temporarily summon the most powerful generic equipment in the game.
  • In the series' lore, The Ansei ("Sword Saints"), an ancient order of elite Yokudan warriors (ancestors to the modern Redguard race), were said to be able to create swords from their very souls known as "Shehai". Their highest ranks were able to use these their Shehai as actual weapons, where they were said to be an "unstoppable weapon of great might." They could even be used to perform the Pankratosword technique, in which the Ansei would "cut the atomos" with their blade. It was considered a Dangerous Forbidden Technique and is now lost to history as a result. The numbers of Ansei faded after the Redguards arrived in Tamriel, and by the 4th Era, they (and their Shehai) are considered to be myths.
  • Skyrim:
    • The aforementioned Bound Weapons have expanded functionality with the ability to banish lesser Daedra, Turn Undead, and capture souls after the Dragonborn gains the required perks.
    • While these weapons are very strong through the early to late-mid game, especially the Bound Bow with the Mystic Binding perk, and can grind both weapon skills and Conjuration, they have their downsides: they can't be upgraded or enchanted as they don't really exist in the Plane of Mundus, they can't be used on horseback because you can't use spells on horseback (for some reason), and sheathing the weapon dispells it so you have to be careful. The weapons can be used in conjunction with a shield but only if the shield is in your left hand, which is better than nothing.
• Borderlands: Any character can wield a portable arsenal (ammo included) thanks to the in-universe "digistruct" system, provided they have a copy of the weapon in their inventory. This is taken up a notch in future iterations, with characters like Salvador of Borderlands 2 being able to dual wield on command, and Claptrap, playable in Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, creating cannons and turning into a small pirate ship.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • The Kori Blade that Sub-Zero uses as his weapon style from Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance onwards is created by Sub-Zero himself using his ice-based powers. When he becomes Cyber Sub-Zero in Mortal Kombat 9, he starts creating bigger swords.
  • Frost, being Sub-Zero's protege, uses the same technique to produce her own ice weapons, though her relative inexperience means that she can only create a pair of small daggers as opposed to Sub-Zero's entire sword.
  • Nightwolf can create green energy-based daggers, tomahawks, and a bow with his powers.
  • Shao Kahn can (at least in 9) create javelins and warhammers. His ability to throw the latter is part of what makes him so dangerous: they're unblockable, can't be ducked under (so you need precise timing to jump over them or hope that your character can teleport), and stun you for several seconds — more than enough time for him to throw another one.
• In inFAMOUS, you can buy the ability to generate electric "swords" from your hands in order to do more melee damage at the cost of draining energy.
• In BlazBlue, it's implied that the Kaka Clan's claws are of this nature (as in they have the ability to produce them, rather than them being retractable). Taokaka (the only playable example of the species so far) seems to be able to produce them in a number of shapes.
• The Unbreakable Darkness in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's Portable: The Gears of Destiny has her Ancient Matrix Limit Break, where she thrusts her hand into her opponents chest then pulls the Blood Flame Sword out from it through a dimension portal.
• Final Fantasy:
  • In Final Fantasy Type-0, one of Machina's unique spells is Sword Field which summons swords of Hard Light to orbit him in a Reverse Shrapnel fashion.
  • This is how all of Ultimecia's spells function in Dissidia Final Fantasy, generating swords, arrows, axes and spears to fire at the enemy.
  • In Final Fantasy XV, this is a power granted to Lucian royalty, as well as Teleportation and Elemental Powers. They are able to grant others this power as well. However, they cannot be granted the Armiger, as that ability can only be used by Lucian royalty. Ardyn also has access to this power due to being the exiled brother of Somnus, the Founder King of Lucis, who betrayed him and had him imprisoned for over 2000 years.
• Pops up now and again in Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts II, Sora and Riku can summon swords of darkness and light to encircle them Reverse Shrapnel style with their XIII Blades skill during their Combination Attack Limit Break. Xemnas also fights using Ethereal Blades, which are lightsabers he creates using the Power of The Nothingness.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, Eraqus can summon keyblades of light to shoot at the enemy as a projectile attack.
  • In Kingdom Hearts coded, Sora's Heartless likewise summons a similar Storm of Blades when fought as a boss.
  • In Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Vexen can create a giant blade of ice by enchanting his shield with an icicle.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Ghirahim of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword does this in his boss battles, summoning fencing sabers, greatswords and a Flechette Storm with a Badass Fingersnap.
  • Impa and Sheik are all over this in Hyrule Warriors creating copies of their current weapons made from elemental energy to unleash combo attacks on enemies.
  • Link is capable of forming an infinite number of bombs (round or cube) with the Sheikah Slate in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, after unlocking the ability in one of the game's earliest shrines. Since the vast majority of his other combat options are rather fragile, they can be useful in a pinch.
• Castlevania:
  • Shanoa of Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia can create weapons instantly by equipping the right glyphs.
  • In Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Dracula can summon the Void Sword at will since the sword is simply a manifestation of the emptiness in his own heart after he forsook his humanity — it's a part of him.
• Devil May Cry:
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening: Vergil Does Not Like Guns (he thinks they lack elegance) and instead creates magical energy swords that launch themselves at his enemies.
  • In Devil May Cry 5, Dante's new sword can conjure four swords to attack on his behalf.
• City of Heroes had several ice and fire themed powersets, many of which had at least one power that involved temporarily creating a sword out of either element.
• Archer in Fate/stay night is able to summon his weapons out of thin air through some unknown means, unlike the other Servants who are always wielding theirs. Shirou eventually becomes able to instantly create swords from mana through his own freakish magic specialization. The exact nature of this power is complicated and takes up a great amount of expo-speak over the three routes, but it basically boils down to Shirou and Archer recording near-perfect copies of any weapon they see inside their soul and using their "Tracing" to pull the copy into the real world.
• The conjuration skill tree of Guild Wars 2 allows an elementalist to summon weaponry of various elements not only into their hands, but also at a location that they specify, so that they can pick it up after theirs runs out, or another player can pick it up and use it for themselves. Particularly helpful when the weapon in question is a Fiery Greatsword.
• Several classes in Mass Effect 3 have omniblades, disposable blades flash-forged by a user's omnitool for melee combat.
• Warframe: Several Warframes possess powers along this line, such as Excalibur's Exalted Blade or Ivara's Artemis Bow. These weapons are modded separately at the Arsenal screen, and have the same mod capacity as a normal weapon with a Catalyst installed.
• Xenoblade Chronicles:
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: When a Blade is first born, they create a weapon from their core crystal, which they provide to their bonded Driver. A Blade can use the weapon themselves, but it takes a lot of energy, so they typically only do so for their most powerful attacks. If the weapon is destroyed somehow the Blade can just create another, but this doesn't happen very often. Rex doesn't even realize it's possible until halfway through the game.
  • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Set in the future of both previous games, all humans can now do this. While most Agnian characters possess a core crystal, none of the Kevesi or City characters do, but they are all born with the ability to generate a weapon at will. The weapons themselves are now called Blades, and Ouroboros or those descended from Ouroboros (such as everyone in the City) can swap between a large variety. Likely has something to do with the Origin supercomputer influencing the world. In the first story DLC, Ino proudly introduces herself as an Artificial Blade, which flabbergasts the heroes because that is a completely nonsensical statement; you may as well call yourself an artificial fist.
• Soul Series:
  • This is a power Inferno has. As he is able to recall any memory of those who came in contact with Soul Edge, he can summon the weapon form they used when he used their body. In gameplay, this means he is a Ditto Fighter and can replicate any fighter's attacks while also having several exclusive moves. When he was forced to reside in the Nightmare armor during III, the weapon he uses is a fabricated version of Soul Edge (when IV rolls around he is using the actual Soul Edge instead).
  • Azwel's fighting style in Soulcalibur VI works on the exact same princple, except on overdrive as he rapidly conjures up multiple weapons from memory and will. That he can manifest weapons with such speed in such a manner is a testament to his mental processing power.
• In God of War Ragnarök, Kratos gains the Draupnir Spear made from the multiplying golden rings. It takes the form of a ring that allows him to materialize a spear to attack enemies with, complete with the ability to toss an infinite amount of them. The spears can also be detonated when embedded into his enemies, with the damage increasing depending on the number of spears stuck.
• Them's Fightin' Herds: Not unlike Sub-Zero, Stronghoof Hoofstrong uses his mastery of Winter Magic to create weapons out of ice in combat.
• The Skulls in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain are capable of materializing their weapon of choice — either an assault/sniper rifle or machete — out of thin air.

Web Animation

• The Auditor in Madness Combat is capable of summoning any weapon he likes from thin air, including firearms and BFSes.
• RWBY:
  • Cinder's Semblance, Scorching Caress, allows her to manipulate the shape of superheated objects such as glass, or even the powerful Dust. She typically uses it to create a bow and dual swords called Midnight out of Dust. However, her semblance originally only allowed her to superheat materials, with Midnight as a more mundane Mix-and-Match Weapon. It was only after she absorbed half of the Fall Maiden's power that she became capable of making it on the fly.
  • The Maidens of the Seasons can forge weapons out of elemental forces; they typically prefer one element over another, but can use any. After Cinder gets the full Fall Maiden's power, she doesn't bother with the bow, but still forges blades out of fire. In their battle, Raven (who was secretly the Spring Maiden) forges a sword out of ice and lightning.

Web Comics

• Part of the ravens' power set in Archipelago is shaping the raven magic into weapons. Most of them make swords, but daggers are not unheard of.
• The Stus of Dubious Company. Gary creates katars out of fire, while Marty can summon any weapon out of thin air.
• For a long time in El Goonish Shive, women who were offended by sexist men could conjure hammers from out of nowhere and use them to pummel the offender. This lasted until the person who originally created this ability passed away.
  • Susan can instantly summon a replica of anything from a specially marked container, and keeps a few old weapons there. And when she finally got her own spellbook, it started with the old good stun-hammer — without any limitations. So she remains "The Hammer Queen".
  • Susan ( and, as is later revealed, all descendants of Pandora) possesses a natural affinity for spells that summon weapons. Since aberrations are highly vulnerable to magical weapons, this makes her a natural aberration-hunter.
  • Abraham possesses spells that summon or create swords, shields, and axes.
• The masked assassin in Ever Blue uses some sort of a spell-in-a-jar to create a sword for killing the heroes with.
• Void in L's Empire can make spears pop out of his body. His future self can make them on any surface.
• Tower of God has many examples of this trope:
  • Enryu can create thousands of spears out of Shinsu and let them fall down onto his enemies.
  • Ari Bright Sharon's family have "guardian swords", which are basically massive rapiers made of Shinsu they can summon in a pinch.
  • White can make stronger swords in case the previous one breaks by burning souls. Bam is forced to do this as well and makes a bow in order to continue the infiltration of The Nest.
• Cyrus of Heroes of Thantopolis can summon a mace from his magic amulet.
• In The Story of Anima, this is how Pocket's Animus manifests. Dante takes it a step further, overlapping with Morph Weapon.
• Huckleberry usually generates wood for defense, but issue #4 shows him creating a club-like mass he calls the "Shell Saber".

Western Animation

• In Avatar: The Last Airbender, Aang briefly discusses the idea of making a 'Wind Sword' this way.
• Green Lantern: The Animated Series: Kilowog's construct of choice is a hammer. He even lampshades that he just does make hammers.
• Steven Universe: Every Gem (made before Era 2) has a special power. Most often, this is summoning a unique weapon out of their gemstone, which they can replace if it's in some way broken or out of reach and vary its properties (Pearl can vary the length of her spear's handle to make it act as a sword, Garnet can increase and decrease the size of her gauntlets), along with using more than one at once. Fusions combine their component Gems' weapons, such as Pearl's spear and Amethyst's whip fusing to make Opal's bow. The weapons can be changed by an external source, as seen when Bismuth gives the Crystal Gems weapon upgrades. "A Single Pale Rose" shows that Pearl stores multiple copies of her spear inside her gemstone. An early plotline is about Steven figuring out how to summon his weapon (a shield).
• Voltron: Legendary Defender: The Paladins have the ability to instantly summon their weapons to hand at any moments, and make them disappear when they're not needed.
• In Wakfu, the Big Bad of season 2 can create a Sinister Scythe made of pure wakfu. After more of his true power is unlocked, Yugo is able to generate a wakfu sword and shield in the same fashion. Season 1 Big Bad Nox performs similar feats such as summoning a physical clockhand sword and a wakfu shield. During his battle with Grougaloragran, he channels a lot of power from his drones to create two huge hammers made of pure wakfu. Sadlygrove's mentor Goultard is able to summon his broken-sword-on-a-chain from his forearm. Goultard's Arch-Enemy and King of the Shushus, Rushu, can summon a huge warhammer. In some cases it's a little unclear whether they are summoning the weapons from another location or creating them on the spot.
• Clerics (or "holy persons") in The Legend of Vox Machina seem to prefer this as a default, no doubt an in-universe usage of their "spiritual weapon" spell from the games. Pike uses hers for a mace and shield, Kashaw creates spears. All out of the same glowing energy, all out of thin air. There's also Scanlan's creative use of "Scanlan's Hand" as a weapon, conjured up by his singing and made out of purple energy.

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