Golarion Goblin's page

All I can say is sweet. Summoning looks awesome and I really can't wait to see what they did to the familiars. I'm glad that the arcane power source is finally getting some love.

Jezred, the 4E write up of the huecuva (they're a template now) can be found in Dragon 364, which I believe is still free from the Wizard's site.

I have software that does that for me. Besides, poking people with sticks is so much more fun.

Since when are you proficient with sticks?

Scott, could you shoot me an e-mail at Snyderman.37(at)gmail.com. I can't seem to find your e-mail on your blog.

Doombunny wrote:

I miss the war.

But War...

War never changes.

Back in the Vault with you!

Take a look over in either the Races and Monsters or Homebrew sections of the WotC boards for the "Genestealers and their Cults" thread. There's a lot of good stuff in there that you'll want to see.

Be gentle...

Crown of the Kobold King -- Level 6

Heartripper Blade -- Level 3+

Grasp of Droskar -- Level 4

Any comments or suggestions would be very helpful.

Scott, your stuff is awesome on toast. My wife has used some of it for her game and it was lots of fun. I'm temporarily converting my Pathfinder game to 4E because a good friend of mine is gonna have to stop gaming in a few months and really wants to play some 4E, so I did up channel divinity feats for the Golarion gods. I'll either post a link here or send them off to you to see if you'd wanna use them in your game.

The chaining chaos bolt seems okay by me. Is there anything in the rules that would prevent you from saying "I know I can make another attack, but I don't want to make it on my ally, so I will forgo said attack" or are you required to make the attack rolls by virtue of the power?

Off hand, since I'm at work and don't have the preview in front of me, I'd say it works like the thunderwave power. If your buddy is in the blast you can't opt to not hit him, you just have to hope for a low roll.

Ah but the war goes on my friend.

It is not a hot war but a cold one. Fought everyday by the game you choose to play. Fought by every penny you spend, whether it is on some new fangled game or as an old grognard you spend your hard earned cash trying desperately to purchase the remaining books on discount while they are still available. It is a long and desperate struggle that is yet to be finished. The flames of war shall heat up again have no fear. You just need to watch closely and you will see the sparks of vengeance fly high in the night sky. perhaps when the new version of the Hero system comes out.

Heh... In that case, does that make my wife and I profiteers because we're trying to come up with stuff for both sides?

FORGIVE ME!

Ok, let's say we have an 11th level sorcerer with a black draconic bloodline. Now, said sorcerer gets his claws (pardon the pun) on a pair of +1 flaming spiked gauntlets. Assuming a Strength of 14, if he were to make a full attack with his claws, what would the damage look like?

This: 1d6 + 2 plus 1d6 acid
Or this: 1d6 + 3 plus 1d6 fire plus 1d6 acid

Does the sorcerer add extra damage from other sources to his claw damage, or is there no way to add an extra oomph the the claws?

EDIT: Does the inverse also apply? Can the sorcerer add the additional 1d6 acid damage to his gauntlet attacks?

Golarion Goblin wrote:

You're assuming that we'll be called on to use our villains. I personally am planning to have to stat up one of the other winners' villain in round three. Granted, I've got the stats for mine set out, but I get the feeling that we're gonna have to work with some different stuff this year.

Did you never learn the lesson about talking about what might go wrong in front of your DM? This is surely one of those times....

Heh, it's only a bad idea if you haven't planned for it...

Golarion Goblin wrote:

I'd keep the Con damage, but add the caveat of "If used against a living creature, both the wielder and the target are subject to the Con damage".

Except the PCs will simply purchase a couple of scrolls of death ward and Con drain away to their hearts' content....

Good point.

I believe you may be right. :)

That being the case, those who make the cut probably won't get to choose which villain they stat up. :O

Indeed. Yay random number generating!

Well done. Simple, elegant, and useful. Consider this yoinked for my game :D Congrats.

I like it. As was stated earlier, an imaginative PC could come up with so many uses for this item.

"Ok, I just patched the hole in the boat, boxed in the sahaugin, and finally put a end to our arguments over what side of the room is whose..."

Very nice.

Imagine the charioteers are coming after you in the gladiator pits and one of your friends whips out a piece of chalk with a wicked smile on his face.

Now, would that be for a wall to smash into or a ramp to send them into the corrupt emperor's box? >:)

I like the idea, though maybe not the full force of it. Perhaps instead of "1/day you go first period", you could make it so you activate it as a free action and then go first on the next round of initiative, taking your previous spot in the initiative order the following round.

It's possible. However, I think a lot of people are putting in homebrew stuff which they plan to expand upon in round 3.

And wouldn't that be a great exercise in stat building? Taking someone else's idea and creating a believable and accurate interpretation while keeping it balanced to what they started with? Sounds almost like something a Superstar would have to do... ;)

As someone else who tackled a tough concept with a small word count (the temporal bracers), I've got to hand it to you; This is a great idea that's only hampered by lack of word space. My only problem would be the "random" aspect of the energy drain. Let's say you're in a room with 9 people, counting yourself. You can't really roll a d9 (without a computer program) to pick who gets hit with the effect. Aside from that, I like it.

I'd keep the Con damage, but add the caveat of "If used against a living creature, both the wielder and the target are subject to the Con damage".

Nice. Great way to stick with a theme, but not overdo it. Well done, and good job.

I'd say naming spells isn't a no-no, as you've already stated his class and level. Now if you say something like "Blahblah uses his ray of enfeeblement just before coup-de-gracing a foe" and have him listed as Fighter 6, there's may be some issues...

SOVEREIGN SIGIL

Aura faint enchantment and evocation; CL 5th
Slot –; Price 5,000 gp; Weight 1 lb.

DESCRIPTION
This holy symbol of Asmodeus is a pentacle of wrought red iron, encircled in fire-blackened silver. Any user gains a +2 bonus to Bluff, Intimidate and Knowledge (the planes) checks, and any divine caster can expend a divine spell-slot of the appropriate level as a full-round action to generate a ray of fire (treat as ray of frost, but inflicts fire damage instead, requires a divine cantrip of any sort to be prepared), command (requires the expenditure of a 1st level spell) or hold person (requires the expenditure of a 2nd level spell). A cleric of Asmodeus with this item can choose to have his channeled energy effect instead inflict a 30 ft. burst of fire damage, instead of negative energy, with a Reflex save (at the same DC) to take only half damage.

CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, produce flame, command, hold person, creator must be a priest of Asmodeus; Cost 2,500

I like this, a lot. You did a lot of great work on converting domains Set and I sad to see that you didn't make it in with this item. It's a niche item, but it's a good one that grabs a theme and sticks to it. I believe I may be snagging this one for my Pathfinder game in one manner or another...

I like this item as well, and I'm annoyed at myself for not getting around to commenting on it sooner. Formatting aside, I thought the price was a bit high (we calculated a shirt that gave DR 8/lawful at 40k for a cleric in our one game), but then I realized that the extra cost was converting that back into attack power. While 50 point does seem high, it also has the potential to backfire for the wearer and those around him. I would have let the wearer fire off controlled blasts instead of the whole reservoir, but that's the only minor quibble I have as the non-lethal question has already been posed. Nice job.

I hate time travel items, so I'm probably going to be unreasonably harsh here.

That's kool. I need both types of responses if I intend to be a better designer/writer, so fire away :)

First of all, either the writing needs to be cleaned up or you need a chart or something to tell you what effects happen and on which rounds they happen.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. Here's what I have in the item's description:

You may activate these gem-studded bracers as a move action, pulling your “future self” to the past for one round. Your future self appears in a square adjacent to you, acts as your turn ends, and may take one full-round's worth of actions. At the start of your next turn both incarnations, and any items carried by them, disappear for one round. At the start of your third turn, you reappear in the square where your future self was last standing, appearing in the nearest adjacent square if that one is occupied.

Round 1 - Activate item as move action, take standard action, swift action, and free action. Future you takes their full round's worth of actions.

Round 2 - Both "you's" disappear.

Round 3 - You reappear in the last spot future you was standing.

Also, when "you reappear" do you have the stuff that your original self had, or the stuff that your future self had. For example, if your future self picked up a bomb, would it disappear with them forever when they vanished?

I had wanted to add in a stipulation where any "excess" items picked up by future you would reappear at your feet, but the word count was too high so it was nixed.

Also, I'm not sure why both selves would be affected by one HP pool or persistant effect. If you brought your future self back, then both of you were hit by a fireball, would you effectively take double damage?

Yes. In the same vein, both could be healed twice by a mass cure light wounds spell. It's mucking about with time, not exactly the safest thing, but it has its uses.

And while it says that persistant effects remain with you after the spell, do their durations continue while you're gone for that round. For example, let's say you were dropped to -9 in the turn you activate this item. Are you possibly dead by the time you come back on round 3?

No. Another bit of editing lost to word count; Rounds spent "returning" to the future do not count towards spell duration or other effects. So if you were at -2 hit points and on round 2 of 4 for the scare spell at the end of Round 1, you'd come back still at -2 hit points and on round 2 of 4 on Round 3. I hope this cleared up some of the item confusion.

What I am worried about is the next few rounds. If someone doesn't like your villian description in round 2, they're probably not going to like it when you stat up the same villian in round 3, design his lair in round 4, or an adventure based around him in round 5. I'm making the assumption, here, that you're using the same villian throughout the process, but I think that's reasonable based on the way the way things are described on the RPG Superstar page. Anyway, a lot is riding on the villian descriptions being submitted today!

You're assuming that we'll be called on to use our villains. I personally am planning to have to stat up one of the other winners' villain in round three. Granted, I've got the stats for mine set out, but I get the feeling that we're gonna have to work with some different stuff this year.

A similar example might be something like: "Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, Spore-tainted Orc Barbarian 10 Fighter 4". So, does that work?

Might that I say, good sir, WAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGH! OY, IZ YOU WORKIN? NO? IZ YOU LOOTIN? NO? IZ YOU ADDIN MORE DAKKA? NO? IZ YOU MAKIN IT MORE CHOPPY? NO! DEN YOU IZ MUCKIN ABOUT! GET BACK TO DA WAAAGH!

*ahem* Sorry.

Not me. I've got to regain momentum. I need Polamalu to get me the ball back!

Are we seeing another Stillers fan?

Lord Fyre wrote:

Paul Worthen wrote:

Uh-Oh, looks like someone's feeling confident!

Nope. But I was also convinced that my submission would not advance (being a camping item), so I didn't do much with my villain.

I don't want to be caught flat-footed again. :)

Gods that sounds familiar (goes back to reviewing again)

Seconded...

I find this item to be heavily overpowered, for anything but an artifact.

The item nearly perfectly duplicates the epic spell, Time Duplicate, other than using a move action instead of swift to activate. By combining conditions and hit points, it does negate the worst abuses of Time Duplicate, but leaves the advantages.

To be fair, I've never played in an epic game and only recently picked up the book to help complete my 3.5 collection. I'll take a look at the spell when I get the chance.

For instance, any spells used by the original caster after bringing in the duplicate end up not being used. This ends up being equivalent to 3 Pearls of Power 9th *and* a Rod of Metamagic Quicken combined.

It does prevent things like summoning the duplicate, quickened teleport to enemies, and use a retributive strike from a staff of power or other suicide maneuvers.

Time Stop is fine as a prerequisite, but the overall power is just too much.

How so? As is stated, the character still only has one pool of items and abilities to pull from, be they fireballs or potions of cure light wounds. If one "version" uses something it's used up.

*Steals item for evil monk NPC.*
Congrats on the Top 32. I really like this item. :D

When I first saw the name, I thought "Hmmm, did someone submit a variation of my phalanx bracer as an entry?", but I must say I was pleasantly surprised at your item. It puts higher level magic in the reach of lower level casters. Nice job. Congrats and welcome to the Top 32.

Nice item Neil. I like it a lot. I fully expect to use a variation of it in my Pathfinder game.

Congrats and welcome to the Top 32!

Mike Speck wrote:

The insect plague exists so that the item isn't JUST a suicide bugbomb or a plot device (as per GamerGirrl's comment). I considered summon swarm, but got hung up on "rats, bats, or spiders" and said "they're just not as creepy as insects." Again, with a do-over, I'd be inclined to call it a summon swarm, and flavor-ize the swarm into bugs -- the argument on lowering the cost (from Jason and RogueRouge) has me convinced.

-Speck

An urban druid variant then could have been the cockroach swarm (see Second Darkness 1). I had my player screaming when those showed up in our campaign.

Indeed. I swapped out the bat swarm for a roach swarm in D0. My players stocked up of alchemist's fire and lamp oil real after that... >:D

Edit: Also, congrats and welcome to the Top 32!

Apologies, but someone has to say this... :(

Phil Snyder wrote:

Item

Great idea, except it doesn't work in Pathfinder Beta. You fall down on the construction requirements.

Check the description of the Time Stop spell:
Page 282

Pathfinder Beta Playtest (Time Stop) wrote:

...This spell seems to make time cease to flow for everyone but you. In fact, you speed up so greatly that all other creatures seem frozen, though they are still moving at their normal speeds...

Time Stop in Beta doesn't have anything to do with literally messing around with time.

A brave attempt to apply game mechanics to a nightmare of a concept, but it shows that you didn't actually check the description of the spell you were using.

Please try again with with wish or perhaps another spell as an alternate construction requirement. :)

Very good point, it doesn't replicate time stop all. That would make it a spell-in-a-can though, and if I just used wish, I'd have a limited and specific wish-spell-in-a-can, both of which would have more than likely gotten me rejected.

I didn't start with "What spell do I want to emulate?", I started with "What effect do I want to end with?" and went from there. Time stop was a means to do that. Sometimes you've got to bend the rules just a bit to get the really good stuff. Ask Nic Logue if his in Eyes of the Lich Queen follows every rule and I'm sure you'll get a similar response.
Though, now that I really think about it, I probably could've gotten away with adding haste into the requirements to compensate for the acceleration of time, but that'd make it more complicated than it needed to. Would your double be hasted? Would you be? Could the bracer dispel a slow effect? Things like that would crop up for no reason (Of course, I'm a bit of a pessimist, so that's my own nay-saying).
Long story short, the bracers don't recreate time stop, nor should they. That's not what they're meant to do.

Good job. Following undead, especially incorporeal undead, has always been a bit of trouble and this item fixes that. It's not so overpowering as to simply say "He's over there", but it lets the PCs use their skills in a way that's meaningful to them. If our undead hunting ranger in the Age of Worms didn't leave for new baby-reasons, I'd definitely craft one for him. Others have echoed my only quibble, and that would be the one minute timeframe. Though for 32k, I'd have expected something higher than CL 1st for the item.

Great job and good luck in the next round!

To address Rob's query above: that's a really good question.

By the way I read this, the original & the "future" user only share the same hit-points. Meaning that if, for example, you take a move action to summon yourself, then cast a lightning bolt, then your future self moves thirty feet & casts a lighting bolt and then the original you eats 5,000 damage from a prismatic dragon later that round, you both die, vanish for a full round, and then a dead body re-appears where the previous future you HAD been standing.

So ... how did he/I cast a lightning bolt if I/he was already dead?

If there's one thing Doctor Who has taught me, it's that time while is fluid enough to move through, you can't really change it. The reason he can cast lightning bolt even though his “future self” is dead is because he already did it. It's been done and can't be changed (at least not by the scope of my little item).

Very, very cool. Time manipulation is very tough to do well with the 3.5 ruleset, and this one comes as close as anything I've seen. It does seem to be a bit lacking on interaction between the past and future self, though. I suppose that's just the nature of paradoxes.

What happens if the future self kills the past self?

Thanks for the kinds words. As for the “future kills the past”, the same thing that happens if your character would stab himself with his own sword; He'd take damage and more than likely need to save vs. a coup de grace. The trick to this item is that you need to look as both versions as one character. Anything that would affect the former affects the latter, and vice versa.

I admit, I first wanted to call these “Bracers of the Silver Mount” and have a bit of Pathfinder fluff accompanying them. Ya know, the Technic League, Numerian warrior kings, skymetal used in the creation... But, well, I opted for crunch rather than fluff and it worked. Though if I could do it with a longer backstory, I'd fully tie them into a Numeria adventure. Oh, and Boomer, the only reason I made them bracers is because I got the mental image of Capt Jack Harkness's wrist-teleporter and ran with that.

An finally, the math for those of you who are curious.
Use-activated - 9th spell level x 17th CL x 2,000 : 306,000
Charges per day – 306,000 / [5/3] : 183,600
4 rounds recharge time (10% discount) – 183,600 x .9 : 165,240 gp

Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. Wow.

Be cool. Deep breath. Be cool...

Thank you so much first off. This was an amazing experience. I'm just glad I got off my butt early enough this year. Anyway, on to the critiques and what-not.

We've seen a fair number of temporal items; this is one of the better ones.

Inclined to keep it around a bit, though I think the design is overly complicated. Maybe it's the editor in me.

Thank you Wolfgang. Trust me, trimming this monster down to the word limit was what cut the really overly complicated to just overly complicated. Also, trying to get the wording right on theoretical physics isn't easy.

As for the Alpha Flight and Dark Sun references, those were completely unintentional. I remember Flashback, but I haven't read any AF in so long, he'd gone from my memory. As for the Dark Sun, heh, I haven't even played 2nd Edition... Wow... Just show that you're a noob, eh Phil? ;-)

Jason, Christine, Rob, Clinton thanks for the kinds words. Clinton, as for the "first one dying" issue, I was going to add a caveat about if one dies, they both die, but I didn't have the word space. Though the "One hit point total" should cover that, but clarification always help.

Next year I intend to create contractions like "stron'utation" and "Constru'quirements" to keep the word count down ;-)

Can't post, too bust tweeking...

Golarion Goblin wrote:

I agree with all these ideas. I'm also working on a 1st-level, one-shot style adventure for Pathfinder. I've already run it and it went quite well. All I need now is something to get me off my laurels...

How about, "Hey, I know you! You're Golarion Goblin! The first to publish a full Pathfinder RPG Beta Adventure to the boards!"

Would that be all it took. Yay stress about contests and job hunting...

Thank you judges, and thank you Paizo for having the contest. Even if I don't get picked, this was a great learning experience.

I'm kind of nervous, too. That seems silly, probably. But we picked the top 32. I know what -items- advanced, but I dont know what -people- advanced. I am as excited as all of you to find out who the people are who submitted the advancing items! Plus, while I think we did a real good job judging, somewhere there will be someone who gets left out and who maybe deserved to have gotten in and didnt. So as a judge you are a little nervous about whether you made the right choices. I sure think we did! And I cant wait to join in all the excitement about the announcement!

YOU TAUNTS US MR PETERSON! EVIL, TRICKSY PETERSON! *GOBLIN* *GOBLIN* WE NEEDS TO KNOW IT! WE NEEDS TO KNOW! EVIL, HATEFUL PETERSON. HE NEVER SHARES WHAT HE KNOW WITH GOBLIN! *HISSSSSSSSSS!*

Er... *cough* I mean, I can hardly wait until 5 pm...

I'm gonna go sit down now...

I'd suggest something similar to the dhampyr "template" that was released recently. It's a string of feats and paths that play up your heritage rather than a race. Not bad actually.

EDIT: After scrolling up and seeing Evil Genius, I agree with him.

I suggest the shifter race. Closest thing to a lycanthrope PC there is right now...

I agree with all these ideas. I'm also working on a 1st-level, one-shot style adventure for Pathfinder. I've already run it and it went quite well. All I need now is something to get me off my laurels...

JoelF847 wrote:

ComicJam wrote:

There are a number of the more famous peeps that play 4e.

Felicia Day plays it too (but that's not really a surprise...!)

Cheers! :D

While this might be true, I have no idea who Felicia Day is. I don't think she qualifies as more famous than Wil Wheaton. If she does, then that qualifies as making me feel old.

I've never heard of her either, so who is she?

She's Penny in Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I was as anti-4e as anyone could be after the announcement and even in the weeks following release. I tried playing it once and hated the gameplay and walked away from it. My wife read the books though, and basically pestered me til I relented to play again. The second time around, I had a ton of fun. Now, I love playing 4e and have managed to dispel a lot of my own misconceptions about it. I think the reason I disliked it so much the first time I tried it was because I "wanted" to not like it. Now I think it is one of the funnest games I have played. There is no doubt a schism that has been created by 4e and the horrific way in which the PR for the change was handled. That said, I think a lot more who are against 4e would find they actually do like it if they would try playing it for a bit.

Oh well, thats the way the cookie crumbles.

Heh, it's not frightening in how similar mine and Brent's story is, it's frightening in how exactly the same mine and Brent's story is...

*goes back to converting Into the Haunted Forest*

ANKYLOSAURUS!
I want my dwarven paladin to be riding a real tank! :D

Majuba wrote:

I don't mind the specific alignments for the animals, but a more generic template included with the spell might be better than actual "fiendish/celestial/etc". Tough call.

I would DEFINITELY favor this approach. Use the beast shape precedent to make summons fairly uniform. Something like this in the spell description:

"Summoned creatures that are not outsiders or elementals are simply extraplanar variants of their natural equivalents. They can understand the caster's speech and commands, and they gain DR 5/magic and SR of 10 + hit dice."

This applies to celestial, fiendish, anarchic, axiomatic, pseudonatural, anything you want. One simple rule for sanity and simplicity (they can understand you when command them, no matter what), and one simple set of defensive abilities. Yes, this does boost low-level summons, and that's okay by me; they aren't going to be around very long anyway, so big whoop if they get a little extra cheese.

I could see a more complex version where you have a list of options you could apply to your summoned monsters; say you got one choice per level of the spell, but while it might be fun I think that way lies madness.

I think we're on to something here. I'm very in favor of this route.

I think this is a case of just trying to be realistic. A set of masterwork thieves tools is a set of finely crafted picks, maybe with a leather sleeve. Well skill is required in their making, their just are not that many of them, nor do they use up a lot of raw material. They also ship for next to nothing as they are not fragile.

An alchemist lab is just that a LAB, it is a large amount of glassware, which was expensive until very recently, highly customized, lots of it, and fragile. A pc shouldn't be transporting his lab, and if you ask me a PC shouldn't be able to make potions without a lab. Masterwork or not, it would be expensive, but a proper masterwork lab would have carefully calibrated and graduated measures, maybe a scale or balance that and a set of weights that have been guaranteed by what ever authority governs trade. The alchemist lab represents a level of precision unparalleled in an age where precision is not readily available.

In that case, I'd say that the lab itself would grant a +2 circumstance bonus, allowing it to be of some use later on in the game, and stack with the Craft (alchemy) version of "artisan's tool".