OwlbearRepublic's page

Hey, folks,

Forgive the late introduction, but this season of Superstar comes during a huge time crunch for me. Demographic info and trivia:

1. I'm Kris Newton from Eureka, CA (the real-life inspiration for Duckburg!). I'm 32, male, married, and not a duck.

2. I recently started writing for Flying Pincushion Games (nothing that's been released yet). Lots of familiar faces from FPG in this year's Top 32!

3. I just finished GMing a 16th-level adventure in my long-running PF campaign, which we've played from 1st level. A Jenga tower was involved due to my latent story-gaming tendencies.

4. De facto cat person. The cat life chose me.

5. I'm co-host of the Gameable Podcast. We recently finished our series on roleplaying in the worlds of all the animated Disney films; we're working our way through the Pixar movies now (in fact, I'm writing this post in-between editing sessions for this weekend's episode). I'm not very active on the Paizo forums, so if you want to get to know me, the podcast is your best bet.

Good luck to everyone, and sorry that I don't have more time to be active on the forum during the competition. Hopefully, my work will speak for me (and not just say "I'm so tired").

Chrysalis Carapace

Great description, fun effects, seamless connection between your original rules material and existing mechanics. I upvoted this one many times and wouldn't have been at all surprised to see it crack Top 32.

Angazhan’s Bloodthirsty Spear

Watch out for using "combat" as a duration, because it's sometimes unclear when a combat begins and ends. The "combat" duration is especially inappropriate in this case, because you've got an uncapped, untyped bonus stacking up every time the spear scores a hit on a new creature; this opens you up to the old exploit of killing animals to build up the bonus before engaging the enemy.

The bonus to crit confirmation rolls is also just a bit vanilla. A more exciting effect, better defined and limited, would have helped this item.

Staff of the Vineyard

I upvoted this one a lot. Good theme, good physical description, and the non-spell abilities really fit the spell list. The only drawback here is that all of the non-spell abilities are very close to existing Feat or spell effects. One dramatic, original, wine-themed ability might have put this staff over the top. Even as it is, this is one of my favorites.

Grave-Nettle

The pervasive, minor formatting errors really add up in this item. The mechanics leave me with some questions about what happens when the wielder tries to create more zombies than he or she can control.

Overall, this is a pretty basic item that offers little flavor or utility beyond the 1/day use of animate dead. Strong name, though.

Mail of Ash Woven Ramparts

First off, the wearer should leave a smoke trail after movement, not a "move action," which sometimes won't involve movement.

This item seems a little overpowered to me. The marginal price of the smoke power is only 15k or so (after the price of the +2 armor base); for that, you can create a very effective barrier or trap that can both blind and block multiple foes. Escaping requires an "overrun combat maneuver check"; it's not clear whether that requires a separate action or not, but if it does, then getting trapped is very bad news even if the wearer's CMD is weak. The item's power level also scales weirdly, because its usefulness greatly depends upon the wearer's speed and CMD.

All of that said, the imagery is cool, and there's nothing way out of line here. I probably upvoted this item about as much as I downvoted it.

Enlightened Jian

As you say, this isn't terribly inspired, but I upvoted it surprisingly often. I like an item that facilitates character concepts without becoming a concept-in-a-can, and you pulled that off here. I feel that this could be published and see plenty of use from players who want to run acrobatic, sword-wielding monks. I do question whether this stands up to price benchmarking against other flight/levitation/air walk items, but the perks for monks might insulate it from that market competition.

Alchemist's Retort

Very good item, wouldn't have been surprised to see it make Top 32. Great, efficient use of existing mechanics to give bombs and alchemical devices a different role in combat. There may be some action economy concerns here that could be fine-tuned away (swift action to activate rather than free? wielder is staggered for a round after the shield goes off?), but overall, the idea and execution are both good. Cost shouldn't be exactly half of price, and the spell requirements don't make a ton of sense to me, but those are quibbles.

ROD OF VERSATILE CHANNELING

I personally dislike items that treat channel energy very mechanistically. It's supposed to be a divine power tied to your deity's alignment, and it bugs me when items and feats switch it around as casually as, say, switching fire damage for cold damage. To get my vote, an item that switches the positive/negative polarity needs to have a strong thematic component; this one is pretty nakedly pragmatic and rules-centric. I also find the whole second paragraph needlessly convoluted.

To get my vote, this rod would have needed to be more flavorful and to do something a little more mechanically creative.

Windpath Razor

Aura faint evocation; CL 5th
Slot none; Price 20,315 gp; Weight 4 lbs.
Description
The blade of this +1 scimitar resonates a soft hum in the breeze. Three times per day as a free action while unsheathing the weapon, the wielder may unleash a sudden torrent of howling wind in a 30 foot line that bull rushes the first creature hit. This does not provoke an attack of opportunity.

Shimmering air continues to briskly flow within this 30 foot line for 1 round. Allies that perform the charge, move, run, or withdraw actions through at least two squares of this wind trail begin hovering 1 foot above the ground and ignore difficult terrain for the remainder of the movement. These allies must land on a solid surface at the end of their turn.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, air step or gust of wind, bladed dash; Cost 10,315 gp

I upvoted this one more often than not (by a narrow margin, I think). The first effect seems like a bit of a mess to me, though. What CMB does it use? Does it activate as soon as the wielder draws the weapon, hitting the first creature in its line of effect, or does it activate when the wielder hits someone with the weapon? I'd have skipped bull rush and gone straight to the existing wind rules here (or ditched the first effect altogether).

The idea of a persistent path of wind that permits the party to move over difficult terrain is great, though. I can see using this in a really cool, cinematic way, and it's thematic for a martial character who leads the charge into battle. That said, this would be an even cooler effect for a low-level party, but the price would be prohibitive.

Overall, a solid effort. Great concept and imagery held back by iffy mechanics and a mismatch of concept to price. In the future, I'd work on simplifying and generalizing your crunch so that it ties elegantly into existing rules.

Jailbird's Sweetheart
Aura moderate conjuration; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 7,002 gp; Weight 1 lb.

Description
This dodgy-looking +1 adamantine dagger does double duty; with a lethally fine edge on one side of its blade and a coarse file on the other, it leaves equally ugly marks in flesh, bone, and steel. The dagger's thumb-breadth blade, along with its flat, guardless, black horn hilt, virtually begs to be concealed in a boot or a garter.

The jailbird's sweetheart takes its name from its usefulness to frequent prisoners. Once per day, as a full action, the attuned owner can summon it from anywhere on the same plane by pulling it out from the keyhole of any lock; the blade vanishes from its former location as it slides through the keyhole, as though it were moving through a ring gate. The summoning fails (but isn't expended) if an intelligent creature is observing the weapon at its original location.

Attuning to a jailbird's sweetheart requires kissing it. Unhelpfully, no markings hint at this requirement.

Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, teleport; Cost 5,002 gp

So, since it's possible for "like x, y, and x" to be read as not inclusive, and "such as x, y, and z" is clearly examples, I strongly prefer the current "formal" writing structure of "such as."

Even Paizo isn't 100% consistent on this issue, but I'll include it in a list of better writing practices every time.

Yeah, it's a matter of opinion even among experts, which is why I piped up. I'm certain there are editors (even grammar wonks) who'd revise "such as" to "like" in order to liven up stiff prose, provided that the meaning were clear in context. Nobody's strictly incorrect.

Except for the (fine) people at Evil Hat, of course, who would probably revise Scott's item to something like:

"So, there's this awesome knife: magic, adamantine, all kinds of stuff. You can use it to punch out locks or whatever, but where it's super-good is when you're up against force magic. It totally ignores all of that, no problem. You could cut a big old gash right in a wall of force!"

@RumpinRufus While I love the idea of hurting people with my terrible singing it just seems so much more right to make people fall over and run into each other like the classic Disney escape and fight scenes from Aladdin :P

If you want to stick closer to Aladdin's innate character traits rather than his genie and his big Disney musical numbers, consider picking up some teamwork feats that he can use with Abu, like Escape Route, Team Pickpocketing, or Underhanded Teamwork. Some of these are pretty niche, but if you're going to emulate scenes from the movie, they'll definitely come up.

Incidentally, we did a whole episode of the Gameable Disney Podcast about roleplaying in the world of Aladdin: you can find a link here if you're interested.

Btw, Owlbear, I don't think I saw another keyhole-themed dagger in the voting that I did. What was your item like?

It was called jailbird's sweetheart. Basically, it was a skinny adamantine dagger that the owner could pull from any keyhole, teleporting it from its current location. The idea was that you could ditch it somewhere, then retrieve it after being incarcerated or entering a secure location.

The resemblance between the two items is superficial, but still enough to make me do a double-take when I first saw yours during voting.

When you say "like mage armor," you are saying it's similar to mage armor, but mage armor isn;t actually one of the rings in question. If you write "such as mage armor," you include mage armor as one of the things in the described category. (Look up like vs such in any grammar book and they'll give better examples).

I'm no usage expert, but this is definitely not a black-and-white rule of English grammar or style. Obviously, Owen's in charge, so he's the arbiter of style here. However, in both formal and informal English, most writers routinely use "like" to mean "such as." OED and Merriam-Webster both acknowledge this usage, and Merriam-Webster explicitly defends it against the minority of writers who have declared it ungrammatical. According to the sources that I could find, objections to using "like" to mean "such as" only date back to the late 20th century, and have never been widely accepted.

I don't usually post to chime in on grammar, but with a sea of would-be freelancers hanging on Owen's every post thanks to RPGSS, I thought I'd venture a dissenting opinion. :)

PS: Congrats to Scott from the other member of Team Keyhole-Themed Dagger!

Most of what we're debating in this thread is the (potential) loss of voters after a deep cull vs. the greater ranking precision that we get from voting on a smaller batch of items. That debate's pretty fruitless to have here: Paizo no doubt has the numbers that will show who's right. If Paizo knows how many unique voters they lost post-cull and how much the smaller field helped sort the remaining items, they know whether the deep cull was a good idea.

I'm not sure we should strive to placate voters who are going to stop participating as soon as they're eliminated, given that we're always going to lose them after the Top 32 are announced. However, if retaining those voters as long as possible is really important, maybe Paizo could keep the deep cut but reinstate something like the golden ticket: say, each judge picks one culled item to save and consider alongside the Top 100, and those items are revealed at intervals during the post-cull voting. There would be no harm in revealing and discussing these choices publicly post-cull, because the tickets would already have been assigned and the culled items would no longer be up for voting.

This would put a public focus on items that won't necessarily make Top 32, which is something we've avoided in the past; usually, only the Top 32 are open for public critique unless requested by the designer. However, we've all signed up to take public criticism if we make Top 32, so I think most of us would be willing to accept public critique (retaining our anonymity, of course) in exchange for a golden ticket.

If this year's contest teaches us nothing else, it's that a lot of fighters and paladins just need to nut up and tell their friends to buy their own g~%#*#n shields.

I don't know that I've been easier on rods and rings per se, but they present less of a problem with opportunity cost. When I look at an expensive weapon, my mind immediately goes to the other, similarly-priced weapons that I'm not wielding because I've got my hands full with this one. Conversely, a rod doesn't need to be cooler than my current favorite to earn a spot in the bag of holding.

For the same reason, cheaper items have an edge over more expensive ones. The more a ring costs, the less likely I'll carry it around as backup when I've already got two that I like.

Noun 3: teabag
Adjective 2: horripilating
Number 6: 9 and 3/4

Noun 1: branding iron
Adjective 1: persnickety
Number 3: 13

Adjective #2: IP-infringing

Noun 2: pedicure

Noun #1: Banana

Isn't "create carcass" an undocumented feature of all weapons?

Me: "I'm not sure angels even have that body part. These can't be real."
Item: "They're real. And they're spectacular."

Torn about weapons that grant a bonus to nonviolent conflict resolution. It's a nice idea thematically, but it doesn't seem like an appropriate power for a weapon. It's like having a suit of armor that gives you +2 to Intimidate your enemies when you leave it at home and go into battle bare-chested.

Then again, maybe I just haven't seen it implemented well.

Snerf Fibbler's Staff
This staff is prized by Snerf Fibblers everywhere. No one else would ever want it. It permits the use of the following spells:

Fibble Snerf I
Fibble Snerf II
Fibble Snerf III
Snerf Fibbler's Fortune

If you already have these spells (and you do, because you are a snerf fibbler), well, enjoy your overpriced wand.

Construction Requirements: Craft Staff, fibble snerf I-III, snerf fibbler's fortune, the trapped soul of a thrice-fibbled snerf

"When you attack with this item, your target must make a DC xx Will save or engage you in an elaborate, multi-stage vaudeville routine. This will never get old."

"Long ago, a wizard made a magic item that did this thing. Then, he decided it wasn't cool enough, so he made it do this other thing as well."

As much as I enjoy the absurdity of this thread and its predecessor, it's a shame that the interesting question (about the wording and implications of feats) is buried under the whole tail thing, which ultimately comes down to GM fiat. I'm strongly on the side that Tail Terror cannot grant a tail, but in terms of practical play, RAW is silent on allowing Racial Heritage to grant a tail, so it's a non-issue.

But this persistent argument that because Tail Terror refers to "your tail," a character who contrives to qualify for it is thereby shown to have a tail? It's totally misguided. You can't "back into" a character feature by qualifying for a feat that mentions that feature. That sort of interpretation would not only raise problems with existing feats, but would make future feat-writing onerous, as writers wouldn't be able to reference even the most ubiquitous character feature (like, say, "your head") without somebody abusing the feat to sprout a skull from their gelatinous cube PC.

And what's gained by this weird way of reading feats? There's no rule saying you can't give a PC a tail, fur, or whatever cosmetic feature you want. This strange reading by which feats can grant character features via loophole only matters in the case of features that are mechanically significant and addressed by existing rules... and in those cases, a stricter reading is better for the game.

I've been avoiding the "neither" button, but there's one case in which it's a useful option: when the voter isn't qualified to vote on a given item and needs to move on to others rather than guessing. This can happen when an item seems well-designed, but interacts with a subsystem that the voter isn't familiar with.

I realize that, even in this case, hitting "neither" isn't a great help to other voters. However, I think it's important out of respect for the submitters. For example, I nearly submitted a vehicle for this year's competition. I wouldn't have appreciated voters down-voting it out of ignorance because they didn't understand the vehicle rules.

On the other hand, there's no good reason to use "neither" to avoid choosing between two rock-bottom items. If you've got the worst and the second-worst item on your screen, it hardly matters which one you rank as better than the other. The worst thing you can do is keep them circulating with the "neither" button, taking up valuable spaces in the queue that could be occupied by a better item that would trounce them both.

What to do if your archetype works across two classes?

This came up for me, too. I got my answer when I reread the Archetype entries for previous contests. I found that the judges sometimes dinged an archetype for missing the point of the base class or diverging too far from its essential features.

So, when in doubt, I decided to opt for the class whose core abilities were most consonant with the play-style and player appeal that I envisioned for my archetype. Basically, I tried to avoid the situation where somebody picks my archetype and then is disappointed to find that they don't get all the cool stuff that makes them love the base class. No oracles without curses, no paladins without a stringent moral code, etc.

Another relevant observation from past contests: People like to be surprised. If you do it well, an archetype for an unexpected base class seems to be able to win people over. Consider, for example, the saboteur ranger and the houndmaster cavalier.

The two part final entry is up! It features a unique monster, Bingle of Betelgeuse! (spelled with an exclamation mark, always) and The Threefold Gift, an idea from Cassiodorus Patavinus that has been waiting for its day almost since the beginning of this thread.

Thanks again to everyone who's been reading along. I'll be posting some miscellaneous updates and corrections to the finished story over the next couple of days, and probably a shameless plug for my next project, as well.

Today's entry is up, and formatting problems be damned! Whole lot of crunch today, and more to come tomorrow, including some items from this thread that I couldn't fit in any other way but through the curio owl's hoard.

Today's entry is up just in time (well, Pacific time) with a new monster, GM Hudson's Bell of Ag, and the introduction of some additional treasure that the party (and therefore we) won't address until the next entry. But the really big stuff is tomorrow....

Today's entry is up, and with only five days left, the threads are starting to come together. I also managed to drop an homage to classic gaming comedy right at the beginning.

I am totally spoiled for choice on wondrous items. Thank you so much, everyone, for contributing and reading. And keep them coming! I still haven't made firm decisions about the gifts for a couple of forthcoming days, so if I see something that blows me away, I will happily use your idea even if it comes it at the eleventh hour.

Thanks, Sean, for the tip on War of Yuletide. I'll probably pick that up.

Garrett, I think that your version of Frosty's top hat is my favorite so far because it could so easily be an adventure hook. If I do a sequel to this story at some point, I might use your item as the hook and make it the Quest for the Frosted Top Hat.

Re: Reindeer Slay
Hey, I used that pun once! In a project similar to this one, in fact. There was this superhero named Jingle Bill... yeah, the upshot of this story was that my pun wasn't quite as bad as yours, but then I realized that I named a superhero "Jingle Bill." Never mind.

Today's entry is up, featuring Sean McGowan's awesome Mouse King's Bane and some new oozes, the Ice Pops. And DIRE HAPPENINGS!

Yesteryday's entry is up, finally! I love my new monster, but it was a pain in the ass to shoot. Today's entry will be up this evening.

The Mouse King's Bane

Yes, please! It's a bit high level for my band of adventurers, but I'll figure something out. I really like that this item fills a legitimate mechanical niche while still being strongly thematic.

I'm not sure I can use the Amulet of the Time Lord. It reminds me, though, I almost created something like a TARDIS in my last PF campaign, and it was totally accidental. Extradimensional spaces, intelligent constructs and teleportation are all so useful! It's only natural to try to combine them... and then you look down at the stat block and realize that you're missing nothing but the eye of harmony and the coat rack.

For some of the people suggesting crafting-based responses, pairing with a character who has access to the Restoration sub-domain allows them to use Restorative Touch, which will remove a fatigued effect.

So...you can pretty much craft/work/etc. all day every day 'round the clock and never sleep.

I don't think that this will work, as both mundane and magical crafting have hard limits on how much you can do in a day. Those limits aren't dependent upon fatique; they apply even to undead and construct crafters, for example.

But, speaking of constructs, the next level in crafting yourself rich is to use Craft Construct to build constructs who also have crafting skills so that they can join your operation. Master Alchemist, already a pretty decent cash cow if you make pricey poisons, is even better if you've got dozens of robot alchemists with the same Feat sharing your lab.

Fabricate combined with crafting feats and a high bonus in Craft (alchemy) or Craft (armor).
1. Craft an item of fabricate x/day.
2. Fab the most expensive armor or poison you can afford, then flip it for profit.
3. Reinvest profits in building an item of fabricate x+1/day.
4. Repeat until rich.

If custom magic item crafting doesn't work, either wait until you can cast fabricate yourself, or pick at item to fab that's so expensive that you can still eke out a profit even if you fab it from a scroll. Then set up shop somewhere with a steady supply of fabricate scrolls.

The trouble with this money-making method is that the GM may try to spring market saturation or contraband laws on you. It's nice to be able to teleport around to broaden your market. The second best option would be to set up shop somewhere where people need lots of Large-sized (or, better, Huge-sized) barding. That stuff is pricey and perfectly legal.

Or, throw caution to the wind and be a fugitive poison dealer. What's the use in being wealthy if you're not going to live a little?

Today's rather long entry is up, featuring both chibiamy's cauldron and Garrett Guillott's tankard. I hesitated to place two treasures together this way, but I had a nice big gift box to fit them into, and the party really worked for their loot in today's adventure, so it seemed appropriate.

RonarsCorruption's holiday sock also makes an appearance in today's entry, as I did manage to track down a stocking prop at the right scale.

Today's entry is up, featuring a new trap and some wondrous items that I devised myself.

chibiamy's cauldron and Garrett's tankard are both cool. I'll probably place them together. I particularly like the incorporation of a skill check into the cauldron, because Toddy has Profession (cook). There's also potential comedy in the alcohol option for the tankard, though I'm not sure that I can take advantage of it, having no Lego-scale tankards at hand.

GM Hudson: Random-table-based items are probably my guiltiest pleasure in item design. I will take that bell, sir. I haven't looked in detail at all of the effects yet, but most of them look okay.

Hey all,

I'm writing a holiday blog, 12 Doors of Christmas, that follows a Pathfinder adventuring party as they kick down the doors of a ceramic Christmas village, one door per day until Christmas. It's a photo-story in the style of X-Entertainment's advent calendar, if you're familiar with that, with a bonus section at the end of each post where I write up the new rules content that I introduce in the story.

I've been taking submissions for wondrous items in this thread. Now that I've got three days under my belt, I thought I'd let the general community know about the project in case you want to read along or contribute a Christmas-themed wondrous item.

+2 DRaino, the alchemical version of your item is now up in today's post. Along with a whole lot of bad puns. Hopefully, their odium will not cling to your fine idea.

Snowfall Skycandle

I want to use this item, but as it happens, I need a mundane item for today's entry, not a magical one. So, I'm going to write up a mundane version: essentially the alchemical part of your item, but without the magic that gives it a wide radius and a calm emotions effect.

Happily, this also keeps that 2-mile-radius calm emotions effect out of the hands of my little band of adventurers. My GM ethics won't permit me to give that kind of power to any party, even a goofy one that's completely under my control. :)

Re: Fancy Hats in Gaming

Once, I played a goblin in a homebrew comedy World of Darkness setting. The GM was improvising a lot, and I was a first-time player in a group who'd gamed with him frequently before, so I felt a bit adrift during character creation. Not knowing quite where to put my points, I decided to sink them into a 5 dot Artifact hat.

"Ah, a magical hat! What does it do?" the GM inquired, no doubt expecting it to grant flight or shoot deadly hat beams or something.

"It's not magical, it's just really nice," I replied. Yes, this hat had no magical features. It was just a deluxe hat, a paragon of masterwork millinery, a hat so fancy that it cost as much to put on a character sheet as, say, Mjolnir.

They thought that I was wasting my points... the fools. Actually, whenever I needed to get anything done, all I had to do was suggest that my hat might be able to somehow solve the problem. The GM, struggling to give the new guy 5 background points of utility out of a "mere" fancy hat, would oblige. That hat turned out to be probably the best 5-dot investment I've ever made in WoD (other than 5 dots of Presence in V:tM, of course, but that's just cheating).

The only drawback to a gambit like this is that the GM will eventually have somebody steal the wonder hat, and then you'll get what's coming to you for manipulating the social contract....

Thanks to RonarsCorruption; I used your holiday sock in today's entry, with credit.

Horrid Woolen Wrap

An ugly sweater item is a brilliant idea. You're right that the fear effect might not come in handy much, though. Maybe we could do something as simple as cold resistance at the expense of a penalty on Cha-based checks? Then throw on a once per day sickening or hideous laughter effect, like "once per day as a standard action, the wearer may show forth the hideous woolen wrap in all its ridiculous glory, afflicting one target within sight with hideous laughter (as the spell)."

Cassiodorus:
I like the Gifts of the Magi idea. Anybody want to take a crack at a more complete treatment? If not, I'll finish it and just credit you with the concept.

Thanks to those of you who are enjoying the entries. I'm glad somebody's reading them.

RonarsCorruption:
I'll probably use your holiday sock. It's nice and simple and doesn't overlap with anything else I'm doing in the story. Also, the thought of carrying Christmas-themed prestidigitation around with me all day fills me with glee. Yeah, I play a lot of gnomes, what of it?

Woodengolem:
Good idea with the tree tokens. Maybe I'll write some flavor text for the bag and then keep that in my pocket for a day when I've got no new item to post.

Sean McGowan:
The Talisman of the First day is nice and creepy, but it's too close to the basic conceit of my story, which is also a gift-a-day kind of thing. Too bad I can't use it, because it's a cool item.

The Top Hat of Frigid Doom reminds me of a similar item that I used in a Christmas adventure I ran a few years ago. Rather than being unpredictable and aggressive, my version of the snowman started out as a blank slate, then became more and more like its role models, the PCs... which brings us right back to unpredictable and aggressive, I guess. I've already got a lot of snowman stuff going on in this story, but maybe I'll slip in your hat late in the story and work it into the plot. Thanks!

Christmas-themed Wondrous Items Needed!

I'm working on a project called 12 Doors of Christmas. Every day from now until Christmas, I'm posting another entry in the story of some adventurers kicking down the doors of a ceramic Christmas village. I'm posting new rules content each day; I've already got some new races and a druid archetype, and there will be new monsters and items in the future.

Part of the gimmick is that there's a gift behind each door. But while I've already got my monsters and the like worked out for this project, I don't yet have 12 Christmas-themed wondrous items to fill the gift boxes.

So, is there anybody bored or antsy about RPG Superstar who wants to try their hand at a Christmas-themed item while we're waiting for the deadline? If I use something that you post in this thread, I will credit you, of course.

The project is at 12doorsofchristmas.blogspot.com, if you want to get a sense of what I'm doing. Today's treasures are some magic gingerbread men.

First of all, most antagonistic organizations can be looked at as f*** the PCs. PCs don't wear signs that declare "I'm a PC, I've been raised from the dead and saved by healing magic six times in the past week".

I see your point, thus the rust monster analogy. All monsters typically attack the PCs, but some of them seem to exist to screw adventurers almost on a meta-game level. Similarly, all antagonist organizations are likely to oppose the PCs. However, this one reads like a designer invented it to antagonize PCs. That's hardly a fatal flaw; they are antagonists, after all. It's just a little too on-the-nose for my taste. Some additional breadth would have helped the organization seem less pointedly anti-PC.

Those are all great suggestions of ways my organization could be used, creative and fits the theme and idea I had for them perfectly, just like PhineasGage's ideas earlier. If I had a full-page "Faction Guide-style" spread, I hope that I would have come up with some of those myself and included them, but with the 400 words I was allowed, I created an organization that inspired you to think of them for yourself.

Obviously, the 400 word limit hit everybody hard. However, I think that specific, creative hooks are the wrong things to cut. It's tough, but you can fit tons of interesting specifics into the word count limit. To hold us both to an unfairly high standard, compare to my favorite entry of Round 2, the Riders of the Black Steppe. Here are some concrete, concise and table-ready ideas for using that group, quoted from the entry:

What I missed in your entry were these little tidbits, specific ideas about how to use your group in a variety of interesting ways. Concrete statements, however succinct, inspire the imagination better than generalities. Without them, a cool idea can start to seem abstract and underdeveloped.

You're right that many of the Top 32 lacked compelling details and hooks... if you read the threads, you'll find that I reviewed some of those orgs a lot more harshly than I did yours. :)

Anyway, that's all my opinion. Everybody's looking for something different in these entries. Now you know that voters like me, right or wrong, exist... use that information as you see fit.

Thanks for your comments on my fungus guys. Here's wishing us both good luck next year.