Tetujin's page

I'm in a Kingmaker game right now and while our whole party has their own interest in maintaining a government none of us are really interested in being the leader. It seems really weird to recruit an NPC for leader (But maybe later in the adventure there might be someone perfect for the job, but no spoilers please) and I know either in the book or in one of the Q&A threads it's been stated that other government types are beyond the scope of the rules presented. We think it'd be neat if someone came up with rules for something oligarchical or what have you, and it sounds like our DM is for it, but I'm not sure how I'd do it.

Maybe take the average of the leaders' CHA scores?

A single judge cited these issues. Another judge agreed. And someone pushed the Reject button.

OK, I think that's enough of a sign that the item can't be easily fixed, so I will move to to a brand new item. I find it amusing that one of the abilities I thought earned me the auto reject was actually one of the better parts. And I guess since I'm almost certainly not using it this year I have no reservation in posting it (since Azmahel mentioned he might be interested):

MANTLE OF MODERATION
Aura moderate transmutation CL 11th
Slot chest Price 7,000 gp Weight -

DESCRIPTION
This gray garment, of decent but unremarkable quality, serves the wearer as much by its direct magical benefits as it does by the lesson it represents: the value of consistency.

The item has 5 charges which are renewed each day. One charge can be spent to give the wearer a +6 competence bonus to a single skill check or ability check but the check can have no more than a +0 overall resulting modifier. Two charges can be spent before making an attack roll or saving throw to roll three times and take the middle result. Three charges can be spent before damage is rolled either by an effect created by the wearer or an effect with affects the wearer to average the damage.

Additionally, the cloak provides a +2 enhancement bonus to the wearer's lowest ability score. This ability is always active and requires no activation. In case of a tie the wearer chooses which ability score to raise and cannot change this choice for another 24 hours.

CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, transformation, creator must be partially neutral; Cost 3,500 gp

I'm still watching. And, as part of having access to the judges' chambers, I can also look back at the stuff from prior years. What specifically did you need to know about your item submission, Casey?

Ah, thanks!

I was just looking at my ideas from last year and with last year's submission I assumed it was as simple as it was rejected because it was one of the items that altered the way die rolls were made (Which appears to be part of the "Encourages Metagaming" category). But now I've realized that a few of the other ability ideas I had for the item could be used instead if that was the only issue. Of course, I could imagine a number of other reasons it would be rejected like: The theme was too silly , The item was unheroic, the item's function was unclear or problematic to implement, or even just some yet to be discovered typo.

But if it was just the die roll altering mechanic that could be easily fixed. Thanks again.

I wonder, is it too late to make a request in this thread?

I've started to think that the reason I thought I was rejected last year might have been wrong.

BRACER OF THE FICKLE MISTRESS

This one got three straight rejects after my comment that it was a bit too metagame. I'll give you a bit more than we discussed, though. You really have to be careful with metagame elements. They work well in limited places, such as Luck domain and such. But in our view it is not the best design to really open up tinkering with rolls, particularly in such a broad way as your item does. That's what held you back. I did like some of the things you did. I like the discussion that you cant have two of these. :)

As you mentioned the "Metagame" Auto-Reject condition is a broad one, but I figured it was worth mentioning that in addition to the examples you gave, it appears items that alter the way rolls are made (Rerolls, taking 10 when you normally wouldn't be able to, etc) also fall into this category, even when they don't provide information about your chance of success.

I figured this was particularly important since it looks like last year quite a few people were auto-rejected for this reason (myself included).

Also: Apologies to the author of the Bracers mentioned above if you're offended, but I'm not singling your item out as a negative example. It was just the first item in the thread where this was brought up. Let me know and I'll change it.

This has me wondering. A couple years ago I submitted a mask that let the wearer swallow whole, and in the stat block I basically repeated most of the text of swallow whole, because it's the sort of ability that while it has name and description in the rules text, you still need to specify in some way the capacity ("X Huge, or 2X Large ... creatures can fit."), as well as the AC and HP of the inside to see how hard it is to escape.

If someone were to submit a item with an ability that has a similar rules status would it be acceptable to just say "This item grants the user the Swallow Whole ability of the Purple Worm" (or T-Rex, etc) and let the players figure out on their own what that actually means?

Would this also apply for abilities which are unique to a given creature or situation? For example "This item grants the user Achaekek's Unweaving Aura ability"?

I tried for "The Resisty!" at some point but the other members weren't having that.

While you're at it you should add the ability to quickly sheath weapons (and other items) to one of those feats. It's probably too weak to be a feat by itself. Heck, might be worth adding to all the feats that have quick draw as a prerequisite.

I've been asking around for this too. There was another thread about it during the previous revision that got about 4 replies, and I mentioned it in the "Welcome to the Final Playtest" thread but in none have I see an answer from someone, well, official.

For what it's worth I think SeekerOfShadowLight's figures look spot on.

I happen to keep a list of characters I want to play that has grown pretty large. I also have something of a reputation (to say the least) for playing some unusual characters. Some highlights that I haven't had the chance to play yet:

1. Alex - A former thug who was turned into a Paladin by an experimental enchantment process, think A Clockwork Orange, complete with severe sex and drug aversion.

2. A Dromite Red Mantis Assassin

3. Iceclimbers
Either Dvati from Dragon Compendium or Halfling with a Cohort

4. Zed Rodrun - Total Opposite of Drizzt: A human/half-elf who grew up in a CG nature-revering culture who rebelled against it and descended into the Underdark to become a Drow slave trader. Uses a single ranged weapon.

5. Vegan Gravetouched Ghoul who subsists on "meat" made from a stone to flesh spell. Did the math on that, actually, ends up costing about half as much per pound, be it at a larger overhead.

6. Quo-Toa - Numerous ideas here, but that's the main issue.

This was mentioned in its own thread once or twice but has since not been addressed by anyone in charge:

What about starting gold for the six classes?

Heck, I actually played Filge as a PC when I played through Age of Worms. I played as a straight Death Master from Dragon Magazine, but that's beside my main point:

I would suggest if you did a formula like that you could make it act like an animated object of the appropriate size instead of a true zombie to make it a bit more sciency then magical. If it had the standard or similar duration it'd probably be balanced as is. Maybe with an added Speak With Dead effect to try to probe the creature's memories.

That was really the point when I felt like my submission was ready to be turned in. I grappled with the design for a week, swinging from 150 to 300 and back over and over. I finally brought it to my sister, who is a very casual gamer, and she told me it barely read like English anymore. I had gotten so obsessed with covering my bases and avoiding some of the flaws and loopholes in previous entries that I had completely forgotten readability.

Actually, I had a similar experience. I ran it by my friend who's played a lot of RPGs but never anything like D&D and see if he could understand it. Of course he had to make certain assumptions like "So you get Attacks of Opportunity when your foe does something stupid, right?". But I think it really helped me state some things more clearly.

Of course, the wonderful (being both sarcastic and not, here) thing about the RPG Superstar contest is that, frequently, there are no similar items.

I totally ended up in that boat. My item has many abilities, none of them are anything close to abilities in any book I've ever seen. I'm expecting half the judges to say it should be 5 times more and the other half to say it should be 5 times less. But just in general I think pricing the item, assuming you put any effort into comparing it to other items, will be just fine. You aren't (I doubt) going to docked too bad for having a few thousand gold too high or two low.

I'm entered, or at least I will be right after I post this. I actually only ever had one idea that came to me suddenly about a month ago and I haven't been able to think of *any* other items since then. This idea has gone through a bit of revision though and I think it's ready. I'm very worried that my name will kill the entry before it starts though, especially since with last year I don't have a good track record for naming.

Might as well take this as a chance to make sure I'm doing the formatting correctly before sending my submission.

Pants of Flying
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 5th
Slot waist; Price 10,000 gp; Weight - lbs.
Description
These pants are adorned with numerous wings and fans, which in addition to being quite cumbersome (the wearer counts as carrying a medium load), allow the wearer to fly as per the spell at will. Unfortunately, since the pants have all the pull the wearer hangs upside-down while in flight, leaving him flat-footed, and after 10 minutes of continuous flight, fatigued from the blood rushing to his head.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, fly, 0 ranks in Knowledge (Architecture and Engineering) and Balance; Cost 5,000 gp

Dont listen to me, or others,Trust your instincts

See, that's what I thought too. Now I wish I would have done more pandering. I'm reminded last year there was someone who dropped out after the first round because he did something he knew the judges would love but wasn't actually very thoughtful design so he felt guilty about it.

Damn. Oh well. Congrats to the top 17. Here's the omitted part from that previous post.

hideous laughter, hold person, charm person, dominate person, suggestion, calm emotions, ray of enfeeblement, silence, blindness deafness, bestow curse, sleep, symbol of sleep, symbol of stunning, command, greater command, mark of justice, quest, cause fear, symbol of fear, symbol of persuasion, symbol of weakness, bane, doom.

Grappling, Tripping, Disarming, Sundering, binding and shackling disabled foes.
And though not his first resort there are nonlethal unarmed strikes,merciful weapons, and ingested/inhaled/contact poisons (all but Con-damaging can be used without risk of death)

So what I imagine is he's got a solid set of tactics against any particular foe.

Fighter/Paladin/Ranger/Barbarian. bestow curse for strength plus a ray of enfeeblement and he's out of the fight. Not only can they not actually fight anymore, but their medium or heavy armor is probably enough weight to prevent them from moving. And of course add calm emotions to cancel out rage and bardic bonuses.

Wizard/Sorcerer/Bard? A silenced monk (either from Paradigm, another cleric, or via an oil) runs up and grapples them. Can't cast any spell, and even if they do break the grapple it costs them a standard action so they'll need to pass a few in a row just to get an standard action to themselves.

Rogue? One blindness spell and there goes all of his precision based damage (right?). After that use something like one of the tactics above.

The aforementioned symbols were going to be in his lair/church, and to address that and the comment about not being able to cast quest I was assuming he wasn't necessarily the highest level cleric in this town, just the political leader.

Once foes are disabled you bind and shackle them and lead them off to prison (Or just repeatedly cast enchantment spells until they fail and they take themselves), which as far as the adventurer is concerned is just as bad as death.

In my defence (sort of) - I thought that I would be in the minority of human villains. Imagine how bewildered I was at the slew of "human something X".

But I can honestly say I tried to give my villain both the striking visual and the goals to match! Tomorrow, I'll find out if I'm right.

Same boat. I had a number of great over-the-top monstrous villains but thought if I really wanted to stand out and demonstrate some design talent I'd have to just try a really well-written and unconventional humanoid. Ironically, everyone turned in humanoids that were thought of as wholly unremarkable and the only real monster-with-class-levels villain (Gulga) was the clear favorite this round.

The bit about the stone-to-flesh meal services creeped me the hell out, in fact, just because I've always assumed that spell creates... well. Human flesh.

I'm glad you liked that. I was defiantly trying to create this idea that as a result of Paradigm the town has some pretty weird evil cult-like behavior like eating human flesh, even if it didn't actually come from a human.

Just as a little sidenote, and not that I'm the first person to discover D&D economics is a little wonky, but Stone Meat is actually a viable guiltless meat alternative, math under the spoiler.

Still, for all that, I do hope you're in the top half of votegetters, if I can say so without being hypocritical.

No worries at all, and thank you for your consideration. Love your username, by the way.

Oh, yeah, and I was really tempted to drop the weird little intro story and am still not sure it was a good idea. I saw them a lot last year and were mostly disapproved of by the judges, I finally decided that it might help paint the picture of someone strictly enforcing nonviolence in a town to being intensely creepy.

Something I definitely saw in a number of comments not only in my entry but in many entries was "This isn't a villain". I don't know how many other contestants used this, but one of my main guides in this round were these attributes on the Round 2 Rules:

A villain:

* Is a unique NPC
* Is an individual creature or entity
* Is as much a plot device as an encounter
* Is an antagonist for the PCs
* Does not have to be a final boss, but he/she/it must be more than just a simple henchman
* Must be capable of being a proactive opponent, not simply reactive
* Must be capable of independent thought and be able to come up with plans and take actions to thwart the PCs

I know at least some commenters don't wholly agree with this definition, since I saw things like "This is a plot device, not a villain". But I'd like to see if we could develop this idea further. What part of this definition should change, if anything?

This is some stuff I was writing up as I read the comments, perhaps the most important part I still can't share since it possibly relates to the next round.

First, the name: Remember how I mentioned I play some weird characters? The name is from a Lumi (MMIII) Incarnate (Magic of Incarnum) I had all stated up but never played for Age of Worms. The name was actually almost my starting point, I loved it so much I thought I'd see if I could make a character deserving of such a name. I'm a huge fan of really over-the-top expressive names (I liked the names of all the characters in The Spirit as well as standard warforged names in Eberron, for example), and noticed last year there was some criticism of Lovecraftian names composed of jumbled letters and apostrophes so I wanted a readable and pronounceable word. I don't think anyone tried something like this last year so I don't think it was my lack of research that lead to the big flop on the name, just sort of a different preference I suppose. For what it's worth "Jonas Nightengale" or something close would have probably been my second choice, but that's ripped off of a Steve Martin movie.
I didn't get a lot of comments on writing, just on the concept. I don't know if that's because my writing was decent (at least an improvement of the writing in my item), or the concept was just so distasteful that people didn't bother mentioning anything else. Just a quick question: Did anyone catch that in the leading story Paradigm was using magic to hold the dwarf still? I felt silly mentioning verbal or somatic components explicitly.
In response to comments about this being a so-called swing for the fences I'd say that is partly correct. Hindsight being 20/20, if I had known the showing for this round was going to be so poor I totally would have gone with one of a few safer concepts I had worked out.
Now, onto the main issues that it seems this villain had. Just a few minutes after 2 I read Ed Greenwood's review, which defiantly pointed out some serious vagueness problems I had. These were mostly a case of being worried I would spend too much time talking about henchmen and not Paradigm himself, as well as trying to keep my villain very portable, which was another heavily criticized point last year. Then I got to Sean and read “He's the sort of person who would berate someone committing a murder but wouldn't actually stop the murder from happening.“ and thought to myself “Really? He is? Huh.” but then I got to “If he's really a pacifist, he won't try to stop anyone who wants to kill him.” and was shocked. I panicked when I realized there was going to be a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of my villain unless the other two judges greatly disagreed. Obviously they did not. I believe more than one comment mentioned they figured Paradigm would simply run away if encountered. I'm not sure if there was some misunderstanding in the word “Pacifism”, maybe I should have left it out of his title. For what it's worth, in my understanding one can be pacifist and simply be opposed to war as a solution to a problem, and plenty still resort to violence when it comes to defending themselves or others. Paradigm though, with the use of magic, doesn't need to resort to violence in these instances. Strictly what I mentioned was that Paradigm has a problem killing any creature for any reason. There was some mention of non-violent positive action Paradigm could take (the Charm domain, for example), but let's just get something straight: a pacifist can do the following things, right?

**List of spells and tactics omitted until round 3 is announced, just in case**

I could have mentioned these things, yes, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that these are tactics, and therefore belong in the tactics section of a stat block (Robert McRae got this exactly right). In fact I was worried that I had even mentioned a few spells by name in a villain description. I also didn't think anything I mentioned was so mechanically radical that I'd need to remind everyone that it was at his disposal. I could have also said “He'll send disabled party members to prison if they committed a crime” but that also seemed a bit redundant. The standard procedure for a town is to lock up or kill people who attempt to murder others, why do I need to bother explicitly mentioning that in this town you'll just be imprisoned?
Finally I saw the phrase "Not a villain" a bunch in my entry, but I don't know if it's just the feeling that Paradigm isn't threatening enough which like I said I can't say too much about right now. I think I should move further discussion of villainy to another thread.

Thanks again for everyone's comments and to those of you that voted for me.

Kids that don't want nap time are good minions. Along the same lines, though obviously a bit darker, would be folks so traumatized by some past event that they are plagued with terrible nightmares or maybe just severe sleeping disorders.

Less than 24 hours left to vote and I still think I might be just a few votes away from making it into the next round. So, I'd encourage people who only had very brief comments to expand on what they said, and don't worry about repeating something that somebody else said.

Finally, I think I could impress a lot of people with a surprising and menacing stat block. I look forward to redeeming myself in many paizoite's eyes if I manage to progress.

Also, "she carries no visible weapons", but uses arrows to kill? Does she have an invisible bow?

Hide (Slight of hand?) checks can be made to conceal items on your person, no reason she can't have a hidden bow.

So, if you're choosing between a couple of options in any given round that seem pretty equivalent, I think it is not just fair but probably desirable to use "past body of work" as your deciding factor, especially as you get later in the contest and there is a larger body of work to judge.

It looks like I'm counting on it since I'm right on the bubble this round and seemed to be in a number of top 5 lists the previous round.

The buffy episodes were Surprise and Innocence in season two. "No weapon forged can destroy me."

It's not necessarily clear in a fantasy setting what "conventional" means. I mean, I would buy someone saying "Mummy Rot cannot be cured by conventional means", yet a 5th level cleric could take care of it without too much difficulty.

Similarly, Vampires cannot be killed by conventional means. Yet little more than a few seconds of sunlight, running water, or a wooden stake does away with them.

And I agree we are in danger of jacking this poor poster's thread; although, bumping it into the 'recent top 10' might actually do him good? Hmmm, swings and roundabouts.

For what it's worth I welcome all comments, even if only tangentially related to my villain. I look forward to responding to all of them and especially appreciate some of the more recent comments.

Why should a villain have to kill an entire village for the party to hate him? Sure if a villain kills a bunch of NPC's you would go after him. But what if he disintegrates your favorite magic weapon, erased your spell books or polymorphed your Barbarian into a rabbit and kept him as a pet (sorry can't just resurrect him he's in a hutch)? Trust me you would spend Levels trying pull this guy apart.

QFT. Obviously I'm totally in support of this idea. If the Rust Monster has taught us anything (other than that Gygax's imagination was aberrant) it is that the only thing worse to players than loosing their character is loosing their character's pluses.

I will go on record with Casey gets my vote.

Much has been said that the concept does not work, 'that the character is not a villain because he is too kill-able'. I disagree, I believe characters would not simply dispose of a town’s blessing and saint like some random monster in a dungeon.

The other big complaint seems to revolve around the fact the character lacks development showing how he would cause ‘trouble’ to the characters.

I am guessing Casey was planning to expand in this area in the next round, as the character concept is nearly at the 500-word limit. I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that by stat block the author was going to include a tactics entry to answer these questions, and (mis)understood that this round was all flavour, no crunch.

Casey, I wish you luck on getting to Round 3. I loved the Maw, see the potential here, and look forward to seeing this villain fully realized.

You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for your vote.

So, basically, it's a crap shoot after the top four.

It certainly keeps things very exciting for the folks at the bottom of the totem pole. Things aren't quite so bad for myself and the 15 others who did not receive any judge recommendations. All it takes is a few people to throw their 4th vote your way for either liking your actual villain, waiting to see if the stat block is a vast improvement, or maybe even some kind of leap of faith based on the item round. There might even be people not bothering to vote for the strong leaders to give more of the marginal candidates they liked a chance, though I can't say I'd necessarily recommend any of this.

...he feverishly pursues rumors of a magical mask that would allow him to swallow such an opponent whole.......

Ha! I missed that until just now. Awesome.

I've posted once to encourage comments, so now it's time to encourage voting. I remain optimistic since it will only take a few 4th votes to get into the next round given the very small number of widely popular entries. Since Mr Peterson compared my entry to The Blink Dog Nation, I'll see if I can come up with a suitable analog to “Think Blink”. How about:

It's time for Paradigm!
Primed for Paradigm! or even
Voting Paradigm is not a crime!

The DM must know those things to properly play your villain. It's utterly impossible for a DM to read your mind to discover these things. You have to tell him. You're not trying to sell your villain to players with this entry, you're trying to sell it to DMs and publishers. Know your audience.

The bigger problem here is I'm not sure he's supposed to do for the next round. There was mention that contestants would not be allowed to change the mechanical description they gave in round 2, so he's stuck giving him levels in mage and sage, and listing all kinds of new mechanics covering his head-survival ability and the various other features mentioned.

Oh, and I'm a big fan of the Raccoon!

Looks like the board ate it, let's try this again. It sounds like a got the green light from Vic. This is obviously a first draft since it's about half the max word count but here's what I had so far:

Glurd, The Enduring Hate
Female Advanced Reefclaw Sorcerer 8 Barbarian 4

Description: Glurd's shell suffers from numerous cracks which have healed poorly as well as a number of gnarled protrusions which resulted from imperfect regeneration. Glurd's voice sounds remarkably human with a thessalonian accent and is produced via a permanent tongues spell. When charming won't due she and her minions occasionally don magically preserved skin suits to walk among humans undetected, just as long as nobody looks at them too long.

Motivations/Goals: Attempts to bring back the Runelord of Wrath (the reefclaw's creator) was, in times past, Glurd's primary goal. But lately her attention has shifted from the sunken palace to the nearby coastal cities of Golarion. She intends to stop the mass killings of the reefclaw populations due their highly prized claw meat. Organized demonstrations of his species' cunning have been brushed off as curious behavior. Attempts to bring awareness to reefclaw's intelligence through dominated activists has failed. The occasional ambush of a fisherman goes noticed. The only fair thing is to kill and eat a human for every reefclaw that has been fished out of the waters. The time for subtle manipulations is reaching it's end. Now is the time for blood and justice.

Hook: Glurd has been working to organize a number of charity reefclaw feeds, which has taken months to set up. The plan is to invite the most important members of society to the feeds and have the tables turned as the doors are locked and very much living reef claws and chuuls pour over the attendees. The feedings are occurring within a few days of each other and far apart so it is up to the party to discover this evil plot, discover the next feeding locations, and put an end to the charity events before they end the attendees.

...
Here are some more statistics about the judges' voting:
...

Oh thanks! I was thinking about doing this and hadn't gotten around to it. I was hoping for obvious reasons that the "All 4 judges do not recommend" was going to be larger than 16. Though, even in spite of that it's going to be really weird since there are only 4-5 really strong favorites so just a few 4th votes will end up determining 2/3rds of the contestants in round three.

I'm waiting to hear if posting my first villain idea is kosher while voting is still going on, if not I'll post here after voting for sure.

We still can't make comments relating to our entries in other threads too, right? For example there are two threads concerning villains that we almost ran, and this looks like it might be prohibited under the spirit of the rule but not limited explicitly. Any help?

1. Neil Spicer—GULGA CENCH, Scion of Cyth-V’sug
2. Ssyth'ek, He Who Devours Demons
3. Myself

So far I haven't used my 4th vote because I'm not sure anyone else deserves it. As many folks have said this was a pretty weak round, myself being no exception it appears.

It's a pain to see misunderstandings about your own villain, but unfortunately one must swallow the facts and understand that the faults are probably in his own prose...

I went through the same realization. I'd be neat if we had 50 words or so we could spend answering questions during the week of voting but can also see some problems arising from that.

I'd just like to thank everyone for commenting. At the time of this reply I believe I'm tied with Legendsinger for the most number of comments, so at the very least it looks like I'll have the most to learn from this round. For those of you that are concerned, I in no way take personal offense from any of the comments so far and understand that it is only my villain which is being evaluated. Of course, regardless of the results I'll do my best to answer questions and respond to comments once voting ends and I am permitted to do so.

Thanks again and happy voting.

(My primary game system is either B/X or OD&D, if you can't tell)

Wand of DEVO

And here I was hoping it had something to do with whips, funny hats, and keyboards. ;__;

Huh, I thought I posted a couple days ago but I hear these boards can be occasionally unreliable. Let's see how much I can reconstruct:

* Does grappling with the mask provoke an AoO, or does the mask have the equivalent of improved grab?

* Does the wearer take the -4 penalty on the CMB roll for not using his hands?
* Pinning an opponent normally gives the grappler the grappled condition. Is that the case with the mask too?

You do not actually grapple with the mask, it grants a grappler a new option instead of pinning to swallow. The second grapple check to pin doesn't provoke so neither would this. Similarly since is appears that with swallow whole the target is no longer grappled once swallowed I see no reason to have them be grappled with the mask.

The bite attack on top of everything else is a bit much in my opinion.

It actually didn't occur to me that was a possibility until I heard it mentioned here. I am inclined to agree with details later.

You didn't pass this through spell-check

Oh, it's much worse than that. I saw "extradimentionally" come up as misspelled in Open Office and went "Right, a word like that wouldn't be in the dictionary" even added it as correct since "extra" was correct and how else could you spell "dimentionally"? This is by no means the beginning of my trouble with the English language as Demiurge can attest (like pronouncing a 't' at the end of 'across', replacing the 'i' with an 'a' in 'miracle', etc). I already made sure my next entry got proof read a few times.

Any chance we'll see a gnome or a halfling making use of it this?

One neat feature of the Pathfinder Beta rules is that size is less important when grappling, so it is by no means unreasonable for a small character to pin a medium one.

And as a side note I also envisioned this item being used out of combat as much as in combat to eat a whole hero's feast or ritualistically devour a bound or unconscious sacrifice.

I agree, it seems like an item much better suited to the Rough Beast than the Pallid Princess.

I did notice that it seemed like Rovagug, Urgathoa, and Lammashtu all had a change to have an item that you swallow whole, but I almost like that. Rovagug and Lammashtu would obviously give you a big tooth-filled mouth, dropping the poison and disease resistance for something else, and if I were making three variations I'd get rid of the bite attack on Urgathoa all together.

I agree that this item is probably sufficiently different from the Acerak mask, however, which was made from a fiend twisted by magic.

Really? Awesome. I don't think our party ever made it that far but that makes me wish we did.

For example, could you take the mask off and drop the swallowed target off a cliff?

Well, in the same way you let go of someone you're pinning and drop them off a cliff, sure. Presumably in both cases they'd be allowed a reflex save to grab on to the ledge before plummeting.

If I were to use this, I'd make the extra-dimensional space the actual stomach of some awful creature lurking somewhere deep in the Astral. One that sometimes demands to be fed. And the item should be cursed so you couldn't get rid of it, of course.

Clearly we think alike! After I read the Ecology of the Bag of Devouring I wrote out a prestige class based on forming a symbiotic relationship with one, trading regular feedings with increased extradimensional storage, acid geysers, and a rope trick-like effect.

And it seems like it's sort of the "gonzo" item of this year's competition.

"Gonzo" is really my only setting, I've been trying my hardest to tone things down for the competition, which anyone who's seen my campaigns or even characters can probably attest to. Actually, I seem to remember two years ago at Penny Arcade Expo Demiurge1138 made someone at the Paizo booth very very sad when he informed him that I consider the 3.5 Fiend Folio to my my favorite player resource.

“Stop this immediately!” cries the priest, causing the dwarf to freeze in place unnaturally. “What do you hope to gain by killing this man?”. Not waiting for an answer he continues: “Cutting off this man's head will not bring back your loss, only breed more vengeance against you. How about I make you a deal? Put that axe away and your hefty bar tab is on me.”. The dwarf loosens up just in time to nod timidly, walking back into the bar and rubbing the new bare spot on his chin.

Paradigm Theoguard, Pacifist Poet-Priest of Shelyn
Male Half-elf Bard 1 / Cleric 8

Description: Paradigm weighs 165 lbs, standing 5'8” tall, appearing blissful and determined. His long blond hair is adorned with colorful feathers. His sharp, wide features make wearing a big grin come naturally. He wears embroidered white vestments, a matching headband, and trinkets around his arms and neck. His time spent training acolytes has given him the habit of speaking in rhetorical questions.

A man of peace, Paradigm takes great measures to ensure his life causes minimal harm to others. He eats only food which is magically generated to prevent even a single worm to suffer from farming. He drinks through fine silk to make sure he never swallows a fallen gnat by mistake. None in his city go hungry after his harmless and affordable stone to flesh food program was implemented, and even the requisite stone was left over from a statue he is constructing to his beloved goddess. His clothing is also magically generated, but has been known to use naturally shed feathers from the rare birds he keeps to construct more elaborate attire. The townsfolk consider Paradigm to be a blessing and a saint.

Motivations/Goals: Paradigm has known for years the importance of a life of total nonviolence: “Do not all creatures have a capacity for beauty in the eyes of Shelyn? What could excuse murder which ends all that glorious potential?”. He seeks to teach others how to maintain a life of peace which he is counter-intuitively aggressive in advocating. Occasionally he takes special interest in those that can be helped the most, hoping to add yet another abandoned weapon trophy to his cluttered church walls.

Hook: Tales of the party's murderous (and possibly exaggerated) exploits make their way to Paradigm's desk, so he plans on visiting them via sending and his acolytes to show them the virtue of a life of peace. Though he and his servants would not dare directly harm the party, they are not above stealing weapons, removing spellbook pages and even giving a quest to the especially spite-ridden.

Things turn from troublesome to dangerous when the party finds out that agents of wrath plan to destroy the town, yet Paradigm can't be convinced that these forces will not listen to reason. In fact, this threat may not even notice him. Unless the party stops Paradigm's interference the town and party are doomed.

Glad to know I'm not alone. I came up two ideas, got rid of one for not being a villain, wrote up the second and after a day of reading last year's entries realized they weren't a villain but my first idea almost certainly is, but still get the feeling like everyone would like the other one better.

This is not quite a formatting issue but it's pretty close. My villain would be most elegant if I use a custom template, and I could include this information in the stat block but obviously I can't this round. So, my current plan is to include the name of the template and make sure it's descriptive enough that everyone knows what's going on. A similar example might be something like: "Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, Spore-tainted Orc Barbarian 10 Fighter 4". So, does that work?

In order:
1. Blightlady's Bread - Love the idea of using them as an ingested poison on a prisoner.
2. Master's Perfect Golden Bell
3. Dust of Weighty Burdens
4. Haunted Shoes
5. Helm of the Golem Master

MAW OF URGATHOA
Aura Moderate transmutation; CL 9th
Slot face; Weight 1 lb; Price 14,000 gp

DESCRIPTION
This mask is invisible when worn, but makes the wearer's face appear sickly, and makes their teeth grow thin and sharp. The wearer gains a primary bite attack which deals 1d6 base damage, immunity to ingested poisons and a +4 profane bonus to intimidate and saves against disease.
The mask also grants an additional ability (3/day), usable only when the wearer succeeds a grapple check to pin. Instead of being pinned, the target is extradimentionally “swallowed”, taking 1d6+6 bludgeoning and 6 acid damage each round. The target can escape by using a light slashing or piercing weapon and dealing 20 points of damage to the “gullet” (AC 12). If they do, the wearer takes 20 damage and the target bursts from the wearer, making the mask unusable for 5 rounds. If the target dies their body is expelled, granting the wearer the benefits of a death knell spell. If the mask is removed or disabled any swallowed target is immediately expelled.

CONSTRUCTION
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, giant vermin or black tentacles ; Skill Knowledge (Religion); Cost 7,000 gp

3) Any problem with resubmitting the previous entry?
I had a weird problem last time where I sent the wrong incarnation of the description so it was over the word limit, and until the judges realized this it seemed to be taken fairly positively.