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Seer's Tea
This rich tea can be made from any number of herbs, and is greatly prized by village herbalists, adepts, and low-ranking priests. When the tea is brewed without a filter and imbibed, the drinker can read the patterns in the leaves remaining at the bottom of his or her cup, gaining the benefits of an Augury spell.
Additionally, the tea can be used as an extra material component when casting Augury, removing the need for a focus. In this case, the caster instead reveals information as if he or she had cast Divination instead.
One use, either to cast Augury or as an additional material component, consumes the tea. It is not possible to use two doses at once to produce the Divination effect.
Weak divination; CL 4th; Craft Wonderous Item, either Augury or Divination; Price 525 gp.; Cost to Create 275 gp + 10 XP
Good flavor. It is truly a wondrous item--something common with special abilities. It is focused and interesting and players would want it--bumping an augury to a divination is great. My players would love to memorize a couple extra augurys and turn them into "divs" as they call them. Plus, its a good low level item that also retains its relevance at higher levels. I think this is pretty good.
DitheringFool
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules, GameMastery Cards Subscriber)
I was expecting something better than an augury item, but this is actually better than average for those. For one thing, it's consumed by use (which is smarter than all those coins: there's a cost to choosing to use it).
And it rewards casters who already have augury available. Not bad.
Woot! I wrote the "coins" one! At least it was enough to remember!
Mark
That would make two of us with coin auguries
:-DThough I would guess I was in that first five. :p
I was expecting something better than an augury item,I was re-reading and I caught this. What where your expectations based on? I don't have reputation that I know of. Was it the name? If so, I'm glad I picked a good one.
There were more than 30 augury-based items, most of them coins; after a while, just seeing the word "augury" made me wonder about the originality of the entry.
The item's name made the first impression, good or bad (author names were hidden from the judges). I was expecting something other than an augury item based on the name; after a while, I came around and became this item's champion, but it's a clear case where a cool name may have oversold the item.
There were more than 30 augury-based items, most of them coins; after a while, just seeing the word "augury" made me wonder about the originality of the entry.
I blame the lack of diversity among Divination spells. Especially low level ones.
As far as the name overselling it, what kind of item would you expect from a Seer's tea?
As far as the name overselling it, what kind of item would you expect from a Seer's tea?
I don't honestly know what I was expecting: I have a divination article that I have half-written for Kobold Quarterly that tries to do some interesting things with the school, but ....
More like precognition or clairaudience, perhaps. It's hard to remember what your expectations are in the moment between reading a name and then clicking to the item text.
What sold it was the way the mechanic worked around augury's problems. Solid design.
Cheaper than a scroll of divination (750) so good for characters at lower levels that can't cast divination yet and can't afford the divination scroll and you don't have to worry about mishaps.
Mechanic of using it with spell to improve the spell is very cool. Kind of inline with Unearthed Arcana's magical spell components.
Nice item. I like the consumable aspect. It would have been good, though, to have a description for finding or making multiple doses.
I wanted to, but to say more than 'is frequently found in multiples' took up too many words for too little gain. I think it's better off without it: I think most DMs can figure out how to place multiple doses if they want to.
Love the idea of tea based magic items. I'm a big fan of the Avatar the last Airbender series, one character 'Uncle Iroh' has a love of fine teas. I could see him having access to something like this as well as some other fine teas.
I can already see a new line of tea magic forming.
Perhaps a Meditative Tea that allows for less rest between spell memorization, though if over used it could have some nasty side effects as well as being extremely addictive.
An Energizing Tea that allows one to resist the effects of fatigue for a limited time could also be useful.
Nice concept, makes sense, everyone would get it. Fills a need without being overpowered. I'd add a bit more ceremony around it, but that's me. :-)
Couldn't have said it better.
I'd love to give this and the coin belt of beguiling to the "beautiful and mysterious Gypsy fortuneteller" NPC in the Gypsy caravan that the PCs meet up with at a rest stop while on the road.
My favourite thing about this item is how it is based on a traditional "real world" form of divination (tasseography, or tea-leaf reading). It got me thinking about other traditional divination techniques and how they might be co-opted in a similar way (though I have to agree with Joel that magic entrails of divination might be pushing things a bit...)
This could easily make it into my top 10.
I can already see a new line of tea magic forming.
Great extension of the "magical tea" concept Sarelth. It wouldn't be at all difficult to come up with a tonne of others - just start from the various claims made about different "herbal/aromatherapy" teas and convert to magic effects. :-)
:-j(enni)
