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Wintertide Candle
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 1,500 gp; Weight 1/2 lb.
Description
This translucent white candle is one foot long and resembles an icicle. When lit, the candle transmutes its material composition from wax into gleaming divine ice (frozen holy water like that produced by holy ice). The flame of the candle is cool and radiates violet-blue light. Lighting the candle is a standard action, and anyone holding it can extinguish it as a free action. The candle can burn for 10 rounds (not necessarily consecutive) before the divine ice is entirely consumed.
While the candle is burning, it emits an aura of divine cold in a 30-foot radius. The candle modifies the effect of channeled positive or negative energy that originates inside the aura, or of any cure or inflict spell cast inside the aura. Instead of their normal effects, these abilities inflict an amount of cold damage equal to the number of hit points they would normally cure or inflict. A target of these effects may halve the damage by making a Fortitude save against the normal DC for the spell or ability.
A character may hurl the lit candle at an enemy as a ranged touch attack with a range increment of 10 feet, causing it to explode into a burst of chilled holy water. A living creature struck in this manner is numbed by divine cold, becoming staggered for half the remaining time that the candle could burn (Fortitude DC 17 negates). An undead creature struck in this manner takes 1d4 points of damage for each remaining round that the candle could burn, as if it were hit by holy water.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, Elemental Spell (cold), cure light wounds, holy ice; Cost 750 gp
This item has the distinction of being one of the really early submissions this year that didn't just totally suck. We had such a huge, horrible pile of items I wasn't even sure if this one was good or not. I think my first thought was: "finally, a minimally competent item, I need to keep this around to see if it is actually a good item or if it just looks like a diamond because it is floating in a sea of poo." So I waited and I came back to it and while it is strange it is in fact really good. Well done and good luck!
I like it, it's weird.
I don't think it should force your cure-my-allies channels to instead deal cold damage; that needs to be fixed or clarified.
As for the cost as an attack vs. undead, a scroll of searing light at caster level 5 is 375 gp for 5d6, caster level 10 would be 750 gp for 10d6, so I think the price is pretty close. Maybe needs to increase because it's use-activated instead of spell completion.
This is a pretty sweet item. Shut down a healer’s channeled positive energy and cure spells or repairing undead for 10 rounds. Price could be higher considering how this could shut down certain encounters. It reminds me of Alexander MacLeod’s scapular of true devotion dealing energy damage with channeled energy.
I’m going to ignore the last paragraph - I don’t see the need for it.
First of all, congratulations on making the Top 32! That in itself is a major accomplishment and it’s something you should take great pride in. You rock!
This is a well-written item based on a tight theme. I like the holy/unholy frosty imagery this thing evokes. It's also a great item for a villain. Oh, you want to heal the damage me and my minions have delt you? Sorry, punk! <lights his wintertide candle>. Well done. Best of luck to you!
Contributor
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Star Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
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Welcome to the Top 32, Morphemic!
The wintertide candle has a lot of potential for surprise, from the twisting of cure/inflict spells (or effects? Does this include, say, channel energy?) to the fact the candle can be used as a "cold bomb." This is a great one-shot item.
I wish you the best of luck in future rounds!
Glad to see this made it, probably in my top five of items I saw that I enjoyed.
Well done, sir! This was a near keep for me, I liked the atmosphere of it a great deal.
This was another that up voted almost all of the time. What sealed the deal for me was the last paragraph. Chilled holy water...fun!
I don't have much to say aside from the 10d6 damage, even though it is pretty good in pricing it, at the level someone would be buying this it will negate a lot of undead encounters.
Congrats!
Wow! Thanks so much to all of the voters and judges. It feels good to be selected. And Clark, you really scared me with that post about the early submissions being terrible. I'm glad to have been the exception!
Yeah, this is good. Nice consistent theme, doesn't do too much. Probably slightly undercosted. Another one with a lovely literary aspect to it. Physically, at least, it seems like it came from a Celtic fairy story or something. Recommended.
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When I first saw the CR 19 Tzitzimitl, I was impressed with its Light to Dark ability (which can allow it to transform a PC cleric's heal attempt into damage instead). It's pretty much guaranteed to kill multiple PCs if any of them get low during the fight. It's dastardly evil and just right for a rare CR 19 monster. In my opinion, this is not something we want to see on a wondrous item. For 1,500 gp, why wouldn't all evil overlords past a certain point have one of these on their person or at least on a minion whose standard action isn't as valuable. I know I would have had at least two deaths and likely a TPK in Part 6 of Rise of the Runelords in literally any of the last 10 encounters if one of these items had been present, which seems to me like it means the price point needed to be much higher than 1,500 gold (considering how high level those PCs are). Since PCs are much more likely than NPCs to run around channeling to heal, this is only really a problem from the bad guy side.
Anyway, the idea was creative and well-flavored, but the balance in my opinion is way off. I downvoted your item consistently for that reason, so you'll need to really think about balance for your archetype if you want to win me back. I'm looking forward to seeing it and hoping that with that feedback in mind, you'll really impress me next time!
This item is creepy and cool (pun only sort of intended).
Congratulations on making it to the top 32. I'll see you in the archetype round!
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Dedicated Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka Steven T. Helt
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This is a decent item with a gotcha factor. I think it could turn a humdrum encounter interesting because of its surprise and other applications. Suppose you use it to channel positive energy and "heal" a squad of fire giants?
I think I only saw this once or twice, but I know I voted for it.
I liked this one enough that it made my Keep file. It's nicely written, has some pretty visuals, and concise in terms of powers. I do think items that play with/alter a cleric's channeling are beginning to feel a little old hat, but that's as much a result of seeing six years worth of contest items go by as anything else. That said, this does go a bit beyond that by messing around with spontaneous cure/inflicts as well, so good choice there. I do think you should have stuck with that and not gone for the all-or-nothing ranged weapon effect; it would have made an already tight item a little tighter. (That's as much a personal bias as anything; I've never cared for the 'secondary powers which uses the whole thing up at once' item design school.)
It's a very neat little item. Good job, looking forward to see what else you have to show us.
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This seems great as a 'surprise' villainous item. Final showdown with the icy BBEG, the cleric channels energy to heal his companions, and half of them keel over, dead and frozen. Not sure if the PCs would appreciate, but the evil DM within me certainly would.
Am I right in assuming since the date on this thread is Dec 4th, that you submitted this item on first day? Nice.
Mark, congratulations on being top 32!
I remember seeing this item when voting started, and while I wasn't sure then, a re-read shows me that it's really a neat little item. My one comment is one that's been raised before - turning all positive channeling into cold damage is really powerful. Perhaps allow a caster to make a Will save to channel normally while within the candle's radius.
The Good: I get a clear mental picture of what this looks like and its effect when used that's a great sign.
The Bad: Some of your mechanics seem clunky- the whole screw your allies as well of you enemies makes me wonder if this was a design choice or an oversight.
The Ugly: 1500 GP, 1500 GP, 1500 GP take like 8 of these and melt a vampire in like 2 rounds of action then run away! Do this for the low cost of $12,000 GP 8 of these will do an average of 200 damage to the undead.
Food for thought. Congrats on making the Top 32
Yet another item I didn't see during voting. Congrats on making it to the Top 32!
I was a little confused at first when I read it...something tripped my brain up and I wasn't quite following you, but looking back on it I think it was more that I need another cup of coffee than anything wrong with the writing.
The thing I really adore here is that it has a versatility to it, allowing it to be used effectively by PCs and GMs in different situations. I'm also one of the ones who kind of likes the idea of a DM using one to trip up a healer. Heck, I've even played in games where we did a lot of group vs. group combats, so using this as a PC to trip up a healer in an opposing group could be a lot of fun.
Price might be a little off, but it's close enough that I'm not going to ding you for it. Overall, tight theme and novel idea. I like it.
Can't wait to see what you bring to the table next round! Good luck!
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Dedicated Voter Season 6
aka Mattrex
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First of all, congratulations for making Top 32! Good luck in round two.
This item had me a little bit on the fence. I saw it more than once during voting, and voted for it a few times and against it a few times. It's really a matter of flavor versus mechanics: love the flavor, and it's got tremendous capacity to become a "gotcha" moment that makes complacent players expecting a humdrum encounter to sit up in their seats and take notice very quickly. As a GM, that sort of tool is invaluable.
The mechanics of the item are a bit wonky, though. I don't actually think it has to do with the item's central thesis: the whole idea is great, but the item doesn't come built-in with many safeguards against abuse. Being able to convert channeled energy to cold damage on a 1-for-1 basis is not only powerful for GMs looking to have a villain hose the party, but for a cleric with Selective Channeling looking to turn his cheap channels into devastating cold bombs while sparing his companions.
This item would be much, much stronger with a few safeguards built in. Whenever making an item, always ask yourself this question: "If I were a rules lawyering player with this item, how would I be able to abuse it?" Perhaps limiting the amount of cold damage that can be inflicted, or causing channels to reduce the amount of time the candle has left to burn, or something like that. Something that doesn't make the party cleric carry a lit candle in hand at all times to ice over the baddies.
A last quibble is that the phrase "divine cold" kept tripping me up. I realize now that it's just a flavorful description, but it reads to me like a technical game term (like "positive energy" or "negative energy"), and I actually had to double check to make sure it wasn't a real thing.
Congratulations Mark,
This was one of my early keepers. Mostly because of the flavor. I think the mechanics are not balanced (see above). This also seems like a GM item instead of something a character will want written on their sheet. That said this is tied really well with the theme, & I loved it.
My advice for R2: balance. Really work on the balance as archetypes will be easy to turn just a little into a lot.
Good luck, nice job :)
Thanks to everyone who has commented so far. I appreciate all of the feedback, whether you liked the item or not. A lot of what I've read is kind of what I was expecting -- like many of you, the public voting helped me to see the flaws in my own work.
I do plan to write some more detailed design notes and responses to specific points. Right now I'm still working on my archetype, but I'm close to finished and I should have time for a longer post here tomorrow night.
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka JoelF847
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Every time I read this item during voting, I was much to concerned about abuse - while it's tightly written, it's way to powerful to let a positive energy channeler convert their healing to energy damage. If they wanted to do damage to most enemies with their channel, they should have picked negative channeling. This makes it too easy to have the best of both worlds.
And I didn't even realize it affected ANYONE in the radius - I somehow assumed it was only the person holding the lit candle - the abuse of someone else lighting one and tricking your cures into damage is even worse.
Make sure in future rounds that you think about how abusable things are - in future rounds, these types of problems will be pointed out in the threads and strongly influence voting for those who might not have though of abuse options on their own read through.
Congratulation on making it into the top 32. This is an item I don't recall seeing during voting, but I do like it. Items that change channeled energy can be a lot of fun. I agree that there should probably be some kind of save to resist the change, but that also might ruin half the fun of it since clerics typically have a good will save; As far as the amount of damage being balanced or not, I'd say its no more/less unbalanced than the ability it modifies. Good luck in round 2.
I liked it, i love anything related to Ice or Lightning magic in all kinds of games!. This is really good, and I can totally see an ice-themed oracle getting some use out of it!.
Congratulations and good luck on the next round! ^^.
Good idea...but a little overly complicated in my opinon.
A good item to find in an adventure that has fire-based undead, but who would bother to make it very often themselves?
Basically a Holy Hand-grenade.
Light, count to 2...no 4...wait! Count to 3! Then throw...
*blows up vorpal rabit*
Thats how it works!
=)
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Star Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka burrahobbit
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Congratulations on making the Top 32! I love it when an item is not only useful but downright magical in its feel, and this covers both of those bases nicely. Look forward to seeing your ideas for future rounds!
Good concept, tight design, well-written, properly formatted. Agree with Steve on ignoring the last paragraph.
Alright. It's time for me to write a little bit about my item.
1. Given that I submitted this on the first day, you can probably tell that I designed the item long before I knew there would be public voting. I was definitely trying to give the judges what they were looking for. My guiding principle in brainstorming for this was to find "mojo" at all costs.
2. The specific inspiration for this item was the holy ice spell. I always thought that the idea of frozen holy water was clever and interesting, but that the spell didn't do the concept justice. It was just a variant of wall of ice with a weird blast thrown in as an alternate effect. Frozen holy water should do something unique.
So I thought, "what if a wondrous item was made of holy ice?" I brainstormed a list of possible item types that could be made of the stuff, and a list of powers related to both holyness and ice. The best ideas from this brainstorm brought about the core concept of this item. From that concept, the mechanics and flavor text practically wrote themselves.
3. Imagining play scenarios for this item was fun, but a bit troubling. I realized that players might only need this for a few rounds in a niche encounter with fire monsters while villains (particularly undead villains) could get great mileage from it. In response to these thoughts, I designed the secondary "bomb" power of the candle to make sure players would be able to use this thing if they got one. I also needed to make sure it wasn't safe for undead to keep these things in their layers -- they were made from holy water, after all.
4. Is this balanced? I did worry about this, and decided that the key to the balance of this item was that it was fairly easy to counter. I couldn't figure out a way to specifically call out the countermeasures I imagined in the text, however. The first was that the candle only affected spells/channels that originated inside the radius. You could heal someone inside just fine if you did it from the outside. The radius was set to equal that of a channel so that unaffected channels could not reach the candle itself.
The second countermeasure I imagined was sundering the candle. It's not too hard to break an icicle!
Were those enough to make this a balanced item? I admit I probably would have to think long and hard before publishing this in a book as is. I think it would have to be tweaked a little more to become balanced. But I also don't think it's nearly as bad as some of the commenters make it sound in their posts.
I realize I haven't addressed all of the concerns here directly. Some of them I'll probably be thinking about for a while.
5. The first draft of this item that had all of the powers was priced at 4,000 gp based on my analysis of how powerful I thought my item was. The reason I lowered it so much before submission is that players tend to be very reluctant to buy expensive consumables, especially if their usage is rather niche.
6. The name was the last thing I came up with and it was difficult for me, but when I discovered the word "wintertide" during a thesaurus search I knew I had what I was looking for.
Thanks for the insight on your thought process during design, I stand by my critique but that was meant in the spirit of constructive if viewed otherwise please accept my apologies. No matter what any commentators say you won the public over enough to make top 89 and the judges over enough to make the top 32 which is no mean feat. Congrats again.
Don't worry. I'm not taking the criticism personally at all and I recognize it as constructive.
I was happy to read what everyone had to say regardless of what they thought of the item.
Honestly I could see using your item with a clarification on allied mechanics (bearer's choice) and a slight uptick on price (2,500-2,750) and I'd throw these in my game in a heartbeat.
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Yeah, this one oozes atmosphere and play possibilities, for both heroes and villains.
As a balance issue, though, 10d4 damage against undead for 750 gp? Seems a little too good.
Keep.
Uhm, 10d4 dmg is ~ 25 dmg. So 750 gp for 25 dmg. to 1 undead creature with a ranged touch? It's not something most players would waste money on.
As prior entries will tell you, Template Fu is one mean point eating machine, but will also praise where praise is due.
These reviews being this in depth usually take me a while to do and they get fitted in around other demands on my time, so please bear with me if I haven’t gotten to your item yet. I will get there in the end.
Review Caveat: I try to keep things totally dispassionate and all comments herein are my own. Having not made the illustrious levels that you have achieved this year, I can only caveat that anything I propose in feedback may not be totally in line with what Paizo thinks or needs of its freelance game designers, so do consider carefully any and all feedback I make under this light.
I start your review with…
Congratulations on being selected by the public at large and then the stalwart judges!
Review Breakdown:
Template: 5/5
Yes, another perfectly executed template! So you added line breaks around Description and Construction, that’s no biggie. I actually like it that way, it feels cleaner and more easier to read and scan even though it probably makes nada difference.
Spelling: 5/5
This bit IS boilerplate to avoid confusion. Everyone should know to use US English, so you just know that I am going to eat points for stray ‘u’ letters and similar.
The sound of full belly contented dragon-kin rumbles are coming from his nest, sssh, quietly tip toe on please.
Readability: 4/5
These are readings you can get from most spelling and grammar check options in word processors, for this, I am pasting everyone’s description into Word for consistency. My grading’s are purely my own personal feelings for target scores but it should be noted these are very helpful during development to spot problems in your writing, especially passivity.
Passive Sentences 16% (a good percentage)
There are whole threads on this and it is possible to get 0%, which is wicked, but I would expect scores of less than 20% to be around the ideal mark for item descriptions (sometimes, you need the passive, but only rarely).
Flesch Reading Ease 53.7 (a little lower than I like, but this is ok)
(0-30 best understood by university graduates, 60-70 easily understood by 13-15 year olds, 90-100 easily understood by 11 year olds)
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level 11.2 (-1pt, slightly high)
(This equates to the grades found in the US schooling system, e,g. 8.2 means it should be understandable by the average 8th grade student)
Me as a Designer Review: 4/5
Hmm, on initials scan, I may struggle a little here, let’s read on by paragraph in depth and see what I can find…
Recently, in my own word smithing practice, I have found that if I am using the word “and” it means I am wasting word count. So looking at your first line, is it possibly to remove that word? Maybe, “This translucent white candle, resembling an icicle, is one foot long”. It’s purely style though, and (sic) I am only mentioning it as another source of possible word savings for everyone to consider when reviewing their own work.
“When” is a big no-no though, be more active in your descriptions here… “Lighting the candle transmutes it’s wax composition into gleaming divine ice (…”.
If you start typing “When”, remember its starts the question “When will I avoid using when?” ;) I still do it myself, it’s a hard habit to break, as the song goes.
All item activations that require activating are standard actions, so you don’t need to say this. Again, it isn’t a huge thing, but worth bearing in mind and being aware of.
Any item saying, here is x something’s spend them as you see fit, introduces something bad, that something is “more book-keeping”. Your item falls into this trap – it is especially bad between sessions if they are weekly or less frequent and you have to stop right in the middle of something in game. GM and player will have to track the current available duration remaining for the day – always try to design to keep the game flowing and the book-keeping as low as possible.
That being said, you could drop all the consecutive wording and simply say “The candle burns one inch per round.” We the GMs and players will fully understand that means, once gone its gone. With how it is currently, there is the possibility that some portion of mundane candle remains – and players will ask if there is that chance. It saves a few more precious words for you to use elsewhere if you need them. It would increases the max duration to 12 (because it is a foot long :p).
You also mention in the first paragraph a radiation of violet-blue light – but don’t mention if it is any better or worse than illumination from a standard candle – you need to catch these because this question is pretty likely to come up at some point at the table.
In paragraph 1, we talked about lighting the candle as the activation, so starting paragraph 2 with “While the candle is burning, it emits…” is a wordy way of saying “A lit candle emits…”.
Getting to the last paragraph, we have a grenade like effect. I immediately wondered about splash damage (you stand next to the student being water bombed at rag week, you will get some of it too). This is something that could have rounded this last action out using words saved earlier ;)
Generally, I think you covered the bases pretty well, the rules are tight and innovative. I think the powers are all equally cool and flow in the natural order that they should. It’s almost a 5/5 but I just can’t give it to you, the sum of the whole review says, so close to perfect but not quite. But I do feel guilty for taking that point.
Overall Impression: 4/5
Flawless execution, but I think I need to deduct for the potential questions that might arise at the game table, but only the 1 point.
With the rules fu evident here, I certainly look forward to your archetype with great expectation!
Final Score: 22/25
I won’t give a final score comment as I haven’t for anyone else as I work through the items.
If this interests for personal reasons, please feel free to check out everyone else’s scores and at the same time check out your competition and their feedback too!
Closing, as I started…
Congratulations on being selected!
Thanks for the very nice template fu review. I'm thrilled to receive a decent score. Now all I need is a review from "Ask A RPGSupersuccubus".
I loved the theme of this item, especially as when I read it, it was snowing. As soon as I read it, I could imagine using it, and that bought me right away. The writing is very good, and the first paragraph describes the candle and effects beautifully. The mechanics look really good, and I have no objections on that part. The idea itself is very novel, at least for me.
Congratulations Mark on making the Top 32!
This is great. Beautifully written and to a very tight theme. The visuals are very nice.
I really like the way you've played with channel energy, especially the potential for sabotaging one's opponents channels. That is a very unusual mechanic and an effective one.
I agree that it may be underpriced, but that's not a massive problem.
All in all, this is definitely one of my favourites. Well done!