Dedicated Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
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The one thing that I want to add on ki pools is that one of the things I watch for is that any item which requires a ki pool is useful to both a Monk *and* a Ninja.Rogues can also get a ki pool if they desire one...
Here's a dumb idea, why can't Pathfinder make a 1 pool mechanic
i.e.
ki, arcane, panache, luck, grit, ect are now all one frakin pool your class determines the stat it is based off of...
Maybe not one pool to rule them all, but definitely scale back and combine similar points to keep track of. Things like Magic, Style, Focus, and Luck. Pools that are very class specific ( like grit ) get annoying.
luck, grit and panache are already the same thing.
I'd argue ki and arcane points are similar enough as well.
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So, having survived the cull (I was lucky enough to see my item on my 6th vote), I have to say that my thoughts on voting have changed pre- to post-cull. I think a large part of that goes back to actually thinking about what other items survived. Going by the (mostly) complete list of items that survived and looking at a number of items that I would not vote for and a number of items that I couldn't believe didn't make it, I started to think.
At first when I submitted my item, I thought it was elegant and unique, and would surely make the top 32 (I'm sure many of us thought the same). Since then, I slowly became less confident in my elegance (though I haven't seen another item like it), and realized that some of my wording is clunky, and I even missed stating something. So I probably won't get in the top 32, probably not even in the top 100, but I do feel incredibly humble at getting past the cull. I've realized just how difficult it is to design an item that will truly appeal to the masses.
Each of us has a different play style, and things that seem overpowered to me may fit perfectly in someone's campaign and seem awesomely fun, and things that seem perfectly balanced to me may be overpowered or boring to someone else. So with this change in attitude, I've decided to not have auto-down-votes, and to take the time to become familiar with rules that I'm not already. So good luck to everyone still in this year, and to those that sadly didn't make it, learn from this year, and I'll hopefully see you next year. It's hard to make such a broadly appealing item, and everyone that entered should be proud of at least taking that step.
Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
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luck, grit and panache are already the same thing.
I'd argue ki and arcane points are similar enough as well.
Interestingly enough, there is a Magus Arcana that lets you combine your ki pool with your arcane pool. I have a Monk/Magus and it helps her be crazy flexible.
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Star Voter Season 6
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You know, one of my new criteria that I wished I considered earlier is price.
I don't just mean if it's been calculated correctly. While that's important - as is all the other usual stuff - there is a big problem if your star item is a 64,000gp and I will likely never use it. Solely because of its price point.
A good chunk of players play Pathfinder Society, and that only goes up to level 12. Until you get very close to level 12, you're not likely to buy a single item over about 25,000gp.
So if the two items I'm seeing are a 12,000gp item and a 38,000gp item, I'm far more likely to forgive any errors on the lower priced item, even if it's somewhat inferior.
I really think this is a commonly overlooked issue. What's the point of a great item if you never use it? It's no longer a great item. This is harder to pull off with these categories, so if you can pull it off with finesse, it's more likely you're on the right track.
Dont forget with price to compare the prices of similar item types of similar power levels, iit ensures that players dont get too much power too soon ;)
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka Boxhead
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Ummm, could you clarify that bit? D&D/Pathfinder have a huge amount of Earth mythology-inspired & outright transplanted magic/items/critters baked in from day one.For me the following will garner a near certain downvote:
-Breaking the 4th wall in a bad way (accidental racism, including a real life disease, using earth mythology, bad joke items.)...
Indeed the VAST majority of monsters, or their names, comes from some Earth based mythology.
With that said, don't enter Excalibur, Mjolnir, or some similarly named item right out of that mythology. And don't give us Ra's Sunrod either.
Total sidebar-your hypothetical example is actually okay by canon, the Ancient Osirians worshipped the Egyptian pantheon, according to AP #80...
Which is a great reminder to not auto-down vote something if you aren't 100% sure about it.
Ummm, could you clarify that bit? D&D/Pathfinder have a huge amount of Earth mythology-inspired & outright transplanted magic/items/critters baked in from day one.For me the following will garner a near certain downvote:
-Breaking the 4th wall in a bad way (accidental racism, including a real life disease, using earth mythology, bad joke items.)...
Indeed the VAST majority of monsters, or their names, comes from some Earth based mythology.
With that said, don't enter Excalibur, Mjolnir, or some similarly named item right out of that mythology. And don't give us Ra's Sunrod either.
Total sidebar-your hypothetical example is actually okay by canon, the Ancient Osirians worshipped the Egyptian pantheon, according to AP #80...
Which is a great reminder to not auto-down vote something if you aren't 100% sure about it.
The main part of the statement breaking the 4th wall in a bad way... The discussion decided to focus on one element of an example. Sorry but Poseidon's trident (fake example) doesn't show off your skills as a designer.
So my voting trends have really shifted post-cull. Whereas prior to the cull I tended to lean toward creativity over proper templating and grammar and so forth, post-cull I am finding the items much closer in quality, and so my decision is often coming down to more technical aspects.
Creativity is still my main requirement, but I am finding more and more pairs where both items are creative. When that happens, I check for proper templating and then grammar and clarity. Clarity can be huge...there are some really complex items that are effectively explained in a succinct manner, and there are some simple items whose explanations meander.
If after this I still can't decide, I look at pricing. And if that doesn't break a tie and I feel like I have two equally designed items, then I just go with which one I'd rather have as a player.
Also, as a side note, it's really impressive to me how many people have reached dedicated or marathon or champion voter status. Especially given that much of the voting period was the holiday season. I've voted every day...I always have the voting screen up on my phone...and I haven't even reached dedicated.
It really is a testament to the community involvement in this whole contest.
The only voting trend that I've caught myself falling into is that I refuse to vote for items that are outright IP infringement in concept or name. Cthulhu Mythos inspired items are fine as the bulk of Lovecraft's early work IS public domain and ripe for expansion, but riffs on modern IPs are not acceptable under any circumstances. An homage is acceptable but outright lifting is not.
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Clarity can be huge...there are some really complex items that are effectively explained in a succinct manner, and there are some simple items whose explanations meander.
[...]
I admit, I find myself being really biased towards clarity as well. I like to think of it as "elegance" but really it's "I'm kinda new and wow that's really complicated and you lost me 2 paragraphs ago." Which isn't super fair, but with so many items out there to choose from, I'd rather have the one that's easy to remember how it works than the one that I continually forget to use one or more of its abilities. And my votes reflect that preference. :)
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Clarity can be huge...there are some really complex items that are effectively explained in a succinct manner, and there are some simple items whose explanations meander.
[...]
I admit, I find myself being really biased towards clarity as well. I like to think of it as "elegance" but really it's "I'm kinda new and wow that's really complicated and you lost me 2 paragraphs ago." Which isn't super fair, but with so many items out there to choose from, I'd rather have the one that's easy to remember how it works than the one that I continually forget to use one or more of its abilities. And my votes reflect that preference. :)
Yeah, I find that to be kind of indicative if how the item would work at the table. Would it slow the game down every time it's used and so on. I feel like if it's hard to understand while reading the entry, and I need to read through a couple of times, then chances are it'll also require more work at the table.
Honestly the name is important to me. It helps your item a lot if you hook me in with the name.
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You know, one of my new criteria that I wished I considered earlier is price.
I don't just mean if it's been calculated correctly. While that's important - as is all the other usual stuff - there is a big problem if your star item is a 64,000gp and I will likely never use it. Solely because of its price point.
A good chunk of players play Pathfinder Society, and that only goes up to level 12. Until you get very close to level 12, you're not likely to buy a single item over about 25,000gp.
So if the two items I'm seeing are a 12,000gp item and a 38,000gp item, I'm far more likely to forgive any errors on the lower priced item, even if it's somewhat inferior.
I really think this is a commonly overlooked issue. What's the point of a great item if you never use it? It's no longer a great item. This is harder to pull off with these categories, so if you can pull it off with finesse, it's more likely you're on the right track.
I find that's an issue with the game mechanic, not a given item. Magic items are crazy expensive--probably to keep players from insisting on buying twelve +2 longswords at the local magic mart, etc. etc. The guidelines provided for pricing items tends to err on the side of "ridiculously expensive and probably way more than the item is actually worth" also in an attempt to avoid cheese. WBL guidelines are boon and bane... on one hand, it's a fair guideline to show what a given character's equipment value probably is/should be in an average game, but on the other, if you really want to give your party this overpriced staff (most staves are really expensive because something containing multiple spells will be by their pricing algorithm) because it would be useful to them, but don't because you're afraid they'll just try to cash it in and buy something else.... well, that can get frustrating to work out. The real issue IMO is somewhere along the lines of providing useful guidelines to GMs for controlling presence of magic items in a game rather than using an often frustrating cost mechanic as a crutch.
At any rate, because I see this as a fundamental flaw in the system itself, I'm not going to dock a designer's item for how much something costs AS LONG AS it looks like they've done their best to work within the system (because even if the system is flawed, they still as potential freelancers have to know how to work within it). Most of the item categories we're working with this year are going to be by their nature expensive (with the possible exception of some simple function rods). None of that is a contestants' fault, and I'm not going to hold them responsible for a design mechanic they didn't make themselves.
Especially when this is a contest to show off a designer's creativity, not their ability to come up with something practical (if it was the practical cheap items contest I feel my chances would be much higher). Nor is it a contest for them to design something usable in PFS, a small subset of Pathfinder players that use a particularly restrictive scenario, so that shouldn't factor in either, IMO.
I find that being a fiction content editor gives me certain biases. In the beginning I was all for interesting uses of Dimension Door, wind-theme items, and earthbreakers. The farther along I go in voting and the more I see countless entries in these categories, my cliche/overuse filter turns on and I get borderline angry when I see them. Granted, there are a few good ones and I up-vote those when I see them, but I'm much more likely to vote for the other item in protest.
The title is often a tiebreaker. If it doesn't catch you, try again.
Perhaps the single most discerning characteristic for me is the writing. If there's a wall of text that has this that and the other thing, I'm more likely to up-vote the simpler, more streamlined item. Description is important as well. And conciseness is your friend. There's one particular item that I down-vote every. single. time. because the description is so overwritten that I can't get past the first two sentences. I't might be a decent item, but I never made it that far. The overwrought text doomed it for me.
Honestly I think it's the hardest part for a lot of people, myself included. You have to say so much with so few words.
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Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
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The title is often a tiebreaker. If it doesn't catch you, try again.Naming is always the hardest part for me.
Especially given the quick turnaround. The name of the Wondrous Item I was going to submit was waaaay better than the name of this item...but it also took me over a month to replace the so-so Working Title with its eventually awesome name.
My personal preference seems to be for items that (generally) have lower caster levels. Generally, the more powerful items seems a little...diffuse...in the story they're telling, or else seem so highly situational that it's difficult to imagine a crafter expending the time and resources to make such a thing.
Another thing that makes me wince is listing a weapon's bonus as +2/+2 or whatever, separating the attack and damage values by a slash mark. Don't know why that bugs me, but it does.
But mostly, yeah, writing qua writing (which includes the item name). Creativity gets high marks, but so does control. Excess verbiage is a drag, and, as far as I've seen anyway, also a good indicator that I'm going to find the item over-powered, thematically under-developed, or both.
All that said, it's a rare pair of items that doesn't have at least one element that impresses me, be it a game mechanic, a name, or a nice turn of phrase. I entered on a whim, and was astonished at how much of a challenge I found designing an item once I'd committed to it. So, chapeau to all of us, I say.
Pricing was the part I struggled with most. From looking at many of the entries, I don't think I was alone.
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@Christopher Rowe, I think most of the items I've seen that do the +X/+X are double weapons, they are listing the attack bonus for each end of the weapon (quarterstaff for example).
@Christopher Rowe, I think most of the items I've seen that do the +X/+X are double weapons, they are listing the attack bonus for each end of the weapon (quarterstaff for example).
Aha! That makes much more sense. I was thinking it was some holdover habit from AD&D or something. I shall pay closer attention, thanks!
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RPG Superstar 2015
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Marathon Voter Season 7, Marathon Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka mamaursula
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The title is often a tiebreaker. If it doesn't catch you, try again.Naming is always the hardest part for me.
I am not a fan of the name of my item, but now 3+ weeks out, I still do not have a suitable replacement name. I hope others like the one I went with.
Regarding naming, I came up with a truly awful name for my item (I had the flu, and it seemed like a good idea at the time). I DID just manage to come up with a better name for it.... yesterday.
I haven't seen my item yet but I keep running into items that my item could, effectively, be used to defeat them.....
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Champion Voter Season 6, Champion Voter Season 7, Champion Voter Season 8, Champion Voter Season 9
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Right now the number one thing keeping quite a few items off my keep list is pricing. I can accept being off by 25%. But if you are putting at least 60k worth of spells and abilities onto an item and listing it at 20k, shame on you. Pre-cull there was an artifact listed at 30k. In my mind, you might be trying to get votes based on voter prejudice against expensive items. So I ding a designer heavily for horrible pricing.
At least make a serious attempt at pricing your item, in my eyes you are just as bad as not using bold and italics in the template. Sure you took the 3 minutes to add the tags, but were too lazy to spend the 10 minutes to at least look at similar level items or attempt a real price.
Naming takes a lot of work. I typically save it for the last part of my process and think about it a lot, trying a wide array of options.
I feel the same way for character/NPC/country/whatever names. How they sound really matters. I have a large file of just names that I like the sound of and can use when I find the appropriate circumstance. If I think of a name I like, I just add it to the list. (That's more for NPCs/countries than items, though.)
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I've been upvoting items that, while not superstar in their execution, really push magic items in a direction I greatly support. One of them involves rods. I honestly hate rods in 3E/PF, and don't understand why they deserve an entire magic item category. Aside from Metamagic Rods, rods are basically just wondrous items in the form of a stick. This year in RPG Superstar, I've seen many designers create rods as magic items that alter spells being cast in interesting ways. I think this is a solid direction for rods, and want to see this come out of published material.
Sometimes I start with the name and build the item to fit. Other times I make a list an scramble things around to find something cool. Naming really is the most difficult part of the creative process.
I still kind of like the original name I had for my item better, but as it could have been perceived as a subtle pun, I didn't go with it for fear of downvotes.
I flipped on my item name three times, and I can only hope I made the right choice. I could justify either name, though of course now I feel the name I didn't choose was better.
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I don't vote against an item because of name. While a good name is not unimportant, it's not a deal breaker.
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Here's a dumb idea, why can't Pathfinder make a 1 pool mechanici.e.
ki, arcane, panache, luck, grit, ect are now all one frakin pool your class determines the stat it is based off of...
Economies make for powerful, meaningful mechanics. It can influence how a game flows and makes for a powerful tool that facilitates emergent gameplay. This is so true that a game design textbook exists that revolves around designing economies to create games. Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans is an excellent book that I recommend for anyone who has serious aspirations to become a game designer, especially for table top games. I've personally used what I learned from Ernest Adams's book to homebrew a class with a pool that starts empty each day and must be filled by performing a special attack that's usable X times per day in order to convey the class's theme.
A class designer can use a pool mechanic to influence how a character's powers feel. This is why grit has gained popularity, because it works very differently from ki. It's also why some people prefer psionics over Vancian spellcasting. A psionic character and a Vancian spellcaster play very differently, even if their abilities are similar.
My point is that homogenizing all classes to use the same pool denies many potential ways to make interesting classes. It does help make classes less complicated, but at the cost of narrowing the design space.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Marathon Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Dedicated Voter Season 8
aka Jiggy
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My point is that homogenizing all classes to use the same pool denies many potential ways to make interesting classes. It does help make classes less complicated, but at the cost of narrowing the design space.
Gonna have to disagree here.
Why does grit/panache "feel" different than ki? The only real differences are (1) the things you can spend them on and (2) the fact that the former can be refilled by meeting certain conditions.
Neither of these is lost by a unified pool mechanic. Suppose you have a universal rule that PCs get X points per day that they can spend. Your class features will define what things you spend your points on, so you've still get #1. Furthermore, the existence of the single pool does not in any way prohibit certain classes from having class features that say "you get a point back when you do X". A class doesn't have to invent its own pool in order to be able to mess with it.
Having a central mechanic as the baseline for all the classes makes learning easier, but without sacrificing any design space at all.
Saying that you limit design space by having all classes work from the same basic pool mechanic is like saying that a first-person shooter limits design space by having every gun use the same button to fire.
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Dedicated Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
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ki, arcane, panache, luck, grit, ect are now all one frakin pool your class determines the stat it is based off of...Economies make for powerful, meaningful mechanics. It can influence how a game flows and makes for a powerful tool that facilitates emergent gameplay. This is so true that a game design textbook exists that revolves around designing economies to create games. Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans is an excellent book that I recommend for anyone who has serious aspirations to become a game designer, especially for table top games. I've personally used what I learned from Ernest Adams's book to homebrew a class with a pool that starts empty each day and must be filled by performing a special attack that's usable X times per day in order to convey the class's theme.
A class designer can use a pool mechanic to influence how a character's powers feel. This is why grit has gained popularity, because it works very differently from ki. It's also why some people prefer psionics over Vancian spellcasting. A psionic character and a Vancian spellcaster play very differently, even if their abilities are similar.
My point is that homogenizing all classes to use the same pool denies many potential ways to make interesting classes. It does help make classes less complicated, but at the cost of narrowing the design space.
I think the ideal is somewhere in between One Pool to Rule them All and Every Class Needs Their Own. And I think there should be well defined pools for the source of similar abilities. How each class interacts with "Style", "Focus", or "Luck" points can be individually flavored and refined. Like access to different powers or methods of generation that differ from default. It's just vague boundaries that get confusing and frustrating.
"Monks use ki. --and also ninjas!"
"Is an arcane pool the same as an arcane reservoir?"
"Who the hell uses luck?"
@Jacob One Pool to Rule doesn't make much sense flavor wise that the spell caster can affect their spells and do cool tricks with the same source that the swashbuckler leaps around the battlefield with style. Multi-classing becomes kind of silly. In my opinion, similar power sources should interact, but entirely different classes should have separate power sources.
Different pools have different recharge methods. Long rest, short rest, upon easy/difficult accomplishment. Different base levels (scaling with level, based on stat).
If they were combined, you lose out on that design space (which balances the abilities those pool points allow).
It may be worth it though.
@Jacob One Pool to Rule doesn't make much sense flavor wise that the spell caster can affect their spells and do cool tricks with the same source that the swashbuckler leaps around the battlefield with style. Multi-classing becomes kind of silly. In my opinion, similar power sources should interact, but entirely different classes should have separate power sources.
Yeah, I'm beginning to think we need an Advanced Multiclass Guide or something to get this all sorted out.
I agree with Garrick's bolded statement. "Feel" (flavor?) is tremendously important to me in terms of play experience, and mystic ki is simply not the same, in terms of that feel, as flamboyant panache or rugged grit. I like all three mechanics (even if they're really one from a game design point of view) and am glad they're distinct. And I say that as someone who's no fan of psionics and likes Vancian spellcasting.
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In Soviet Russia all pools the same! All characters the same! We all ride bear to battle and regain communism pool by drinking vodka and singing praises to mother Russia. We all start at level 5 and give extra experience to lower level players and npcs until everyone in world get to level 5 too! All same!
Seriously though, can you imagine the amount of multi-classing abuse that would happen if all of the pools were made into one?
Seriously though, can you imagine the amount of multi-classing abuse that would happen if all of the pools were made into one?
My monk1/swashbuckler1/magus1/gunslinger1/ninja1/investigator1 doesn't have to imagine!!! He can do anything muhu hah ha haha
Seriously though, can you imagine the amount of multi-classing abuse that would happen if all of the pools were made into one?
Not really. Even as the game is written, a lot of pool-based abilities are also dependent upon class (not character) level. For one example, a monk can't use ki to heal wounds until 7th level. For another, many gunslinger deeds cannot be activated until 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, or 19th level. Multiclass abuse would then in fact restrict your pool's effectiveness--you might have a vast pool of basic abilities you could activate, but still often those only one at a time, and nothing terribly powerful.
If you were to redesign the classes from the start--which WOULD have to be done to make this work properly--to have a unified pool mechanic, you'd just have to be sure all classes using the mechanic had scaling, class-level based pool-based powers (as many of them already do), and possibly some action economy restrictions (perhaps no more than one pool-based ability active at a time, or a certain type of action required to spend a pool point).
I have to say I have always hated pool-based abilities with a fiery burning passion. In an already complex system, it's just more crap to keep track of. I would probably hate them less if, indeed, they were at least a unified mechanic. And I agree with the above poster that it wouldn't eat at a given class's uniqueness, as what I'm gathering from this conversation is that what you can do with the pool of points would still be dependent upon how a given class uses the points.
Maybe you could even tie the universal pool back to Hero Points.... come to think of it, d20 Modern used Action Points, which were basically Hero Points, but in addition to the basic universal usages (boost a die roll, etc.), you also used them to activate certain class abilities. It actually worked very nicely and didn't take away from what a given class was capable of, and in fact made multiclassing easier without making it overly powerful (you could in fact still weaken yourself direly by multiclassing yourself too much). d20 Modern was a flawed system in many was, but its Action Point system was one of the best things about it.
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Star Voter Season 6
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I find that's an issue with the game mechanic, not a given item. Magic items are crazy expensive--probably to keep players from insisting on buying twelve +2 longswords at the local magic mart, etc. etc. The guidelines provided for pricing items tends to ...
You've overanalysed it. I know how items are priced and that the system tends towards items being expensive, but there's a simpler fix for this: don't make the item so powerful that it jacks up the price.
Remember the item just has to be a cool/flavourful. It doesn't need a high power point to do that. There's a sweet spot in between hyper-powerful and cost-effective, and a lot of items ignore the latter.
By the time you hit around 20,000gp, that should be a red flag that the item had better be amazing.
Well, with staves as an option this year, that's a decided damper on the cost conservation. The way staves are priced, any staff that has spells in it that you'd want to use, that don't take five or ten charges, will be very expensive.
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I find that's an issue with the game mechanic, not a given item. Magic items are crazy expensive--probably to keep players from insisting on buying twelve +2 longswords at the local magic mart, etc. etc. The guidelines provided for pricing items tends to ...You've overanalysed it. I know how items are priced and that the system tends towards items being expensive, but there's a simpler fix for this: don't make the item so powerful that it jacks up the price.
Remember the item just has to be a cool/flavourful. It doesn't need a high power point to do that. There's a sweet spot in between hyper-powerful and cost-effective, and a lot of items ignore the latter.
By the time you hit around 20,000gp, that should be a red flag that the item had better be amazing.
I don't think I've overdone anything, I just take a different approach than you do.
Simply, in my opinion, it is is easy--too easy--in this system to make a item with perfectly reasonable powers that ends up being incredibly expensive because of the way the item creation rules work. I, personally, am not going to hold that against the designer AS LONG AS the designer showed they understood the mechanics they were working with. (It should also of course go without saying that the item itself should be a good item.)
You approach it from a different perspective and vote differently accordingly. I got it. You are heard. I simply disagree with your approach and am noting I personally will not take it. The world will continue to turn for us both regardless. Not much else to say.
I personally think that the item pricing rules are viewed as a little too concrete in general. I think the first step in the book is to look at other items and price your item according to comparative abilities and so on. After you've taken that step, if you feel it is inaccurate, then you rely on the table provided in the CRB.
I think too many people here go right to the table. Which does not cover every possibility. Without saying too much about my item, it was limited in its ability in a way not addressed on the table. So right off the bat, I knew I was going to have to come up with my own reasoning.
I feel that looking at other items and pricing based on that is a better way, but of course it's much more open to interpretation, so in circumstances like this, many would prefer more consistent rules.
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Marathon Voter Season 8, Marathon Voter Season 9
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I personally think that the item pricing rules are viewed as a little too concrete in general. I think the first step in the book is to look at other items and price your item according to comparative abilities and so on. After you've taken that step, if you feel it is inaccurate, then you rely on the table provided in the CRB.
I think too many people here go right to the table. Which does not cover every possibility. Without saying too much about my item, it was limited in its ability in a way not addressed on the table. So right off the bat, I knew I was going to have to come up with my own reasoning.
I feel that looking at other items and pricing based on that is a better way, but of course it's much more open to interpretation, so in circumstances like this, many would prefer more consistent rules.
After doing the table-based math to create the price for my item, I was like, "I might get down-voted on price alone! That's a bit steep!" So I decided to scale back the price on the sheer principle of, "Make it fun, and make it reasonably affordable."
Of course, I still had to dig deep into the overall magnitude of my items uses and possibilities before setting a proper price in stone. I don't think I should say much more or risk revealing my item. I still have the math all written down in case people ask about my pricing choices in the upcoming "Critique My Item" thread.
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Brigg, that's exactly the kind of reasoning that I think is intended with the item creation rules, and I also think that such reasoning displays a deeper understanding of the game. It is much harder to quantify, though. That's why, for me, pricing was a very small part of my voting process. I most often wouldn't even look at the pricing.
Of all the comments that have been made about voting, I've seen many comments along the lines of "with that spell usable x times a day, the pricing should have been y amount....downvote" but I don't recall seeing even one comment that said "wow, smart design to scale the price back even though the table would say it should be more".
I think people are sticklers for the math because math.
I personally think that the item pricing rules are viewed as a little too concrete in general. I think the first step in the book is to look at other items and price your item according to comparative abilities and so on. After you've taken that step, if you feel it is inaccurate, then you rely on the table provided in the CRB.
I think too many people here go right to the table. Which does not cover every possibility. Without saying too much about my item, it was limited in its ability in a way not addressed on the table. So right off the bat, I knew I was going to have to come up with my own reasoning.
I feel that looking at other items and pricing based on that is a better way, but of course it's much more open to interpretation, so in circumstances like this, many would prefer more consistent rules.
Yep. This is the philosophy I used as well. The item I built only used a small subset of what the spells in the prerequisite list I opted for could do. And it had other limitations not covered by the book as well. Just relying on the formula would've been a very poor way to price the item.
I went through several other items in my head and asked myself would I typically want that item or mine. When I arrived at a price range where the answer changed from usually "Item A" or "Item B" to "It Depends," I had the approximate area the item's price should be in.
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I think people are sticklers for the math because math.
As an accountant, I can assure you that this is a universal truism. People greatly prefer to use measurables, even when those measurements are inappropriate to the situation.