Brian L Clark's page

Treads of Momentum

The flavor you are setting up here is actually quite nice, conjuring visions of a restless character with fancy, shimmering shoes who really can bowl them over with a bull rush.

The problem is the mechanics you use for getting the extra movement. First, it is counter intuitive. It's not exactly "momentum" if you go faster by going slower in the previous round. You do manage to avoid keeping the total movement constant, but way you are getting the extra movement doesn't seem to match the feeling you're going for. Second, it is a confusing set of rules to read and probably a bit of a bear to track, round to round, since it sounds like it's an ongoing effect.

You clearly have given the consequences of the increased movement a lot of thought. And you tied the extra movement into the bull rush neatly. I voted for these at least a couple of times in spite of the confusion in the middle. But each time it came up I had to read through it a couple of times to understand how it would work at crunch time.

Brian L Clark wrote:

Sinister Collar

Over word count. Was 300 words. The missing space in "16,000gp" brought it over word count.

... Er ...

But what I really want to know is: what about my subject-verb agreement and did I use "who" and "whom" correctly?

Brian L Clark wrote:

Sinister Collar

Aura moderate transmutation; CL 5th
... Incomplete text omitted...

What was the rest supposed to be ?

I filled it in "in the original message"

Sinister Collar
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 5th
Slot wrist; Price 16,000gp; Weight 0 lbs.
Description
This item consists of two parts: The Master Bracelet, a thin strap of tanned leather with a power word embossed in its surface, and the Sinister Collar, a shorter leather strap with twelve raw leather strips, forming a long tassel that can be affixed to a sword hilt or the grip of any handheld object.
Whenever within five feet of the wielder, the leather strands will writhe like the tentacles of an octopus or squid, reaching for the wielder. For this reason, the wielder can ready a weapon with the matching sinister collar as a free action, even from the ground, as long as it is within five feet and unrestrained.
When the collared object is held by the wielder, the leather tendrils wrap around the wielder's arm. When the wielder is disarmed of the object, he may immediately make a second grapple check to regain the weapon, with a +2 surprise bonus. Succeeding on this second check by five or more allows the wielder to make an attack of opportunity, in addition to the normal attack of opportunity for a disarm attempt, even against a creature with Improved Disarm.
The sinister collar can drag the weapon across a room to the wielder if summoned using the power word. Each round after being summoned, on the wielder's turn the sinister collar will move the object, if not obstructed, along the ground with a speed of ten feet in a straight line toward the wielder, taking normal penalties for difficult terrain. It will not navigate around obstacles, but can be stopped by the weilder with the power word.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wonderous Item, animate rope, the blood of a tentacled creature; Cost 8,000 gp

EDIT: Parts missing from actual submission filled in

If I were a judge I wouldn't want someone asking why the #1 voted item was not in the top 32. Heck, I wouldn't want to be asked by guy #32 who didn't make it.

Semi ninja'd

Very nice, solid concept. It was not seeing items like this one during the voting that gave me a false sense of confidence.

You have managed to make a commonly used item that adds efficiency to exploration and damage to a specific attack against two specific categories of enemy.

I understand why you needed to target light sensitivity to bypass damage reduction, but that particular rule is generally not relevant to damage, so it feels a little like an arbitrary mechanical effect, however consistent it is with the theme.

Still, since there's no "radiant" energy type, you didn't have many options, mechanically for doing "light" damage, so this is a pretty innovative solution.

Congratulations on making a "must-have" item for the dungeon crawl.

I miss Douglas Adams too.

So great! This is fantastic design. A simple item that disconnects a single rule mechanic and charges appropriately for it. The fact that there are no limits, to me, is tempered by the facts that it empowers one very specific group of spells, it needs to be used as a divine focus, and that it costs somewhat more than some characters will be willing to spend, which forces them to make choices in order to benefit.

And its just so simple, it's beautiful.

This one is solidly written and I like it. A bit over the top for my own play style, but a great cinematic item and not broken. Good work.

Congratulations! Top 32 out of some very stiff competition this year. Truly brag worthy.

I know it is not possible to tell anything about the upcoming winners and, sadly, losers, but (and I may have missed this) can we know the total number of entries?

Well, I submitted one, so... One.

Anyone else?

Good luck. And may the odds be... Oh wait.

Just good luck, y'all.

... with peanut butter.

I love the theme for monsters this year! So many great niches for Golarion appropriate urban monsters;

... omitted: List of said niches. ...

I'm glad that the idea I'm nursing is not much like any of the ones you listed, although I did bounce quite close to a couple of them on the way.

I have to agree. The fact that it is restrictive, in a design environment that doesn't have a lot of obvious Bestiary examples initially seemed really difficult but as I ruminated on it, some really exciting ideas started to present themselves.

The creative mind can often work better under limitations.

• existential ennui: d3 Cha damage

Stolen.

Meaning...I'm stolen it for use in some later project/comment.

Ah, again I ask myself the question... Does item A have more broken than item B has boring?

I had utter confidence in my item, until this morning when I realized that I had skimped on my research and named it Ford Prefect.

Awful vs. Offal

Ah, just one sentence too far. Exactly one. Your writing by itself almost charmed my vote, but the spell was broken.

Nobody ever makes suspenders. :,-(

Challenge accepted.

I'm going to go ahead and suggest that a certain unnamed subset of entrants might should consider therapy.

Frost vs Frosting

"The Crew laughed at our Frosting attack. Then we were attacked by pirates just off the Diabetic Coast..."

Forgetting to italicize spell requirements.

Also all sorts of wacky things put into the construction requirements.

In defense of the first-timer, the italics are in in the Pathfinder requirements section (among other places), but the provided format template in the Open Call rules didn't have the tags for italics so some of them (not me, or anything) may not have had enough knowledge of this particular message editor to assume that it was possible.

I, of course, know everything and if I didn't properly italicize a spell it was purely an artistic statement.

Just remember:

Also, people agreeing on an item (by tending to vote it up or down) doesn't tend to make it appear less or more in later pairings; the pairings are random.

Oh, thank you for that. I haven't seen mine yet and I was starting to be really concerned.

If you've been rolling the item idea around in your head long enough and done a little research to identify conflicts, you have a strong idea of how best to describe it, relative to the rules and what specific rules you feel need to be addressed in the description. It's entirely possible that a modestly complex item could put you at nearly 500 words. So you go back and do some rewriting.

First you target effects you thought were cool, but if you're honest just distract from the function. Then you start noticing that, "Oh man, this sentence uses different words to accomplish the same thing as that sentence two lines up", and the "The box is gold." Is somehow actually more flavorful than "This particular box is not quite yellow, with a metallic glint and a unnatural heft."

Then if the word count is still to high, you have to start the hard process of deciding which broken parts of your brain are hiding the fluff from you. If you have friends, or even editors with benefits, this is a good time to start reading it to them and see what they either don't get, or believe is unnecessary. After your ego is done hurting and you can view the criticism objectively, you have to do the nasty, nasty job of honestly evaluating it for truth. Maybe it isn't necessary for the item to kill the owner and give the party poison damage on a botched skill roll. Does it really make sense to include rule language about nightmares if the character doesn't take a full rest with the item in their possession, when most GMs you know are sadistic enough to fill in those drawbacks for you?

In the end, the 300 word limit is probably the best thing to happen to some first time entrants. There's a lot of rewriting that might never happen otherwise.