Derek Becker's page

Sure, it's earlier in this thread:

http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/community/gaming/rpgSuperstar/general/ losingItems&page=9#342109

Thank you!

I hope you didn't post the designer's notes. The judges really hated that in one of the other items.

I did that. Out of curiosity do you still have the link referencing that?

Scapular of the Heroic Slayer

Liked:

Constructive Criticism
1) the mechanics behind the bonus feats. A +4 AC bonus would have done the trick just as well. And since they are feats that rogues get, the anti-undead item is of less value to the class that doesn't get to use one of their best abilities when fighting creatures that aren't affected by sneak attack.

2) Written as-is, I'd have lowered the cost. The big draws are the roleplay benefit of not coming back to eat everyone's brains and you can use a wisdom item with it if you want to. I

3) I know English is your second language, but its spelled "whether" ... not that I know one word of Portuguese other than "Please for the love of God, does anyone here speak English?!?!?" And I'm told that's not even very good Portuguese.

I'm going to give him/her the benefit of the doubt on that.

Agreed.

In my gaming group I'm one of two people who buys books beyond the PHB,DMG, and MM. I'm the only one who buys non-WotC. Its very probable that this is simply a case of great minds thinking alike.

This isn't exactly what I submitted. I couldn't find the file with the final version, so this is reconstructing it from my notes.

Trollheart

A common ritual in barbaric lands, the heart of a defeated troll is magically prepared and eaten. The consumer gains some of the troll's regenerative powers and heals one hit point per hour. Unfortunately, the trollheart sits poorly in the stomach and the mildly nauseous consumer suffers a -2 penalty to Fortitude saves and Concentration skill checks.

Creating the trollheart magically protects it from the damage digestive acids cause, though it eventually succumbs and becomes inert. After one month all benefits and penalties of the item are lost.

Moderate conjuration; CL 7th; Craft Wondrous Item, cure serious wounds; Price 25,000 gp; Weight 1 lb (prior to ingestion).

... at this point I used the rest of my 200 words to launch into a mathematical defense of my pricing. It wasn’t 25,000, though that number is close to what I recall the total gold cost in the real final version. I calculated how many charges it would take to heal someone at the rate of one hit point an hour for a month given the average curative roll of cure serious wounds. I then knocked off some for the fort and concentration penalties and took into account the "no item slot used" factor.

All of which was probably a silly idea given that I could have used a few extra dozen words to make my prose better. The idea behind the penalties was to prevent the item from becoming a "no brainer" and to give a little more ... um ... "flavor" ... to the idea of a lump of troll flesh sitting in someone’s belly. The penalties also skewed the item in favor of melee classes, or at least the classes that already had a high Fort save. In hindsight, I was already hitting spellcasters pretty hard with the Fort penalty and the Concentration penalty just chewed up my word count and made the pricing harder to follow. If nothing else, I could have used the extra words to come up with a cooler name.

Looking over some of the other items, there's also the question of utility. Does the game really need a 25,000gp healing item? Do people want to go around eating trolls? It isn’t a great NPC item because most NPCs aren't going to survive past the first combat. Still, I thought it was a neat idea at the time and I like the idea of items with penalties, if for no other reason than to make the players think over their choices.

Oh, ouch!

Congratulations to Mr Nanni and Mr Kogan, but oh that must truly hurt for the original two.

edit: corrected honorific

But I was suprised how many were... eh... mundane. Just not terribly creative at all. Malleus Maleficarum and Seer's Tea spring to mind, among others. I mean no offence to Mr. MacLeod and Mr. Byers--those are certainly USEFUL items--but how much creativity does it take to stat up something from the real world?

I liked the tea, actually. I've seen magic tea leaf reading in some other systems and its generally tied to a spell or feat or something like that. The Seers Tea has function and simplicity, it is easy for the DM to introduce the item to create a mood for a specific NPC and if a PC decides he wants to do the same thing its perfectly balanced to permit it.

Not all of the top 32 honked my honker and I'll confess to a certain amount of disappointment mixed with envy with a nice dollop of anti-climax on the side. I shall keep my sour grapes to myself though, as they are ripe and go well with whipped cream.

I may not be an RPG Superstar, but that's OK! I'm an RPG Indy Cult Wonder! I eagerly look forward to reading the works of the upcoming RPG Tom Cruises and RPG Brad Pitts. But I'm an RPG Bruce Campbell, baby! My stuff is too hot for mainstream!

Congrats!

Ah - success!

Oh, good going jerkface. Your meddling in time just got Archduke Franz Ferdinand assassinated in 1914. How are we going to clean that one up?

What are you doing?

1) Hitting "refresh" on the paizo site in the desperate hope that will create a temporal wormhole to noon pacific time.

2) Working on my country submission so in the very, very small chance I come out in the top 32 I will have made some progress and will not be as rushed.

3) Hoping my boss doesn't notice that I'm not working.

The SRD just seems so limiting

I've never thought of it that way. You just have to look at it as a toolkit and not a rulebook.

Stupid:
Advanced Vampiric Fiendish Black Pudding Druid-3/Rogue-3

Not Stupid:
A dark terror that creeps through the forest without a sound and leaves no trail; it strikes without warning and steals the souls of the unwary.

Get your inspiration and let the SRD come afterwards! Your only limits are your imagination! Now get out there and give us your nation populated entirely by Rust Monster Paladins!

When the going gets tough, the tough go to musical theater.

So what about "Brigadoon"? Is that a country? If "Goblin Town" qualifies, does Brigadoon? Don't take this literally. I'm using Brigadoon as an example. Maybe its a real big flying island, carried around on the back of a gigantic sea turtle, or is deconstructed and rebuilt 2 feet to the left at midnight by very sneaky gnomes.

Not that I'm planning on doing this. My country won't be based on Brigadoon. That's silly. I'm brining my A-game!

I'm going to base it on "The Music Man".

I considered a vest which allows a short-lived temporary ability score swap once every 24 hours. For example, a silver-tongued bard has no choice to fight for her life. She invokes the power of the vest to drop her CHA into her STR slot and put her STR in the CHA slot.

I really like this item. It allows flexibility for the character. You could do it for all the attributes of course, but even STR/CHA helps out classes like the cleric and lets the cleric go from a melee to undead-turning guy.

The only complication the item has is that the player would have to re-figure his ability score modifiers for everything and that slows down the game. But he'd only have to do it once before it got faster, kind of like the barbarian rage.

Any other problems I had with it turned out to be irrelevant because there was no way to write a complete description of that thing in 200 words.

Dude, you totally already did that earlier in your post.

A weapon not an item, hence I didn't submit it. I didn't work out the math on the pricing very well, but it basically gives a feat with a bit of a spin. I originally had this item preventing "speak with dead" as well (thats what animate dead is in there for, to prevent rezzing), but it was pointed out to me that "speak with dead" doesn't involve the soul. Which I think is a little annoying, but those are the rules of the game.

My submission has a lot less flavor text. Man, its a really good thing I decided to read the rules before I sent this in, huh?

============================

Sword of Xitecka-Telacop

In the jungles far from the known kingdoms lie the twin cities of Xitecka and Telacop. Banding together to resist foreign invaders, they have used the death magic of the Xiteckian priests and the craft of the Telacop masters to create swords for their warriors. The blades are created from magically empowered obsidian, identical in all but appearance to the best steel. They each have a handle of bone from a jaguar the warrior must have slain for himself before being considered worthy of a Sword of Xitecka-Telacop. Recent tradition encourages warriors to engrave a stylized pictogram on the handle celebrating every major victory achieved using the sword.

A Sword of Xitecka-Telacop allows the wielder to make a coup de grace attack as a standard action. Opponents that fail their Fortitude save and die must also make a Will save (DC 10 + damage dealt) or have their soul cleaved, which causes their death to be treated as if it were from a death effect, preventing raising.

Moderate necromancy; CL 7th; Craft Magic Arms and Armor, death knell, animate dead, Price 20,0000

Ah. I just found this post down deep in another thread:

DOING the math is necessary, because if you have something priced badly, your entry will not be selected. SHOWING the math is not part of the requirement, but it might help prove you know what you're doing. However, those words will count against the limit. Personally, if I had a short entry, I'd probably show my math, and if I had a long entry, I'd just be really really sure that I've priced it correctly.

Amazing. The Pazio luminaries are able to answer my questions before I even ask them!

The item I plan to submit can be a little quirky. I have 60 words left in my word count so there is room to show how I arrived at my base price. Is this something I should include or should I allow my heartbreaking work of staggering genius stand on its own merit?

I realize this is the 13th, so I'll submit this afternoon no matter what, but I wouldn't mind hearing from the fine forum folks or the athletic and intellectual Paizo people (whose very footprints I am not fit to wallow in, may they all know the joy of a thousand blessings and be tended upon by courtesans of a lewd but vivacious character).

You can't, really. You can certainly start out good or lawful, but the Abyss is tenacious. It won't take long for its evil to seep into the mind and soul and body of anyone who claims a layer of the Abyss as their own, turning them chaotic evil in the end. The only way to escape this, really, is to either abandon the lair or to somehow tear the Abyssal realm free and move it somewhere else, something that even gods can't really do without great peril (as evidenced in the creation of the Dreaming Gulf—see Dragon #357's Demonomicon of Demogorgon).

Which is wonderful fodder for an epic level campaign! First the PCs have to assess their new realm, maybe play with the plane's physics a little bit ("coffee beans will now grow like weeds & people who talk on the cell phone in movie theaters suffer level loss"). Then defend it from all the other demonic rulers. Then try to find some way to move it to a more acceptable multi-dimensional home.

... and all because some chick wanted you to collect the money on her boat!

Spoilers

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Excellent conclusion. A satisfying end that still raises many new questions.

In some ways this is the ultimate pay off for a paladin forced into one of the many demonic bargains. The paladin will lose his status of course, but the opportunity to turn an abyssal plane into a chaotic good haven is the ultimate stick in the eye of evil.

I'd personally rule that other PCs can help nominate one person to the title (that might be in there already, I need to give the adventure a second read). That would underscore that while an individual demon lord may be more powerful, the PCs are stronger as a team. To that end I'd rule that a chaotic good character wouldn't have to shift alignment to evil. That would defeat the purpose of the victory ("you win! but now you're a malevolent NPC.")

The PCs absolutely must make those alliances in the previous adventure though. And that's a little bottle-necky. There's too many ways they can completely screw up due to poor dialog. If its late at night and a PC is cranky from lack of sleep, that's not the kind of thing you want to penalize.

A dang shame this couldn't have used a mass combat system of some kind. Ships with demonic cannons shooting green fire at each other would have been a nice tie-in with the start of the adventure path.

But like I said, a great end to what I think is the best adventure path yet! I can't wait for pathfinder!

Does this site have this feature and I'm missing it?

What I'd like is something that would let me plug in the base EL for an adventure and maybe the setting (e.g. wilderness, urban, Eberron, etc) and have a list of back issues show up.

That would be cool.

Am I missing something?

Good point - I think it comes down to teamwork.

Point in case - The Arizona Cardinals have good players - a good team on paper. Yet they come out and lose most of the games they play. Why?

It sounds like your group falls into this category.

Incidentally, I force team play on my PCs. My three big rules for character creation are:

1) No evil
2) No chaotic neutral
3) all characters must be group-oriented, no lone wolves

Many groups would find this restrictive, boring, heavy-handed, and unneccisary. But I stick with it and over the years, I think I've had some good results.

Unfortunately it seems my Dungeon Mag subscription will now be 1/3 useless to me for the next year, filled with overpowered, unreasonably challenging modules that my group will refuse to play and that I will refuse to DM.

I don't mean to pick on DrWaites, but this is an attitude I've encountered frequently and I don't understand it.

Do people run all of these adventures "out of the box" and if they don't run all of them they are dissapointed? I typically lift encoutnters, NPCs, maps, magic items, and monsters out of individual adventures to use in my own. If we're talking about using all adventures front to back, they are almost always "useless" to me.

And, in any event, after reading over the first and second adventures, nothing is jumping out at me that looks overpowered and unbalanced. Hard encounters are clearly noted as such for the DM so the DM can adjust if needed.

I'm doing a play by post game.

I'm a little worried about the survivability because things in play by post are a little more abstract.

1) I'm using the Defense rule from UA. So most of the guys won't be wearing armor because their base defense will be very high. This is to make it more of a pirate game.

2) I'm permitting firearms to make it a more pirate game. Mechanically they'll be the same as shortbows and longbows, only they do +2 damage and need a move action to reload. These are "movie" pistols and longarms, not real ones. When I hand out treasure the crossbows and longbows will always be the more magical weapons.

3) point buy. 34 points for EL0 characters, 25 points for EL 1 characters. No EL2.

4) One free district feat.

So it's a little power-gamery, but if the party is too tough I can ALWAYS add in more monsters!