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The thunderdash ability combined with Greater Steal is pretty harsh. This combination would become especially annoying in the war between GMs and players. As worded, the thunderdash ability indicates any creature who takes damage as it teleports across their space becomes subject to a free steal attempt without provoking an AoO. It's a save for half Reflex save. So, unless you've got evasion (or you're completely immune to both electricity and sonic damage), you're always going to take damage and generate a steal opportunity for these creatures. And, with Greater Steal, just a handful of them would wreak havoc on most parties. I'm not a fan of this notion. "This maneuver can be used in melee to take any item that is neither held nor hidden in a bag or pack." So it can't steal weapons, hidden items, armor, clothes, or other closely-worn equipment. Mostly what it can do is take your sheathed weaponry, potions on your belt, arrows from your quiver, stuff like that. The whole premise of these voracious creatures hurtling around the massive hurricane comprised by the Eye of Abendego and somehow having a fertile enough hunting ground to keep targeting metal objects to swallow and digest feels way too ill-defined. About the only way they're going to encounter anyone out there to steal such items is if ships come passing by their territory. How often do you imagine ships venturing through a hurricane...on purpose? Exceedingly rare? I'd say so. Thus, how do these thunderthieves actually survive? They eat anything. It says it "prefers items made of metal", not that it eats them to exclusivity. I prefer chocolate cake, but I don't eat it to exclusivity. You've classified them as Small aberrations (which needs to be lowercase, by the way), but gave them the ability to speak Auran which means maybe they've got a connection to the Plane of Air? Yet, you were prohibited from giving us an outsider this go-around. To me, this smacks more of a creature idea you may have had in mind before the Round 3 "twist" prohibited you from submitting outsiders and you tried to shoe-horn it into this round anyway. They are aberrations. They have a bizarre anatomy and strange abilities, which are two aberration qualifiers from the PRD. If I wanted it to be an outsider, I wouldn't've shaped it so strangely, would have given it an elemental descriptor, and would've set its environment in a different place. - Spell resistance of 19 is a bit higher than the norm. A CR 7 creature would normally have SR 18, which means spells fail against it about 50% of the time. You've skewed it to 45% of the time which could tip the balance a bit further on this thing. Spell Penetration or a single CL boost from somewhere will compensate. By level 7, I would assume that any spellcaster dedicated to SR-Yes spells would have one or the other, if not both. Shocking aura is vicious if it can stun victims for a round in addition to damaging them. That pretty much makes them drop the items they're carrying (making it even easier for thunderthieves to steal them). Getting stunned requires failing two saves: first you have to fail the Reflex save (since it's Ref neg), then the Fortitude save. Plus, you have to start your turn in the area: entering the area doesn't trigger it. You can’t kill a monster for a magic item. It just shouldn’t work that way. If it did, then when you killed a dragon you’d get a magic spear or sword from its fang, or a magic shield from its scale, or you’d get a cloak of displacement from killing and skinning a displace--uh, I mean a monster that isn’t in the SRD -- but you get the point. When you kill a dragon, you can skin it and make dragonhide armor. This is not very different: all it really does is cut out the middleman between "I skin the dragon, carry its hide around, and give it to the armorer next time we're in a large city". Save or 3d6 damage and stun per round is way too good, especially if you have multiple creatures in an encounter. It's save or 3d6, and if you fail, save or stun. I agree that if it was all a single save it'd be too good, but it's a double save. Phantasmal killer is available at level 7 which follows a similar save pattern. Shocking Aura is overpowered. Taking that save every single round and risk being stunned is too much for a CR7 encounter. The DC of 17 is pretty high too; it's going to be tough for armored fighters to overcome. I disagree on that. Sure, they'll fail the Ref save, but they will probably make the Fort save. On top of that, protection from energy or resist energy will shield you from even having to make a Fortitude save most of the time. However, you're dealing 6d6 points of damage, and stealing an item. The way this monster would end up being played, is lining up as many people as it can, and thunderdashing through them all. And how is this different from a dragon or spellcaster trying to catch as many people as possible in its breath or spell? Steal is pretty limited in what it can and can't take, in addition. Further, 6d6 averages to 21 damage, which the monster creation rules say is one point under average for a weak hit at CR 7. Getting hit with both the aura and the dash is 9d6, averaging to 31 damage, which is one point over the average for a CR 7 strong hit, and it still allows for a Ref to negate 3d6 of that and another Ref to halve 6d6 of that. Making both means you essentially take 3d6, or averaging 10 points: incidentally, the amount negated by resist energy. There's just no real reason why this is an aberration. Yes there is: "An aberration has a bizarre anatomy, strange abilities, an alien mindset, or any combination of the three." Three steering-only wings, no limbs, triangular mouth, ring of eyes, flies supernaturally, has a stomach bigger on the inside than the outside...sounds like a bizarre anatomy to me. The creature should then have the air or electricity subtypes. Why? A behir breathes lightning and doesn't have the electricity subtype. Neither do shocker lizards. Dont' make more work for GMs, or force player to deal with a situation where the encounter is playing a different game system than they are (like drawing the line and impacting every character along it). It is exactly the same as a lightning bolt but for half the damage being sonic and an added steal attempt. As a standard action, the creature gets to move 60 feet, deal damage, take your weapon, and swallow it. No it doesn't. It can steal, not disarm, when thunderdashing. Steal (as I quoted above) is very limited in what it can and can't take. It could steal your amulet, maybe a sheathed dagger on your belt, but it can't take anything in your hands, on your body, or in your pack.
Fixed that for you. :P
Only if I get to brag about my adorable one-year old daughter.
Went through my entire monster again this morning, realized I had forgotten to add size modifiers to everything except AC. Went back through, added them, then realized that there are size modifiers to Fly. Aaaaagh. SIZE MODS Y U SO PERVASIVE
Speaking of dangerous rodents, I threw a dire wereweasel halfling at my party once. You should have seen the rogue's face when the halfling she'd been making a deal with two seconds before tackled her and sunk his teeth into her neck.
Question: the template says to list special abilities like this:
...yet monsters in the Bestiary list them like this:
Which is correct? (examples lifted from the vorin, not my monster)
YES! Thank you, everyone. I'm making monsters and I'm still alive. Sorry to see you go, those of you who didn't make the cut. Those of you who did, congratulations.
I know it's cold comfort, but the 'almost got my vote' award goes to James Raine's Besmara's Chosen & David Ross's Dreamstitchers. It helps. I made some pretty big missteps, so if you still feel my organization was good enough for an almost-vote (or my item was good enough you'd give me a pass), that makes me feel better.
I think this organization needs the aboleths as a patron or ally. Perhaps exploring for a remnant of the Starstone that was rumored to still be down there. That would probably have been a better idea to go with. And I was hoping that my implication that there was more starstone at the bottom of the sea would come across, but apparently it didn't. Still, craters are always circular, and the Inner Sea is ovoid, suggesting multiple impacts. While starstone may have been lifted from the bottom of the sea a thousand years ago, there may be more down there. I, however, failed to make that clear, partially due to word count restrictions and partially due to my own failing. This is an epic, out there concept. I like the creativity behind the idea, for me it does not fit well into the Inner Sea of Golarion. I’m also not certain how this one would play out in a typical game; the whale creatures seem like high level, even epic level threats; I imagine each one would have a crew numbering in the dozens, but surely these crewpersons all wouldn’t be high level, so how would this play out? Is it intended that the PCs fight the whales, or are they more like living bases to be infiltrated? The paikea is effectively too large to be combated traditionally: it is so immense that any combat will take place on or in it, rather than with it. It's effectively a CR --. The halfbreeds may be more reasonable (and could probably be represented with a Colossal or Titanic creature), and they would certainly be represented as high level threats. I was envisioning a crew of about a dozen per whale, double to triple that for the paikea. You had me at "giant whale over a half mile in length native to the Plane of Water." However, that's called an avanc. Alternately, you could change it out with a dragon turtle. I think I'd love to see a dragon turtle, with its shell transformed into a whole city, the architecture all scales and plates. I felt that using a dragon turtle would've been too Aladdin III. Also, I thought avancs were beaverish rather than whaleish, unless I'm getting my lore mixed up.
I disagree. The paikea is a unique creature on Golarion: the rest of them are on the plane of water, a place where something of their kind could be expected to be encountered.
I've taken every monster in Pathfinder and placed them all in a complex cladogram. I, uh, don't know of this helped me make a monster, per se, but at least I know what's out there. o_o can I see?
I lost interest when the 49ers lost the final game of the playoffs. :(
(not to toot my own horn)That's how it sounds. Sorry. :\ I'm really just interested in helping everyone get better at their entries in the future. In retrospect, I should've asked for a commentary on any one top 32 item, rather than just my own, or one from a previous year. I'll shut up now.
Well, I was thinking of it as an example of an item that does demonstrate "superstar" quality (not to toot my own horn): sometimes a positive example is as helpful as a negative one. Still, this is your show here, so if that's how you feel, carry on and all that.
Would you be willing to do this kind of review for my spellbreaker gauntlets? You touched on it somewhat in the original thread, but I'm curious to a more in-depth breakdown to its merits and flaws.
Scrolls.
Despite the glaring flaws in my item design, I'd still very much love to be where the top 32 are, and every time I see post after post after post from a competitor all I can think is, "why aren't you using this time to work on your submission rather than beg for votes!?" We don't have anything to work on yet (beyond monster template familiarization). Round 3 rules won't be posted until 2/7.
..does anyone know what happens in the case of a tie, if such a tie determines who stays and who goes? Do they both advance? Do the judges decide? I know it's kind of a low chance of occurrence, but I'm curious.
Actually, you didn't address that hard choice: Your item uses the head slot, but the Int/Wis/Cha buffing items use the headband slot. So a caster can wear your magic earrings and still have his +X Int/Wis/Cha headband. ...aren't those the same slot? If he meant the face slot, that's one thing, but a hat goes on the crown slot just like a circlet, a phylactery, or a--*looks it up*--WOW I never noticed PF did that change. Seems like James Knowles is, like me, still discovering little bits of PF that changed. Even for someone who knows the system, though, I can see a source of confusion: if it were me I would've called the headband slot the 'crown' slot, for clarity's sake. Still, I didn't make PF, so it's not my call. And, if you're entering into a design contest like this, it's your responsibility to make sure your item adheres to those changes, even one as stealthy as that.
Wow. Three negative reactions and one judge on the fence are enough to put me in the middle of the pack, not dead last? This round is going to be a bloodbath. I read the reviews on mine and my initial reaction was "craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap". Then I read everyone else's entries and I relaxed a little, because the immediate reaction I got was "everyone but like two people screwed this stage up, the judges have their kid gloves off, and the real important part is connecting with voters, not the judges." In fact, the first thought I had after reading a few entries was "This round is a bloodbath."
Problem is, wondrous items are capable of an extremely broad spectrum of things while still being constrained within an easy template. Monsters have a metric ton of math involved and are wildly variable between parties and within their CR. Other items are very constrained as to what they are capable of (weapons basically deal damage, armor basically stops damage, wands and staves and scrolls cast spells, rods modify spells or class features, etc., etc.). The only other design space that is near as equally broadly-spectrumed while having an easy template to work with is feats, and even there is the issue that feats interact with other feats in strange and mysterious ways sometimes. Further, feats have prerequisites, so it's a conscious, permanent character decision to work with. The opportunity cost on a feat is far greater than a wondrous item. Wondrous items, at least, have the caveat that they can't be (easily) mixed with certain other same-slotted items, cost money, and are globally acquirable, easily replaceable, and can be introduced into a campaign mid-play without players whining or asking for a restat.
...on that note, is there a breakdown somewhere as to what item slots tend to have certain kinds of abilities? If there isn't, could you give us a quick rundown of your perception of slots-to-abilities? I want to see if it differs from my personal perceptions.
I'm 26, in a dead end job, and I didn't do great in school. I'm 28, unemployed, have a wife and a one-year-old daughter that I can hardly support between my unemployment check and my wife's income from a job she hates, and flunked out of college. Trust me, I know where you're at. But my wife and my daughter are my reminders as to why I'm even here: they have been nothing but supportive (as supportive as an infant can be, anyway) both in this contest and in my desire to break into this industry. You've got to have a reason to be here too: family, friends, prestige, 2 B A MASTER, whatever. Just figure out what that is and everything else becomes easier.
I feel like the polar opposite, myself: I've been homebrewing for so long and gotten so many people I don't even know to tell me "They should've had you make 4e/on the 5e dev team". It's been slowly over time wearing away that artist's self-criticism to the point where I can honestly look at my work and say, "I'm satisfied with this, and I think it turned out well." But I was where you are now, once (and I'm only a year older than you). It took me some five years to get over it, but I can look at my work now and overlook the imperfections to see the greater, better whole. Sometimes, that's a blessing. Other times, it's a curse. Regardless, I'm still as nervous as you are, being here in the top 32. It's one of those "holy crap are my dreams coming true" moments, and while I hope they do, I doubt that this solitary contest will make me able to be a full-time game designer. But I can make it into leverage that I can use to make that happen. Sorry if this is rambling or hard to follow: I haven't had my coffee yet, and my little girl had me up half the night with nightmares.
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