Janvs's page

I've been holding off on getting some of the recent books, but I would absolutely throw some money at Paizo if they voluntarily recognize the union, it would feel nice to buy games from a union shop for a change.

Hey everyone, I took a few days away from the forums, but I wanted to thank all of the people who took the time to critique my item and give feedback. It really means a lot to me that you've taken the time to help me improve and I fully intend to put all of your (really excellent) advice into practice next year.

I suppose I'd like to hear people's thoughts on my item. I fought with it a lot -- pricing, different delivery methods, etc. -- so I can't say I'm shocked it didn't make it to the Top 32.

Anathema Brand

I'm honestly a little shocked that this didn't make it into the top 32. The execution was a little ponderous, but the idea was solid and the mechanics were excellent. I must have voted for this a dozen times or more.

Murder Candle

I think maybe people might have thought this was a joke (personally, I think Murder Candle is perfect, but you could have gone with something a little less on-the-nose), but I loved it.

My PCs are definitely going to have some run ins with a few of these.

Cloak of Nine Lives

As I mentioned via PM, I thought this was fantastic. This was definitely Top 32 material, though you may have been hurt by the quality of cloak competition.

Hey everyone!

My name is Robert Guthrie and this is my first time entering the contest, but I've been playing Pathfinder and RPGs in general for well over a decade (not that much when compared to some folks, but still the majority of my life).

I'm actually a freelance writer by trade, but I've never pitched anything for RPGs or tabletop gaming. It's a field I'd love to break in to, and I do a ton of tweaking/homebrewing for the games I DM, so it's a natural next step.

Obviously I'm beyond thrilled to have made it so far on my first entry and, no matter what happens, I'm excited to get involved with the community. I had a great time voting for items and I can't wait to see what maps people come up with!

I don't have time for a detailed critique (I should be working on my map or, since I'm at work, working) but I wanted to say that I LOVED the Wing of the Night Monarch and Vudrani Fighting Rope and voted for both every time. I was disappointed not to see them in the final 32!

First off, congrats! I am immensely happy to see your item receive some credit for being so wonderful, even if I don't get the chance to see your map entry. This was a personal favorite of mine. It was a bit flawed, but in a lovable way.

Here were my thoughts about your item back when I had to be vague.

Lucky Pips wrote:

Item, you are my favorite. Your imagery is straight up cartoon villains from my childhood, you drip mojo, you use a completely unique mundane item as your basis, you are one of the few magic items I would alter my character art to show. Heck I want to repaint my mini to show you. I will even get a mundane version before I can afford you so my teammates won't even notice the difference...

However, you made up a new aura strength, you incorrectly filled in your slot info, and your price appears too cheap (by about half). Basically your header is a mess (besides name, which I also love) and the body is Superstar quality. Because of this, I find myself voting against you half the time to decent items that nail the CL, Aura and Price. I hope you pull through, but I'm not really helping you towards that goal as much as I would like. Work on your headers, and hand them to your friendly local rules lawyer to pick them apart before your next submission (we work for very reasonable retainers). Best of luck.

Hey Pips, thanks so much for the feedback, I thought that might have been about my item!

Everything you said is absolutely correct -- I changed the aura strength last minute and forgot to double check the phrasing (I was agonizing about it all week).

In my defense about the slot though, I was comparing it to a Feather Token, so there is SOME precedent for a dash, though I am noticing now that most slotless items say "None" instead.

This is all high praise though, and legitimate criticism. You can all rest assured that next year's entry will be FLAWLESS.

(Seriously, it will, I can't handle a week of stressing about minor errors. I must have shaved a month off my life).

Maybe that would be prudent, but I've already posted a few things. Oh well, I'll stop for now!

Me too. I'm stuck at work and got a little overexcited.

*snip*

That said, maybe once per day on a Bluff or Diplomacy check, the 'wearer' can roll 3 d20s and take the highest. That should bestow something near the +10 bonus that the innocence spell grants.

Well shoot, now I wish I'd thought of that...

I loved the mechanics and imagery of this item! I normally don't vote for anything this expensive, but the cost is justified and it's such a cool item. Well done.

I loved this item and voted for it in every pairing! Congrats, fellow alternate!

I really liked this item, and voted for it many times. Congratulations on making alternate!

Thanks so much! I found out about the contest SUPER late and didn't have anywhere near as much time as I would have liked to work on my entry.

If anyone has suggestions on how I could have improved the Scallywag's Tooth, I would love to hear them -- I was never quite satisfied with the mechanics of it.

Ack! I'm an alternate! This just replaces my waiting anxiety with a different flavor of waiting anxiety!

Congrats to the top 32!

Um, are alternates allowed in here?

At this point I'm pretty sure we're all a part of some mad psychology experiment. There is no prize. There is no Paizo. What is real?

Nine is real. Only nine.

I mean, I'm fine with them moving the date, do what you gotta do, but did they have to wait until the exact minute that we were expecting to see the winners? I just about chewed through my fingernails here.

Put it together and see if you like it. E,g.

Human warpriest of Irori (base archetype)
1: Improved Unarmed Strike, Weapon Focus (unarmed), TWF, Double Slice
3: Dragon Style, Power Attack
5: Step Up
6: Weapon Spec (unarmed), Following Step
Effective from level 1. What did you want to do with your feats as a sacred fist which this couldn't?

Well, when you put it that way it does make a lot of sense. I guess I forgot about how many bonus feats warpriests got.

Plus, brawling and weapon spec are pretty tasty.

Thanks for the build help everyone, I think I was just overthinking things a bit.

Ok, that makes sense, but it's a minimum of two feats to be able to replicate flurry and that seems pretty silly on the face of it.

More than two, actually, since flurry gets full STR bonus on attacks and you need Dual Slice for that.

Are you more interested in playing the concept or the actual archetype?

The actual archetype. I'm aware that I can replicate a sacred fist with judicious multiclassing, but what was appealing about the sacred fist was that it could do its thing from level one onward.

This is a character I'll be starting at level one, and I'd rather not play an incomplete version of my concept for 4-6 levels before it all comes together.

Hey everyone, I know that I'm sort of late to the party on this, but I've been looking into building a sacred fist warpriest, but it appears that some recent errata has changed the way the archetype functions.

I have the ACG, but I'm a little behind on the effect of the errata -- can someone clarify the following things for me:

1) Sacred fists can no longer flurry in armor, right? (Could they ever?)

2) Sacred fists now use 3/4 BAB progression instead of their class level for flurry of blows?

3) I've been reading some stuff about the sacred fist's AC bonus being a deflection bonus, but PFSRD and my book disagree about this.

Finally, if all of the above is true, can someone help me figure out how to salvage this archetype? I love the idea and feel of a unarmed holy warrior-priest, but even my best attempts at optimization leave me with a crap defenses and mediocre damage.

Thanks!

For me, there are some clear winners that stand out from the rest, but I've only found a dozen or so. I'm hoping all of my favorites get in, but even if they don't, there's a lot of wildcards.

I guess that shows what I know.

I don't think anyone is arguing that Fate's Favored is strong, but Magical Knack and Magical Lineage have the potential to be WAY more impactful, and I don't see anyone calling for their removal.

I hope that this doesn't upset anyone, but I'm a lot less mechanistic than some other voters have indicated they are.

I tend to look for "mojo" -- an item that feels awesome, has flair, or drama, or panache, something that makes it stand out.

I also privilege good writing over almost anything else. Formatting is important too, blocks of text are hard on my eyes (and brain).

Issues like costs and balance are usually the last thing I consider, unless they're especially egregious, though that kind of thing often ends up being a tiebreaker. I almost always vote for the cheaper item, and rarely anything over 50k.

Hey, a new item!

And it's neat!

*throws flour at empty squares looking for invisible culls*

Snarking on other people's snark is called meta snarking

Snarkception.

We are all 9.

Brevity is highly appreciated in any sort of writing, and almost everyone needs a good editor to produce their best work, but as a freelancer, I have to agree with Tothric here -- if someone asks you for a page, or 500 words, or whatever, then it's best to come as close to that as possible.

I'm not entirely sure if that applies to this contest, at least not directly. The best entries I've seen have been in the vicinity of 200 words -- less, and they often feel anemic, more and they tend to be confusing, verbose, or both.

Don't you know? It's always been Season 9.

The Raven Black wrote:

Greenwood vs Greenwood o-O What are the odds ?

SUUPAAAAAHH GREEEEEENN

Just the the SUPER-GREEN GEMINI CROQUET CONTEST! YOU WIN A TRIP FOR 2 TO PHLOSTON PAAARAADDDIIIISSSSEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I rigged the contest so you can save the world, by the way. <.<

*runs*

CORBEN? CORBEN?

Gross item vs. unbelievably broken item.

Gross item is well written, I guess. Up you go.

So, I finally got around to checking out Variant Multiclassng (VMC) in a little more detail, and while giving up all of your feats is a pretty hefty trade-off, it occurs to me that the once class that can totally do without the extra feats is a fighter -- and that fighters can benefit the most from borrowing class features from elsewhere.

I'm a huge fan of the fighter (in theory), and I've been tinkering with some builds, but I'm curious what others have come up with. So what do you guys think? What's the best class for a fighter to VMC into? What's the best way to overcome the fighter's weaknesses?

A level 1 Strix anything can stymie a T-Rex, because dinosaurs can't fly.

Where my Strix nerf?

Ok, which of you guys are torturing your players with incorporeal undead? Every other item is some kind of ghost slaying/trapping/banishing doohickey.

Magical Knack and an Orange Prism Ioun Stone come to mind, though I imagine you've already thought of that.

Is there something I'm missing in the language that would prevent those from working with a kineticist?

Guys, I roll dice all the time for this game, don't make me roll more dice when I use my items.

Papasteve08 wrote:

Just keep in mind that the winner of this contest writes a module - Would you prefer your new author to have rich, innovative ideas with cool themes? or one who can nail the mechanics?

Editors can help with mechanics. Give me the good writer anyday. My preference is to vote for the good idea, execution being far less important (but not something to ignore)

Totally disagree. To be honest, the idea behind a module is not that important, much like the plot of a kung fu movie is not that important. It just needs to be strong enough to do its job and enable adventuring.

A workmanlike module with well constructed encounters, wherein the writer has clearly visualized how things are going to play out pragmatically, is very much preferable to some high concept mess with neat ideas but boring/easy encounters and/or baffling mechanics. In my opinion, Paizo currently has far too many of the latter type of mod, due to the predominance of opinions like the one papasteve just related.

Edit: I submit, as examples of what I am talking about, Quest for Perfection Part I (which I thought was excellent) vs. Quest for Perfection Part III (a high concept mess where the mechanics hadn't been tightened up enough).

Edit 2: In other words, when in doubt I favor solid mechanics in an item over a vivid idea. The solid mechanical item would have to be very humdrum, and the poorly designed item extremely evocative, for me to go the other way.

I agree 100%.

Whether you're writing a novel or a Pathfinder module, execution is far more important than concept.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen. Fully-realized, well-edited, concrete realizations of them are very rare.

I know this item is silly and probably broken, but I like throwing weapon builds and they have enough trouble as it is, so YOU GET ALL THE UPVOTES.

I regret not finding out about the contest sooner.

I'm happy with my item, but I really would have liked more time to polish it, tweak the language, and fine-tune the mechanics.

Ugh, no, I really like having all my limbs and appendages attached, thank you very much.

Yikes...you really need a strong stomach for some of these items.

This is starting to feel like the prop table at a GWAR show.

Kthulhu wrote:

Well, spellcasters get a constant flood of new cool things. Why is it so verboten to occasionally give non-spellcasters cool new things?

And on the rare occasions that they do give non-spellcasters cool new things, why do they immediately follow it up in that same supplement with a spell that lets spellcasters do that same cool new thing, only several levels earlier, more effectively, and generally scaling with level?

Don't forget that spell-caster options are far less likely to be Crane Winged into oblivion.

Has ANY casting option been hit with the nerf bat as hard as Crane Wing? I get their reasoning, but I'm STILL salty about that.

Aw, this joke item started out really funny but they dropped the joke halfway through the description. I am disappoint.

Don't be dropping quotes from items here, guys.

My bad, should have thought my snark through better.

Wow, that is an awesome cloak! Flavorful, thematic, well-formatted, and cleanly written.

I'm not sure that it's especially original, and it may be a little cheap for its effect, but after all the sloppy entries I've read I am just pleased as punch.

Remove anything that requires combat expertise. It the worst tax in the game. There are new ways around it, but it's still annoying as hell.

Enthusiastically seconded. It's needlessly punishing to martials who want to do something interesting.

What, exactly, is 'abduration'...?

I like items that give martials powers they shouldn't be able to get, even though they're almost always poorly balanced.