Jon Agley's page

Would love feedback (either positive or negative). Several things that I know counted against the item: spells weren't in alphabetical order in construction requirements (still new to Pathfinder templating... I'm a 1st ed/2nd ed guy who picked up the system recently), and the item is kind of a limited swiss army knife with a randomization component, but I thought the concept/visuals would make up for it - as a visual RP person I learned a lot about the importance of raw mechanics to this system. The healing firework was probably too good (2d6 would provide a more reasonable mean heal per round). Alliteration annoyed some people (voters), most likely, but the kind of wizard who would create this item would also enjoy alliteration.

Fray’s Fabulous Fireworks
Aura moderate evocation; CL 7th
Slot none; Price 10,000 gp; Weight 3 lbs.

Description
This soot-covered leather satchel contains an array of colored fireworks. A firework can be drawn from the satchel and launched as a standard action. It flies 200 feet upwards and up to 60 feet horizontally before exploding in a beautiful pattern matching the firework’s hue. The glowing embers rain down in a 20 foot radius cylinder for 2d4 rounds, causing an effect each round based on the firework’s color. Each creature in the area may make a DC 16 Reflex save to take half damage and avoid any additional effects.

Red: Burning ash deals 2d6 points of fire damage and blocks all sight in the area;
Yellow: Sparkling motes deal 1d6 points of damage and outline all creatures as glitterdust;
Green: Falling spores deal 1d6 points of acid damage and sicken creatures;
Blue: Shards of ice deal 2d6 points of cold damage and create difficult terrain for 1 minute;
Purple: Inky tentacles attempt to grapple creatures as black tentacles, with a CMB of +12;
White: Positive energy cures 1d8+5 points of damage and affects creatures as protection from evil.

Every 24 hours, the satchel generates 3 random fireworks, and any fireworks remaining from the previous day disappear.

Construction Requirements: Craft Wondrous Item, ash storm, ice storm, glitterdust, black tentacles, cure light wounds, protection from evil, 5,000 gp.

My personal favorite made it, my close second (Blaze in the Azimuth) was culled.

I predicted about half the list, about 10 of them don't surprise me. Some I honestly couldn't believe made it past the second or third cull, so I'm rereading them to see what I missed.

This is kind of the same boat I'm in. This was my first exposure to the contest and I submitted an item at the very last minute, so I'm excited to have survived all of the culls... but... I've learned that the vast majority of other voters think very, very differently than I do. Many of the items in the top 32 are those that I consistently downvoted, and many of the items that I loved and consistently upvoted are nowhere to be found. It's interesting in the sense that for next season I will need to design an item that I don't really like but that matches the concepts that were popular. Regardless, it's a fun exercise.