Lars Lundberg's page

I am curious about the "golden ticket" element of the judging. Is it really necessary? Doesn't the normal process of evaluation give us the strongest candidates? Several judges critique an item, they agree or disagree on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the item and consensus rules. The ticket seems to circumvent this process, allowing a judge to pick one item, regardless of what the other judges say, and put it through. Am I wrong in my assumption of how the ticket works?

Divide by (5 divided by charge per day)???
Multiply lower item cost by 1.5???
Spell level x caster level x 2,000gp unless the item lasts rounds, minutes, hours, days then multiply by 4,2,1.5 or divide in half???

The one complaint about the RPG Superstar competition is pricing a Wondrous Item. I spent almost as much time trying to price my item as I did developing the idea. Am I crazy or do the rules given for creating and pricing a Wondrous Item just not make sense? I tried looking at Wondrous Items that were already created and in the Core Rulebook, but 90% of them didn't seem to follow the rules given. As it was, I had to make the decision to either price my item using the formulae given or use my gut feeling for what my item was worth. Since the contest stressed being professional and accurate I decided to go with the formulae. Now, that being said, I could be completely wrong about how I calculated my item so I am hoping that people out there can give me a hand. I don't want to delve into my specific item but I would like some feedback from the community on how they do this in their own campaigns or for this contest.