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Hey, I'd love to get some feedback on my item if anyone has time!

Astral Thief’s Opera Gloves

Aura Moderate divination and evocation, minor necromancy; CL 11th
Slot Hands; Price 24,000 gp; Weight —

Description

These elbow-length gloves were conceived by interplanar cat burglars to break into the most secure locations, or perhaps merely to escape from a dreadful opera. Through cunning magic each glove can be worn on either hand, but their powers only work when both are worn simultaneously.

The glove of thin air makes the wearer’s arm nearly invisible. When she looks through her gloved hand, she can see extradimensional spaces, such as of a bag of holding. These appear as opaque bubbles (‘shadows’) with volume equal to the space’s internal size and centered around their access portal. The wearer can make a steal combat maneuver to reach inside of an adjacent shadow and grab an object inside whose location she knows. This glove has the ghost touch property and deals piercing damage with unarmed attacks.

The glove of quicksilver ripples like liquid metal, and is sharp to the touch. If the wearer touches the glove to an extradimensional space’s shadow, she gains tremorsense across the space’s internal surfaces. She can attempt a sunder combat maneuver with the glove to slice a Small-sized hole in an adjacent shadow, which knits shut three rounds afterwards. This glove overcomes silver damage reduction and deals slashing damage with unarmed attacks.

Extradimensional spaces have a CMD of 10 + their creator’s caster level for the purposes of both gloves.

When worn as a pair, one glove is designated as primary, and the other as off-hand for unarmed attacks. The wearer can suppress the gloves’ effects for a round with a free action, during which time they assume an elegant silk form.

Construction

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, contact other plant, forceful hand, spectral hand; Cost 12,000 gp

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Cue jokes about contact other plant. *facepalm*

Why can't the gnomes just ever make, like, a nice hat or something?

Oo, exciting! I'mma review all of these, but let me get mine out there first :P

Wyvern Tamer (Cavalier)

Many rulers claim the lands of the River Kingdoms, but the wyverns own the skies. Nesting in the Tors of Levenies amidst the rolling wilds of the Kamelands, wyverns mark a territory of their own: one where they are kings and everyone else is prey. Taming these terrors requires cunning and ruthlessness, two things the folk of the River Kingdoms have in spades.

Class Skills: A wyvern tamer gains Listen (Wis), Spot (Wis), and Stealth (Dex) as class skills.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency: A wyvern tamer gains proficiency with whips.

Ambush Charge (Ex): At 1st level, a wyvern tamer can perform an ambush charge, which deals 1d6 extra precision damage against flatfooted opponents, with an additional +1d6 precision damage every three levels thereafter. Additionally, his mount can share his Stealth check results. This replaces challenge.

Dragonlore (Ex): At 1st level, a wyvern tamer learns Draconic and treats dragons as suitable mounts. This replaces his order.

Ruthless Whip (Ex): At 2nd level, a wyvern tamer learns the Whip Mastery feat (Ultimate Combat), and deals double damage with whips when riding a charging mount. As a free action he can whip his mount (maximum damage) for a +5 morale bonus to Ride checks for one round.

Wyvern Mount (Ex): At 8th level, a wyvern tamer obtains the service of a wyvern. Some tamers bribe, others threaten, but the result's the same. Customarily, one feeds the wyvern their previous mount as a show of good faith. The wyvern becomes his new mount, albeit at a -7 effective druid level. While mounted, he can make Ride checks in place of his wyvern's Fly checks.

Aerial Combatant (Ex): At 9th level and every three levels thereafter, a wyvern tamer learns one of the following aerial gambits. Gambits require his wyvern to attempt a Fly check using the specified action type. These replace demanding challenge.

• Bolt from the Blue (Swift, DC 50): This gambit is used before a charge. The entire charge is treated as a ranged attack for sniping, as long as it ends in concealment or cover.
  
• Dead Drop (Full-Round, DC 25): This special charge can only travel straight down. The target of the charge is treated as flat-footed.
  
• Flutter (Immediate, DC 40): This gambit moves the wyvern 5ft., but only such that it grants her rider an attack of opportunity against a target he otherwise couldn't reach.
  
• Sudden Sting (Immediate, DC 30): The wyvern can use this gambit after a successful ambush charge to make an immediate sting attack against the same target.
  
• Swooping Charge (Swift, DC 20): After a successful charge attack, this gambit allows the wyvern to change her angle of attack to up to 45 degrees upwards.

Page 5 items!

Flask of Sudden Sanctuary - I wasn't crazy about this cathedral in a can. I wonder about a 4 story cathedral when summoning it only requires 50 sq ft of space. The priest seems to be a 10 HD outsider summoned just to make holy water? Seems overkill. There might be something in this if it was scaled way, way down. A small chapel perhaps, with a low level friar

Thank you for the review! As far as the area requirement goes, remember that this is a 50ft. square, not 50 square feet; much the same way that a 5ft. square is actually 25 square feet, a 50ft. square is 50ft. on each side, and is actualy 2,500 square feet in size!

I can see what you mean about the Outsider's strength, but it's mostly to allow for a reasonably wide range of possible priests for different religions – there just aren't that many appropriate low-level Outsiders of different philosophies and alignments to provide a decent selection. In any case, the chapel and the priest abilities are mostly trappings for the final ability, which is the super soaker full of holy water.

Thanks again for the comments, it's awesome to see what people actually thought of the items we submitted this year!

Hey, I'd love to hear what people thought of my item!

Flask of Sudden Sanctuary
Aura moderate conjuration and transmutation; CL 13th
Slot –; Price 10,000 gp; Weight 2 lbs.

Description

This silver flask is inlaid with motifs of angels and dolphins cavorting. It's carved with a particular holy symbol, and can be used by a cleric of the appropriate faith to channel energy. Although it appears the size of a canteen, it holds an extradimensional space which can actually contain 125 gallons (1,000 pints) of water.

By tracing the perimeter of an empty 50ft. square with the water (36 pints) a cleric of the faith can channel energy to summon a chapel. A four-story cathedral of the cleric's design is erected in the area, including bell tower, iconography, and stained-glass windows. It appears complete with a high-ranking priest of the religion (an appropriate 10 HD Outsider) qualified to perform baptisms, handfasts, last rites, and marriages.

For an appropriate tithe (25 gp per pint), the pastor will bless the water in the flask, turning it into holy or unholy water. The chapel disappears after one hour, and the priest is sworn to never participate in conflicts.

By chanting one of three command prayers as a standard action, the flask starts gushing water, at either 8 pints per round (a touch attack), 45 pints per round (a 15ft. line), or 240 pints per round (a 20ft. cone). If the contents are holy or unholy water, the number of pints (flasks) of special water are divided between the squares in the area, with damage dice divided evenly. If mixed with normal water, holy water floats, and empties first; unholy water sinks, and sprays out afterwards. The area effects offer a Reflex save (DC 17) for half damage.

Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, control water, mage's magnificent mansion, planar ally; Cost 5,000 gp

Yes! I really loved the lonely man's instant party! It was such a ludicrous premise, but executed so flawlessly! I loved especially the little touches, like the party guests exploding into confetti :D

And yes, that's the one! Thank you so much, you made my night!

Other items off my awesome-list:

The spell knot was almost literally a spell-in-a-can, but it still made my list because of the sheer range of cool stuff you could do with it; a totally new spell delivery vehicle. The light shelf was absolutely useless in-game, but was such an amazingly cool idea, that's totally the sort of thing someone in the game world would actually build! The flute of the macaw gets awesome points for summoning a macaw the size of a pteranodon, and the cloud of gray was a really innovative idea, even if I cringed every time I saw that spelling of grey! :P

Since we're only talking about stuff that was awesome, I absolutely loved the linarian's bane, just a perfect idea for a one-shot item! Also super-cool was the meridian needle and the jade bell of the discordant soul as awesome monk-love items (especially the latter, which provides a recharge mechanic they desperately need), and also the tesseract dust, which was fun but probably too sciencey.

Sorry, one more – props to whoever made the belt of the shielding portal. SO cool and so well done!

A little disappointed that my flask of sudden sanctuary didn't make an impact, but there's always next year! :)

As far as the wondrous item as weapon debate goes, the only example I can think of from previous contests is the Malleus Maleficarum from the first year. While I don't necessarily subscribe to one philosophy or another, it's worth mentioning that the judges didn't bat an eye at the book being usable as a magical warhammer. Wondrous items, plain and simple, are just magical items which do something unique and interesting with the rules. If that something interesting involves acting like a weapon of some kind, I don't think it's a big deal!

It's a holdover from 3rd edition that was inherited by PF. Realistically, spell-like abilities and spells themselves should have been folded together so that every ability would be one of the three basic types. Or if they were really smart they would have just scrapped that category altogether and made everything either (Ex) or (Su); I'm personally not sure whether the granularity between a bolt of lightning which works like a lightning bolt spell and a bolt of lightning which works slightly differently is really worth keeping around. I'd prefer a much simpler Magic/Not-Magic dichotomy.

As far as I can tell it's a legacy issue, because of the way that traditional spellcasters were benchmarks for power; the game was basically built around the framework of the cleric and wizard. Monster abilities tended to become "like this spell BUT", which led to the introduction of abilities that just cite preexisting spell effects in order to save wordcount and to avoid having to think creatively.

Another sample had 11 of my tagged items. Estimate for this sample is 909 items.

Brilliant idea, we should have started this days ago; then we would have been able to compare estimates before and after the cull to see how close we were. But, late is better than never! I did a sampling following your methodology, and saw 16 of 100 tagged items in 50 votes, leading to an estimate of 625 items.

Brilliant. Thank you so much for this, guys, it's amazing to actually be part of the process this time and not just twiddling our thumbs for a month!

cmjohnst wrote:

Mask of Many Roads

*Wha--? How does seeing across the Ethereal Plane grant you a see invisibility effect? Wouldn't that just let you see ethereal creatures? Invisibility =/= Ethereal.

*Then we get a planar lesson embedded in the text of this incredibly expensive item and it basically boils down to just a create demiplane-in-a-mask item. I'll pass.

*Vote to Reject.

*Aaaaaaaand....this one just kinda peters out. I do like bubbles though.

*Reject.

*I get the feeling this person could write a cool creepy story, but needs to work a lot on getting game terminology and game rules right.

*Reject.

*Rejected.

Thank you for the feedback, Neil, and for going to the massive effort of letting everyone have this catharsis by getting feedback on their items. It's tempting, as I'm sure it is for most people, to try to defend my item, but the bottom line is that you guys know what you're talking about. There's always next year, thanks again!

I'd love to get your feedback!

Mask of Many Roads
Aura strong divination and conjuration; CL 15th
Slot head; Price 170,000 gp; Weight 2 lbs.

Description

This carved wooden mask is stained with occult markings. Anyone looking through its serpentine eye sockets can see across Planes to the Ethereal, granting them a see invisibility effect.

The true power, however, allows the wearer to create a crossroads between worlds once per day. They must shout a command word which is carved inside of the mask in Aklo.

Activation is a full-round action, and establishes a nonmoving bubble of radius 100ft. centred around the mask. Upon activation the speaker must designate a single Plane near their own. The Transitive Planes are near the Prime Material and each other, and the Astral Plane in particular connects to every Plane. Inner Planes are near each other, and Outer Planes connect to other Outer Planes which share an alignment component.

The wearer can choose which Plane dominates inside the crossroads for each of the following traits: gravity, morphic, elemental, alignment, and magic. Time proceeds at the rate of the slower Plane. Interplanar interaction is possible, allowing material contact with the extraplanar. A trait can be changed as a swift action.

Extradimensional spaces such as a rope trick collapse within the crossroads, scattering their contents across an area equal to their apparent size. Creatures which leave the crossroads end up in the Plane of their choice. After 15 rounds or if the mask leaves the bubble, the crossroads collapses. People still inside are stranded on the Plane of the wearer’s choice.

Construction

Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, contact other plane, create demiplane, see invisibility; Cost 85,000 gp

Have the alternates ever been called upon to present round 2 material? In other words, are there any alternates with the (rpg superstar top 32) tag?

I remember this at least happened in the first year. There was quite the kerfluffle too, since one of the items which was put into the top 32 was disqualified based on plagiarism. Honestly, I feel bad for the alternates. They are expected to do the same work, they have extra pressure on them with the 'will I won't I' situation, and in the end they probably won't get to proceed anyway.