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Congratulations Top 16!

Yup, I'm going radio silent for now. See you guys on the other side.

Elixir of Last Will

Item in a Nutshell dead or dying character aids another

First Impression: It’s a good concept to build an item around

Template Use: Looks ok.

Critique: On the face of it, I like the idea of this item, it’s a good way to bend the rules but not in a wild way, but ultimately I can’t envision a character ever wanting to buy this. The real cost of this item isn’t 150 gp, it’s that the character needs to be dead or dying to use it. Unless the character is suicidal, the best time to use this to guarantee it’s effects is a round or two before certain death, but drinking this elixir takes just as long as drinking a potion of cure wounds. I can’t imagine a character wanting to drink this over a cure potion.

This item is really hard to plan around because the only time a character can be sure it’ll trigger is if they kill themselves. Plus, the effect is basically Aid Another, which a player can do even better when they are alive. I think you had a neat idea of doing something after death, but I don’t think the effect is strong enough to make people want to hang out on the brink of death.

There are some minor mechanical issues, as elixirs typically reference “the drinker” rather than “the character” and a stabilized creatures always stop losing hit points, so there’s no repeat that. That can save you some word count to make the item more exciting.

Would I rather buy this or... 3 cure light wound potions? No, I’d buy the potions.

I really like constraints when doing creative work, as I end up producing much better content.

Yeah, I definitely didn't feel obligated. It was just something I wanted to do.

I must confess, I'm astonished at how many people seem to think the removal of the saving throw was too much/unbalanced/overpowered/etc. The math shows that even with these gloves, you'll still be outpaced in damage by other casters using blasting spells of the same level as whatever cure spell you use. (And that's to say nothing of the party's martial damage output.)

Yeah, the lack of saving throw seemed perfectly reasonable here, and to me a bit exciting.

Plus, who is really going to wear these at level 20? I think they do what they do really well at a good price.

I was daydreaming a bit about instead of caring about the word cure in the spell name, it instead cared about healing sub-type spells. You'd have to do some serious work dealing with restoration and true resurrection, but that seems like a pretty interesting problem to solve.

Just a note: I do plan on reviewing every item in this thread at some point, but I'm also trying to win some RPGsomething-something contest, so I may not be Mr. Johnny-on-the-Review.

Thanks for your patience.

Jacob, Neil, thank you for the advice.

The main reason I reviewed items last night is that I needed a day to mentally separate myself from archetypes and relax, and I wanted to spend that time engaging the community in a meaningful way. I lurked the boards heavily last year during the competition, so while I recognize many of the regulars, I'm basically an unknown quantity. I really wish I had posted a little bit more before I entered this contest, as I feel like all my interactions are "tainted" with a weird power imbalance since getting into this contest is the first anyone's ever heard of me here.

While risky, I felt that reviewing items was beneficial for the community and the Superstar contest, and at the same time revealed a little of my design philosophies.

If I hadn't been at work last night, I probably wouldn't have reviewed them at all. While my job doesn't require my constant attention, it does require enough that doing research and brainstorming for future rounds is extremely difficult (especially due to internet firewall restrictions) Review was something I could do in the moments between.

I'm no politician, but I know I can't please all the people all the time. I'm proud of my work, and I'm going to do the best I can to win this contest.

I really do appreciate your comments. I feel like I'm having a difficult time transitioning into being a member of the community vs. being a lurker, since "message board small talk" isn't something I'm particularly good at. Conversations like this are encouraging.

Orb of Aggravation

Item in a Nutshell 4 rounds of ranged random dirty tricks

First Impression: not very exciting, to good for it’s cost

Template Use: Looks ok.

Critique: So you fling this ball at an enemy, and for the next four rounds it gets dirty tricked. Your first sentence is a problem. Item’s shouldn’t tell the reader who favors them. Leave the reader to decide who favors it. You also say that rogues call this item by a completely different name than the actual name of the item. You’d think that if they were favored by rogues, either they would call them by their actual name, or the name would be what they call them. All of this is “backstory” that doesn’t really add to the item. This item also hits one of the snags listed in Sean’s Consolidated Advice Thread, namely #8 “The random item.” An item with a random effect is lazy design.

Creating these seems difficult too, because wizards get telekinesis at level 10, and I’ve never known a wizard to take Improved Dirty Tricks as a feat, and I don’t know a lot of rogues who take Create Wondrous Item. Either way, the DC to make these would almost always be +5 due to not meeting the requirements.

This item could work, but even if the writing was improved and the results were less random, it still isn’t a superstar item. It just isn’t very interesting.

Would I rather buy this or... whip feather token? Actually, these are kinda similar... I didn’t notice before my review, but perhaps you used this as a model? If so good on ya.

Orator’s Torc

Item in a Nutshell Moderate bonus to Cha skill checks, bigger auditory range

First Impression: Deserves to be in the top 89, needs a little umph

Template Use: Looks good

Critique: This is good item. The item’s description is clear, and it is easy to understand what it does. You paid attention to a lot of details and covered a lot of the various way this item could be used based on it’s powers. It's obvious that you thought about this item carefully.

But it’s kinda boring. Giving +X to Y skills is very, very easy to do, and doesn’t require a lot of design acumen. Same for doubling spell and ability range. You are bending the rules, but not in a new, exciting or compelling way. Almost every bard is going to want one of these, but they just make bards “win more.” Next time, make an item that gives characters interesting opportunities, rather than letting them do what they already can better.

Would I rather buy this or... something else? If I’m a bard, I’m buying these.

Thanks Guy! I am determined next year to make it more interesting and Superstar. I'm gonna bend those rules to an inch of breaking!

That's the Superstar spirit!

Time's Tide Pendant

Item in a Nutshell Player takes two turns in a row.

First Impression: Messing with initiative orders is messy.

Template Use: Looks good.

Critique: This is a very weird design space to work in, not just because it’s time related. I just took a quick look at magic items, class abilities etc, and couldn’t find a single reference to affecting initiative order once it has been established, except for delaying or readying an action which always moves down initiative not up. So on that note, you found something completely new! But I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing in this case. I would be very nervous inventing mechanics like this as a freelancer.

It’s a swift action to activate. Mechanically, I could activate this as the last action of my turn, but it says it works like Delay which isn’t an action at all and you don’t take your turn. What happens if I activate this at the end of my turn? Does my initiative order become last, and if so, what about all the people that had turns between the original initiative position and the new one, since my turn was "the last in the round”

There is no compelling reason why an these must be made by an oracle since the slow or speed time revelation is just slow or haste spells. This makes the item more restrictive, but not an equal amount more flavorful.
Would I rather buy this or... anything else? I wouldn’t buy these. I would be afraid of blowing up the world with a time paradox.

Wings, Resplendent Battle

Item in a Nutshell Burst of good lets allies do handful of things for a minute

First Impression: I kind of like it, but something’s amiss...

Template Use: Looks good

Critique: Ok, on the face of it, this seems pretty cool. You make a shout or something, and for the next minute your allies can gain a different benefit each round. The writing is clear and these wings certainly are resplendent. I think what let you down here is it does way too much. It’s like the swiss army knives of swiss army knives in that it’s exactly what each character needs for one entire combat. It’s a combination of thematic abilities without much restriction or down side, which while interesting and desirable as an item, isn’t very exciting or difficult from a design perspective.

Would I rather buy this or... headband of alluring charisma +6? belt of giant strength +6? It’s a toss-up, but I think the +stat items are going to push this out more often than not.

And here we go, it's in.

Something I've learned over the past few days is that being top 32 is not the same as wanting to be top 32. I feel a lot of pressure to not f~&! it up.

Anyone else feel the same way?

It's a lot of work for sure. I entered without really thinking about what would happen if I actually made it (even though I was still working under the assumption that I would make it).

But what did it is that I may never get this opportunity again, and if I don't do my absolute best, and work harder than I've ever worked, then I'll regret it.

I still wonder how much sexy is actually selling Pathfinder material though. How many people buy an adventure path or a campaign setting because there's cleavage on the cover, or because the sorcerer is showing a little leg (a lot actually)? How many copies of the APG sold because Oracles are hot?

Intellectual's Clay Pipe

Item in a Nutshell +5 to a potentially untrained knowledge check.

First Impression: That’s it?

Template Use: spell in requirements should be italicized and lower case

Critique: What’s not to like? Simple and useful. But this doesn’t really show us what you a really capable of, since a +5 bonus to X skill is one of the easiest things to have an item do. Bend the rules harder!

Would I rather buy this or... brooch of shielding? Yeah, I’d buy this pipe.

Handkerchief of the Scoured Visage

Item in a Nutshell: A handkerchief that steals someone’s face.

First Impression: Why would I want to steal someone’s face?

Template Use: Looks good.

Critique: The name is singularly appropriate. Your writing needs work. The first sentence describes it as nondescript and appearing like a rag or cloth, and belies it’s true nature. Not all magic items have to be clean. You can just say it looks like a dirty rag, we know it’s magic.

You are doing fairly complicated stuff here, removing a face, transferring locus of senses to rag, removing need of faceless body to breathe, and it reads like you dealt with them as you thought of them, not as would make most sense to the reader. You need to organize the consequence of these actions in a logical way.

So, I wipe a corpse’s face with this handkerchief. Now what? The body can’t be identified? Ok, so I wipe a living persons face with this handkerchief. Now what? I carry it around, and they can see and smell and speak from my back pocket? Again, why would I want to steal someone’s face, and why might someone be willing to have their face stolen?

Long story short, this is a really imaginative idea. You were let down by your writing, and the items limited usefulness, especially for it’s cost. Read more wondrous items and magic spells and look at the way they word things, as there are often standard way of dealing with consequences of effects like the one you’ve invented.

Would I rather buy this or... Crystal ball? Orb of storms? No, I’d rather control weather than control faces.

Fiddle of the Dance

Item in a Nutshell Give allies an extra 5 ft step per round, or can walk on walls

First Impression: A “good” irresistible dance.

Template Use: unknown, but if it’s only missing message board tags, this is pretty bad

Critique: Wondrous items can be made by player characters. When you say things like “Of elven make” but don’t list “creator must be an elf” in the requirements it means that one of those two things is incorrect. Requiring a DC to use an item should be avoided if possible, as it only really make things bad for low level characters, and it already costs almost 17,000 gp.

Anyway you make your allies dance, which ends up manifesting itself as “a five foot step as an extra swift action at the end of the round” This is a little confusing, as each creature on the battlefield has a turn during one round, so do all the allies take the extra swift action at the same time at after the last creature in initiative order has acted for the round? I don’t think that’s what you intended.

Take a look in the “phrases that drive you crazy” thread, and you’ll see “the item’s true function is revealed” is one of them. It’s not neccessary to say this, simply list what happens when a bard uses the item.

In any case, I’m not really sure how dancing has anything to do with climbing walls and ceilings, and taking extra steps. These don’t really fit any kind of theme, and end up feeling mashed together.

Would I rather buy this or... a headband of alluring charisma? broom of flying? Both of these seem more useful.

Candle of Distant Assurance

This item in a Nutshell a little assurance that loved ones are safe.

First Impression: Absolutely fantastic.

Template Use: Looks good.

Critique: This item is great. The name is evocative, and leads the reader right into it’s function. It is items like this that make a roleplaying setting seem more real, with families and people living out their lives with hopes and fears just like us. You didn’t literally tell a story, but your item told a story. I liked seeing your design notes because you achieved exactly what you set out to achieve. And you did it well enough to be voted into the top 20. So why didn’t you make the 32? Most players will never buy this (all my friends play orphaned characters unfortunately). This item is for the folks at home, not the daring adventurers in the world. Wondrous items are about overcoming obstacles, solving problems, shoring up weaknesses, and enhancing strengths, in a way that magic can’t. Next year, set a goal to do one of those things, and make it as believable and captivating as this candle, and you’ll make top 32.

Would I rather buy this or... Yes. I’d buy a handful.

Amulet of the Grasping Soul

Item in a Nutshell: Corporeal can smash Incorporeal and visa versa.

First Impression: That’s it?

Template Use: missing semi-colons and colons, CL 15th, not 15, Craft Wondrous Item should be capitalized, spaces between price numbers and gp

Critique: As useful as this item is, it’s boring. Everyone who’s ever fought a ghost would have wanted something like this. This item just makes the problem go away. Without restriction. AND ghosts can wear it too. This item doesn’t show off any flair.

Also, what happens when a corporeal creature travel to the ethereal plane? Can they affect items in the material plane? The way this is worded leaves that ambiguous.

Would I rather buy this or... This is a no-brainer item, and to me that’s sad.

Siegebreaker Cymbals

Item in a Nutshell: Swap metals to overcome DR

First Impression: These don’t break sieges.

Template Use: looks ok.

Critique: First of all, the name doesn’t really relate to what these do. The name is your first impression, and the name implies these break down walls or something. A little disappointing. Ultimately the cymbals are a neat idea, but they fall short. As mentioned earlier in the thread, requiring a DC performance check makes these items hard to price, and higher level characters are going to have an easier time using them, but will also likely have other ways of dealing with DR.

There were a few terminology problems (creatures within vibration?) and the strange choice to remove the ability to overcome damage reduction with pure enhancement. This seems good if the party has damage reduction, but not if the monsters do, unless everyone’s packing silver swords or something. And imagine an encounter where he party has silver, and they are fighting two monsters, one with DR cold iron, one with DR adamantine (however unlikely that is) You’ll never be able to get them both.

Bardic performance to increase effect, that seems novel. Having the cymbals become non-magical for an hour seems odd though, why not just X times a day? Does that mean they can’t be detected by detect magic during that hour?

Note: I see where you were going with the spell requirements, and it’s pretty cool. I’m not sure it gets us all the way to what these do, but I like it.

Would I rather buy this or... there are lots of things at these prices which might serve a bard better than these, especially since you have to plop down at least 8,200 for these to work.

Porcine Pendant

Item in a Nutshell Dancing faerie pig fascinates onlookers

First Impression: Are all faerie pigs this jovial?

Template Use: I think someone mentioned that faint only need be used once in the aura.

Critique: You’ve introduced the concept of a faerie pig, and the spell carry companion in the requirements makes this seem like you’ve actually caught a faerie pig and have it trapped in the necklace. Does that mean they have stats? Do faerie pigs always act like this? Can it be attacked or killed, and what happens if it is?

Since you haven’t explicitly said that the hypnotic effect of the piggy functions like the hypnotic pattern spell, it works exactly as you wrote it in the item, which doesn’t list any save vs. the fascination of the pig and there isn’t any limitations as to how many HD of creatures can be affected, and as written this piggy would fascinate blind creatures as well. This means that this little piggy could stop an ancient gold dragon cold, possibly more than one. Since it can only move 20 ft away, I'd be worried about being fascinated by our gyrating porcine friend as well.

There are too many loose ends with this item, and in the end it fascinates creatures for 1 minute, possibly makes them like you better, and you can influence them to do something, which if was there was a thematic connection to pigs might work, but as it is seems a little jokey. With extreme care you might be able to pull this off.

Would I rather buy this or... Bag of tricks? Eh, if the rules were ironed out a bit, possibly, but I’d like to see a better explanation about how faerie pigs got their groove. WOAH, what if the pig caused an irresistible dance-like effect? Makes everyone dance with it. Hmm.....

Ethos Swarm Charm

Item in a Nutshell Turns character into swarm.

Ghoulslayer Gloves

Item in a Nutshell:Tweak range and damage to undead from cure spells.

First Impression: Useful, but not exciting.

Template Use: Looks ok.

Critique: I personally don’t like calling out Golarion setting info (except for maybe gods, unless explicitly asked to do otherwise), but it’s done pretty well here. Undead-slaying as a phrase seems a little rough here. There is probably a way to clean up the “casts a cure” spell sentence, since you obviously thought it needed clarification, and might come off as patronizing (e.g. “cure spells are the ones that cure... stupid”) Applying meta-magic with gloves is a neat choice, and the application is narrow enough be balanced.

When it comes down to it though, is this superstar? It’s a good item, and follows the template well, but it just doesn’t play with the rules enough, or create that excellent imagery to get there. It looks like you had ~150 words you left on the table that could have been used to punch this up.

Would I rather buy this or... Incense of meditation? It’s a close call. There aren’t a lot of cleric related gloves around this cost, so this is it’s only competition. It would depend on the campaign, but I totally wouldn’t mind buying these if there were lots of pesky undead around.

Gentleman’s Ensnaring Cane

First Impression: How is this gentlemanly? Also, there are some serious power issues.

How does one pin an item? Pinning mechanics don’t cover pinning items, and this item doesn't explain how that works, or indeed why it’s necessary.

Force cage the spell can only affect creatures that can fit inside a 20 ft cube and has a range of at most 75 ft. Dimensional Anchor is a ray, which requires a ranged touch attack and needs line of sight to target. The Gentleman’s Ensnaring Cane is effectively casting both of these spells up to 4 times at once, while ignoring almost all of their restrictions, and also lets you move each target creature before it acts on it’s own turn, which none of the aforementioned spells do (perhaps telekinesis?).

The DC to negate actually seems about right for the spells involved, but here’s the thing: A character can reasonably expect to afford this thing around level 14 (if they save for it). CR 15 monsters on on average have +13 to +18 reflex, which means that they’ll make the reflex save ~70% of the time. It only get’s worse as you level up, but even CR 12 monsters save ~60% of the time.This might be an argument for the cane being balanced, but you ask someone if they’d spend 78-grand on an item that works ~40% of the time, they’d probably pass.

Would I rather buy this or... Robe of the Archmagi? Helm of Teleportation? Probably not.

Chelish Silver-Tongued Devil

First Impression: Name makes me expect a monster rather than an item.

You allude to erinyes, and the item is named after devils, but they don’t have any powers like this grants, unless the wearer is getting an Entangle ability that affects only the throat. The devil connection isn’t very clear from a mechanical standpoint, although choking a creature to death does seem like something an erinyes would do. Slow and torturous. Changing peoples opinion does not seem like something an erinyes would do.

You should have listed the “web kiss” ability first, since it’s the cooler of the two abilities, you want to lead with your neatest power. Web is a strange choice for a spell to base this off of though, suffocation might have been better.
Would I rather buy this or... A pearl of power? bracers of armor? headband of alluring charisma? save up 500 and buy a circlet of persuasion? The answer is mostly no, I wouldn’t.

(Also, "rat-treat boots" should be rat-tread, unless there's an item I don't know about.)

Oh man! That's hilarious, I'm imagining what rat-treat boots would be like.

Yup, them last few words. I was away from my normal writing tools the last few days so my word counter was off (fortunately the one I was using was over-counting). But then I kinda splurged on words and it took a while to get things back in. Oh well. It's done now. Onward to monsters.

@Template Fu: I really like your feedback about the difference between the interaction between wearer and rats when on water vs. on land. I hadn't intended there to be a difference, but the way it's worded now I can see how it paints a slightly different mind picture. Excellent catch.

As for the bland description: again, you're on point. Since I was doing something so different with the swarm I wanted to make sure I nailed down all the loose ends, which didn't leave a lot of wiggle room for description so I skimped.

I do, however, regret the phrase "often mistaken for large rats when not worn" which I think sent people in a more bunny slipper direction that I would have liked.

And seriously Clark? Meat Dress? Does that make me the Lady Gaga of this competition? I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

@TanithT: You hit the nail on the head. Tabletop gaming (indeed almost all gaming) is such an boy's world we really should be surprised there are any women gamers at all.

It's similar to the dearth of women in science and technology professions. Everyone at the top is scratching their heads wondering where the women are, when at almost every point leading up to the top women are implicitly or explicitly discouraged from continuing.

What makes tabletop gaming unique from other games is that it is REALLY good at telling stories: Anything is possible!. Why then are we telling the same stories? What TanithT brought up is that a lot of the tropes of tabletop gaming are excluding women in a way that male gamers never have to think about; they are non-issues for them. As GM_Solspiral mentioned, this is at the root a problem with society, but I would counter the assumption that because men spend the money men get the games. If women thought tabletop gaming was worth their while, they'd spend money on it. I'm not talking about flowers and unicorns and that type of stuff: that's the stuff that the ignorant think of when the think of what women want ("It's for a girl? Make it pink!"). I'm talking about a game which doesn't alienate them before they've even opened the rule-book. A game where the can participate in the community and not be dismissed or harassed for their gender. A game that is a safe and fun space to tell kick-ass stories.

Unfortunately I think the best solution to the problem is to have more women game designers. As Marie just said, we need to mentor and encourage women designers, and continue to shape Pathfinder and it's community to be much more inclusive. More women players -> more women designers. We need to prime the pump as it were.

This thread is a good start, as long as it's not an end. It would behoove us to listen with an open mind to the women posting in this thread.

I won't say anything now, but I think it would be interesting if, after submissions close but before the entries are revealed, we all shared what we thought everyone else would submit. Probably still not a good idea though.

I can share that now. I honestly haven't spent a single shred of mindpower on thinking what anyone else is going to submit. Part of that is that I have so little free time to work on the contest that if I spent it worrying about what you guys are going to do, I wouldn't be able to do what I'm going to do.

I grew up playing Rolemaster (hey, we were kids, having a million charts for everything was cool), and then 4E on-and-off for a number of years.

Yeah, Chartmaster! My first RPG was a Middle Earth themed Rolemaster variant. I spreadsheeted the heck out of that.

I saw this item during voting and I tend to agree with judges. Designers must create a space for the players to make interesting and meaningful choices. If we play too fast and loose with bending the rules for that sense of "awesome" we end up making items and abilities that really aren't choices at all. I agree with SKR, that this item is likely to be kept in a bag until it's needed, then whipped out to make whatever easier.

That said, the item concept is solid, and definitely worth exploring.

I wish I had seen this item during voting (though it appears you didn't need my vote to get here). Very nice effects, with a cool theme. Any pirate worth his salt (*groan*) would love to have one of these.

Congratulations fellow swarmer! For some reason I wish the mirror reflected a creature and made them into a swarm of tiny versions of themselves. Your choice was probably more wise than that.

I can see a knight charging at a mass of enemies all by himself, only to suddenly blink past them to smite the army's cowardly leader riding behind the main force.

This is awesome imagery. I like that the item is straightforward (even though a little awkwardly worded) and allows a lot of neat tricks with an ability that might otherwise not see use.

What I like to do with proof reading, once I've got the main thrust of the text down, is to ~5-10 drafts back to back reading the text out loud each time. This helps identify passages that "sound funny" and forces me to pay attention to what I've actually written.

Am I right in assuming since the date on this thread is Dec 4th, that you submitted this item on first day? Nice.

I totally picked up on the Baba Yaga connection with this one (as she gnaws through the forest to capture the fleeing hero), and even though I usually pass on such strong allusions to specific lore, Baba Yaga is rad.

I bumped into this once or twice during voting, and for some reason had a hard time wrapping my mind around wearable quicksand. I kept visualizing how a person would look if their cloak literally looked like the surface of quicksand, and it made me dizzy.

It's a tight item though.

I like this feedback. I find it humorous that so many of you find it "weird" or even "gonzo", when during development it seemed perfectly natural. I actually got the idea when I discovered that rats swarms had a swim speed and imagined a party of travelers floating gently downstream on a raft of rats.

In no particular order...

The candle that tells you when someone has died: I know it's a simple idea, and arguably not "superstar", but the description was so evocative and it's such a good fit in the fantasy genre. As well as offering the slim hope that perhaps the linked person might only be on another plane!

I second this. It was such a simple idea, and it feels as if it already exists in Golarion, even if it's not high up on the average adventurer's want list.

I am by necessity a nocturnal creature, and my alarm clock today was remembering that the round one results were just announced! I must say it was a uniquely wonderful way to start the day to see my name in the top 32.

Congratulations all, and good luck.

Thanks everyone! I had a great time designing these and I'm glad they made it. I'm definitely looking forward to Round 2 and beyond.

Thanks again!

I've seen a few items 2-3 times, one of which items was my own!

Eric Morton wrote:

toothpaste

Wow, I thought I was the king of garbling but that is one single wicked run on sentence.

Yeah, he's definitely superstar material. I can only think of one way to clean teeth with that invention. He's got more than any writer could hope to express in less than 300 words. That's some imagination.