Withering Hourglass

[Pieter Simoons]

WITHERING HOURGLASS

Aura moderate transmutation; CL 9th
Slot --; Price 8,000 gp; Weight --

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DESCRIPTION
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This small hourglass is crafted of the finest silver filigree. Inside, sand always seems to flow from the smaller chamber into the larger, even if the hourglass is turned upside down.

Touching the larger end to an object causes it to age and decay rapidly. This deals 1d10 damage each round, ignoring hardness. It spoils food in one round, rots hide in two, and crumbles wood in three.

Touching the smaller end to an object rejuvenates it, restoring 1d10 hit points per round to a damaged object. This can restore spoiled food, remove rust from metal, or render faded parchment legible. If a substantial part of the object is missing, it is not replaced.

Stone, enchanted items, and constructs are unaffected. Living creatures resist both effects, instead taking 1d6 points of constitution damage when hit with a touch attack. An ignorant adventurer handling the hourglass takes this damage each round, until he figures out how to safely hold it by making a DC 20 Knowledge (Arcana) check.

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CONSTRUCTION
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Requirements: Craft Wondrous Item, Fabricate; Cost 4,000 gp

[Wolfgang Baur]

I think I'm in love. This is an item that does something other wondrous items don't do, with real utility in a lot of situations, and it answers most of the questions I had while reading it. Plus great flavor for the DM or player who uses it in the game.

The costing is lowballed something fierce, I suspect, but I don't care.

Inclined to keep.

[Clark Peterson]

I dont like the Con damage, because that can make this into a weapon which it really isnt intended to be. And I do think the cost is off.

But I agree it is really really inspired.

Keeper.

[Clark Peterson]

Kept.

[Sean K Reynolds]

I'm glad that it doesn't youthen-heal living creatures... I was afraid this would be used an an unlimited-healing item.

[Jason Nelson]

Congratulations on making it into RPG Superstar 2009!

I like the name (though it's a little misleading, since the item both withers and rejuvenates) and the description of the item is colorful and interesting. I like new items that fill a niche, and the niche of repair or destroying items is not well-covered in the rules. The fact that it doesn't affect magic items or constructs covers a lot of abuses, and the inability to affect stone prevents you from using it to go around knocking down castle walls, which is good!

My problem is more with the hourglass as a weapon. It's a melee touch to hit and does 1d6 CON damage with no save. Which makes it, in most respects, better than the rod of withering which does only 1d4 CON damage that is negated with a DC 17 Fort save. True, the rod does get +1 to hit and it also does 1d4 STR damage on a hit and a failed save.

Generally speaking, though, this item is at least as good if not better than the rod simply as a weapon, and it gets better the higher level you get, where touch AC gets farther and farther away from base AC and where saves keep going up, yet the rod is TRIPLE the price of the hourglass, plus the hourglass also has the damages/heals objects property.

If the withering of the rod did perhaps 1 point of CON damage per round or per hit, I think I'd be okay with it. It would still allow you to slowly drain the life from someone in a very cinematic way (representing fast aging through CON loss) without making the hourglass such an efficient weapon. As it is, I think the weapon property vastly overshadows what seems like the intended main property of the item, which is damaging or restoring objects.

Summary: It's a really neat idea and a vivid description, but I think the side effect has stolen the show and become the story. This is a place where I think mechanics get in the way of concept. I'd suggest to either increase the effect and objects while upcosting the whole thing, or downgrade the CON loss to a smaller effect to bring it more lin line with the object power and the cost you've set. I like it. I just have issues... :)

[Christine Schneider]

An hourglass makes for a fine wondrous item and connecting it with some sort of time mechanic fits the base object neatly. Being well written and structured, I was inclined to dig this item until I got to the Con damage part.

The application in combat could explain the name of the item, because the way it stands 90% of its use will be to touch attack for serious Con damage. This is just too good, since the damage (in HP) scales (with the HD of the target) and debuffs (lowering Fort save) or even kills its victim.

Positive
The aging effect is well represented through the Con damage.
Spotting the stone issue shows attention to detail and how players could abuse this item. That is a very important skill and a great plus that you managed to show that here.
Nice formatting too.

Negative
The 1d6 con damage is a killer for me. I know that it probably wasn't intended, but an effect that strong shouldn't stick around that easily. Especially at this price.

After reviewing all other items:
1d6 is still a lot. If there were a save…hmm, anyway, I like many aspects of this submission while hating only one, so I am still wanting to see what you got for future rounds of RPG Superstar. Avoid getting me sad again, ok?

[Rob McCreary]

Interesting. I'm not sure what to think - it's definitely something I haven't seen before, so full marks for creativity. But I have the same concerns as the other judges. Usable as a weapon, doing Con damage with no save. Is that per round, too? Yikes! And it's unlimited use, apparently. Have a locked door? No problem, I have a withering hourglass! You've essentially given your PCs an unlimited chime of opening. It may not knock down castle walls, but it'll knock down everything else not made of stone! I also have a pet peeve regarding prerequisites: you've got fabricate for the restoration power, but I'd like to see a prerequisite for the withering and Con damage too.

Too open for abuse, IMO. Still, you did try to cover some abuses by keeping it away from magic and constructs, and I suspect most PCs would drop it as a cursed item or trap once they started taking Con damage, without realizing it was a useful wondrous item. It's certainly original - just don't forget about the potential for abuse. And congratulations on joining the ranks of RPG Superstar!

[Clinton Boomer]

You people are a bunch of sissies! Think of it this way: for less than the price of a +2 longsword, you can now deal 1d6 Con damage with EVERY ATTACK!

Who cares if you're not proficient with hourglasses? It's a TOUCH ATTACK!

... okay, but seriously: yes, the "drawback" has overshadowed the core effects of this otherwise very, VERY cool item.

As a side-note, we used to refer to these as "Flerits" back in my Vampire: the Masquerade days: Flaws (like, for example, Anosmia) with some over-looked mechanical benefit (like, for example, being able to ignore ALL taste and/or stench-based defenses or attacks) that could (for example, in the hands of devious players like me) turn a drawback point-builder into a distinct advantage.

And yes, this item needs tweaking. A limit to the number of total rounds it can be used per day, or the total amount of material it can affect with each application, would keep this from seeing use as the eternal and unstoppable door-remover-in-a-can, or the three-round mansion-obliterator ... that leaves all the windows, stonework & metal doorknobs intact!

This is cool, though. Fun, and interesting, and obviously designed for low-level play - the cheap cost and the fact that it can't affect stone (or, presumably, metal) makes it cool without being earth-shattering.

Congratulations, and I look forward to seeing more as Superstar! continues!

[Rob McCreary]

Ah, but it does affect metal, Boomer. At least it can remove rust from metal with its restoration power, so one would assume it could rust away metal just as easily with its withering end.

"My stone door is proof against your withering hourglass!"

"Sorry, chief, you put a metal lock on it. BOO!"

*ZAP* goes the rusted lock...

[Clinton Boomer]

Rob McCreary wrote:

Ah, but it does affect metal, Boomer. At least it can remove rust from metal with its restoration power, so one would assume it could rust away metal just as easily with its withering end.

Oh, crap - you're right.

Okay, that needs an Errata something fierce. Maybe it just places a light patina of rust on a metal object?

A wee, little bit of rust?

[Todd Stewart]

"Rusts metal?" asked the mage rhetorically. "But my vault's door is made of copper, and its layer of verdigris protects it from any further corrosion. Nice try, but no."

Ok, that said, I love the thematic concept behind this item. I really do love it. The con damage as a touch attack however, with seemingly no save though, makes this thing one village shy of a necropolis.

Still, a tweak aside, this is a cool concept.

[Fern Herold]

Yeah, can't say I dig the Con damage. But the rest of it is so nice...

[Zombieneighbours]

A very conceptually cool item. I am not sure if i like it or not.

[Mike Welham]

This is an interesting item, but it is very open-ended and open for interpretation at a gaming table.

I'd add disintegrate to the list of requirements, since that seems to be the effect of the "negative" end of the item. Plus I'd give a living create a Fortitude save to resist the Con damage.

At any rate, it's a clever idea involving an hourglass, and the description is a nice clue to how it works.

Congratulations!

[Sue Flaherty]

Good FX follow through on the theme of breaking/fixing things that are organic but aren't living ... so why then add an effect specifically against living?

As an aside, I'd love to see the PC that fumbled while trying to use this :) Talk about hoist on your own petard!

[Set]

It seemed like it might be a super-cheap Make Whole item, but since it doesn't affect magical items (or even stone?), I suppose that it's really not exactly as overpowered as it looks. (About the only time I could see it being a HUGE pain in the butt is in one of those encounter rooms where the DM describes a bunch of faded or worn paintings that look like they might have been worth a bunch of money, or a bunch of books that are no longer legible, or some writing that they can't make out. A character pulling this item out and making them all shiny and new would PO the DM who hadn't intended all of the 'ruined artwork' to suddenly become party treasure, or the 'worn out runes' to suddenly be valid clues...)

Using it to destroy pretty much anything (locked wooden doors, cell bars, etc.) by 'aging it' might be a bit much, 'though, although simply limiting it to a certain number of uses per day would easily prevent characters from using it to tunnel through metal doors or whatever.

You use the term 'enchanted items' in the description of what can't be affected. I can't speak for our judges, but I know that some people don't like that terminology for magic items, since magically empowering an item no longer has anything to do with the 'Enchantment' school of magic. I personally still use 'enchanted' myself to refer to magic items, since I'm old enough not to care what words the new kids are using, but I probably wouldn't use it in a submission to people whose preferences I don't know.

[R D Ramsey]

Best name so far. I knew what it did before opening the thread.

Mechanics a little off, as others mention. Lots of potential for abuse.

But a fun item, and unique enough to make it feel as if the world has allll kinds of magic stuff.

Tier 1.5 for me.

[roguerouge]

Congrats! I think, instead of con damage, you might have considered making it also an anti-aging device when touched to a person. Rather than do Con damage, I would want this to eliminate or impose one step of age penalties and bonuses. And with that mechanic, I'd want there to be use limit as well: perhaps 1 or 3 uses per person per life?

[Vladislav Rashkovski]

Wow, this item's concept is so neat that it almost pains me how much clarification/editing it needs. It is very capable of crippling an enemy in a horrifyingly quick manner, and can dispatch anything that isn't stone (so it cleaves through armor as good as any Rust Monster).

That could break a game and turn the Hourglass into the party's main weapon. Even without the issues fixed - and it really just needs uses per day or something - this item is among the most original things I've read!

[Jacob Manley]

Ditto to what's been said before... awesome concept, but the Con damage is absolutely brutal and it needs some limitation to keep it from being the perfect door opener. Daily charges or limited uses (maybe there's only so much sand in the hourglass?) would go a long way, as would a limit on what hardness of materials it could affect (if you can only rot objects of hardness 5 or less stone is already out, and you don't have to worry about slowly rusting the unpickable wizard locked adamantine door the DM didn't want you to be able to open). And even without the Con damage or door opening properties, the cost still seems very low.

But as Wolf says, you've got so much cool in this entry the mechanics can slide. Well done.

[Russ Taylor]

A good item. I'd rename it a way that reflects the Janus-like nature of the device, but then again, maybe people just notice what destroys more than what preserves.

The price as pointed out all over the place is way off for 1d6 Con. But more than that, the ability to over time destroy any object is pretty gross too - consider that this can get you inside an adamantine vault, for example. That's fairly easily solved by putting a limit on how much it can be used in a given day.

In the top half for me.

[Mark Thomas]

I definitely have to agre that the concept, and in fact the use of an hourglass at all is very cool and almost somewhat iconic. The Con damage makes an uberweapon that's realy easy to abuse.

[Erik Anderson]

The Withering Hourglass is a good idea gone terribly bad. It's well written, but the mechanics are scary and the price is too low. It's not a standard "utility belt" item, however, and that's a plus.

All in all, however, the good does not outweigh the bad in this case. I think a superstar would realize how horribly abused the con damage touch attack would be in the hands of the wrong people.

[Neil Spicer]

I've got to agree about the Con damage component. If you eliminated that, the device could stand on its own without it just as well. Regardless, the flavor and intent of the idea behind your item is good. Execution of the mechanics just wasn't quite complete. Still, it's good enough for Top 32, so make the most of it in future rounds. Best of luck...

My two-cents,
--Neil

[Charles Evans 25]

As it stands, great if it were an artifact, but way undercosted as a Wondrous Item.
Original, but apparently not enough thought given to how it could be abused.
Taig's suggestion of adding disintegrate as a construction requirement might make sense and put the prices to craft and 'on the market' somewhere closer to the right figure, although I'd still have considerable reservations about the item.

[Paul Worthen]

This is one of my favorite items in the bunch - it's got great flavor and loads of utility. I'd make a couple changes - first, I'd ditch the Con damage in favor of 1d10 real damage - keep everything consistant. Secondly, I'd make the item fragile, which would prevent people from using it in combat.

[Eric Morton]

Well, it does need a lot of errata. But the fact that so many people read it and said "errata" instead of "ban" just goes to show how good the concept is.

I agree that the Con damage needs to be dropped or reworked. And there should be some limit to its use. (I'd like to see the item expending pinches of rare but expensive sand instead of a hard per-day limit.)

But again, the fact that so many people want to play around with its mechanics is a sign of how evocative it is.

[Sue Flaherty]

Set wrote:

About the only time I could see it being a HUGE pain in the butt is in one of those encounter rooms where the DM describes a bunch of faded or worn paintings that look like they might have been worth a bunch of money, or a bunch of books that are no longer legible, or some writing that they can't make out. A character pulling this item out and making them all shiny and new would PO the DM who hadn't intended all of the 'ruined artwork' to suddenly become party treasure, or the 'worn out runes' to suddenly be valid

[[Take two on replying, apologies if the web coughs up the last one I typed--crashed me to please sign in partway thru loading ;p]]

I couldn't help but chuckle at this one, Set :) If I was the GM with this situation, I would either (A) be doing a pick up game, in which case I carefully check char sheets and nix any items I don't want used in my game, or (B) be pulling a d'oh moment if I had handed this out and then promptly forgotten about it. But, to save my bacon and the coffers of the nearest town(s) I'd make all the paintings things the players wouldn't want or be able to sell (Precious Moments, Velvet Elvis Paintings, badly done paint-by-numbers done by an half-blind dyslexic <G>) and the books all boring accounting books (2 eggs, 5 grupnuts, outrageous!) or diaries that have no historical value (Dear Diary: Today it rained, again. I got wet.) :)

[Sean Huguenard]

You know, when I first looked at this item, I instantly thought of the Clock from the miniseries "The Lost Room", only that Clock sublimates/reforms brass. It's a really cool item, though the thing about the CON damage doesn't quite appeal to me.

[Pieter Simoons]

Thanks for your response, everyone!

I must admit that the hourglass's power as a weapon was an oversight. To affect anything, it should probably be touched against it for longer than one combat round (not to mention a single hit within one combat round). I do rather like that it starts out hurting the PCs until they figure out how to use it.

If I may make recommendations for my own item, I'd say that it doesn't do anything for the first three rounds, and then deals damage (etc) per round; that should make it pretty useless as a weapon (except against a paralyzed enemy, but any competent adventurer probably has half a dozen ways to off a paralyzed enemy anyway).

To prevent over-use, I'd argue that handling the item is simply dangerous, so every usage on one day beyond the first has a 50% chance of hitting the user with the aforementioned con damage. This feels more elegant to me than simply giving it X charges.

[rootbeergnome]

This item would be annoying without a uses/per day. Horribly so. Good concept, terrible mechanics. I would take out the CON damage too.

Congrats on top 32!

[Philip Snyder]

I'd keep the Con damage, but add the caveat of "If used against a living creature, both the wielder and the target are subject to the Con damage".

[Charles Evans 25]

Golarion Goblin wrote:

I'd keep the Con damage, but add the caveat of "If used against a living creature, both the wielder and the target are subject to the Con damage".

Except the PCs will simply purchase a couple of scrolls of death ward and Con drain away to their hearts' content....

[Philip Snyder]

Charles Evans 25 wrote:

Golarion Goblin wrote:

I'd keep the Con damage, but add the caveat of "If used against a living creature, both the wielder and the target are subject to the Con damage".

Except the PCs will simply purchase a couple of scrolls of death ward and Con drain away to their hearts' content....

Good point.

[Straybow]

Way too cheap, and Fabricate doesn't even vaguely approximate the item's powers except for the restorative powers of the small end.

[Steven Helt]

Clinton Boomer wrote:

Maybe it just places a light patina of rust on a metal object?

A wee, little bit of rust?

Did you just define a word for the audience? SHAME!!

[Steven Helt]

You've already been busted on the price and the other limitations that should have been imposed on the hourglass, but the core concept deserves praise. A great idea that should have been in the game a long time ago. Well done.

Noq give us a villain that we knew our characters hated before we even read it.

[Joel Flank]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how hard is it for most adventurers to break objects? Any decent fighter or barbarian can power attack through most hardness pretty easily, as can lots of magic effects from the casters (unlimited acid splash as a cantrip is a bit slower, but it's free). I guess a rogue or bard might want the ability to do something against objects and pick one of these up, but if it were me, I'd either buy some acid for a lot cheaper or just ask my friend to break it for me. I get that you can also restore items, but so can mending and make whole, which are pretty common.

Combined with the awesome abusable weapon side effect, I just don't see this as a very good item. Luckily, I'm not a judge and you made it into the top 32, so hopefully you have a great villain concept.

[Glass Castle]

I like the Rip-Van-Winkle item here. I can imagine some temporal based villains utilizing the device to ill effect. Or someone tapping it against valuable documents or powerful weapons, then having them crumble to naught.

If it had the changes you expressed desire to add, it would be a bit more suitable.

Question though: It can age objects... and people... what about doors? This seems like a great way to get through walls of force, or any sort of iron door... Possibilities exist for abuse.

Merely giving Con damage to the heroes won't really solve the problem. Heroes will just start walking around with ways to restore ability drain. The power to simply walk through walls is almost too powerful when the DM is attempting to constrain the playable area. It should perhaps be more expensive considering that it allows players to effectively walk through doors or any non-stone material. Of course it will take time for them to do it, but they certainly will be able to hollow out and destroy any maze the DM traps them inside, given time. Not very heroic yes, and munchkiniy.

Still. I like the item.

Good luck next round!

[Montalve]

great item Pieter, and good solution for the CON damage

[Lilith]

Very very very neat. One of those utility items that a good group would have a ball with.