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The judges have gone above and beyond and told you exactly why they rejected your idea so what are you going to do now?
I'm still waiting to hear on mine but just posting it up showed me so many little places I should have tweaked it that I NEED to fix it and make it better for my own piece of mind. Anyone else have those ideas running through their head on what they should have done instead?
If you've re-worked your item to make it better and want to get the second draft a look see by the board members here (Judges are more then welcome but we know how busy those guys are) lets post it here and see if we actually "got" what the judges were saying.
I'll go first.
Here's my original item
Corrupt the Divine
Aura moderate necromancy; CL 9th
Slot hands; Price 9,000 gp; Weight -
This device is a single white leather glove fitted for the left hand and embroidered with silver threads spelling out the Laws of Man covering the palm.
By tossing one of the embroidered Laws of Man onto a divine caster the words hide themselves in the targets possessions waiting to trigger and chastise anyone who breaks the first law.
Description
Three times per day the wearer can attempt a ranged touch attack against a suspected Divine caster within 30 feet to corrupt their next channel energy attempt. For the next hour the first time they channel any energy it is corrupted and they instead channel the opposite energy type (Negative instead of Positive or Positive instead of Negative) to harm all within their area of effect. Regardless of the original target everyone within the area of effect is touched by the energy channeled (though immunities to that energy type still apply).
For example a 3D6 positive channel to heal living becomes a negative 3D6 channel to harm or a 1D6 negative channel to heal undead becomes a 1D6 positive channel to harm.
A target may only be affected by one corruption at a time but multiple targets can be affected by the same glove simultaneously.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, enervation, Creator must not be able to cast divine spells; Cost 4,500 gp
After posting it three things really bothered me.
1. The description on how to use it was too vague and needed to address how the target could react to it.
2. It really should have been a Transmutation aura and used a different spell base.
3. The name was just crap (what was I thinking?)
My new version of the item
Word of Kahlim
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 9th
Slot hands; Price 9,000 gp; Weight -
This device is a single white leather glove fitted for the left hand with hundreds of silver snake-like threads constantly spelling out the Laws of Man writhing across the palm.
By tossing one of the snake-threads onto a divine caster it will hide itself on the target, waiting to trigger and chastise anyone who breaks the first law.
Description
Three times per day the wearer can attempt a ranged touch attack against a suspected Divine caster within 30 feet to corrupt their next channel energy attempt. For the next hour the first time they channel any energy the thread triggers and shouts the first law as it unravels itself to corrupt that channel causing it to instead channel the opposite energy type (Negative instead of Positive or Positive instead of Negative) to harm all within their area of effect. Regardless of the original target everyone within the area of effect is touched by the energy channeled (though immunities to that energy type still apply).
For example a 3D6 positive channel to heal living becomes a negative 3D6 channel to harm or a 1D6 negative channel to heal undead becomes a 1D6 positive channel to harm.
With a successful opposed sleight of hand check the target is unaware of the word hiding on their person. A target may only be affected by one corruption at a time but multiple targets can be affected by the same glove simultaneously.
Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, bestow curse, sepia snake sigil , Creator must not be able to cast divine spells; Cost 4,500 gp
What do you think of the changes?
The judges have gone above and beyond and told you exactly why they rejected your idea so what are you going to do now?
The thing to do is: practice! Write something every day, pitch something to 3pp. Get better.
Questions for your new item:
Who is Kahlim? My golarion-fu is not that strong that I recognize the name.
What is the first Law of Man?
If your item should explain the above then it is best to just move on to the next idea.
Star Voter Season 6, Dedicated Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 9
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Practice, but eventually set up a mutual critique group, simular to a writers group. Thing is, I asked several people for feedback, had them do a read through to catch any errors I might of missed, and I felt let down. I'd like to get with people who are seriously interested in improving their work rather than people who will tell you, 'gee that's nice, sounds wonderful.'
Also, review and vote on the items that made it.
Nitpicking...
I think the 'd' for dice should be written in lowercase. Throughout any Paizo Texts, I see things like 10d8, not 10D8.
Why did you place a <CR> between 'Construction' and 'Requirements' in the last line?
Excessive blank space after sepia snake sigil
'Cost' should be bolded.
The second sentence in your description is hard to read (for me, at least).
Plus... what does this thing do? Convert any channel to harm, whatever the intent (You wrote 'to harm' in your description)? What, if anything, does it do if I channel for harming?
You wrote 'All in the area'... does this imply you are nixing effects of Selective Channeling?
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The judges have gone above and beyond and told you exactly why they rejected your idea so what are you going to do now?
The thing to do is: practice! Write something every day, pitch something to 3pp. Get better.
Questions for your new item:
Who is Kahlim? My golarion-fu is not that strong that I recognize the name.
What is the first Law of Man?If your item should explain the above then it is best to just move on to the next idea.
Rahadoum. Everything about this item is answered if you know anything about that country and if you don't it SHOULD come as a complete surprise and drive the characters to do a bit of research. Maybe not the best idea for this kind of competition but it's just the direction my mind went.
I've always been a big fan of taking the least developed pieces of a world and building onto the the theme laid out there.
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Nitpicking...
I think the 'd' for dice should be written in lowercase. Throughout any Paizo Texts, I see things like 10d8, not 10D8.
Why did you place a <CR> between 'Construction' and 'Requirements' in the last line?
Excessive blank space after sepia snake sigil
'Cost' should be bolded.
The second sentence in your description is hard to read (for me, at least).
Plus... what does this thing do? Convert any channel to harm, whatever the intent (You wrote 'to harm' in your description)? What, if anything, does it do if I channel for harming?
You wrote 'All in the area'... does this imply you are nixing effects of Selective Channeling?
thanks for the nitpicking, exactly what I needed there.
As for how it works you've pretty much got it.Anytime they try to channel it simply flips it to the other energy type and uses the "Harm" option from the channel ability but affects everything instead of choosing living or undead. And yes it nixes all the feats you throw on channel to change how it works (selective channel, channel smite, etc.)
Really the way it's supposed to work is whenever the channeler tries to open a connection to the positive or negative plane to release energy from there to heal or harm their targets this effect goes off and connects to the other plane and just freely lets that energy rush through the cleric and try to harm everything in that 30' radius.
The point was to punish anyone who works for the divine and anyone who would go to them for aid or power. Very fighting for a country whose first law is "Let no man be beholden to a god".
Hey Mathwei, I have, since two minutes after submitting, started making corrections. I am going to save them for the Blazing 9 practice thread though to give the Top 32 time to be the Top 32.
Hi Kerney, I too need a review group who is more SS oriented. Again that is why I start the practice thread. Come join us in April :)
hey mathwei, i really like your idea! i was lucky enough to make it to round two but still wanted to learn and improve too, so i (before noticing this thread) posted revisions of my item in its thread (near the bottom of the first page)- i would really appreciate feedback from anyone willing to give it :)
very creative idea!
in terms of template use:
midnight brought up some good points- also remember that you shouldn't have any text before the Description heading. and some of what's there is made redundant by the actual description- drop that and it'll open up some words to clarify other things.
for content:
like i said, its creative- so creative that you should really try to make sure that the effect is crystal clear. i got it on the first reading, but other people didn't so that's worth considering. also, to the best of my knowledge there is nothing with immunity to positive or negative energy, so you could have left the parenthetical statement out; unless you meant that undead are immune to negative/harm and living are immune to positive/harm- if that's the case, i think a clearer description of the effect overall would make that obvious. finally, i get what you're going for with the sleight of hand check but you should specify that its not being thrown at that point.
EDIT:oh, and anytime you make an item that's only one of a set you need to specify what goes on with the other hand- can you wear a second one of these for 6/day or could you wear a "Claw of the Crawling Spell" (an item that made the top 32 despite making that same mistake).
i hope that doesn't seem overly critical- i really do like your core concept. i hope the advice helps.
good luck next year!
I think you do indeed have a really interesting core idea in there, Mathwei, both in terms of playing with Rahadoum and the basic idea of your item. I'm not a judge, but I'd guess you were closer on the mojo aspect and dinged on the writing and template use.
I think your writing could be clearer even in the rewrite. While I was able to figure out where your item was supposed to be based on, maybe something to call that out just a little more for those who don't know could have helped (I just checked, and don't see Kahlim in PathfinderWiki, so still don't know who that is, though the Laws of Man part let me figure out the core idea).
Also, I might try to use more active voice. For example, instead of:
By tossing one of the snake-threads onto a divine caster it will hide itself on the target, waiting to trigger and chastise anyone who breaks the first law.Try: When a wearer tosses one of the snake-threads onto a divine caster, the thread hides itself on the target, waiting to chastise him if he breaks the First Law's prohibition against religion.
Not only does that make it more active and breaks up an odd sort-of dangling modifier, it gets what's the First Law is into description for those who don't know. (It does leave me wondering what happens, though, if the thread is thrown on someone who's not a divine caster.)
Mechanically, I also wonder whether it could have been better to have it absorb the channel completely, as that would seem to be more an effect a Rahadoumite (Rahadoumian?) would want. That's just an off-hand thought, though. Just subduing it might not be as Superstar as
You also say the thread hides itself, so is it the users' sleight of hand check that lets it hide? And isn't that an opposed check against Perception? I think those little issues build up and outweigh any of the core mojo you've got here.
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I think you do indeed have a really interesting core idea in there, Mathwei, both in terms of playing with Rahadoum and the basic idea of your item. I'm not a judge, but I'd guess you were closer on the mojo aspect and dinged on the writing and template use.
I think your writing could be clearer even in the rewrite. While I was able to figure out where your item was supposed to be based on, maybe something to call that out just a little more for those who don't know could have helped (I just checked, and don't see Kahlim in PathfinderWiki, so still don't know who that is, though the Laws of Man part let me figure out the core idea).
Also, I might try to use more active voice. For example, instead of:
By tossing one of the snake-threads onto a divine caster it will hide itself on the target, waiting to trigger and chastise anyone who breaks the first law.Try: When a wearer tosses one of the snake-threads onto a divine caster, the thread hides itself on the target, waiting to chastise him if he breaks the First Law's prohibition against religion.
Not only does that make it more active and breaks up an odd sort-of dangling modifier, it gets what's the First Law is into description for those who don't know. (It does leave me wondering what happens, though, if the thread is thrown on someone who's not a divine caster.)
Mechanically, I also wonder whether it could have been better to have it absorb the channel completely, as that would seem to be more an effect a Rahadoumite (Rahadoumian?) would want. That's just an off-hand thought, though. Just subduing it might not be as Superstar as
You also say the thread hides itself, so is it the users' sleight of hand check that lets it hide? And isn't that an opposed check against Perception? I think those little issues build up and outweigh any of the core mojo you've got here.
I get what you're saying here and actually spelling out what the first law is in the description does make the sentence read much better.
As for using on a non divine caster since the effect only lasts an hour and only goes off if the target channels then throwing it on a non-divine caster does absolutely nothing. (a perk for Razmiran clerics and a tie in for a scenario submission if I got that far)I chose to have it reverse the channel since the Rahadoum tend to kill any cleric they catch in their lands and heavily punish lay followers when caught. This kills 2 birds with one stone.
Really the way I envisioned it is the pure legion would target a suspected divine caster and slip one of these onto them when they are heading to give service. as soon as they try to bless the crown it would punish the followers while showing off the cruelty of the gods to send the survivors back on the straight and narrow.The sleight of hand was to mimic pulling a thread and rolling it into a ball and flicking it at the cleric (like the wrapping from a straw we used to flick around the cafeteria).
@N. Edward, you made some good points. I should really make it a matched set to take up both hands and just take out the immunity part. If it can't be hurt by that energy channeled that's all laid out in the channel energy section, no need for me to paraphrase it.
Oh well, time to re-write it again and remember the basics
Simplicity
Clarity
Accuracy