For all of you RPG Superstars in the making here are some additional critiques.
First I have some Caveats.
A.) I am not a professional game designer, however I am attempting to become a paid professional writer and enjoy game designing as a hobby.
B.) I do not claim to be “Correct” all of the views expressed here are opinion.
C.) I am going to be honest and give as much constructive criticism as I can.
D.) I have no personal feelings either for or against any item creator, so I am going to be critiquing solely on the item’s merits.
E.) I hope this helps others, as I know that those who have been kind enough to critique items are trying to help me.
Each Item will be rated A+ through F in the following categories.
Voice: Writing style and clarity of expression, along with word craft.
Ingenuity: Freshness of idea and novelty of mechanics use.
Template: Ability to follow the given template, and Paizo item precedent.
While the gear swap power is nice, it honestly makes me think dimension door + folding armor. The 250 foot limitation on range along with the 5 minutes of setup after transport make this item only useful if you have a large amount of time/warning. In all honesty this seems like an item to setup before sleeping so you can instantly be in your gear if ambushed at night. This makes it firmly in the camping item trope for me.
The addition of the alarm power makes it clear that the focus of this item is to make you “Safer” against attacks while sleeping or otherwise occupied. This is an item that might exist as a safeguard for a King/Prince/Extremely Wealthy individual, but for an adventurer simply acts as an “I did not want to take feats to sleep in armor” button, thus making it more of a background/world item as well.
I personally also find the price for this item too high considering weight, drawbacks, and setup time. In no game I have run would anyone have bought this as it is simply too large of a chuck of money to invest to get a largely nerfed version of rope trick for one person.
I understand that the mannequin and user switch places thus potentially teleporting a user out of bonds or a dangerous situation, but even so I feel that the above is true.
Small template nitpick, your spells are not in alphabetical order in the requirements section. Also your alarm spell if using the items caster level of 7 should be 14 hours, I understand you may have deliberately changed parameters but perhaps you should have said “As per an alarm spell centered on the Mannequin” thus letting all of the mechanics be uniform and also consuming fewer words.
I would like to say that if you tighten up some of your phrasing and take more of a chance next year we may see something emerging here.
Good luck.
Voice: C+
Ingenuity: C-
Template: B
P.S.: Just starting this a little late due to RL, my apologies. I will get some more critiques up later.
Please do not post items here as I am going to go through the Critique My Item thread in order and will try to address everyone there.
The scaling spell resistance means that this item will already be undercosted at any level you obtain it. That alone would cost more than what the item is currently priced at.
The Mythic power usage is interesting but again the powers read like a laundry list of (this, or this, or this).
The first power is easy to miss and unclear. I assume when the magic aura’s are viewed that it is as arcane sight due to construction requirements but this is not addressed and could cause some discussion at the table. The ability to metamagic a reflected spell is simply insult to injury and honestly feels tacked on.
In short the shawl is vastly overpowered for its cost and should in all honesty just be an artifact. This feels like a grab bag of powers that were not polished down due to more attention being paid to the mythic part of the item.
Extremely small template nitpick but, after the word description and before the word construction there are blank lines, those are not included in Paizo released items.
Next year show us the Voice you can bring, and also put your item through a few more polish/critique cycles before submitting.
Good Luck.
Voice: D-
Ingenuity: C
Template: A-
There is a large chance that the first two abilities would cause contention at the table, due to player and GM arguing whether a player was “genuinely peaceful”, some GM’s might take this to mean no thoughts of any kind of contention and absolute capitulation. These abilities just seem to have a chance to cause table dissension. While carrying these problems the abilities themselves are not very “WoW” and instead simply add passive skill bonuses in some situations.
The use of the word “furthermore” for the third power seems to break the item into separate parts both in terms of concept and in Voice, as it seems to me there is a line which states “Here is the combat power, and over there is the non-combat power”, it makes the item seem glued together.
The use of the word “finally” adds to the clunky feeling and seals the idea that this item’s description was constructed rather than created. It feels mechanical and honestly I feel the entire last power is not necessary.
I feel that this item was perhaps over-worked, and that while it had a tight theme and good imagery, its powers were all over the place and too crafted.
Your template use is right on as far as I can tell.
I think if you allow for a more organic approach to your item building and deliberately only allow yourself 1-2 abilities, while letting your obvious creativity really ramp up the uniqueness of those powers you will excel next year.
Good Luck.
Voice: B
Ingenuity: C
Template: A+