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Rod of the Iron Rose
Aura Strong transmutation; CL 13th
Slot None; Price 50,000 gp; Weight 10 lbs.
Description
This black rod is capped by an iron rose. It acts as a +1 fey bane cold iron light mace and grants a +2 insight bonus to perception checks against fey creatures. Its other powers are as follows:
- Iron Gardens: As a standard action, the wielder can cause iron objects to grow plantlike protrusions: branches, leaves, spikes, and flowers. Thorns and spikes created this way deal 1d4 points of damage when touched. Objects cannot be rendered nonfunctional with this power, nor can their size or general shape be changed. The changes last 24 hours.
- Transmute Plants to Iron: Once per day as a full round action, the wielder can permanently turn all living plants within a 40 ft radius to iron. The transmuted plants are subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena that would affect iron. Iron created by this ability is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold. The effect can be reversed by transmute metal to wood. Plant creatures must make a DC 20 Fortitude or turn into mindless, inert iron statues.
- Iron Entanglement: Once per day as a standard action, the wielder can cause iron objects to entangle creatures in a 40 ft radius, similar to the entangle spell. Creatures that fail a DC 15 Reflex save are entangled; success means they can move as normal, but must make another save at the end of the wielder’s turn. Creatures that enter the area must save or become entangled. The effect lasts for 1 minute.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod; wall of iron, transmute metal to wood, entangle; Cost 25,000 gp
Significant wording and formatting issues. Nicely themed set of powers for a fey hunter going up against fey with plant powers with an arsenal of cold iron, but it has adjudication ambiguities and lots of missing details. However, I like the idea of comboing iron gardens and iron entanglement for some thorny entangle action. I was ambivalent about this item, but in the end, I went for a Weak Keep. Welcome to the alternates.
Hi there! I'll be one of the judges for this round, and I'll be looking at a couple of key points for your item: flavor, usability, and how the item is presented. For some background, I helped found the Wayfinder fanzine before I started working for Paizo, and I oversee every third-party Pathfinder Roleplaying Game product that makes its way onto Paizo.com.
Flavor
The description of the item leaves much to be desired. Fey bane seems to be tacked on just to jack up the price.
Usability
Normally, I would put this in the hands of a fey creature, as warping iron seems like something they would do, but since it's also fey bane and cold iron this wouldn't work.
Presentation
Skill names aren't capitalized. "Iron objects" seem to be the key to this item, but what, exactly, is an iron object? Does it work on steel? Held objects? How much iron does an object need to be made of for this item to work?
Final Thoughts
Mechanical questions combined with a lackluster name. I do not recommend this item for advancement.
Modules Overlord
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My approach to judging these items is "How would I approach this as a developer?" If I would be pleased by the turnover and not see any reason to give negative feedback to the writer, that's great! If I'd keep it but it would take a lot of work or I'd want to let the writer know what needed improvement, that's fine but not perfect. If I'd scrap the item because it would be faster to write new material myself, that's bad.
This item is a neat idea, that gets killed by a sense that it's sloppy. The skill "Perception" is not capitalized. The prerequisite spells aren't in alphabetical order. (They aren't in order by level, either, which at least I'd understand.) Iron gardens doesn't give a range, or target max size, or saving throw, or limited number of uses or say how often objects touched deal damage. Does making a foe's armor thorny deal 1d4 damage and that's it (since the wearer doesn't re-touch it), or 1d4 a round, or what? And how does a GM decide if something is iron. Does cold iron count? Steel?
I want to like an item that mixes metal and plant forms with an anti-fey theme, but this doesn't manage to meet the bar it's concept sets. I want to want it, but ultimately it'd take a total rewrite. Weak reject.
First off, my gosh, I made Alternate!
Beyond the formatting issues & problems with some of the mechanics (specificity regarding the damage, etc) I think the biggest thing I needed to do was take out the "Fey-bane" quality. The entire reason behind that was that initially, I had an entire backstory for this item, a reason it existed in the world, why it worked the way it did... in the original conception, the fey-bane was there for a reason.
After I learned more about Superstar though, I realized that 1. Backstory is dumb. Leave it out (I didn't have room for it in my item anyway) and 2. Without that backstory explanation, the fey-bane qualities felt superfluous.
if I had a do-over, I might rip out all the stuff about being fey-bane and giving advantages against the fey, and focus more on the qualities of it being a rod that turns plants into iron. That would have also given me more room in the word count to define the 1d4 damage (I think I wanted it to be 1d4 damage ONCE, as after being aware of the spikes you could avoid them... but the caster could take another action to do it again). Cold iron would ABSOLUTELY count, steel would not. I might leave the rod as cold iron and possibly have the iron it creates act like cold-iron. Not sure.
BONUS THING:
The item was inspired by an object I own in real life. Picture here. That was the impetus for "magic item that turns plants to iron." I was actually rather relieved to find out we were doing rods / weapons / etc rather than Wondrous Items, as I felt the powers fit a rod better.
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This was another in my list of keepers. Yes, the judges note a lot of the problems, but for me, I really like the theme. I actually talked about this in the armory of awesome thread -- I've had a rose-themed item in my head for a while now and just never quite had it to a place I really like. Yours is completely different, but I think it also works really well. I can visualize the item and think its got some really neat powers, even if they need some mechanical polishing.
Lots of alternates have advanced to the big show over the years, so keep your head up and submit an awesome map.
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I rather liked this item myself (though admittedly, hadn't noted some of the issues the judges point out). To me, the fey/iron connection was actually one of the things I most liked about it, and it fit thematically, so I wouldn't recommend removing that part at all.
Congratulations, though! And as Jacob points out, alternates have advanced for various reasons in the past, so don't give up yet!
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I think some of the abilities of this item could be better defined, particularly iron gardens, but I love the concept of this item. I also like that the creator was willing to push what magic items can do, and really appreciate that this wasn't another rod that is actually a light mace.
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Congratulations on making it to the Top 36!
Excellent theme. I've seen this idea in other fiction once or twice, but not to often that it has become a cliché. I could definitely imagine this item in the hands of a villain that travels around terrorizing innocent villages by transforming their livelihood into cold metal.
Unfortunately the execution of this theme has some problems. Iron Gardens is fine, it functions well, is thematic and a cool visual to the boot. Transmute Plants to Iron is problematic to me. I'm not sure I like it being a permanent effect. It kind of makes sense as an NPC item, but I can just imagine a player getting his hands on this and going on a transmutation spree around the countryside, causing havoc just for the heck of it. Though that applies to most of the magic items, so perhaps it's just a nagging visual that has gotten stuck to my head. Iron Entanglement is the worst in my opinion. A cool idea and it works well with the second ability, but I don't like the fact that it strips most of the characters from their weapons - assuming that this works on steel as well, which is a reasonable assumption to make. Sure it kind of implies that they return to normal after a minute and the item is pricy enough that on those levels it won't be a huge problem, but still.
All in all I can see the potential, but this could have benefited from some fine-tuning and play-testing. Still, the best of luck for the future!
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Congrats! Your item was one of the items I consistently upvoted.
I really enjoyed the flavor and theme. For a 50K item, I don't mind stripping PCs or NPCs of iron items for a minute, but I'd still have capped Iron Gardens with limited use(s) per day. Also, for a item seeming designed for countering fey, I'd have included something more, like a bonus to Knowledge checks related to fey and/or a bonus to seeing through/disrupting illusions and glamours.
Don't be discouraged by being "only" an Alternate... being in the Top 36 is something to wear proudly. So buckle down, get the sugar and caffeine on a drip feed, and do your best for Round 2! Good luck. :)
I really enjoyed the imagery of this item and thought it deserved to be in the top 32 for that alone. There isn't much rules innovation here, but from a cinematic perspective the item is excellent and fun.
Congratulations!
Congratulations, Jensen! I loved your item, it made my personal top 32 and was probably my favorite rod in the round except for maybe the rod of exorcism. Love the theme and the visuals, and the fact that you made alternate shows that you clearly have the chops to compete in the top 32. Nice work!
What I really like: the flavor, the imagery, the name. There's something that's just inherently cool about the visual for this: I saw your picture of your actual 'iron rose' and it definitely matches what I already had in mind. I can see this garden of rusted iron flowers stretching out around an old, decrepit mansion, stagnant fountains and willows frozen in time... and an old man inside the house who mumbles about how his gardens will stay perfect forever, while he holds the rod close to his person and glares resentfully at the intruding adventurers...
What I don't like about this item: As flavorful and visual and imagination-engaging as it is, I don't feel that you filled in any need in Pathfinder in its design. You created an item that's a great story piece, but when I try and visualize who would actually craft or use it (aside from the villain I just described) I run into very little. The druidic=themed stuff implies nature, but something that actually kills plant life is almost anti-druidic. Maybe an urban druid, or a dwarven metal-focused druid or other caster, but even that feels sort of stretchy for me?
For the price, a rather princely sum of 50,000 GP, someone is getting the ability, mechanically, to do the following:
1) Cast entangle, a 1st level spell. I can't imagine there usually being so many iron items around that you could justify them writhing up and grabbing things, the way plant life could, as plant life is everywhere in any outdoor environment... which means that 90% of the time, you probably have to use the 'Transmute' property first, to get enough iron to do your entanglement thing. Which means that a 50K item... lets you cast a first-level spell... but will require two turns to do it in, a lot of the time.
2) Potentially save-or-suck against plant creatures. Situationally very cool (I mean it, the image of turning a shambling mound into an iron heap is a COOL image), but niche-y and rare.
3) Cause your iron objects or iron entanglement to do a d4 of damage. A d4.
Assuming I use WBL as a rough guideline, the soonest a character could hope to afford this item is level 10 (and it would still take up most of their gold to do it). I just picked 4 random CR 10 monsters to give me a ballpark idea of typical threats that our rod-user would face: an adult crystal dragon, a formian myrmarch, a nosferatu, and a sleeping willow.
Two of those have DR that your thorn damage won't even pierce. The other two have HP in excess of 100. The standard action to inflict a d4 worth of damage is something that nobody at this level would ever use in combat. The plant creature is the most susceptible to the rod, but not to the d4-damage ability of the rod.
So. This boils down to:
1) 1 ability that is almost useless, the d4 of damage
2) An entangle that will often take two rounds to cast, with a relatively low DC for CR 10+ monsters to make. (That part is not your fault, items always have relatively low DCs.)
There's simply not a lot there that justifies the extra 40,000 GP beyond what the +1 fey bane cold iron mace costs.
Things I would do if I were trying to fix this item:
1) Make the thorns in the first ability do magical damage, and bleed damage. At least you can get past the very-common DR/magic that foes of this level often have, and bleed, while not overwhelming, does start to become a problem if foes are stuck in this, as per the entangle portion of the rod's abilities.
2) Consider combining abilities 2 and 3 into one, so that your full-round spell is a "turn everything green into wild grasping iron" but in ONE casting. That makes it a COOLER version of entangle, rather than a potentially more limited version. A magic item should at bare minimum be cooler than the sum of its individual abilities.
Sorry, I teal-deered pretty hard here and came down hard on you, but there's just such a big discrepancy here for me between how COOL I think the name and the visual and the imagery is, and the fact that it mechanically does (almost) nothing a 1st level druid with a handful of caltrops can't do.
I think you've displayed a fantastic writer's imagination with this item. Like I said: I want to see that scene with the decaying mansion, the rusted garden, the madman hissing about keeping the fairies away from his flowers. Unfortunately the mechanical imagination is not anywhere near where you need to be yet, I think.
This theme had such a good feel to it, I could have seen it used in a lot of places or by a lot of different character types.
I'm glad your an alternate, but sad it's only an alternate.
Best of luck and good job!
Just wanted to say this was in my top two items during voting. Mechanical issues aside, the imagery and the thematic coherence are really impressive!
Congratulations on making Alternate! Good work!
This item grew on me throughout the voting process (pardon the pun). I like the imagery a lot, but there are some mechanics questions here that have to be answered like why can't you gather a number of permanently changed iron plants and melt them down for making other objects? Obviously for balance, but an in game reason should be provided. Still I liked it enough to include in my Top 36, just like the judges did.
The sound of wrenching metal as a fence erupts in twisting iron vines! The faltering steps of a wooden titan as it succumbs to its body turning to iron! This item is both terrifying and evocative, and I had a suspicion it would make it into the Top 32 from early on in the competition.
Unfortunately, I found the incredible visuals at odds with what the item does. Fey don't like iron, so it's a feybane mace. Nice. Then why does it do entangling effects and cause plant-like protrusions? The only ability worth 50k here is the auto death to plant creatures, but then we're talking about an auto-death effect. I often find those to be kind of uninteresting when they're boiling death down to a single die roll.
This item is so close to being there, and I feel like if you had had a little more time to make revisions, it would have made it. Nice work, and I'd be happy to see what this item becomes after you've had a chance to implement the comments from everyone here.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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Star Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Star Voter Season 9
aka JoelF847
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Congrats on making alternate.
I'm pretty puzzled by this item overall, and Dana Huber pretty much sums up most of my thoughts - overall, I just don't see much use for this item, certainly not at 50K price. The only power it has that is something I can see using is the auto-petrify plants, which is way overpowered. Flesh to Stone doesn't have a mass version even, and limiting this power to work on only plant creatures simply makes it overpowered, but less often usable, it doesn't change that the base power is too much. I'd definitely change that to be a separate use of the transmute plants to iron, and make it a single target, requiring a touch attack with the rod, followed by a save.
Rod of the Iron Rose
Aura Strong transmutation; CL 13th
Slot None; Price 50,000 gp; Weight 10 lbs.Description
This black rod is capped by an iron rose. It acts as a +1 fey bane cold iron light mace and grants a +2 insight bonus to perception checks against fey creatures. Its other powers are as follows:
- Iron Gardens: As a standard action, the wielder can cause iron objects to grow plantlike protrusions: branches, leaves, spikes, and flowers. Thorns and spikes created this way deal 1d4 points of damage when touched. Objects cannot be rendered nonfunctional with this power, nor can their size or general shape be changed. The changes last 24 hours.
- Transmute Plants to Iron: Once per day as a full round action, the wielder can permanently turn all living plants within a 40 ft radius to iron. The transmuted plants are subject to rust, perforation, and other natural phenomena that would affect iron. Iron created by this ability is not suitable for use in the creation of other objects and cannot be sold. The effect can be reversed by transmute metal to wood. Plant creatures must make a DC 20 Fortitude or turn into mindless, inert iron statues.
- Iron Entanglement: Once per day as a standard action, the wielder can cause iron objects to entangle creatures in a 40 ft radius, similar to the entangle spell. Creatures that fail a DC 15 Reflex save are entangled; success means they can move as normal, but must make another save at the end of the wielder’s turn. Creatures that enter the area must save or become entangled. The effect lasts for 1 minute.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Craft Rod; wall of iron, transmute metal to wood, entangle; Cost 25,000 gp
Is the Item Decorative?
With regard to this question, I feel it useful to clarify that I am addressing the matter of what the item itself looks like, and this looks like a rather nondescript rod, albeit one with a metal flower stuck on one end. Therefore, in this section, it gets a low mark.
Decorative score? 1 out of 7.
Does the Item have Any Obvious non-Decorative Use Around the Home?
Moving beyond the issue of what appeal, if any, the item itself has to the eye, it seems to me that it might have considerable use for decorating a domicile for, say, a party. Only for some very specific social events, of course, and to be frank I'd give this item a higher mark if it were indicated that the item had the power to 'reverse' its own plant transmutation effect, which would greatly facilitate 'clearing up' after any party where this item had been used to help decorate.
non-Decorative Domestic Use score? 4 out of 7.
Does the Item seem Likely to be Helpful in the Fantasy Setting of an Imaginary World where 'Operation Sealion' is taking Place?
So the (for simplicity's sake) Nasties are lining up with all their little boats to launch an invasion-attempt across a strait upon a nation of perfectly (socially) harmless tea-drinkers. And then there's this item.
So what impact is this item likely to have on proceedings?
The tea-drinkers could find all sorts of uses for several of these rods, I suspect, if any 'Sealion' actually made it as far as a beach phase.
'Sealion' score? 4 out of 7.
Total: 9 out of 21.
You can see my full commentary on your item on my dedicated critique thread here.
To understand my method of commenting, you'll likely need to read the first entry.
Why am I critiquing every item? Well, frankly, I love this sort of thing. I sincerely enjoy editing and the art of the critique. I have long considered starting a blog to that end, and maybe this will be the kickstart I need. Speaking of which, if you want to hire an editor, I'd be happy to help ;)
Regardless, the point of my criticism is always to help. Nothing is perfect, so everything can potentially be made better. My comments will often be less than flattering, but they will never come from a place of malice. The point here is to make your item better, not to make you feel bad.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? My primary focus is on rules knowledge, clarity/simplicity, and usability. You can come up with the most creative item on the planet, but if nobody is going to actually use it in a real game, who cares? And it doesn't matter if nobody uses it because it's obviously too strong, too weak for its price, too confusing/complicated to actually adjudicate at the table, or just too niche to have an actual target audience. What I am generally not looking at is flavor text. Descriptions of your item will only hurt if the item evokes imagery I dislike. I care about theme, of course, but a crow item with blind and pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it.
Finally, know that I did not read any critiques of your item yet. These are all my first thoughts based only on the item itself, so, I apologize if I repeat things others have said already.
Now, let's get to the critique!
This was my second favorite item in the whole competition (only the Movable Rod beat it in my eyes). I understand there are formatting issues, but what it does is just so awesome, I didn't care. To me, the real beauty here is that it has an interesting, clear theme (basically, stealing nature from the fey via iron), and plenty of uses (mostly noncombat) that allow players to solve problems in unconventional ways. It's powerful, but not in a way that makes it an obvious or automatic choice--it creates more options, rather than limiting your choices (a specific suit of armor, for example, is compared against all other armor you could possibly be wearing, while a rod doesn't fill any lot and can be freely switched out, meaning it doesn't limit your other item choices).
Some of the effects really do need more of an explanation, but I trust that could be fixed. I would make sure my party kept this item if we found it, and I could see custom ordering it, too, but not in every game (which is honestly a good thing--no item should be an automatic pick the way Metamagic rods are).
Overall, great job. I can't believe you weren't top 32.
Edit: I am also shocked to see that people can't see the theme in this item. Fey like plants and hate iron, so you bone them by making plants iron and having that iron grab the fey (and pierce them). It's obvious to me, but I guess the fact that others don't see the theme is what kept it from the top.
Rod of the Iron Rose
Congratulations Jensen,
I did not see this one very often, but it was upvoted for tightness of theme. I felt the Fortitude save against plant creatures and the 40 ft radius went too far, and plant bane would have fit better with the theme. I did not like rods that had too many magic weapon abilities, but this kind of covered that concern by making it a weapon. I would prefer just a rod. Again the theme of turning plants iron, entangling with iron, and bramble wall fit together perfectly.
Good luck next year! :)
EDIT: after reading your comments I think you are spot on for next year. :)