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Aura Moderate Transmutation; CL 11th
Slot Armour; Price 22,350 gp; Weight 30 lbs.
Description
At first glance, this +2 Breastplate appears to be made from pale blue crystal. On closer examination, this proves to be constantly flowing ocean water, powerfully enchanted to retain its shape. The Flowing Fortress' armour check penalty does not apply to Swim checks, and upon speaking a command word, the armour flows on or off the wearer, so it can be donned or removed in a single move action from up to 10' away.
While wearing the Flowing Fortress, two other commands, usable a total of three times per day in any combination, can be used to transform the wearer's body into water:
Melt: As a move action, the wearer melts into a puddle. In this form, the wearer moves 10' faster when flowing downhill, gains a swim speed of 60', can flow through even the tiniest cracks, and gets a +8 circumstance bonus on Stealth checks. The wearer can see and hear normally but can't speak, attack or cast spells. This form can be maintained for up to 10 minutes at a time.
Gush: As a standard action, the wearer turns into water, shoots up to 40 feet at a very high speed in any direction including straight up, then resumes normal form. This could, for example, be used to cross a small chasm or quickly get on board an adjacent ship. Any creatures or movable objects in your path are affected as though you had cast Hydraulic Torrent (APG) at a caster level equal to your character level.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armour, Control Water, either Elemental Body (any) or Fluid Form (APG); Cost 11,175 gp
Formatting and wording issues. Price/Cost don't match. Another quick don/doff armor, but this one has a twist! It can be removed or donned from up to 10 feet away via a spoken command word. This could get awfully inconvenient fast once the bad guys figure out the command word! The set of abilities is pretty cool, though I'm surprised not to see hydraulic torrent in the requirements, given its explicitly referenced in the item. I'm conflicted about this one, but looking at everything so far, I think I'm going to go with Weak Keep.
Modules Overlord
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The very first thing that leaps out to me is that it should say "At first glance, this +2 breastplate appears to be made..." rather than "At first glance, this +2 Breastplate appears to be made..." Getting things like capitalization and italics wrong in a formal, final entry makes me wonder what other minor mistakes I may miss. As a developer, I have to take more time to double check every aspect of this, even if the rest is all correct. And as Mark mentions, the price is wrong.
If you are writing specific magic armor and weapons for Pathfinder, the cost is NOT half the price. Instead, the cost is half the price of the value of the magic abilities (not counting the masterwork base item), plus the base item. So if we assume 22,350 is the correct price, 200 gp of that is for the base breastplate and 150 gp is for the masterwork quality. So the magic is worth 22,0000 gp, which means the cost should be (22,000 gp/2) + 350 gp, or 11,350.
All that said, the core concept is cool - I like the idea of magic warted as armor, and the powers are evocative and interesting. That core concept and the fun abilities it includes are worth more to me than the obvious mistakes are troublesome. I'd send this back to the writer if I had time, but I'd correct it rather than cut it and write something myself to fill the space if I was on a tight deadline.
That said, multiple turnovers with these kinds of mistakes would cause me to stop giving the author new work.
Even so, I recommend it as a keep.
Kept. Now with all three judges' approval, you've made Top 32 for sure. Welcome to RPG Superstar!
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
Magic water armor? What a neat visual. Has someone been watching The Last Airbender?
Usability
Magical water armor that I can don as a move action? This is tailor-made for any noble that doesn't want to wear armor all the time. I think I would have liked an additional command that glamered the armor, or made it invisible.
Presentation
Missing italicization on item name and spell names, underpriced. The item could be presented in such a way where it lists out the various commands available, rather than mentioning one of them in the paragraph above, then listing out the other two options. You're going to want to watch your armor/armour usage, though this is fixable.
Final Thoughts
Very thematic, but presentation needs some work. I do recommend this item for advancement.
I really like this item. The theme is well done and the ability to quickly wear this armour makes sense. The two other abilities are useful, but not game breakingly so. I do agree with Mark that the spell should be part of the construction requirements and am also a little confused by the melt ability and how fast you can move in that form. But overall the positives out way the concerns by quite a bit.
Congrats, Jeff. I was mixed on this one in voting. I thought it was a little bit of a Swiss army knife, though obviously one with a strong theme. That said, it had some neat visuals and there were lots of interesting options for players in how they want to use this, and I'm always a fan of that.
Looking forward to seeing what you can do for Round 2. Good luck!
Thanks for the feedback. I'm proud to be in the top 32!
The formatting comments are well-taken. That was a straightforward mistake on my part, though in my defence, many of the items I saw during the voting phase were far worse in that respect. I've been using Canadian spellings all my life, thus I tend to write "armour" (and, in the previous sentence, "defence") and am convinced that if there is a God, He surely kills a kitten every time I am forced to do otherwise. Nevertheless, for the purposes of this contest and any future work with Paizo, I will make sure to use a US spell checker to catch this kind of stuff. I'll tend to use Canadian spellings in things like messageboard posts.
Originally, the item had flavour text to the effect that clerics of certain water deities were extremely fond it and that being able to make it was a big deal for them. That's why it's a breastplate (it's the best armour a cleric can normally use), and why Hydraulic Torrent isn't among the prerequisites (I was not able to find any way in the current rules for such a cleric to get that spell). In any case, the turning-into-water thing was seen as the main point, not the Torrent aspect; that was just a way to give the Gush ability some mechanics in very few words.
Regarding the presentation of the commands, I considered a few different ways of doing this. The one I gave made the most sense since one of the commands can be used at will, while the other two have a limited (and shared) pool of charges per day. Putting them all in a single list, I felt, would encourage confusion on this point.
Was it James Jacobs who said pricing was the hardest part of item design? Ah well.
Off to read the rules for the next part!
I like this armor - it makes me think I can keep my armor in a cup of water if I want, and spill it too.
There are a bunch of issues with this item - like just what kind of water/liquid is needed to flow into? How much? Can it flow through any hole etc? And the flowing on or off part is just the end to another sentence that makes this all important ability see like a misbegotten afterthought.
I like the two added abilities - gives the player more choices - the first is a little silly, but very cinematic. Why is the puddle so Stealthy? The second ability I like - it is very anime - a little fantastic for my tastes perhaps, but creative within the theme and just what a magical set of armor should aspire to.
Congratulations Jeff.
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This was the only item of my personal keep list to make the top 32 (well, not counting my own, which I had on my keep out of optimism more than belief in its quality), and I'm really glad to see it.
I love how flavorful it is and how well suited to a nautical campaign. I am very curious as to whether a druid could wear this armor, since it's not made of metal, but pure water...
I think more nailing-down of the puddle form might be a good thing. Does it take up a 5-foot square? More? Less? Can it stretch thinly out over multiple square as it trickles along? Can it flow uphill at all, or climb? Stealth makes total sense... in a damp environment. If water starts flowing under the door of a room in the desert, however, that's probably a bit weirder and more noticeable...
When the armor is "off", could you carry it around in your waterskin? How much water is it when off?
Still, the fact that I'm asking all these questions is a sure sign the item has engaged my imagination. I want to see it in action, to see it described, and to see players do ridiculously fun things with it... the party is in the town jail, but their gear's just across the room! The party wizard magehands the fighter's canteen closer, closer.... then it splooshes out and becomes his armor, and then he can trickle out and free the others! Ta-da! That's fun.
The most important question, of course, is if I can use it as an aquarium and store small sealife in it. >___>
There has been so much focus on getting price right. I don't think it matters.
It is so much easier to teach someone to use math formula than it is to be a good writer.
I'm sure there are a lot of people out ther who can A+ price and mechanics, but have trouble coming up with cool ideas.
Which one of those two people will get better first? This is why writers have editors, right?
Cool idea. Mechanics need polishing to avoid play issues and clarity. Writter talent evident.
Weak keep.
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Modules Overlord
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Editors generally have a fixed amount of time, and everything can be made better with editing. So the more detail-oriented mistakes a writer makes, the less time developers and editors have to polish the cool ideas. Especially for things that have definitive answers that can be looked up, there's no reason to accept such mistakes in the world of someone who wants to be paid for their work.
If there are enough mistakes, it's easier for a developer to just write a cool idea from scratch, and then the writer no longer gets work.
Now if a writer makes a few mistakes and, when they are pointed out, stops making them, that writer is likely to get more work since they show a willingness and ability to improve. But a single magic item that writers have days to work, and which are supposed to represent their very best work, on shouldn't have obvious pricing errors.
It won't get you disqualified (obviously), but it does matter in the judging.
This is a cool item, but please remember going forward that spell names and names of magic items are lowercase and italicized, not Capitalized like feats. The competition is going to be a lot fiercer here on out. Don't give voters trivial reasons to pick someone else's entry over yours.
One of more unique Items I have seen and I applaud creativity. Sadly I never saw this one in the polls even once but I can see why you got into the top 32. Seems very under priced. Also what happens when it is subjected to cold type attacks and low temperatures? Good luck in the next round
But a single magic item that writers have days to work, and which are supposed to represent their very best work, on shouldn't have obvious pricing errors.
It won't get you disqualified (obviously), but it does matter in the judging.
I'll keep that in mind, but part of the problem is that my decision to enter was made very late. I did this item in about 45 minutes, submitting it (as you can see above) two minutes before the deadline. We'll never know for sure, but I would like to think I'd have caught the formatting, pricing, and US spelling issues had I used the full time available :-).
I like this armor, and it got several votes from me during voting.
My main concern was that it provides a major transformation without much detail about it. The character turns into water and can't speak, attack, or cast spells. Okay, so what does that mean in regards to others attacking the wearer? Does the wearer still take damage normally? What about precision damage? Fire effects? It's a major change that seems like it should have noticeable effects beyond what's listed.
Congratulations, and good luck in the coming round.
Congratulations on making the Top 32! Good work!
I liked this item and regularly up-voted it. A cool visual of both the armor and its function. Some template errors, but they are minor. More detail on the transformed character could be helpful, such as immunity to criticals or vulnerability to fire.
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My main concern was that it provides a major transformation without much detail about it. The character turns into water and can't speak, attack, or cast spells. Okay, so what does that mean in regards to others attacking the wearer? Does the wearer still take damage normally? What about precision damage? Fire effects? It's a major change that seems like it should have noticeable effects beyond what's listed.
Maybe grant the elemental subtype while in water form, which would make the wearer immune to precision damage, flanking, and critical hits? That said, water elementals are made of water and take normal damage from weapons, until they get Large anyway. I complain about how stupid it is that poking a sword through water 'hurts' the water every time we fight an elemental (and don't get me started on air elementals!), but those are the rules.
I definitely remember this armor, unfortunately for you (at least in my case) it was almost always against some of my favorites in voting pairing. So while I did upvote this, I more often downvoted.
Template and wording issues.
"At first glance" is weak way to write this, it should be written stronger, which would have shaved some words off.
Armour vs armor.
Nautical armor that avoids the fear of drowning by basically instantly flowing on or off. Also with no ACP.
I'm not going to go through both powers seperately, but I will say that I think you should have stuck with just one and not named the powers. Each of the separate named powers grants multiple things and the price should be much higher to accommodate all of them.
You also give an example of how to use a power...
Overall, this had more issues (for me) than it did good things. Several editing phases probably would have fixed it. You definitely need to work on tightening your writing, focusing your writing, and mechanical knowledge. This would be my bottom choice of the Top 32, but I see some great ideas in here, now I want to see you improve vastly in the next round(s).
Congratulations on making it to the Top 32!
I like the abilities. Both fit the theme well and while they leave some questions unanswered, I feel that those can be answered relatively easily. I especially like the Gush ability for its usability both as means of movement and as an attack.
It's something about the visuals that bug me. It feels... too anime. I have this rather medieval idea in my head about what Pathfinder looks like and this is just too cartoony for that. Still, that's just a nitpick, but I would snigger if a villain wearing this one walked ahead to face me.
Nevertheless, a nice item and the best of luck to you!
Congratulations, Jeff! You have a gift for evocative, thematically-connected powers, and that will serve you well in this contest and your future design career if you keep it up. Good work, looking forward to seeing the map that spawned this super visual item!
Congrats Jeff!
despite all the formatting issues which have been mentioned, I still voted for this quite a bit.
good luck in future rounds
Wow, a lot of new comments on this thread! Thanks for all of them, even the not so positive one from theheadkase. I'm certainly aware that some of my creations are not all things to all people. I'm... not opposed to Tolkien style fantasy per se, but I'm at a point in my creative life where I kind of feel like I've seen pretty much everything that has to offer and feel like exploring other influences.
I don't watch much anime (I've seen most of Miyazaki's films but very little else) but the Final Fantasy games are a big influence on my, for what it's worth. I'm also starting to read non-Western mythology a bit and to explore other Appendix N authors like Moorcock and Dunsany. I don't know if that explains anything about this specific item, but since people are commenting on where they think I'm coming from, I figured I might as well say a few words about it.
Just remember, the important take-aways from my critique is that YOU made Top 32...not me.
Also, while the execution of this item fell flat for me I saw a great deal of potential in you as a designer. Trust me (I've been ripped apart by Endzeitgeist more than I care to admit), the negatives are necessary to help you grow.
This one never came across my screen during voting, but I do love the visual of the armor flowing on and off the wearer. Like Mark, my first thought was, how does the armor know whom to listen to? And my answer would have been to state that the armor must be donned and worn normally for an hour for it to bond with its wearer. (Or I suppose it could be something more graphic: sneeze into it? Something involving bodily fluids....)
This one never came across my screen during voting, but I do love the visual of the armor flowing on and off the wearer. Like Mark, my first thought was, how does the armor know whom to listen to? And my answer would have been to state that the armor must be donned and worn normally for an hour for it to bond with its wearer. (Or I suppose it could be something more graphic: sneeze into it? Something involving bodily fluids....)
Since it's a command word, it should obey anyone who knows the word. My first cut had a sentence that explained that you couldn't remove it from anyone but yourself, but that anyone who knew the word could don it if it was unattended. That sentence must have ended up either cut for length or lost in the process of reorganization. This went through a fair amount of editing and reorganizing relative to the short time I spent on it, it was like ten minutes on the stat block, five writing the rest, 30 on fine-tuning.
I think that the weak description sentences through me off of how cool the armor was (also, wouldn't armor made of water be completely transparent?) I really like all of the abilities and the overall theme. There have already been a lot of comments on this item, and I'm not sure I have anything to add that hasn't already been said.
Congratulations!
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 the top 32.
I really liked this item during voting, and I'm glad to see it made the cut. Not only did it add some useful movement and disguise abilities to the base armor, which complement it being a defensive item, but I especially liked the touch of negating the armor check penalty for Swim checks, which is so thematically appropriate.
As for the issue of using the command word to remove someone else's armor, I've always though that command words could only be used by the wielder/holder/wearer of an item, not any random person who says it. I've never seen the argument that someone nearby could use the command word of say a ring of the ram to cause the ring being worn by someone else to activate, so I don't see why it's an issue with the armor. The exception would be called out, such as here in the case of using the word to don the armor if within 10 feet.
Now that could make for a fun wondrous item or rod: Be able to use command words on other people's magic items. Potentially so eeeeevil.
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.
Now, let's get to the critique!
As always, congratulations on making the top 32. No matter what I thought of your item, you won, and you should feel awesome!
I liked this item quite a bit, and had it as one of the best "maybes." The powers were cool and evocative, and were things I would enjoy being able to do (especially on, say, my Hydrokineticist, though I wish it were Mithral for that purpose).
I know there are a few formatting errors, but, fixing an italics here and there isn't so bad. There are a few more severe issues that held it down, though, in my opinion. First, while I love the idea of it flowing on and off from 10' away, the command word part scares me a bit, because there's nothing making the armor "mine." If my enemies heard me say the command word, they could just command it off of me--or worse, on to them. Hell, even if they didn't, a simple UMD check could theoretically strip me if they knew what kind of armor I had.
Oh, and you should clarify earlier that the command word takes a move action rather than its normal action (i.e. standard). Additional minor nitpicks: can you still smell, taste, or feel in "melt" form? Would a blind man regain their vision? I would have used a phrase like, "the wearer retains their normal senses" rather than "the wearer can see and hear normally." I think Hydraulic Torrent should really be in the requirements, since Gush can semi-duplicate it.
Anyway, for me, the real thing holding it back from being a high keep is the 3/day limitation. This, well, it's probably my own personal thing, but I just hate such limited resources, especially for something so cool. Couldn't there at least have been 3 uses of Melt and 3 of Gush? It bugs me when Pathfinder is turned into a tedious resource management simulation. I don't want to jealously guard my uses of such cool powers in case I really need them more later.
But still, personal crazy aside, I think this was awesome. If my group found this, we'd keep it for sure. The real beauty is that, you don't even need to wear it all the time--it can maintain its utilitarian uses just sitting in a back pack somewhere. Whoever the party needs to have scout, for example, can toss it on and melt for a bit. Need to get the group across a gap, but don't want to spend spell slots on the heavy melee? No problem, just have them gush across. Even if there's more than one, toss it back and the guy on the other side can probably ready the command word to put it on even if you can't throw it completely across. If it was in the game, I can see some having it made, but, unfortunately, not a ton of people. It's a useful item, but it's not so useful that everyone would order one all the time. There are lots of 20kish utility items that are just as useful, so, choosing this one out of a big pile is going to be more rare. I think it would mostly see purchase with those into the roleplaying aspect of not wearing armor most of the time so that they can don it in a flash.
Overall, good job. It's up there, but not quite the top in my esteem.
Aura
Congratulations Jeff!
hmmm... no name. Still this was a constant up-vote for me and was on my keeper list. I didn't care for the blue crystal image, but I got passed that quickly. I loved the melt option and the gush option as packed full of flavor. You don't need to tell me what to use the ability for though. You avoided SiC nicely by making gush a move option first and CM second, nice work.
Good luck!
Congratulations on the top 32! I shall only add to the other comments that I too was rather fond of this item and that I forgive that spelling preference completely. I forever have to remember not to do it.
Aura Moderate Transmutation; CL 11th
Slot Armour; Price 22,350 gp; Weight 30 lbs.Description
At first glance, this +2 Breastplate appears to be made from pale blue crystal. On closer examination, this proves to be constantly flowing ocean water, powerfully enchanted to retain its shape. The Flowing Fortress' armour check penalty does not apply to Swim checks, and upon speaking a command word, the armour flows on or off the wearer, so it can be donned or removed in a single move action from up to 10' away.While wearing the Flowing Fortress, two other commands, usable a total of three times per day in any combination, can be used to transform the wearer's body into water:
Melt: As a move action, the wearer melts into a puddle. In this form, the wearer moves 10' faster when flowing downhill, gains a swim speed of 60', can flow through even the tiniest cracks, and gets a +8 circumstance bonus on Stealth checks. The wearer can see and hear normally but can't speak, attack or cast spells. This form can be maintained for up to 10 minutes at a time.
Gush: As a standard action, the wearer turns into water, shoots up to 40 feet at a very high speed in any direction including straight up, then resumes normal form. This could, for example, be used to cross a small chasm or quickly get on board an adjacent ship. Any creatures or movable objects in your path are affected as though you had cast Hydraulic Torrent (APG) at a caster level equal to your character level.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armour, Control Water, either Elemental Body (any) or Fluid Form (APG); Cost 11,175 gp
Is the Item Decorative?
Hmmm. Prime-material plane ocean water isn't actually blue. Not unless it's severely polluted. Sometimes it looks blue, because the local lighting conditions or weather create that effect, but still...
Now some outer-planar ocean water, I grant you is blue - in its natural (or unnatural, or supernatural, or however-you-want-to-classify it) state.
All of which is preamble to addressing the appearance of this item. Blue crystal is decorative, especially when not being actually worn; when being worn, being translucent, obviously it tends to reveal what is (or sometimes more accurately, what is not) being worn underneath it.
Now, an item which, on closer inspection, resembles some sort of fluid... I think I'm going to say that to the casual viewer, said viewer is going to assume that it's alchemical fluid of some description, rather than ocean water of any particular origin. And whether the viewer thinks that it's alchemical fluid - or ocean water - conceivably affects how the viewer perceives and overall evaluates the attractiveness of the item.
I think that this item probably merits a middle-of-the-range mark, regarding how decorative it is.
Decorative score? 4 out of 7.
Does the Item have Any Obvious non-Decorative Use Around the Home?
No. This item has no obvious non-decorative use around a home. The point of armour is generally to either look nice on a stand, or to be worn, but none of the non-decorative benefits which might be derived from wearing this armour seem to me to be of especial use around a succubus' home.
non-Decorative Domestic Use score? 0 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?
At best I could see it being used by the Nasties in the initial assault phase of a beach-landing - if they actually managed to get that far. I'm sure it would appeal to their leader greatly, the idea of his troops turning themselves into bolts of living water, and blasting across a beach. I'm also sure it wouldn't prove to be nearly as devastating a piece of equipment as he imagined it to be.
'Sealion' score? 1 out of 7.
Total: 5 out of 21.
Congratulations for having made it to Top 32 AND Top 16!
Sorry I'm late to the party, I hadn't realized how big a task commenting on everyone else's items was going to be in the Official Critique Thread!
Seeing as how many other people have commented above me, and you've moved well on from this point... I'm going to keep my comments brief. To understand my rating system, see my larger post on my critique thread.
As an overall comment, each and every one of you that made it to the Top 32 must have had a "Publishable" item in my opinion because you appealled to not only the voters but also the judges -- so if I say "Rewrite" it's more to be "rewriteable to be SUPERSTAR!"
Publishable -- How does this work underwater? That is my main question mark...? Do I just get the swim speed if I am in melt form? What about the gush? Same way just underwater?