mpl's feedback generally comes from an optimization angle that I understand (and care about as a player), but isn't necessarily the one of mass appeal in RPGSS that I've noticed.
It's very difficult to make items that are on par with flat bonuses to Important Things, but also interesting and don't go over the line in pricing. Things of that nature are usually "fix" items that allow more efficiency by circumventing dependence on stats, feats, etc, rather than things that offer breadth in another direction.
This is true, and I recognized that "fixing" the game with items is the wrong approach (too late, though--I tried it and got culled myself).
I'm not exactly coming from an optimization angle--I mean, the very best items would satisfy that, too, but that's not a fair requirement--what I am doing is considering the practicality of items. In my opinion, you have to look at when you are able to acquire an item--you can't really expect summoning a CR 3 creature to help at 13th level, nor can you think a +1 weapon is going to fly in the double digit levels.
I just think that coolness has a place, but if you awesome idea comes at the price of practicality, either nobody will ever see your item in actual play (because nobody will want it/they'll immediately sell it), which means the coolness was for naught, or they'll use it and just be disappointed at how ineffective it is, diminishing the coolness and possibly making the player feel deceived.
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So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
Formatting and writing seem solid, and theres not much going on here, so there's not much to talk about. I didn't like it, but I think that's mostly a taste issue, not an indication of your ability.
I would never pay this much for a single spell I'd practically never cast. I guess other people would?
The problems come in when you get to describing how this works. You get to add a point of bleeding automatically when the bad guy remains impaled and then again when you make grapple check to deal damage? Or is it just once when you use the check to deal damage?
This is very unnecessarily complicated. You have to spend actions to pull the weapon out, but you can stop grappling them if you drop the weapon, but it stays iside of them unless they break out and it still uses your CMD, and they continue to bleed....
It just feels like you need a flowchart to use this. It's honestly not a bad design, just sloppy writing that overly complicated the execution until it's pushing unusable.
That said, it's clearly not a good PC weapon. It'd make for a great weapon for a major mini-boss, though. Overall, it needs work, but it's not bad, just gross and excessively convoluted.
Analyzing the actual item, Deathwatch feels totally out of place here. Why would the shield let you detect the health of other people? That's not very thematic at all. Then, the second ability triggers...when you die?! I'm going to pay 13k for deathwatch once per day and an "in case I die" emergency button? No, thank you. I never want to bank on dying, that's absurd. I don't want to die, so why would I buy items specifically in case I do? Why not spend that 13k on preventing my death instead of accepting it as a foregone conclusion?
We'd sell this item very fast and I'd never custom order something that only proves itself worthwhile when I die!
Overall, I hate that you directly mention the Spartans and, possibly even more, I hate magical items with special abilities that only trigger if I die.
The abilities are, admittedly, really minor (though more than 400gp for sure, regardless). Feinting is a weak maneuver--you're almost always better off just attacking each round, rather than attacking every other round following successful feints. The ability to deny your opponent Dex twice is a nice benefit if you're deadset on doing this anyway, but, you're probably still better off just attacking every round. Using your Bluff Skill instead of your actual attack bonus seems like a great idea because your BAB is probably only 3/4, but you're also missing out on lots of other sources of bonuses, like feats, weapon enhancements, buff spells, etc. You have to really focus on Bluff (i.e. waste gold on Bluff buffing items) to make this worthwhile (at which point it might be auto-hit). However, it only works 1/day. Might as well not even include it.
I don't usually comment on this sort of thing, but the name make very little sense to me. Feinting is not Betrayal.
If my party found this, we might keep it if anyone wanted a Speed Dagger, but since we almost always have someone to Haste the party, it won't be often that such a thing is desired. I can see Feint focused characters custom ordering this, but Feinting is generally such a poor action to take that it doesn't matter.
Overall, it's an undercosted item that benefits a sub optimal strategy. Eh.
I get the thematic connection for Dispel Magic and Shatter, but, what's the deal with Sanctuary? Sunder is an attack, so, it would break Sanctuary. For an order of pacifists, why not calm emotions type stuff? Why aggressively shatter stuff? Even if we're assuming that is what they'd do, wouldn't stealing their weapons with, say, Pilfering Hand or making them drop weapons with Burning Disarm...
I don't know, it just seems like a confused theme, that's all. Shatter is a good spell for a staff because it's really useful, but not "memorize it every day" useful, so, points there. Why does this staff have CL 11? You could have saved a lot of money by leaving the CL at minimum.
44,000 of your price here should be going to the staff (the cost, half the price, is 400*3*11 + 300*2*11 + 200*1*11). Ok, so that's an issue because you gave away a free feat (that ignores pre-reqs) for 2k or so. Or you calculated the cost wrong.
If you had left the CL at 8, you'd only be spending 32k on the spells, leaving you 10k for the free feat (the generally established cost of a feat in magic items terms) and the last 3k to make it Adamantine and bypass 20 hardness.
If my party found this staff, we'd sell it--too much money and the only thing we'd do with it is Shatter anyway. Nobody would custom order this when they could custom order an adamantine staff that casts those spells.
Overall, I like the theme, but the execution of the theme is questionable, and it ends up both improperly priced and priced too high for what it does.
I love the idea of a clockwork lock/alarm, don't get me wrong. But it costs 20,000 gp! When you can afford a 20k ring, I don't think you're worrying about mundane thieves anymore (and there are much better ways to stop disarms).
Think about it--if this is your most expensive item, you're at least level 9! But if you spent half your gold on a item that does nothing except protect the other half, I'd question our sanity. So, realistically, this is going to wait until the teens, and, yeah, people robbing you in your sleep just isn't going to be a thing.
If my party found this ring, we'd rob the guy wearing it blind, because he must have SOOO much money. Nobody would order this except NPCs that had wealth beyond typical WBL, like, maybe kings or whatever?
Overall, good concept, vastly too expensive to be practical or useful.
Adaptive is a nice touch--that shows you're paying attention to your audience. It's fairly useful as an emergency heal when your group is in a jam. No complaints there. The price (~6k for the three heals) is...I would say a litle high, but not the worst. You actually seriously disounted it from what it should actually have been (2000 for use-activated x 7 CL x 1 spell level x 5/3 for three charges per day = more than 23k), which is smart, because it's definitely NOT worth that much. I'm not totally sure how you decided on 6k, but I'll accept it.
However, there are a lot of little errors that drag this down. There are lots of grammatical errors (I could point them all out if you really want), and, maybe worse, there are inconsistencies with the way Pathfinder typically formats and phrases things. For example, the sentence: "If the archer has the ability to fire multiple arrows..." is a mess. There's something awkward and strange like that in almost every sentence.
I can see this being used by a party, but the language needs to be polished up before it's actually usable.
A +1 Speed Mithril Longsword should cost 34k, so your custom abilities are running about 13k? That's a good proportion, I think--nice job.
Making the longsword act as a light weapon is...ok. You can off-hand it for a lower penalty, so, that's nice, I guess, but in that way, it's basically just +1 average damage. Not impressive. It also penalizes both power attack sorts (since they can no longer use it in two hands) and Finesse builds because the longsword would no longer qualify for Slashing Grace. So, I'm not sure treating it as light is really a good thing in the end.
The Charge thing is really awesome and useful, in theory, but Charging is really only especially useful to people who Pounce or who use a lance (i.e. this sword doesn't help there). Current Pouncers that I am aware of:
Barbarians (who will be angry that they cannot use this blade in two hands)
Pummeling Charge (must be unarmed, so, again, this won't help)
Druids (in which case, they're not using weapons, either)
Beastmorph Alchemists (hey, they could theoretically make use of this!)
Eidolons (ooh, a second group that could)
It benefits a very, very small subsection of the Pouncers out there. Not awful, but hardly ideal. I strongly suspect you didn't think about how making the longsword light would actually penalize its use for most users. Finally, the last line is awkwardly written, as I mentioned, but the ability is also pretty underwhelming. It really only helps sneak attackers that lose intiative.
So, it looks like this is best for Beastmorph Vivisectionist Alchemists (who are not actually proficient, unfortunately), since they aren't hurt by it becoming Light, they have pounce, and they sneak attack without necessarily being Dex focused (so, they might lose initiative more often).
If my party found this item, we'd give it to the Beastmorph Vivisectionist with Longsword proficiency. Otherwise, we'd probably sell it. A very narrow set of characters would custom order this.
Overall, I like the idea, it's mostly well written, but, I don't think you thought the "light weapon" thing through, and the audience is just too niche in the end.
Ok, it starts with some word salad--I guess those are names/places in Golarion? Then, it turns out that this is a +1 weapon that costs less than a +1 weapon. Yikes. Oh, and you can crumble up your 1750gp up into a ball and toss it away in order to turn a helpless, 4HD or fewer target into gas for 3 minutes (oh, but only if they fail a DC 13 save)? For what purpose?
If you have a helpless target of 4HD or less, why do you need to capture them as gas? Why not regular-type capture them? They're weak anyway, it's not like you need special means to capture them--plus, they were helpless to begin with or you couldn't have used the item. And what can you do with them in 3 minutes? Sprint where you want to go at top speed? I just can't figure out what you're supposed to do with this.
If my party found this, we'd be stoked to have a 250gp discount on our +1 weapon. We will absolutely never trigger the ability, though. Everyone would custom order this to get a +1 weapon 250gp early, but nobody would use the special ability.
Overall, sorry, I don't get it. Too many errors and an effect I can't figure out the purpose of.
50) Sleeper's Vessel:What?Ok, it starts with some word salad--I guess those are names/places in Golarion? Then, it turns out that this is a +1 weapon that costs less than a +1 weapon. Yikes. Oh, and you can crumble up your 1750gp up into a ball and toss it away in order to turn a helpless, 4HD or fewer target into gas for 3 minutes (oh, but only if they fail a DC 13 save)? For what purpose?
If you have a helpless target of 4HD or less, why do you need to capture them as gas? Why not regular-type capture them? They're weak anyway, it's not like you need special means to capture them--plus, they were helpless to begin with or you couldn't have used the item. And what can you do with them in 3 minutes? Sprint where you want to go at top speed? I just can't figure out what you're supposed to do with this.
If my party found this, we'd be stoked to have a 250gp discount on our +1 weapon. We will absolutely never trigger the ability, though. Everyone would custom order this to get a +1 weapon 250gp early, but nobody would use the special ability.
Overall, sorry, I don't get it. Too many errors and an effect I can't figure out the purpose of.
Thanks for the review...it was good to get someone having a detailed critique against the 'crunch' of this item. I realised early on in voting that I had failed on two counts (actually it was way more than that but never mind!)... The first being that this is almost certainly a Wondrous Item - it could easily have been a shard of magical glass, a small vial, even a syringe... it absolutely wasn't a weapon (if I had realised earlier, I'd have given it a few more weapon-y things it could do) and the second thing being what I think you are calling out here... It's a GM tool...a Plot Device that helps tell a story of people being sneaked away in the night...it's just not something a player wants / needs...
Of course, the pricing is off...and the duration is too short / effect too weak (I followed the effects of the spells as written rather than riffing off of them)...
The best thing about this completion is that it is an open invitation...this was my first attempt...and the community gives you great support and honest feedback. There were bits that I think people liked about my item (and I will keep on doing those things next time around) and there are all of the other things which people have talked about honestly... Any other competition, I'd just be peeved at being culled in first cut and then...the very next year...do it all again!!!
So, once more, thanks to everyone who did take the time and effort to review my item... I promise I'll pay you back next year with a vastly improved entry...
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Thanks for the review on Springheart! You aren't the only one to mention the mechanical failings. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future.
First time RPGSS entrant, didn't get past the Cull and I can see a few things that I'd do differently in future...I would love to hear other people's opinions though...
Sleeper's Vessel
Aura faint transmutation; CL 3rd
Slot none; Price 1,750 gp; Weight 1 lb.Description
A favored tool of agents playing out the political games within the Nidalese cities of Nisroch and Pangolais, the sleeper's vessel is often used by those in service of the Umbral Court to spirit away those who seek to challenge the enduring reign of the Midnight Lord. This ornate +1 dagger has a hollow crystalline hilt. As a single use, this dagger may be used to make an attack against a helpless target with a maximum of 4 HD; on a successful hit, the target is rendered unconscious and transformed into a dense cloud of gas (Will Save DC13 negates both). The entirety of this cloud is held within the hilt of the dagger for 3 minutes, after which time the target reverts to it's previous form destroying the dagger as it does so.Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, gaseous form, sleep; Cost 902 gp
Entering for the first time is half the battle, Kudos for that. As for this item I am sorry to say it never got my vote. I just didn't see a reason for it. Knocking someone unconscious yes, keeping them as gas form while they are unconscious for three minutes just doesn't make sense to me. I like the creativity behind the idea, just not sure it is an idea that I would use for a PC or an NPC. Also the first line is all backstory something that isn't necessary in a magic item description. I think you have a creative spark, but just need to channel that not good design technique. Join the Blazing 9 this year and seek out the SKR Auto Reject Threads on the boards. They are awesome at helping first time designers figure out the pitfalls and what those of us who have been following the contest for a while look for in a Super Star Item.
Ring Of Utmost Need
Aura strong polymorph; CL 13th
Slot ring; Price 4000 gp; Weight --
Description
This ring is covered with innumerable intricately carved tableaus of daring exploits and narrow escapes and grants the wearer the ability to tap into previously unknown talents in times of great danger. Once per week, as an immediate action, the wearer may choose a skill. For one minute, the wearer makes all checks with that skill as though it were a class skill and the wearer had ranks in that skill equal to the wearer’s hit die. Any feats, skills, abilities, or spells that modify that skill apply as normal.
Construction
Requirements Quicken Spell, Forge Ring, paragon surge; Cost 2000 gp
I am sorry to I was not a fan of this one. It falls into the makes adventuring easy category and as a DM I wouldn't want the challenges I present just bypassed with a ring that gives class skill bonus and max ranks as needed to any character. Even with the limitations, they are fairly cheap as magic items go and I could see characters stock piling them.
I would much appreciate feedback about my item
Cryohydra's Coil
Aura moderate transmutation; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 48,010 gp; Weight 3 lbs.
Description
This three tendriled +3 scorpion whip is braided from the pale tanned hide of a cryohydra, and each tip ends with a small steel serpentine head, it's fangs bared. The handle is ivory wrapped with silver wire, a large fang caps the pommel.
The whip provides a +4 bonus to disarm and trip combat maneuver attempts. A successful critical hit with the weapon causes a chill touch spell effect. As well whenever any tendrils of the whip are sundered an identical new tendril grows back to replace it at the beginning of the wielders next turn. This regrowth is accompanied by a sound like cracking knuckles and stretching leather.
Additionally by willingly reducing the weapons enhancement bonus to +1 for a duration of three rounds the wielder may cause a 15 foot cone of frost to project from the whips heads which deals 3d6 cold damage to all creatures in the area. To target the cone the wielder simply cracks the whip in the direction they wish the cone to fire. Using this ability is a standard action and a successful DC 16 reflex save halves the damage. Targets caught in the cone who fail their reflex save are affected with the entangled condition as per Rime Spell. The whip cannot create another such breath weapon effect until it’s enhancement bonus has returned to the normal value.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Rime Spell Metamagic Feat: chill touch, make whole, pilfering hand, thunderstomp; Cost 24,005 gp
I really liked this one. I loved the name and the theme. I see by the judges comments that Mark Seifter shared with you why it didn't make the final list but I agree you have the MOJO and if you can combine that with good execution you are one to watch out for next year.
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Disruption Disc
This reminded me of last year’s ironmorph dust, which was both good and bad: It had the gem of a cool idea, but it also felt like something that had been done before. I also felt a little bit like it was more a wondrous item than weapon or armor – partly because it trod the line between both. On one hand, you throw the discs at an enemy to use them – clearly a weapon element – but it adds to their AC – clearly an armor element.
“The most recent wielder” line was also a little awkward. I know what you meant, but I think once it’s attached to a target and giving that character an AC boost, you could argue that’s the most recent wearer. I think your thought about having 10 percent each round wasn’t quite enough either. I’d rather just attack an arcane caster than give him a somewhat negligible failure attempt.
Traitor’s Blade I liked the description; very evocative. Otherwise, though, I felt like it just didn’t quite do enough. It felt like it was begging to be a rogue’s weapon and just didn’t have enough general utility for me to get behind it.
Rod of Resonance This didn’t differentiate itself enough from a metamagic rod of enlarge spell to me (despite the bardic performance aspect) and the swift action to activate it messed with action economy.
RHEUMATIC ROD Obviously has some templating issues. That said, I like the core power of dealing with age, but I think it’s a tricky area in magic item space. Like dealing with planar attributes and gravity, there’s the feeling it should be cool, but the powers just don’t show enough design chops. There needs to be something to bring it to the next level beyond having something effectively be one age category higher.
Mimic Skin I voted for this sometimes, but mostly felt like it was a monster in a can. Just not enough there for me.
Norgorber's Lens I think you mostly nailed the critique in your notes, Garrett. This one more or less just seemed confusing. I got the lens and how that played into bringing things closer or farther, but it just didn’t feel like a cohesive item to me.
Thundering Shield Nice description on this (which doesn’t surprise me now that I see you were the author, Bombadil). The first power seemed nice, but didn’t have enough mojo to really set it apart. The second power feels disjointed, though – not fitting the thundering theme. Why does the shield only bite at metal weapons?
Ring of forgotten acquaintance No description here starts the item off on a bad foot, as that’s a way to show your writing skills. Then it moves to a skill bonus, which isn’t Superstar. It’s compounded, though, by the requirement and goofy (sorry, but that’s how it read to me) way it has to be used. I think the idea of making someone think they know you could be cool, but definitely needs a lot more exciting mechanics to make it work…
Tempest Bow Andrew, you know my feedback. I liked this one. :)
Dynamic Staff I know I was in the seeming minority, but I liked the idea of a staff that didn’t have set spells, since I thought if that could be pulled off, it could be Superstar. I think this went too far in the other direction, though, making it basically a totally universal item that can hold any spell the owner wants. On a smaller note, you’ve also got an extra comma before “that” in the first sentence that throws me and immediately sets me off to be predisposed against the item.
Staff of Thin Air I think you were partly caught in the glut of dimension door items with this one. However, I also thought it was odd that it could be used as a javelin, not to mention giving proficiency in such. The idea that you could catch the staff at any point along its path was also odd – on one hand you can call it magic, but the description doesn’t make sense: if you throw it 30 feet away, how can you catch it? I think rewording that would have helped. In addition, for the thin air name, the spell selection felt odd – vanish I think would have worked better than invisibility and I’m not sure what bull strength has to do with the theme.
Skywalker’s Cloth The name, as I’m sure others have pointed out, was somewhat unfortunate. Skywalker’s a great word, but I think Star Wars has made it tough to use. I like the description, which is nice. I think it just didn’t go far enough in terms of mojo to go beyond its SIAC roots. I’m not sure I’ve ever used altitude rules, so it didn’t feel like something that would come up in the game all that often. I did upvote it a lot of times, because I was impressed with the use of uncommon design space, but at its heart I felt like it was an SIAC.
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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36) Rod of Illusory Casting:
I loved this item. It was in my top 5 keepers. Illusion focused casters are loads of fun, but get shut down way too easily with simple Spellcraft checks. This solves that problem nicely and without breaking the bank. I see no significant flaws except maybe some sloppy wording in the middle there.However, much like my own item, it does try to fix something about Pathfinder that is broken, by patching over the flaw with a magic item bandaid, and I have grown to realize that is not the proper way to fix things. That's my only explanation as to why this didn't make the top 32, unless people generally didn't understand what it did or why it did it.
Thanks for the kind words. That's exactly what I did, addressing that spellcraft completely destroys most illusionist capabilities. I get what you're saying about it being a magic item bandaid, and sure, the better fix would be to change the way Spellcraft works, more like defensive casting so it's not as automatic once you hit 8th level or so. However, unless Pathfinder 2nd edition comes along, that's not really an option. Instead, I'd rather have multiple band aid options (magic items, spells, archetypes, etc.) that gave a range of options to deal with the flaw.
It's also the reason that I had it work automatically to beat spellcraft and simple divinations suck as detect magic, since the inherent problem is so severe. Many people keyed in on it being automatic and therefore somehow wrong, and while I can see that point of view, I felt that in a very limited niche (detecting illusions) and when dealing with the issues with Spellcraft that already exist, that it was okay. Sure, at that price you can pick up 5 of these rods and use the ability 15 times per day, but at that price, it's 25K, which even at high levels is still an opportunity cost which you could otherwise spend on other things.
36) Rod of Illusory Casting:
I loved this item. It was in my top 5 keepers. Illusion focused casters are loads of fun, but get shut down way too easily with simple Spellcraft checks. This solves that problem nicely and without breaking the bank. I see no significant flaws except maybe some sloppy wording in the middle there.However, much like my own item, it does try to fix something about Pathfinder that is broken, by patching over the flaw with a magic item bandaid, and I have grown to realize that is not the proper way to fix things. That's my only explanation as to why this didn't make the top 32, unless people generally didn't understand what it did or why it did it.
Thanks for the kind words. That's exactly what I did, addressing that spellcraft completely destroys most illusionist capabilities. I get what you're saying about it being a magic item bandaid, and sure, the better fix would be to change the way Spellcraft works, more like defensive casting so it's not as automatic once you hit 8th level or so. However, unless Pathfinder 2nd edition comes along, that's not really an option. Instead, I'd rather have multiple band aid options (magic items, spells, archetypes, etc.) that gave a range of options to deal with the flaw.
It's also the reason that I had it work automatically to beat spellcraft and simple divinations suck as detect magic, since the inherent problem is so severe. Many people keyed in on it being automatic and therefore somehow wrong, and while I can see that point of view, I felt that in a very limited niche (detecting illusions) and when dealing with the issues with Spellcraft that already exist, that it was okay. Sure, at that price you can pick up 5 of these rods and use the ability 15 times per day, but at that price, it's 25K, which even at high levels is still an opportunity cost which you could otherwise spend on other things.
As it is, it's possible you would have been more successful sticking with the illusion side of things and perhaps limiting what divinations you fooled (though it's too hard to say with so many voters). Fooling detect magic spam with a low price item is perfectly reasonable and a great idea even if it always works, but analyze dweomer or even greater arcane sight are different stories. Also, at least personally, I felt that the most powerful in-combat usage was for non-illusionists to carry these around and just fake every non-illusion as an arbitrary illusion spell to completely prevent counterspell or targeted dispel to strip a particular buff. I wanted the item to focus more on helping the illusionist trick people into thinking his spell was the spell it pretended to be, not in helping non-illusionists in the way I described. The illusionist part is tighter with the theme and is definitely cool.
I know I thanked alot of people by IM, I know I did. But I have a nagging feeling like I'm missing some people.
I don't know if I did miss anyone, but I want to cover all my bases. I want to thank all the wonderful people who gave feed-back on my item. I want you to know I appreciate it. I hope to come back stronger, next year, and I'm taking alot of personal notes.
I didn't want to clutter this forum with my thanks untill well after most of the Critiques were done. I'm sure many more will come, and I apologize to anyone who's critique is harder to find becuase of this post.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
The only reason it wasn't one of my "maybes" or keepers is that it is iconsistent with Pathfinder wording. "as though it were a class skill and the wearer had ranks in that skill equal to the wearer's hit die..."
That's awkward and generally not done. It's also technically not correct because I get ranks equal to my hit die. My hit die is a d8. Do I roll randomly to determine the number of ranks. Or do you mean my hit dice? Like, my level? There's a reason this phrasing is not used in general (I do know what you meant, but just "knowing what you meant" is not sufficient for writing rules in a game).
That said, I'm not sure I could come up with better wording, which is probably why this sort of item/ability doesn't exist, yet.
If my party found this, yeah, we'd totally keep it. Very useful. We'd probably custom order a few eventually--it's especially useful for rare knowledge checks.
Overall, good, but not great.
"A successful critical hit with the weapon causes a chill touch spell effect" is extremely vague. Does that mean it does some minor damage and they save or take stength damage (or run away if undead)? Or do you get the whole effect (i.e. since the item is caster level 9, it triggers 9 times)? Does the extra damage from the spell double on the crit or is it flat?
How do you determine if a single tendril was sundered (rather than the whole thing), thus triggering the regrowth? Is there any significant effect to having a single tendril sundered?
The last power, the cone thing, isn't really written properly. You don't give up enhancement bonuses to trigger powers--you could have just put a 3 round cooldown without the random cost. Frankly, this whole paragraph is formatted/written poorly and needs polishing.
The price on this thing means you won't get it until 12th level. Do you really think 3d6 cold damage with a DC 16 save for half is going to matter at all at 12th? It's just not enough to matter.
If my party found this, we'd sell it--it's not strong enough for its cost and we really don't quite know how the Scorpion Whip works.
Overall, sorry, I think it needs a lot of work.
How do you determine whether or not a projectile/thrown weapon strikes the shield? Holy crap, a gate spell teleports the arrow away? That's a bit excessive, isn't it? No wonder this is CL 17 and costs 44k. This second paragraph just talks about a weird drawback and doesn't clarify any of the problems with the first.
I can't really rate this item--there's no clarity here. I have no idea how it works. You need to clean this up and explain what it really does and how it does it. The idea isn't a bad one, exactly, but the execution--well, there is no execution.
It's also not totally clear how the entangle works--is it a full on entangle effect? Or does it only affect one target? Does it only affect enemies? And it would have been nice to actually list the DC (which seems like it should be 15?).
If my party found this item, we'd sell it--it's just too expensive for a one per day entangle. Nobody would custom order this, either.
Overall, the description is interesting and clever, but it's just too much money.
It definitely couldn't win the contest (as it's not really a weapon), but it wouldn't be too horrible if it weren't for the last line where you can use your Witch Hex DC, or get a 14 + Cha version. That's crazy for 350gp.
I don't know how to judge this. It doesn't fill contest rules, but it's also too weak without your final line and too strong with it. You mention the price being terrible and the CL mistake in your post (I didn't notice until now), so, I'm not sure I can give you much advice, since those are the biggest problems. The idea is ok. I think it's too silly for me, but others might like it.
Trying to be more objective, let me analyze the spell list. It seems like the theme is literally just, "this is a random grab bag of buff spells that have no theme beyond wanting to buff my summons, plus, some summons." I think the idea of actually including summon spells in the staff is a misstep because you're dropping tons of money (those two spells alone cost 33k) to put an unnecessary expiration date on this staff. In fact, this staff is already a Summon spell level obsolete by the time you can acquire it by WBL at 14th.
You should have just left it to the caster to summon on their own. The benefit granted by the "legion" template or whatever (and it is never made clear the summons get this template) are totally unclear. "Attacking the same target" is not a thing in Pathfinder. You can't be "attacking" something unless you are currently rolling an attack, so, you can't get a bonus to hit for other people "attacking" as nobody would be doing so at the exact same time. You could give the bonus for each legion creature threatening the target, or, for each legion creature that attacked the target in the past turn or whatever, but the way you worded it is not valid rules language.
What kind of energy damage is this 1d8? And actually, it never specifies that it has to be a "legion" creature that successfully hits the target--that's kind of important, otherwise, this technically works on every creature everywhere in the universe for each of theses staves that exists.
I feel like the weird Legion template thing was a bad idea, because the real star of the staff is the ability to cast personal spells on your summons from 40' away. By the way, 40' is a really strange choice for range. Typically, these things have either 30' range, or Close range (25' + 5'/2 CL). Why 40'? And you fail to explain fully how the ability to deliver touch spells works. Can the creature hold the charge? Is there a range limit on where the summoned creature can be? If the spell allows multiple touches, can the monster deliver them on subsequent rounds? Does it cost more charges? It's just too vague.
Overall, I don't like it, but that's anti-summoning bias, not a reflection of quality. Thankfully, there are enough errors and ambiguities that I do not have to feel badly about voting it down. Even if you are a fan of summoning, the language needs a lot of polish.
If I am an actual Alchemist, do I get to add my own Intelligence modifier to this damage? Where did the +3 come from, anyway?
Uh-oh, your armor creates infinite wealth, given time. Not good. Economy wrecked in t-minus...
It's also strange that you can create and throw an alchemical item as a swift if you have a specific feature, but you can only create it (not throw it, too) as a standard without. There's likewise a slight problem, at least for me, in that the possible created items are worth significantly different amounts of gold.
The final ability, +2 to specific saves, feels very out of place. It's never written in stone as a rule, but I feel like passive bonuses like this generally come first on magic items, just after the description.
Anyway, if my party found this item, we'd keep it without question. In fact, once we found out about it, we'd custom order several more, and then open an Alchemy shop. You make your money back on Alchemist's Fire in less than a year (216 days), and that's assuming you sell it for half. Imagine real merchants with established shops--they could keep a stock of these and make their money back fairly quickly in the context of business.
Overall, the ideas are interesting, but, your item ruins economies, so, I can't really condone this item's existence.
A disruption disc apparently attaches to an arcane spellcaster if the attack roll equals or exceeds the spellcaster's touch AC. What does that mean? Do you make a special touch attack? Or does it stick if you make a regular attack that does damage and happens to beat the touch attack? Does it work when you shield bash, too, or only when thrown? I guess it doesn't matter because we don't know if the shield is light or heavy, and thus can't tell how much damage it should do in the first place.
It adds a cumulative 10% to the target's spell failure. What if the target gets to ignore certain levels of spell failure? Would a Bard in light armor ignore it? They can ignore a shield's spell failure, for example, and the disruption disc is sort of maybe a shield. Can Arcane Armor Training/Mastery reduce it?
Why can't others remove disruption discs? You just basically say, "nope." Almost everything has another way. Can't I, at worst, cut them off? Rip them off with damage? I mean, if I have 50 strength, I can't get it off? I can't teleport away from them? Nothing?
I can't figure out how or why this thing works, so, I can't really judge what I'd do if I found one. I do know that, if I'm supposed to have five of these, they're way too expensive. Overall, it needs a rewrite, with a great deal more clarity.
Edit: Just realized a huge possible exploit! What makes someone an "arcane caster?" Is it having an arcane caster level? Because quite a few races would qualify via SLAs. That allows one to simple stack 2 or 4 of these on themselves for extra AC at a serious discount (5.4k each). Normally, only the first two points of enhancement bonuses and the first point of natural, deflection, insight, and luck bonuses cost less than that.
The addition of "gaining all the benefits of strength or precision damage..." is awkward, unnecessary, and ultimately, limiting. What if I have Slashing Grace or Dervish Dance and deal Dex damage? Do I not get it? What if I have non-precision bonus damage, like weapon specialization or whatever?
I just read your own design notes and, I really didn't, and still don't, see the betrayal thing at all. This is a vicious, assassin weapon. There's no special benefit or whatever for turning on someone with this that I can see.
Pricing is actually not terrible. A +2 Vicious weapon is 18k, and, 10k for 3/day free sneak attack is pretty reasonable. But, overall, lots of little errors really drag it down.
I believe as of the posting of this comment, I have critiqued all the items in this thread over on my own thread. Sorry I didn't just add it to this list, I will next year I think, unless they do something different all together.
It was fun everyone, but if you post an item after this point I'm unlikely to comment on it (but I'm guessing people are unlikely to post after this point -- it's been awhile).
You can always try sending me a PM and I might get you feedback.
Good luck Top 16!!! I look forward to Round 3.
Blackmail
Aura Strong Necromancy; CL 13th
Slot Armor; Price 40,000 gp
Description
Blackmail are +1 chain shirts with rough, dark pig-iron links adorned with yellow silk. Their surfaces are smudged with soot which won't clean off. Scrutiny reveals a pattern etched into the links that a successful DC 17 Knowledge (Religion) check identifies as symbols of Calistria.
Whenever the wearer succeeds in grappling a corporeal creature, it gains a mark of her Blackmail’s soot. Marks can only be cleaned by a Remove Curse or an application of universal solvent.
If the wearer is within 10’ of a creature she marked, she may activate her Blackmail as a magic item, casting a curse on the marked creature. The curse is negated by a successful DC 21 Will Save and makes the creature immune to that Blackmail's curse. Each mark the wearer still has on the affected creature applies a -1 penalty to its roll. On a failed save, the creature is cursed to take negative energy damage equal to any lethal damage dealt to the wearer from any source.
Any number of creatures can be marked any number of times by a set of Blackmail, but only one can be under its curse at a time. One creature can be affected by any number of Blackmail at once. A wearer cannot mark or curse herself. A curse remains in effect until either the cursed creature or the originating Blackmail’s wearer dies, or until either receives a successful Remove Curse, or the originating suit of Blackmail for that curse is destroyed.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, Greater Bestow Curse, Black Spot, worshipper of Calistria; Cost 20,000 gp
I know I got the cost wrong, lacking Masterwork. In retrospect I'm not sure I could use Black Spot. And I noticed due to someone else's item during voting, that my worshipper requirement could mean that the worshipper is consumed by creation, and not that the creator needs to be a worshipper.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
That's just...soooo underwhelming, especially for nearly 10k gold. Even if it weren't once per day, this will most often be a waste of my action, never mind my money.
Oh, and a less obvious formatting-type flaw: you left off a range. I could theoretically do this to anyone on the planet. Be careful of that mistake.
Overall, I believe people call this a SiaC, but it's a really expensive SiaC, and not only is the spell not very good to begin with, but there are additional restrictions on it (like, it needs t be living and have a skeletal structure) that the spell normally does not have.
One of those abilities is 8 hours of hiding as another object, so, I'm pretty sure you're already over budget.
Then, you add yet more. For 1 hour, you get a grab bag of little bonuses. What kind of action is it to pull a weapon free? You never specify. Giving a -2 penalty to grapple escape attempts is awkward--shouldn't it be worded as a +2 grapple-specific CMD bonus for the wearer instead? Where are you getting this DC 17 from (actually, where are you getting those durations from, too?)? A 3rd level spell (implied by the CL 5) should have a DC 14 under normal circumstances. The wearer can dissolve the adhesive on demand--is that all or nothing? Do I have to totally end the effect, or can I command a certain small bit of it to dissolve? Why would I get a higher bonus to climb and hold on to weapons, activities that involve my hands almost exclusively, than grappling, an activity involving my entire body? The point is, this section needs some serious polish.
The worst part is, even though these abilities are ridiculously undercosted, they're still not something I'd consider especially useful to have. I can't see bothering to use the sticky thing, while the mimicking an object ability is randomly either useless or too awesome. Overall, I think this needs some rewriting before I can fully judge how I'd use it/if I'd sell it.
The action cost doesn't make much sense--you don't fight defensively as a full round action, fighting defensively can be done as part of a standard action attack or a full attack action. It's very awkward how you describe the effect, too--wouldn't just setting your reach to 30' for the attack work better?
What are the attacks consumed here? When you fight defensively as a full attack, you get all your attacks, so, you're not limited to any specific number of attacks per day. Did you mean uses per day? Like I said, this is very confused and messy.
This 100 foot cone--can the character with the shield move the cone freely? Or is it a one time distortion, such that, enemies who move around are still subject to the effect for the duration? Why does it grant total concealment, rather than cover? Why would you say the AC and Stealth bonuses of a Tiny creature, rather than listing them? Why would it even help your Stealth? The shield is still out in plain view and it appears that you need to stay near it. It should be obvious where you are.
This is really complicated, but not worth it in the end. I think it needs more clarity before it can be truly judged, but as is, I'd definitely sell it. This is 23k (the actual shield itself is only 1k) to get some reach for 3 rounds per day (actually, it's not even that good because it doesn't work for AoOs) and/or get some minor extra AC and concealment for up to 6(?) rounds per day. That's nowhere near worth it.
Overall, it needs a rewrite and some polish, and even then, it's probably still too expensive to be worthwhile.
At its core, a 1/day stun in a 15 foot cone is a perfectly reasonable thing to put on a shield and the enhanced living steel thing is a fine minor benefit. For 4800 gp, I think the price feels reasonable for its power.
However, where are you getting this DC 16? If you're using Soundburst, it should be a DC: 13. That said, as a DC 13, I'd say "why bother?" and pan the item, so, the 16 makes it actually worth trying even though it's incorrect. Then, you add this awkward thing where you can use the shield as part of a full round charge action (I get you were trying to stop a partial charge, but it still reads awkwardly) and that the origin of the cone is 10' from the start of the charge, which is very commonly going to be worthless, since people tend to charge only when they have pounce (and pouncers are almost always two-handed weapon users or natural weapon users, shield bearers) or when they're more than their base speed away. It seems like it's just a way to attack in the same turn that you use the special ability.
Your wording on increasing the living steel special effect is very awkward, and your final line about changing the phrase wih a DC 15 Craft Magic Arms and Armor check is really bizarre. Not only is that not a skill, but it's a really weird thing to even bring up in a magic item description.
The effect is actually worth the price, but I have a feeling this is probably undercosted if you calculated it "correctly." Most heavy shield users would keep this, and some might order it, but it's probably not a "correct" item as is. Overall, it's ok, but it needs work.
I'm not really sure how you could "guess correctly" at someone's history. In what context would you even do that? Do you have to tell the GM your guess? Or make it known out loud in character?
Further, the writing is not consistent with the way magic items are written in Pathfinder. The explanation of the effect is very casual, quite unlike the normal technical style expected of rules material.
Overall, this does nothing unique, the bonus is underwhelming, it's priced wrong, and in the wrong writing voice. Sorry.
Ok, so, strike one is that this is a composite longbow with +3 strength on it. There is absolutely no reason to have a composite longbow that isn't adaptive after the first few levels. It opens up a much wider audience to your bow (i.e. anyone, rather than only people with the proper strength) and only costs a flat 1000 (vs. spending 750 for +3 strength).
A +3 bow (with +3 strength) cost 19k, which means the only special ability this has costs about 60k or so? And this bow should be appropriate for 14th level character, right? So, what does it really do?
Three times per day (boo!) you can blow hurricane winds in a 100' line. That's...it? Wind isn't even that impressive. It's just a DC 15 strength check to avoid getting blown away (or, I guess 18 if the attack roll hits), and even if you are blown away, it's just prone and some inconsequential nonlethal.
I am so underwhelmed by this, especially at level 14. You can't even blow away most enemies you'll be facing at that point (you can only blow away medium or smaller). Yes, we'd definitely sell this, and nobody would order it.
Overall, this is another victim of the "cool idea, but I didn't think through price vs. power" problem.
A lot of the problem is the ambiguity surrounding the changing of the spells. It appears you can just make it any spell you like with no restriction. You should probably have included language limiting it to spells known or currently prepared or at least in your spellbook/familiar. But really, the problem is going to remain even then. It's just too versatile, too powerful.
Every party would want this--maybe even more than one of them. Overall, excepting the ambguity involved in choosing spells, the writing/formatting is solid and professional, but the item is just too good to exist in any form at any price. What was your throught process here?
Edit: Until I read your own comments in you own thread, I had NO IDEA you had to use a specific spell to recharge the staff and that spell became a spell in the staff. There's a serious issue here because you basically bury that ridiculously important fact in the middle of a big block of writing that feels like its just boilerplate stuff everyone knows, so it's very easy to skip over subconsciously. What sticks, instead, is the phrase: "...a dynamic staff holds three spells that can be changed by the wielder daily." Because you don't actually get to explaining how that works until a full sentence and a half later, it is natural to just assume that's all there is to it--you change the spells.
Honestly, though, with this new bizarre restriction on how the spells are chosen, I can't help but question what this staff is really for? You have to cast your niche utility spells ahead of time and then hang o to this until you need them, like reusable scroll, sort of? Weird.
Oh, and you seemed to act as if a DC 20 UMD check was hard. That's ridiculously easy. Someone with 10 Charisma can auto succeed by taking 10 by level 7, if they have it as a class skill (which just about anyone can and will have thanks to traits). DC: 20 is no barrier.
I still don't like this item, but for totally different reasons. For one, it's written in a manner that masks how it really functions behind it's own tone (i.e. it feels like boilerplate), and for another it's function goes from "get any spell you want!" to "get only spells you could already have, so...yay I guess?"
The spells are also fairly random and disconnected. What do +4 Str, +30' speed, and Invsibility have to do with each other? And quickened invisibility at that? I am confused by this combination of abilities. It's also crazy-balls-expensive. Almost 65k for a few 1st and 2nd level spells and a bizarre teleport--not worth it. I'd definitely sell this if I found it and I can't figure out who would custom order it.
Overall, I think it needs a lot more work.
Continuous Air Walk is pretty awesome, and I like how you added stuff that made it so you basically could live up in the sky and never come down. But, it's a cool world building sort of thing, not an item PCs would ever want. It's too expensive, and people will have a way to fly all the time anyway, by 15th level. And, really, there's nobody who would wear this as armor--it'd just be entirely for the special effects because not only is +3 kind of underwhelming at 15th, but Padded is pretty worthless to begin with. It's been completely obviated by Silken Ceremonial--there is no reason to ever wear it.
I also don't know if "the death zone" is a thing in Pathfinder. I couldn't find anything on it at least.
We'd all definitely sell this if we found it, unfortunately. I doubt anyone would order it. Overall, I like the ideas, but it's too impractical and, also, not really armor.
I understand that you were trying to give a 1/day Shield Other with a twist, but your twist is bizarre, dangerous as hell, and creates additional book keeping for very little gain. Why would you create this strange maximum HP limit thing? Why not just split the damage, or transfer 10 at a time? That'd be so much easier to handle at the table, and, it fits better with the way Pathfinder does things. In general, magic items (other than staves referencing caster levels and casting stats) don't reference their users stats, they're all self-contained. They have an effect based on their own caster levels or other inherent statistics. They do not change their effects based on the user.
It's also unclear about what happens when the damage actually rolls in. Does type matter? Can DR or Energy Resist reduce it? Is nonlethal taken into the pool, kept separate, ect.? What if I throw the shield away? Is there a range at which this ceases to work? Can I stick it in a portable hole or something to stop it? Can I hand it to someone else and they take the damage? There are too many ambiguities.
If my party found this, we'd sell it. But, that's mostly because of the Rallying quality--that's a fairly worthless 5000 gp anchor around this shield's neck. Well, and because it's slightly ambiguous. If the wording was cleared up, I could see some custom orders from healers.
Overall, it's ok. Needs some polish, but it's not terrible.
Blackmail
Rewrite - There are some minor wording or mechanical errors (you point out the cost thing, you didn't italicize +1 chain shirt and you also wrote parts of it in plural when normally they are written in a singular tense, etc.) but the basic design is interesting. I don't think I personally would ever use it. Marking a person to curse them is interesting, but armor seems and odd choice and the grapple mechanics become complicated to use well. Feros and Jaragil point out a few other interesting aspects as well.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
First, normally, I'd be very critical of the price--a +1 Keen wounding longsword only costs 32k, which is barely more than half of this weapon, but the rest of the cost is eaten by special abilites directly related to hitting stuff and hurting them more, so, that's ok--the problem comes when you spend 30k of your weapon budget on something totally unrelated to swinging the weapon.
My problems start when you try to convey what this unabating wounds thing does. A DC 20 heal check is required--ok, that's not bad, but, still kind of crazy easy for "unabating wounds." Then, you start getting confusing--"any attempt to heal a creature suffering from these wounds must succeed on a DC 20 caster level check or the spell does not function" has poor grammar (there's no actor here, the attempt has to succeed on a roll? Huh?) and ignores a whole lot of non-spell healing abilities. The biggest, most obvious, of course, is Channeling, which is supernatural.
I am also a little confused about how this interacts with fast healing/regeneration. Let's say a creature has Fast Healing 5. When I hit them with this weapon once, what happens? If the fast healing is not fully canceled, doesn't it automatically stop the wound anyway?
Also, If someone is bleeding already from another stacking source (like bleeding critical or a different wounding weapon), can I remove the other bleeding with a normal DC 15 Heal, or must I beat DC 20 to stop it all?
I can't judge what a party would do without fully understanding the item. Overall, good idea, but the execution severely lacks clarity.
First, it ends up just a (very long) Reach Cure/Inflict Light Wounds twice per day unless you can channel, in which case, it's a boosted cure/inflict wounds twice per day. Eh. Oh, and I don't really get why this is ghost-touch, thematically.
The save is also unclear. Does it only apply when you add the channeling, or does it always apply? If it only applies when you add the channel, does it only halve the channel part of the damage, or does it also half the base 1d8+6?
Then, you create this strange book keeping annoyance in that, you can't activate it the same way more than twice in a row, which means you have to track how you activated it across days. It would have been much easier just to say it could cure once per day and inflict once per day.
Finally, there's a subtle problem in that, this is best for channelers, but, the only channeler that would be proficient in its use is a Paladin. It also costs 30k, which means you're 11th level before you have a shot at this, assuming it's your main weapon. Nobody uses Chakram as their main weapon, especially Paladins (who are not especially well equipped to be throwing experts), so, this item won't really see use until you can afford it as a back up, meaning probably 14th or so. At that point, Cure/Inflict Light Wounds is not going to cut it anyway.
If my party found this item, we'd sell it--we'd have nobody to use it. Very strange niche builds might custom order it. Overall, it's ok, but, once again, this item weighed concept above execution, which leaves it weak and lacking in practicality.
No, at best, this had to be a Swift action, not a Free. Or a "free action once per round" or whatever.
So, assuming that's the case--that it's only one free drag per turn, well, it's too expensive. You can't acquire this until you're 15th level, and you need a +5 weapon at that point. +2 is not cutting it.
Further, the crit thing is formatted/worded very poorly. The throw thing is just...not done that way. It's also a weird visualization. I don't really imagine earthbreaker swings that go up, so, it's hard to picture throwing them over your head. And, yeah, all the language describing this just strikes me as off, not aligning with proper Pathfinder style guidelines. What is a creature unable to be thrown, anyway?
This item is either too powerful to exist, or too weak for its price. And either way, the whole second paragraph needs work.
Unfortunately, the special ability of this staff is, well, worthless. The idea of turning a staff into an iron cobra is cool, but not 86k cool. Remember, you won't get this staff until 14th level. It is utterly ineffective to turn your staff into CR 3 (or CR 4, for two charges!) creature when you are facing CR 14+ threats.
It seems a common theme: nobody thinks about the practical side of these items, they're too busy in the realm of "awesome" instead.
I can't judge this properly until it has a legal usage limit, but I have a feeling it's going to be too strong in the end, and this is otherwise totally underwhelming.
Edit: Having read your notes, I feel like you missed the mark on the "martial caster" thing. Readying the action is best used on spellcasting, since one spell > one attack, and the spells are not very good for support--you should have used battlefield control, like walls or whatever, if you wanted support.
The "pick" ability is worded strangely. What does "as a trained skill with a +10 bonus" mean? Does that mean it's really a +13? It's also a bizarre image, shooting a lock pick into a lock from far away.
"Stick" is not much better. The hand shaped arrow is goofy. How does the rope release? Does it shoot out to you, or just hang straight down? Forcing a DC: 20 Strength check to dislodge the hand just means they're going to cut the rope instead.
"Shh" doesn't appear to do anything. Silence is too powerful normally, but a 5' square is, well, just where you're standing, so, it won't affect enemy spellcasters. All it seems to do is make you, yourself, quiet, which has, well, no effect. Its entirely up to GM discretion what it does--nothing about the spell silence, the stealth skill, the perception skill, etc. says anything about silence helping stealth in any way, so, you're just relying on GM fiat here.
This is a useful burglary toolkit, no doubt. But, by 8th level, well, damn, I'm one level shy from teleport--mundane burglary is not a thing anymore. And, once again, yeah, I don't buy that this is a weapon at all.
If my party found this item, we'd sell it. Nobody would custom order it (though a low level burglar would love to steal it!). Overall, I don't like this. It's not an awful item, but I think you pushed the boundaries of "weapondom" and you definitely did not consider the practicality of an item this expensive.
As is, every poison user would want this, but, well, nobody else would. Poison is also a very sub-optimal path for a PC to take, but, this could still be a nice NPC weapon.
Overall, it's not a bad item, but with a save, this might have been much higher on my list.
It's also kind of unclear what sort of action is required to initiate this ability. Is it a standard action to cut their shadow off?
Anyone that sneaks attacks should definitely consider this weapon. Nobody who doesn't will care.
Conceptually, it's cool to steal a shadow, but, maybe next time you should come up with a more inventive use for that shadow other than just flanking?Overall, it's useful, but, frankly, boring.
Bardic Knowledge is not a skill check in Pathfinder, it is a class feature that adds a bonus to knowledge checks in general. I can see that you're trying to limit this item to Bards, though, which I dislike on principle. Don't get me wrong, I love bards, I just dislike "ONLY THIS CLASS CAN POSSIBY USE THIS."
Ugh, getting to the real effect, it's just so sloppy and awkward. You're going through this elaborate nonsense to make something strike as another weapon with all these changes, crits, damage types, all the stuff it ignores (Fortification? That's a weird choice)...
I don't like the effect to begin with (I like the concept of the pen being mightier than the sword, just not, you know, literally). Then you make it overly complicated--it changes everything, from the base damage to the attack bonus...it auto crits and rises the multiplier if you would have crit normally (the easier way to put that is just to say it does double damage)...
Oh, and since this isnot actually a magical weapon (it is when you swing it as a pen, but not a greatsword), you don't need to specify that only corporeal creatures can be struck.
The 5 attempts per day is weird--no, I'm sorry, 5 attempts per target (when's the last time you were in a Pathfinder combat that lasted 5 rounds?!)--as is the slowly increasing skill check DC (which is not even a real skill). It's just a serious mess. You really need to rewrite just about the whole thing.
80) The Pen of Mirado:
So, obviously, this is not a weapon. I haven't read other critiques of your item yet, but, I bet you heard that 51982647189 times already.Bardic Knowledge is not a skill check in Pathfinder, it is a class feature that adds a bonus to knowledge checks in general. I can see that you're trying to limit this item to Bards, though, which I dislike on principle. Don't get me wrong, I love bards, I just dislike "ONLY THIS CLASS CAN POSSIBY USE THIS."
Ugh, getting to the real effect, it's just so sloppy and awkward. You're going through this elaborate nonsense to make something strike as another weapon with all these changes, crits, damage types, all the stuff it ignores (Fortification? That's a weird choice)...
I don't like the effect to begin with (I like the concept of the pen being mightier than the sword, just not, you know, literally). Then you make it overly complicated--it changes everything, from the base damage to the attack bonus...it auto crits and rises the multiplier if you would have crit normally (the easier way to put that is just to say it does double damage)...
Oh, and since this isnot actually a magical weapon (it is when you swing it as a pen, but not a greatsword), you don't need to specify that only corporeal creatures can be struck.
The 5 attempts per day is weird--no, I'm sorry, 5 attempts per target (when's the last time you were in a Pathfinder combat that lasted 5 rounds?!)--as is the slowly increasing skill check DC (which is not even a real skill). It's just a serious mess. You really need to rewrite just about the whole thing.
...
Thanks, mpl. Hey, next time, don't pull any punches, mmKay? But seriously, I appreciate that you took the time to review it in full, and didn't simply re-hash what's been said already - much of which has been.
I actually have rewritten the whole thing, here if you care to check it out. I'd love to hear a further review if you can get to it. I've taken the feedback I've gotten from these threads and tried to come up with something that was an actual weapon with cleaner, and correct, mechanics, that I think would have been at least somewhat more appropriate for the contest, and tried to address the criticisms while still trying to be true to my original concept which was, yes, the pen is mightier than the sword. Any feedback is good feedback.
Cheers,
Phil
Here's the problem with the Pen. You cannot make an untrained Knowledge check with a DC higher than 10. DC for a knowledge check to your opponent is 10 + its CR. See Knowledge skill. Not even a bard is going to necessarily have the right Knowledge skill to access his opponent, limiting this item's usefulness.
Debby
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I collected all up all of the feedback on my item from this and other threads. Thank you to everyone for providing their thoughts. (Mark, if you want to throw a few thoughts in as well, I'd love to hear them). I think that the overall consensus seems to be that the item was fairly solid (potentially publishable), but that opinion on whether this was a Superstar was split.
The original item (so people don't have to dig back through the pages)
Ring of the Medic
Slot ring; Price 13,000 gp; Weight -
Description
For those proficient in the art of healing, this simple silver band enhances their use of the Heal skill to allow the wearer to quickly remove an assortment of conditions. A wearer of the ring with at least one rank in the Heal skill may take a full round action (which provokes attacks of opportunity) to attempt to remove one of the following conditions from an adjacent individual. With a successful Heal check that meets the required DC, the condition is removed immediately.
DC Condition
15 Dazzled
20 Dazed
20 Sickened
25 Confused
25 Deafened
25 Nauseated
30 Blinded
30 Stunned
Each successful removal of a condition in this manner increases the above DC values by 3 until the next dawn. This penalty continues to apply even if the wearer of the ring changes.
If the wearer of the ring fails when attempting to remove a condition he or she may attempt to do so again (requiring another full-round action). Different conditions affecting a subject must be removed individually, with each condition requiring a separate full-round actions.
Construction
Requirements Forge Ring, heal, creator must have 12 ranks in the Heal skill; Cost 6,500 gp
The collected feedback.
These were just my thoughts during voting:
Ring of the Medic - Didn't really strike me as a ring item. Underpriced. CL 11 item, but 12 skill ranks needed to create.
130) Ring of the Medic:
One of my keep items. I like the fact that it tries to keep Heal a viable option long into the game after the first few levels. I like it a lot. At first I was worried that you could just spam attempts until you succeeded, but the cumulative +3 penalty takes care of that nicely. Though perhaps just denying retries might have been a better option. Nevertheless, I'm a bit disappointed that this wasn't advanced, but perhaps the judges thought it wasn't exciting enough or found some balance problem I just cannot see. Nevertheless, thanks for one of my favourite items and I hope to see from you next year as well.
Stuff about fixing throwing weaponsAs I mentioned in another topic, I agree with the sentiment. I also want throwing weapons to be good. This also extends to the Ring of the Medic, which wants the Heal skill to be useful (though that one was pretty well received I think). I also want skills to be more useful.
The thing is, items in general/RPGSS specifically isn't the place to be patching the game.
Edit2: Why not patch via items? Because then the item becomes a necessary part of the fighting style. This is part of the reason I really didn't like Agile, it became about having the right magic weapon to be viable in your combat style. I like items to enhance and expand on capabilities, but not to be vital backbones.
Ring of the Medic:
Pretty straight forward Heal skill augmentation allowing the skill to be used in a way normally reserved for spells. Good idea, well presented, and not exciting in the least. A solid ring and that’s about it.
RING OF THE MEDIC: Kudos for trying to keep the Heal skill relevant. The choice of DCs is odd, given things like Nauseated can be suppressed by a 1st level spell, and both Blinded and Deafened are removed by the same 3rd level spell, remove blindness/deafness. A high level cleric with maxed out Heal might pick this up as a convenient way of removing annoying conditions and free up some spell slots. I'll just come out and say it though: I found it kinda boring =(.
167) Ring of the Medic
The Good: The heal skill is under utilized and this is a great item to push more use.
The Bad: healing items are a tough sell for superstar
The Ugly: This isn't a far cry from an item last year.
Overview: 4 stars for em I like it but not contender like it.
Ring of the Medic - Publishable - Personal note, I WISH that Heal could naturally do something for most of these effects, using DCs almost exactly what you have set. I'd need to look closer at where you rank various conditions, question other little bits, etc. but I like this -- a lot. Price may or may not be an issue, I'm unsure. The fact that you have to make a skill check I think helps to keep it low. Also, that Check goes up (why by +3? seems an odd amount, +2 would have been my suggestion, +4 isn't bad, +5 would be fine too). Anyways, I really like this item, and I would get one if I played a healer in the party. I'm curious to see Mark's response to it (wasn't on this page).
Some of my own thoughts on the item and some comments on the concerns:
Ultimately, I was trying to create an item that did something completely new that didn't necessarily have a precedent. And when I thought about it, a magic item that enhanced a skill to let you do something new (and possibly magical) with the skill seemed like a pretty good candidate. The core idea centered around giving new uses for skill checks. When I thought about what type to make the new item, one of the best candidates seemed to be rings - bonuses to skills is a power that many rings possess. What I was trying to do, at its core, was a new type of enhancement to a skill, so rings made a lot of sense to me.
I wanted an item that would be useful in a number of situations. I considered several different skills and spell-effect combinations before settling on the Heal skill. Given how often players get gimped with conditions, removing conditions seemed like a very good effect to enhance Heal with. And for the spell, Heal seemed the natural fit. CL 11 is the minimum to cast Heal, so that set the caster level. In hindsight, judging from the comments, I might've been better off picking a flashier spell/skill combination (such as Jump and hooking a Dimension Door-type effect to its use).
The DCs. These were somewhat arbitrary, but I did do some benchmark examinations of typical skill bonuses vs. the level where some monsters where the effects are. The numbers were close enough, typically making it a dice roll whether or not you succeeded, which is what I was trying for. Auto-success would make the conditions less meaningful, which I didn't want to do.
I did think about taking 10 and taking 20. Being in combat will preclude someone from doing these (generally), which was the big case where I saw the item being used. And after combat, taking 10 or 20 seems reasonable.
The formatting of the table. I recognize that usually DCs are listed in the second column rather than the first. I wasn't quite sure how to make a table that looked nice, so I opted to flip the order of the condition and DC columns to make the table look better (as the DCs were all 2 digit and the columns would line up if I just made a list with a couple of spaces).
Costing. I wanted an item that would be useful to a wide range of levels. So that required a fairly low cost. The standard formula gave 1800 * 6 * 11 = 118,800 (requiring an action fit more with command word than use-activated). Way more than I wanted. However, first off, Heal really does three things, it heals hp damage, cures ability damage, and removes conditions. This only does about a third of those. So lopping 2/3 off the price of the the basic cost to 39,600 seemed reasonable to start with. That was still higher than I wanted. So I looked at other ways to reduce it even further. And there are really three. First, the ring requires a full-round action that provokes rather than a standard action that doesn't to use. Only affecting one condition per attempt made this even more action-intensive to use in a subset of the use cases. Second, I tacked on a limitation that made the item (effectively) no longer unlimited use: the +3 penalty to the DCs for every time you succeed. (Why 3? I had +5 for every two uses in my mind as being about right and settled on just having this just be a +3 to simplify bookkeeping). The third is simply that success isn't guaranteed. That you have to put ranks into Heal to make the item more useful. This last one doesn't have a good parallel in any existing item and the 10% reduction in cost for requiring a rank in a skill to use didn't seem high enough, as one would need more ranks to make it more useful. So the skill investment is a sort of hidden cost decision that the player has to make. I also evaluated the item against other items in the price range and decided that 13,000 gp (roughly a third of what spell formula yielded) seemed like a pretty good place for the item.
One other note on cost is that I toyed with the idea of granting a bonus on the skill too, but decided that having a lower cost and no bonus (go get another item if you want a skill bonus) was a better plan. One could theoretically increase their skill bonus (and enhance the effectiveness of this ring) by purchasing additional items. I was ok with that - the effect of buying more items to make this more reliable is that they just spent more gp to get the effect (effectively increasing the cost).
Other odds and ends. I wasn't actually looking to patch the Heal skill with this item. I was mainly trying to pioneer a brand-new space for magic items. One item that I would change is reduce the required number of ranks to create the item to 9 (I've been playing 3.5 a lot recently, and I think that my mind added 3 to the number of ranks rather than remembering the +3 bonus.)
Again thanks for the feedback! (And if anyone else wants to throw additional thoughts in feel free to do so).
I know it's a little late for critiques at this point, but if someone is still out there doing them, I would really appreciate getting your opinions. Thanks in advance.
Bonewarp Chain
Aura faint transmutation; CL 5th
Slot armor; Price 12,300 gp; Weight 40 lbs.
Description
Constructed of twisted steel rings, this +1 chainmail covers the wearer from head to toe, leaving only his face exposed. When worn, the armor imparts an uncanny, often unsettling, range of motion.
With a swift action, the wearer's head spins freely upon his neck, undulating from one shoulder to the other. This effect grants the wearer All-Around Vision (Bestiary 2, page 294) until the start of his next turn. The wearer's limbs shift and rotate around his torso as if unanchored, providing a +4 enhancement bonus to his CMD. Furthermore, with a move action, the wearer automatically frees himself from the pinned condition.
Humanoid creatures witnessing the armor's disturbing ability for the first time must make a DC 12 Fortitude save or become sickened for one round. Regardless of the result, the creature is immune thereafter.
Construction
Requirements Craft Magic Arms and Armor, excruciating deformation; Cost 6,300 gp
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Having posted my own item, here are the items I saw that I really enjoyed, with a short comment and rating for each.
Widow’s Web – 157 Words, Net (Near perfect, wish I had written it.) 10/10
Shield of Embers – 228 Words, Shield (Could use one more pass, great visuals.) 8/10
Pyroclastic Spike – 278 Words, Rod (Fun destruction, if a little one dimensional.) 8/10
Molten Mail – 232 Words, Chainmail (Not terribly original, but well executed.) 6.5/10
Chrysalis Carapace – 225 Words, Full Plate (Weird, but in a good way.) 7/10
Steel Mistral – 205 Words, Greatsword (Not overly special, but tight writing.) 7/10
Aesculapian Rod – 165 Words, Rod (Should have been a staff, excellent name.) 8/10
Windstrider Mail – 248 Words, Chain Shirt (Probably not Superstar, but I like it.) 7/10
Arrow of the Deep Wood – 211 Words, Arrow (Too much backstory, surprise abilities.) 6/10
Shillelagh of Legions – 294 Words, Staff (Too powerful? Nicely written.) 7.5/10
Nesting Needle – 234 Words, Rapier (Evocative writing, gruesomely good.) 7.5/10
Mail of Ash Woven Ramparts – 249 Words (Mechanics need slight tweaks.) 8/10
Jailbird's Sweetheart – 184 Words, Dagger (Like the writing more than the item.) 6.5/10
Rod of Gravity – 287 Words, Rod (Lots of out-of-the-box possibilities.) 8/10
Eremite Rod – 226 Words (Nice combo of writing and mechanics.) 7.5/10
Psychopomp's Crosier – 222 Words, Staff (Impressive name, quality item.) 9/10
Corpse Thicket Javelin – 187 Words (Should've been a pilum, neat idea.) 8/10
Rod of Eldritch Horror – 295 Words (Goes just a bit too far; drop last paragraph.) 8/10
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
Bane is pretty nice, but the requirement that the enemy hurt the wielder is strange--the point of ranged combat is generally so you can stand far away from danger and unleash withering streams of death--getting hit is not a thing archers should be accustomed to. It's a subpar weapon until you get hit--but because it's subpar, why would anyone come after you early enough in the combat to get the meaningful bonus?
Your phrasing on the bane also needs work. The hour duration is just confusing where it sits in the sentence, and bane works against creature types, not individuals (there's no Bob-Bane arrows), so you need more clarifying language to get across the effect you are looking to convey.
The long term healing thing is, well, pretty much worthless at 10th when you can acquire this bow. It's too few HP, and your Wisdom based party mate can just take 10 by now.
Finally, the restriction on calling the bow mother (and nobody else) is, frankly, creepy, and unnecessarily so. It's not a drawback, not a real one at least, just an uncomfortable bit of flavor. No thanks.
Nobody would use this bow because it's not Adaptive (or a longbow) and you have to be an archer interested in getting hit to make it work. Plus, creepy fluff baggage! Hooray!
Overall, you are creative, but this is not practical at all and its main ability needs clearer writing.
Edit: Your notes suggest you didn't make it Adaptive because it "didn't need to be optimized," but at 10th level, I don't think Adaptive is a question of optmization so much as common sense. That's like making a smart phone that only people with Type O blood can use. Why limit the audience when you don't have to? The Adaptive quality is basically spare change at the level this bow hits the table.
Why is this mighty cleaving and elysian bronze? I mean, it's legal, it's just weird. Cleaving is a strange path for a longspear user. Speaking of which, longspear users are basically back-up melee characters like Bards, Oracles, etc., so, that's another strange choice. Elysian Bronze is 1000 gold for +1 damage to very specific creatures--why? Were you just trying to use fancy bronze because chariots are a bronze age thing?
What's up with this wind speed thing? Does it stack (if I hit the enemy twice)? Do you realize how awkward it is to base the speed on damage done or how tedious it would be to have to keep the wind speed chart ready at all times? Does it surround the guy in question (protecting him from ranged attacks eventually) or just blow him down/check his movement? This is too vague.
What happens if there isn't 300 lbs of unattended stuff around? Ugh, you expect me to actually use the vehicle rules? And what's up with the stats you gave these bulls? Height, but not space? The damage they deal, but not, uh, what they use to deal damage or their stats or even an attack roll. A DC--for what? Speed is just about all that makes sense.
This item is just crazy, sloppily written, and bizarre in effect. I don't like it, and I can't imagine anyone that would. It shows that you were trying to be a risk taker with a really out there idea conceptually, and that's valuable, but, in the end, no, please, try again.
Whoah, what? 32k of the rod is spent on weapon stuff, leaving only 26k for the "rodness?" Wow, no, it's worse--you surely spent some more budget on the "Crits deal ability damage" thing. By the way, that's very poorly worded--the entire second paragraph needs a rewrite, assuming you even keep it. And what's up with a special crit ability on a weapon that only crits on a 20? It'll barely ever happen.
No, we would immediately sell this and nobody would order it. Overall, it commits fairly grave sin--it is a rod that is, economically speaking, more weapon than rod. Remove the whole second paragraph as your notes suggested and you'd be left with maybe 20k for a strange metamagic rod. Not great, but not as bad.
Three times per day, you get an hour long buff based on the HD of something you kill? That's just well outside of the realm of what is done in Pathfinder in just about every way. It's not even clear--do I need to keep the hammer in my possession once I get the buff? Eh, no, it's not valuable to nitpick this because it just needs a complete rewrite, from the concept on up--it's not like "get a buff when you kill things" is even necessarily interesting design space.
I know that you thought it had a strong concept and theme, with the ephemeral thing, but, in the end, that doesn't really do anything. In general, one does not cast spells targeting magic staves, so that's irrelevant, and I don't think this will get used as a weapon very often regardless.
Faerie Fire is very niche--it's useful when it's useful, but its not useful often. That's a good kind of spell for a staff, but, it's a Druid only spell, and Druids can't use the other two--is this strictly for UMDing or something? Spectral Hand is another niche spell--it's great for a certain kind of caster (a touch based caster), but worthless for most. It's also a bizarre choice here because neither of the other spells in the staff can be used through it, so it doesn't synergize at all. Then, Blink, which is actually pretty terrible--I'd rather have Displacement for practically the same benefit without the penalty.
It's just very boring and not especially useful. You were lost in trying to convey the theme of the item without considering the practical side of things.
It has three spells of dubious value--Arcane Sight is the only one I think I've ever seen anyone consider casting, and even then, it's only the Permanent version.
Then, the ability. Your language surrounding this ability was...questionable. The staff throbs. You pet the staff while it pulsates. Come on. Don't do that.
Anyway, what is an aura ability affecting the user? Do you mean like, if the user was a Lawful Good Cleric, it'd eat their Lawful Good Aura? Or do you mean like a fear aura? It would swallow that? What is "fire aura?" I can't find that in the srd. This is just totally unclear as to what an aura even is.
Overall, you were too jokey with this--the name and the weird description--and too unclear with what it really does to the degree that I can barely judge it.
Speaking of wasted, Magic Missile is a terrible spell and I never understood the appeal. Fireball without a lot of metamagic is fairly weak, especially for two charges--keep in mind the party will be 10th level or so when you get this staff. By far, the best use of this staff's charges are for free attacks--or at least, I think it is, because I don't think you're making the free attack as an off-hand, right? If made a two-handed swing, you'd get a free two-handed swing, right? But, even then, it's not really strong enough for a 10th level character.
It's too niche for people to realistically use. It's also not priced correctly.
Greater Magic Weapon 400 x 8 (CL) x 3 (spell level) / 2 (2 charges) = 4800
Fireball 300 x 8 x 3 / 2 = 3600
Shield 200 x 8 x 1 = 1600
Magic Missile 200 x 8 x 1 = 1600
Total Cost for the spells: 11600
For the final price, we double that to 23200, then add 2300 for each +1 end (2000 for the +1, 300 for the masterwork) and we get 27800. That's already more than the cost of your staff and I didn't even get to the ability to take free attacks.
Anyway overall, it's ok, but it needs work. It's too niche and there are bound to be wasted aspects. It's a staff with "eh" spells whose charges are best spent on making free attacks. That's problematic.
And honestly, the special ability to teleport and get a flat-footed AoO (you probably just meant to deny dex to AC, by the way, flat-footed is very specific) is probably worse than the auto-hit, because, well, it doesn't automatically hit.
I can see you tried to compensate somewhat by using truly awful armor as the base (seriously, there is never a reason to wear a Lamellar Cuirass).
And hey, why isn't Blur or Twisted Space in the spell requirements?
Anyway, I can't imagine a GM in their right mind allowing this item, so, it's hard to judge what a party would do with it. Overall, well, you should not have an always on 20% miss chance, you should not have an auto-hit ability of any kind, and you should never wear a lamellar cuirass.
Not counting the things you pointed out like price, formatting, etc., there's also the issue of "per encounter" as a usage limit. That's not a thing in Pathfinder--there's no definition for "encounter" that can create an objective ruling on this.
This also won't actually work on very many spells. The requirement is that the spell target the wearer, but the vast majority of energy damage spells have area effects, not targets. Iconic damage spells like Fireball, have no targets, and the classic single target ones ones, like Acid Arrow, etc., are too low level to trigger. Heck, even rays don't have targets, just Effect: Ray. Looking through the list quickly, the only spells this seems to work on are trial of fire and acid (ever even heard of that one? Yeah, me neither), Corrosive Consumption, Lightning Arc, Chains of Fire, and Chain Lightning.
Are there any special rules for being a simulacrum? Even knowing what happens, I still don't knowhow this actually works.
Overall, it needs a heavy rewrite before I can even really judge it, but the parts I do understand are still flawed.
Then, what?! You get to auto-break any bonds/grapples? Or, ok, +10 CMB if they're too big (i.e., if they're the normal size of creature that you're going to encounter at 12th level), and then you need to spend another move action to put the armor back on. This is just bizarre. Nothing in Pathfinder should automatically do anything--there should always be a defense of some kind. The +10 CMB regardless of size would work--no need to auto break anything.
The concept isn't bad, but you'll never be a superstar with auto-anything.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
That means, you're mostly paying for the ability to empty a slot without actually losing the slot. That is actually useful, but not something I would pay 11k for. I'd much rather just but actual Pearls of Power and leave slots open.
Overall, not only is not very good, it's barely not just a copy of an existing item.
The Bullrush isn't so bad an effect. This is a weapon for, roughly 7th level characters, though, so, the +13 CMB is not especially impressive. A normal Fighter at 7th level easily has a +11 or +12 (+6 BAB, 20-22 Str) CMB, and that's without any focus on the maneuver whatsoever (and hey, the +1 from being Large puts it right on target). A quick survey of CR 7 enemies shows they tend to have CMDs in the upper 20s, though, so, by the time you can acquire this weapon, it's usefulness as a Bullrushing tool is already phasing out. The deafen strikes me as pointless, too, since, well, deafening is pointless and does almost nothing in general.
The Stealth penalty seems excessive and out of place. Why would this constantly chime? That's not how bells work. If my party found this, we might use it briefly, but ultimately sell it. Nobody would custom order it when they could just get a +1 Earthbreaker with an actually useful property for 8k.
Overall, it's not a bad lower level item, but, it's barely viable even at the lowish level you can acquire it, and it comes with some garbage properties weighing the price down (Thundering and deafening).
This is just one potential consequence, but, think about this: what if I used my ultimate mega attack with a lousy hit chance on my ally with this shield and he uses it to redirect it unerringly into the enemy next to him? It's even better than True Strike.
Nope, sorry, back to the drawing board. No free lunches here.
But, I doubt this was intended to be armor. In fact, calling it a vestment kind of confirms that for me. I think you tacked on 4,170gp worth of armor to your 40k wondrous item, and hoped nobody would notice. This is especially problematic because, this might actually be a perfectly fine price point for a vestment--I really have no clue how to price this, honestly--but, it's a horrible price for your armor slot, especially considering you only get 4k worth of actual armor with it. You're 11th level before this item is in reach, and 5 points of armor with a max dex of 4 is a total joke at that point. Most people have a potential 9 AC before they even get magic items (Breastplates, for example, have +6 Armor and +3 Max Dex from level 1).
Overall, you made a totally solid wondrous item, and then ruined it making it into Armor.
Dealing 1-4d6s of fire damage to nearby enemies is probably not going to matter at that level, either, since almost everything resists fire at the end, and forcing all those saves for negligible damage is going to be tedious.
For taste reasons, I dislike that this comes with a 1/day Heal/Greater Restoration, especially since Greater Restoration has expensive components. You don't have to specify that it's cast by a 15th level Cleric, because the item has a CL of 15.
I hate hate hate abilities with a longer cooldown than one day (I only single hate daily abilities), so once per year abilities are awful in my book. It also only triggers when you die. I absolutely do not like abilities that only work when you die--I'd much rather invest in not dying and remain confident about my chances, than just accept death as inevitable and pay for contingencies.
Overall, I don't care for it. I think you could have done a lot more on the armor side of this, rather than focusing on the special powers.
I actually don't think the price is especially off, either. 4k for Mithril, 1k for +1, 50 for the base armor, 1k for what Elven Chain teaches us is the cost of counting as light armor for everything, including proficiency, which leaves 3k for the not being flat-footed and making a charge during the boarding action, which could easily fit if you considered that equivalent to a +1 enchantment (+2 would cost 4k, meaning 3k more). I think the price is spot on (though, yeah, the cost is not--don't worry, I did that, too).
Overall, great, practical item. But, it's just not special enough to be superstar. You basically just made a +1 equivalent enhancement, but, it's the least impressive and useful aspect of the armor.
Yeah, I think the problems speak for themselves, sorry.
+1 Ghost Touch Armor should cost 4k, so there's 21k worth of special abilities here unrelated to being armor, which is just way too much. Remember, this is not in reach until 10th level, and 4k worth of protection is going to get 10th level characters killed.
Overall, it's not a bad item, but it's too expensive for what it does without enough "armorness," and it carries a worthless baggage effect (ghostly disguise).
Then, you give the summon a tediously random number of tentacles--even if it had to be random, why make it 1d3+1 instead of 1d4 or another die we actually have? I hate d3s. You already pointed this out, but yes, it is annoying to have to look up a specific ability of an obscure monster (speaking of which, Horrific Appearance is really powerful for your summons to have). I am also not fan of these sorts of "subtle" refernces to Cthulhu. I know Cthulhu is technically part of Golarian, but, that doesn't mean I have to like it. Oh, and you didn't italicize anything the formatting calls for.
This is really powerful, but probably costed properly. I don't like it, but it's not awful or anything. Overall, I'd say it falls into the upper end of the middle or the bottom part of the top.
Dagger of Dretch Dominion:
So, let me get this straight: this item's only power is +4 to social rolls dealing with a specific kind of demon, +2 to social rolls with other kinds, and the ability to do max damage (i.e. +1.5 damage, since 1d4 averages 2.5 and you get to automatically do 4 instead) with a dagger when fighting the weakest kind of demon, and all of this comes in a package priced for an 8th level character, even though this is most effective against CR 2s?
Yeah, I think the problems speak for themselves, sorry.
Yup, you are effectively only paying 2500 gp more for all that, which is quite the steal if you think about it...
Yup, you are effectively only paying 2500 gp more for all that, which is quite the steal if you think about it...
You can't judge the property in a vacuum--this was a contest to create a fully cohesive item.
+4 to deal with dretches, +2 to deal with demons, +1.5 damage to dretches might be a steal at 2500, but, you put it on a +2 Cold iron weapon, pushing the cost way up to the point that only 8th level characters could buy it (since WBL limits your best item to half your total wealth), so the value of that property is irrelevant.
Despite the fact that I find +1.5 damage to be kind of silly, this could have been done with just a +1 cold iron dagger for 6500, putting it just barely out of reach of a 5th level character. Not only are they more likely to face dretches (which are CR 2), they are also much more likely to summon them (via Summon Monster III) and face enemy casters that might summon them via the same.
Or, if you wanted to go a little bit higher, you could have done a +1 Chaotic Evil Outsider Bane Dagger, which removes the need for the "max damage" thing by adding 2d6 damage and the cold iron by becoming a +3 weapon that automatically bypasses cold iron and silver DR, while being much more useful in general, since it applies to creatures you might face at the level you're getting this.
And actually, let's talk about how much of a steal this really is. +3 to ALL Charisma checks, period, goes for 4500 on a Circlet of Persuasion. That suggests the cost for a general bonus to Charisma checks is bonus squared x 500. Your item gives +2 against a very specific subset of creatures and +4 to one very specific creature. That's bound to be some kind of discount. A significant one, in my book. At least 75%. I don't know if 2500 is even all that much of a steal.
Anyway, one more way to do this, much cheaper and, probably, more thematically:
Aura moderate conjuration [evil]; CL 9th
Slot none; Price 2510 gp; Weight 4 lbs.
Description
Crafted entirely from cold iron, this rod features several small, sharp barbs and tiny, but foul, Abyssal writing circling its length, providing traction and insight into the rod’s purpose. A faint smell of acrid sweat exudes from the weapon.
This rod can be swung as a cold iron light mace, but shows its true power when demons, especially dretches, are called to service. Wielding the rod gives you a +4 bonus on all Charisma checks when dealing with dretches. This bonus is reduced to +2 while interacting with other demons. Unruly dretches can easily be dispatched, as the rod always deals full damage to them.
Construction
Requirements Craft Rod, summon monster III (dretch); Cost 1260 gp
This is lightly edited to swap dagger for rod. It also assumes 2500 was the correct price for the special abilities (which I still think is kind of high). As you can see, by becoming a Rod, it fits the dominion theme more strongly and also puts the price point much lower. A 4th level character could easily afford this, now, and no properties are wasted.
Interesting, I am picking up some kind of item optimzer vibe from you. That may or may not be correct, but it does offer an interesting perspective.
However, what I do know about design is that powerful items are neither interesting nor Superstar. All the entries over the years for RPG Superstar proof that.
But thanks for the review.
If you posted an item before here I've reviewed it
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
There's just not much here to judge. You need something more solid and objective, and you can't expect people to crumble up 50k gold and thow it away.
It's also very awkward the way you describe the effect of the bind. Why "as the Entangle spell" when talking about a single target? Why not just say that they are Entangled (as per the condition) and all squares are considered difficult terrain? I'm also unclear about the save for half movement, "as normal." Does that mean they are held in place unless they make the save? You need to be much more clear, here. Why use an existing magical effect if you're going to change almost every aspect of it? Another error: you state that they take 1 damage for each time "either save is failed," but there's only the one save--the other thing is a check, not a save. Decline is a strange choice of words, too. Pathfinder tends to use "forego" when discussing saves.
How did you calculate that DC of 15, by the way? That should be impossible as far as Pathfinder is concerned. A level 3 effect requires 13 in the casting stat, creating a DC 14, while a level 4 effect requires a 14 in the casting stat, which makes for a 16 DC. You're specifically using Entangle here, so, as a 1st level spell requiring only 11 in the stat, the DC should be 11. The only way I can see it as 15 is if the Plant Growth +4 DC clause is in effect, but Plant Growth is not listed as a required spell.
Finally, at least as far as the "bind" power is concerned--is this really at will? Like, I can do this every single attack? No action cost is listed, even--is it just free? That seems...excessive. I am all for all-the-time item powers, don't get me wrong, I just think one with a save and complex escape rules will get tedious and add tons of rolls to combat.
The second power is a lot more clear: create a 10' cube of Wall of Thorns once per day. No special alterations or anyting. I like Wall of Thorns a lot, and I really appreciate that it's permanent if cared for. I can imagine an NPC lair just surrounded by rosebushes. Very cool.
Overall, you have some execution issues, but the concept is definitely cool. I wouldn't want it in my game right now because of constantly forcing saves every attack, but I like it otherwise.
Using Drag at range is just not a good idea. It needs significantly more clarifying lanaguage than you've used here. First of all, Dragging involves the dragger moving. You move back 1+ spaces, and so do they. It doesn't seem like that's what you're going for. You cannot use it to pull people closer. You also including nothing to overcome this line from the Drag maneuver: "If your attack is successful, both you and your target are moved 5 feet back, with your opponent occupying your original space and you in the space behind that in a straight line" (emphasis mine). Inventing some kind of ranged Drag here is just too messy.
Yeah, wow, it gets worse when you stitch another enemy. The initiator is supposed to move, too, so, this is like forcing movement on two guys at once, even though your writing suggests you don't think the second guy should move at all. You are physically incapable of dragging them adjacent without clarifying language, and your entangle effect does not include any method to escape. Actually, you don't talk at all about how the wielder of the weapon changes targets--it doesn't seem like you have any way to end the effect. Once you've sewn two targets, you're done, because only two enemies can be effected (sic) at once and nothing indicates how one ceases to be effected (sic).
Anyway, the rules you should have used is Pull. It is a special monster quality that allows you to drag someone closer without moving yourself. It works at range at base, so it requires no further clarifying language. If you really wanted it to work at variable rates (based on how well you rolled on CMB), it would be trivial to add as much to the Pull rules. The key is that a Pull with variable pull distances needs far fewer changes than a "Ranged Drag."
Now, I know you might bring up the fact that there are Drag feats, but there are a few things to keep in mind here:
1) Nobody takes them normally. They'd only be taking them for a special effect like this, which means they're devoting, what, 4 feats to get a minor extra benefit? Nobody can find this weapon around 8th and then get those feats all into their build except fighters, the last people that are likely to use a Rapier (even Barbarians have more synergy via archetypes).
2) This weapon is a Rapier, one of the worst weapons in the game for Power Attacking. Power Attack is a requirement for the Improved Drag chain.
3) You could easily include language (again, much more easily than trying to properly write a "ranged drag) that allows the Drag feats to apply to the Pull maneuver this weapon allows
4) You could just include a flat CMB bonus to the Pull maneuver, which removes the need to invest feats into it.
Overall, I actually really applaud the creativity here (maybe that's why I'm so hard on it). I love the concept of a big needle stitching enemies together like this (I wish it were a spear or some other kind of polearm, though, not a rapier). It just has some pretty severe execution issues. Your writing is a little sloppy in places, and it doesn't look like you really understood the Drag maneuver and what making it ranged would entail. It seems like you just said, "eh, they'll know what I mean," which is probably true, but not appropriate for rules text.
I think the item has a clear, cohesive theme with an interesting and internally consistent set of abilities. My major complaints, and the reasonns it didn't make my list are:
1) Why is this not Composite (and adaptive at that)? That basically kills its usefulness as a bow in combat when you're not shooting through walls. This is too expensive to be a back up bow for special circumstances. That shows a serious lack of understanding of how the game is really played. Non-composite bows exist only for 1st level characters who can't afford Composite.
2) This is probably way too cheap. 3/day Command word activated Faerie Fire with a CL of 12 should cost 12,960 gp on its own. That means you priced the ability to unerringly target enemies and shoot through all cover and concealment as about a 5,000 gp ability. Or, more likely, you didn't calculate Faerie Fire's cost correctly (you probably didn't use the bow's CL 12). I think this item would have been much better off overall if you had simply removed the Faerie Fire entirely. Then, it would feel write power/pricewise. And honestly, why would I Faerie Fire anyway, when I can limn them with my arrows?
Overall, close, but those are pretty serious flaws that kept you off my keeper list.
I like the pocket dimension thing, that's pretty cool. It does make it harder to draw than every other weapon, though, since it takes a whole move action, rather than part of one.
The fact that you can teleport the target every round is a little excessive, and "in the opposite direction" just isn't a thing in Pathfinder--there's no facing. Moving an enemy without reach 10' away is actually really devastating, because it prevents them from making a full attack. That's a subtley hugely powerful benefit.
The once per day dimension door is kind of "eh" and feels tacked on at the end there.
Overall, this is just vastly too powerful. The double damage thing doesn't make sense in context and is definitely too strong at any level--there's a reason Bane is only +2d6 damage. Moving an enemy 10' away every round is also way too strong. Those things need to go--put some other kind of limit on the teleporting. The best teleporting blade I remember from the competition was the Argent Edge, and it only worked 3 times per day.
+2 costs 4k. Mithril shirt is 1,100. +5 Stealth is the Shadow property (you should have just called this +2 Shadow Mithril Shirt) and costs 3,750. +1 Dodge AC (you don't need to specify it is lost when you lose your Dex mod as that is an inherent property of dodge bonuses) should cost 2,500 (maybe 3,750 because it's off slot or an extra feature). +1 Reflex is probably about 500 for the same reason. That's 13,100, meaning you charged 7,700 for three rounds of invisibility, expeditious retreat, and a silence that does nothing because it affects only you (since there's no benefit to being silent yourself beyond GM fiat, the only solid rules benefit is denying spellcasters the ability to use verbal components)? No, no way, that's way overpriced. Or, even if it is somehow calculated correctly, it is not valuable enough to warrant that cost, not by far. How did you determine the 3 round thing, anyway?
Overall, it's kind of boring and its signature power is overpriced and underwhelming.
I don't know, I guess that confirms it's a bad idea, since I can't think of anything to do with it at all, but I'm still positive that it's too strong.
I have never had much call to use a scroll anyway, and the only people I've seen using scrolls were the ones who created the scroll in the first place. That said, the ability to cast a scroll without holding it is, uh, no real benefit. Would people really pay 3,300gp (since +5 UMD is 2,500) for the ability to pretend they're a spellcaster once per day? I just...I don't understand this item's purpose or benefit at all. I'm clearly not the intended audience here.
Actually, legitimate question here: what happens with the increasing effort required to wield this shield? A buckler gives you a free hand. What happens if I am wearing this and both of my hands are full? After the third attack, it's a heavy shield--what happens if my hand is still full? Do I get to wear it and keep my hand full? Do I drop the item? Do I drop the shield?
The MMO style taunt is a nice idea, but, how did you get a DC of 15? A 1st level effect has a DC 11, a 2nd level spell effect has a DC 13 A 3rd level effect is DC 14, and a 4th level is DC 16. Also, "disengage from combat with" is really vague. What does that actually mean? Must they attack the target with every available action? What if they are a spellcaster? Can they cast spells on the target, or is physical combat the only acceptable solution? Do they have to move next to you if they made a ranged attack? It's just not defined enough.
Wait, this shield only does any of this once per day? How do you determine that combat is over? That's not a valid duration in Pathfinder.
Overall, this is not clear enough in what it does, it's priced strangely, the effect is really out there...it needs a lot of work. But the idea of an item that helps you feign power isn't a bad one, necessarily.
I actually do like the ability to apply pernicious poison on a bite or touch--you can deliver it with the initial Poison and then, if it fails, on the follow up Accelerate Poison, too.
The major problem is that your staff's charges are best spent on the special ability and its weakest spells, and ideally, in combo, which eats charges very quickly. Since you can only add 1 charge per day, this is going to have a very short adventure life as you're speeding through them to activate its cool power, further cementing this as an NPC item.
Overall, it's really not bad, it just has some junk abilities dragging it down and spiking the cost, and it's clearly meant to be in the hands of an NPC.
Basically, I think it's in my ideal class of items, where, nobody goes out and custom orders one, but if anyone found one (even randomly in a shop's inventory) they'd want it. It's awesome without being necessary. I will say that the price feels very steep (you can't get it until 14th, but it's not anyone's pimary item, like a weapon might be, so 15th and 16th are far more likely), though, and my major knock against it is that its main, awesome effect only works once per day. I certainly wish it was useful more often.
But, yeah, overall, it's great. Good job.
If you posted an item before here I've reviewed it
I did not see one for my item (Bonewarp Chain). Is it time to get my prescription checked?
If you posted an item before here I've reviewed itI did not see one for my item (Bonewarp Chain). Is it time to get my prescription checked?
I wrote one for that and blackmail then noticed they didn't post properly... I'll rewrite it soonish
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Thank you for your review of the lash of wild roses!
I'm fairly new to the Pathfinder setting, which is probably evident in my word choices. The higher DC comes from casting it at a higher level through Highten Spell, the meta-magic feat, which I failed to include in the requirements. I was trying to buff it up a bit, without making it too lethal (an odd approach to a magic weapon, to be sure). A +2 would have been a good idea, though.
I'd hoped by using the entangle spell, any circumstances I didn't account for would be covered by the spell, but I see I overly complicated the mechanic. I could have done a lot of good with the word-count I wasted on command words and rules caveats.
I'm glad you liked the rose bush bit. I'd worried that Plant Growth would have been a more appropriate spell, but the wall of thorns had the mechanics I wanted.
Lots of easy stuff to fix for next year!
Dedicated Voter Season 6, Star Voter Season 7, Star Voter Season 8, Dedicated Voter Season 9
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Thanks to everyone who has critiqued the rod of gravity, I was really proud of the item. I had a bit of a crisis when it came to pricing, because it's an item that if overused could become disruptive so I brought its uses down to once per day. Essentially you when you wanted to change how an entire battlefield works that's the time to activate it.
Playing with gravity though feels like high power magic, and something suited to the last book of an AP. So I wanted to price it as such. I might have overestimated the power of the item though and probably could have brought it down to be within reach at about level 10.
Oops, last time I did two 109s. I've fixed that here. Rod of Gravity should have been 111.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
I don't understand this item's theme or how the two properties connect at all. I also don't see Dispel Magic getting cast on people as often as you apparently do, certainly not multiple times per day--probably not even once per day. I feel like this would get used more often to "trade up." If an ally (or even you) throws a dispel at you or like, your non-magical boot or whatever, they/you lose a 3rd level spell, and the ring creates a 4th level spell. You could even get a Spiritual Ally out of dispelling a negative effect on you.
But, uh, despite this easy way to "cheat" the ring, I still don't find one or two castings of Spiritual Ally to be worth 22k and a ring slot, regardless.
Overall, I don't quite "get" the item and I don't think it's worth the cost.
I liked this item--of the anti-caster weapons in the field, I felt like this was the best. It scored big nostalgia points with me because it just inexplicably felt like D&D 3.5--like what this item did was a compilation of a number of things from that edition that just never got translated to Pathfinder, like Spellthief or the Abjurant Champion.
There were some things I did have a problem with, though--few, if any, entries were flawless.
This one's are:
1) It's meant especially for Magi, and it's keen, which was smart, but it's not a weapon with a base 18-20/x2 threat range. It would fit the class it is intended for much better as a Scimitar, Rapier, Cutlass, even a Rhoka, Urumi, Katana, or Wakizashi. As is, the fact that it's a longsword feels like a penalty cost--like, "you get this awesome ability for Magi, but, only if you're willing to use this inferior base weapon!"
2) It's priced for a 15th level character, but it only has a +3 enhancement bonus. I can't imagine a 15th level character without a +5 weapon (or, like, a Barbarian with a +3 Furious one), so that they can ignore Adamantine and Alignment based DR. In fact, the base weapon here only costs 32k, meaning the ability to steal spell slots on a crit (only 20% of the time) and manipulate those slots cost a ridiculous 65k. I don't buy that. I think it's super overpriced, and that, at it's current price, it's too much rare special ability tacked onto too little base weapon.
Overall, though, still very good. One of the top items, surely. I, unfortunately, no longer remember if you were on my "maybe" list or the bottom end of my keeper list.
Your entry is also lacking in clarity. I understand that when you hit someone, you inflict some condition on them, and it lasts until the end of your next turn. That is clear. I also understand that the target gets a penalty to saves vs. spells with the cold descriptor.
What is not clear, however, is whether or not this condition always lasts until the end of your next turn or if it goes away after the target takes the extra 1d6. It seems like it ends, because it says, "removing the effect." However, it also says, "until the end of the wielder's next turn, whenever..." not "once..." or some other adjective suggesting the condition did indeed end.
I will also say, "damage from a cold source" is really awkward phrasing. You should have just said "cold damage." I mean, a "cold source" could be lots of things. Would the claw of a white dragon count, since the white dragon is clearly cold?
It also appears pretty severely undercosted. The extra d6 isn't worth much, but -2 to saves is nasty. A +1 Frost Greatclub is already 8k, so, you're only charging about 2k for this bonus effect, and that's nowhere near enough. It should be at least +1 equivalent (which would bump the total cost to 18k).
Overall, the concept is not bad, but the inability to follow directions (by not using the provided format), clarity problems, and mechanical issues are just too much to ignore.
Further, you've priced this for 13th level characters, but it's only a +1 Planar weapon. Planar is a frustrating property to me because it does very, very little that simply increasing the base enhancement of the weapon wouldn't. A +5 weapon overcomes all DR except X/-, and making a weapon planar slows down your ability to overcome DR completely in order to provide a slightly accelerated assistance against later kinds of DR and, ultimately, X/- DR for a specific subset of monsters. I definitely don't think it's worth it, and a 13th level character is very much going to want more than just a +1 enhancement mod. Frankly, I'd expect them to all have +5 weapons by then. What's more, since the ability to make a really loud noise should cost next to nothing (a signal whistle is less than 1gp) and the Totem Spear is already an instrument (so, a masterwork totem spear is automatically a masterwork instrument), you have 50k worth of Gust of Winds slapped onto 8k worth of weapon.
Don't get me wrong, Gust of Wind is actually a deceptively good spell. It's just not that great all the time...or at 13th level. Plus, it doesn't really need a high caster level--there's very little reason to have this available all the time in your weapon rather than just grabbing a wand (for 4500) or a handful of scrolls (150 each).
It's also really weird that you included monks in this--they get very little benefit from the weapon, as it can't be flurried with and they don't use instruments for anything. Overall, yeah, the Gust of Wind thing eats 85% of your budget, is not useful enough to justify the cost, and is kind of out of place thematically.
Overall, it's overpriced and, well, just not exciting at all.
Your special abilities don't really help. Three times per day, this crappy weapon can be used to drop 4d6 damage or maybe up to 6d6 damage on someone. 4d6 averages 14 damage, and 6d6 is only 21. This is priced for a 12th level character, and 21 damage at 12th level is a complete joke (especially considering that there's a save for half innate in the falling object rules).
The ability for a halfling to add sneak attack and precision damage "as long as the conditions necessary to activate them are fulfilled" just feels silly and probably doesn't work. Sneak Attack, for example, works when your target is denied their Dex mod to AC, but their AC is irrelevant to the falling object. You also should never add your level to an item's DC--excepting a Staff, it should be based on the item's level.
Regardless, even adding sneak attack/precision damage to the falling rock is still a joke. 12th level characters are dropping WAY more damage than that. It also felt silly and forced to add the extra paragraph, basically stating, "Hey, by the way, you can use this item for stuff other than dealing damage, too!"
Overall, the name kills it in my mind, but, it has enough mistakes that even a tolerable name wouldn't save it.
That said, let me first, no doubt, repeat hordes of others and say "in the hands of..." should probably be punishable by flogging.
Giving natural reach is a really bad idea because that's crazy powerful. I don't know how to price that, but, it should definitely be a lot. Further, this is priced for a 14th level character, but well, it's best head is only +2, which is woeful at that level. Its better against giants, but, by level 14, there are precious few giants left to fight, unless the GM gets creative with giving them class levels (as most are in the CR 8-12 range). There aren't a lot of spellcaster giants, either, unless, again, you get custom class leveled giants.
How are you calculating the DC: 22 on that stun? The CL of the weapon is only 10th, so, it should only be mimicking a 5th level spell at most, and items casting a 5th level spell have a DC of 17.
Throwing Glitterdust in at the end feels awfully tacked on, but it's practically required to make the name make sense.
It ends up feeling like a bizarre grab bag of effects that lacks focus, and well, frankly, it's really only strong against a small niche of enemies, most of which are obsolete when this item comes into play.
105) Sidereal Blade: Ok, +1 Ghost Touch...GYAH! Double damage to outsiders! That's a huge number of foes and that's a LOT of damage. This basically becomes the most damaging weapon you can get at 10th level.
So I take it that's not a good thing then? I wanted to make it useful of course. lol
Thank you for taking the time to offer feedback.
I have learned a valuable lesson this year in that there is absolutely no substitute for system mastery when designing game elements.
My strengths lie in designing the adventures themselves as I am a storyteller first and foremost.
If I follow that path, I'll just become my own 3PP at some point down the road and write my own adventures for $1.
@MPLindustries,
about your review of 99/Ghastly Plate (which wasn't mine, and I don't know whose it was - I had no entry in RPGSS).
Apparently you weighed heavily the following "error":
........................
+1 Ghost Touch Armor should cost 4k, so there's 21k worth of special abilities here unrelated to being armor, which is just way too much. Remember, this is not in reach until 10th level, and 4k worth of protection is going to get 10th level characters killed.Overall, it's not a bad item, but it's too expensive for what it does without enough "armories,"
........................Um, no.
The magic in +1 ghost touch armor costs 16k, so there's 9k worth of special abilities unrelated to armor...or there's one "+1 equivalent" special ability which just happens to work out to 9k in this case since there's a +4 equivalent enchantment before the last +1 for your weapons & disguise is tacked on.
You may not like that ghost touch is a +3 equivalent ability, but your dislike of this pricing doesn't negate the fact that this is the pathfinder rule.
If your critique is that it's too expensive for what it does, your complaint is with Paizo, not the author of 99/Ghastly Plate.
Wow, you're right. I looked it up and it was just a +1 property for weapons and I, apparently, foolishly assumed it would be the same value for Armor. Hmm, I will have to reconsider this armor, then.
It is priced correctly, you're right, assuming adding Ghost Touch to a weapon 3/day is a +1 equivalent property and the ghostly disguises is worth nothing because the spell is pointless.
There's no big "error" in the item, but, I still don't find its particular combination of abilities to be especially compelling--it's now just "correctly priced" ghost fighting armor. And I still think the ghostly disguise is ridiculous--it does nothing (it's not going to matter to a ghost) and it kind of forces you to take your armor off in social situations.
So, I guess I rate it slightly higher? I do appreciate you pointing out the error, though. I can't believe ghost touch is so much more "valuable" on armor than on a weapon.
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Finally getting around to posting comments on every item. Haven't read other comments, so I may well be repeating them.
Man, the first couple pages are bears!
Page 1:
Windpath Razor- Mostly voted for this one. Like the name, descriptive but not utilitarian. I read this as a wuxia style item, but it looks more like it was intended to be Arabian Nights with the scimitar angle. One concern is the limitation that the power only works when the weapon is being drawn, so there's no mid-combat use of it. "Hovering" is a little misleading since players can move along the wind bridge. Speaking of which, could you use it to cross a chasm? It looks like the answer is no, since you can only be 1 foot off the ground, but the overall vibe seems like it should work that way.
Rod Of Versatile Channeling - Mostly voted against, but that's due to a personal bias against items that interchange positive/negative energy. They usually feel like they're working around choices than making players make new ones. I would move the bit about it working as initally described for neutrals and necromancers to the first paragraph. Keep the limitations with the powers being limited, for clarity.
Alchemist's Retort- Mostly voted for. I didn't like the name, it's a little punny for me. The item itself seems mostly like a way for an alchemist to get a free attack, but that seems pretty reasonable given the circumstances. The way it does it is clever, and I like the touch about the shield indicating what's in it. One of the better shields.
Enlightend Jian- Mostly voted for. Definitely has the wuxia vibe. Not the most imaginative, true, but fills a logical niche. My votes for it were mostly just because I like wuxia. Might work slightly better if the sword can not be used offensively while it's maintaining air walk, like it has to be pointed in a direction to move around, etc.
Mail Of Ash Woven Ramparts - Voted for and against. I liked the visuals on this one, but I don't think I ever got the "ash" theme behind it other than it would look cool. Why ashes? I like that it doesn't work quite like I expected, in that you can go in easily, it's getting out of an ash cloud that's hard. I also don't get why this is armor. It feels a little wondrous item to me.
Grave-Nettle - Mostly voted against. Essentially zombie-in-a-can. That said, the flavor of it is neat, and it's an item that makes sense to exist.
Staff Of The Vineyard- Sometimes voted for. I like the flavor of this one well enough. The berries are cool, and the entangle mechanics are clever addition. I think what hurt it was that it would mostly be used for the entangle, and as such isn't overly exciting to voters. It's a nicely made staff, though.
Angazhan's Bloodthirsty Spear- Mostly voted against. The name is a problem, X's Y items usually don't do well in this contest. Plus, is this really Angazhan's personal spear? Probably not. Some mechanical issues, with what looks like unlimited crit confirmation bonuses. Needs to define how close behind a pierced target the additional target needs to be. As it is, there's no limit, could be any distance. The increasing bonus weapon is a decent idea, it just needs a good twist to make it in the contest.
Chrysalis Carapace - I don't remember this one from voting. The flavor is very nice, though I worry about the butterfly wings feeling a little silly. Moth wings might have served better in this case, though that might seem a subtle point. Just less on the delicate side, you know? I like the concentration check mechanic, though it could use some flavor explaining why it's something this item can do.
Dirk Of Treachery - Voted mostly for. I think there were at least a couple of items along these lines, and I may have confused them at times. I remember this one as my favorite of the type, though. What does it mean to be unaware of its presence? If a victim has seen in sheathed on my belt, do I not gain that bonus? And I know the "gm discretion" probably cost votes, but I did like the additional damage to allies. It's the whole theme of the item, after all. I like what you were after with disguise self, but it probably was better left out since it's not mechanically there. Your idea about a bonus to hide it during searches is a good one.
Monastic Staff - Don't remember how I voted. This feels a little SAK. I get the general monk theme, but the staff itself just seems like random things a monk would like to have. It needs to be somewhat tighter in the theme and a more specific name. As an example, it could play off the idea of super-fast monk vibrations, building off the haste and blur. Add some to that line of thinking and it could work.
Skewer Shield - Mostly voted against. The core idea of loading a shield with a weapon didn't work for me. Firing the weapon out made this feel not like a shield, but like some sort of strange weapon-gun. I'd also remove the choice of returning or anchoring and make one or the other the permanent feature. Why does the shield not provide armor bonus after firing the weapon?
Catapult Ring - Voted for and against. I kept having the image of a gnome launching giants all over the place, and mostly laughing. This could be a very fun item, but it's probably overpowered. A touch attack to move and damage a creature seems too easy. Not particularly a ring. Still, the havoc would be glorious and maybe worth it.
Living Copperthread Net - Didn't see this one until late in the voting, was happy when I finally did. A fun item, and I like the active grappling that it does. The image of an animated net chasing people around seems a little cartoonish, though. That would suit some gaming styles and not others. Might have been better to focus more on the grappling than the chasing. Was glad to see a net item.
Shield Of Compassionate Radiance - Mostly voted for. I'm not sure the core tradeoff of laying hands for small heal bonuses is worth it. Seems like that would be very circumstantial. I also don't see why it should be limited from scrolls or wands. I get that this is a relatively low level item, but the benefits seem a little limited for what you're giving up. It does seem like an appropriate paladin shield, though, and nice job there.
Jailbird's Sweetheart - Voted for. I was a fan of this one. Circumstantial, but something that opens up certain options for stories. I like the touch that one side is a file. The kissing for attuning is fine, but saying that there's no indication of that seems needlessly complicating.
Weapon Trap Shield - Mostly voted against. The name is very utilitarian. As you probably know, there were several shields with this theme. Mechanically, this is one of the better ones, but it could use more flavor. I get what you were after with the polymorph any object, but it still seems an odd choice. The basic problem with this one was that it needed some mojo to stand out in its crowd.
Ragathiel's Regalia - Don't remember it from voting. Essentially a spell in a can. Might be armor of choice for certain paladins, though. Needed more to it, and at the price there was some room to add some minor things for flavor.
Perpetual Vortex Staff - Remember the item but don't remember how I voted. Reading it now, I see it's more themed than I thought. I like the description and its visuals a lot. The powers aren't really related themselves, but I see how the staff's concept connects them. They also aren't spells, so it's not really a staff in game terms. It's tough, I like what this is, it's just not what it should be.
Raven Leather - Voted for, mostly. I like the visuals, though it's probably better to say "transforms himself in to a raven-like mass of shadows and swirling feathers", as it reads now the first power seems like he becomes a flock of actual ravens. Also not sure this is really armor and not a wondrous item. It doesn't do much that's armor-like.
Wing Smasher's Hammer - Don't remember how I voted. The name tells you what it is. Main concern is it's a little one-note. It fills a niche, certainly, but it needs some more flavor and mojo. Also picturing it being a thrown weapon, and maybe needing the returning property.
Courtier's Solitaire - Mostly voted for. Nice flavor, and I'm always in favor of non-combat items. Nice name too. Non-combat items do tend to suffer in the voting, though. Now and then one gets through, but it's a tough hill to climb. Most of this item is some basic bonuses, which don't win voters. But then there's the automatic detection and surprise round actions, which seems pretty overpowered for the price.
Staff Of The Hidden Blade - Mostly voted against. Nicely themed item, but lacking excitement. Needs more flavor, and at least one interesting additional power. The ki substitution mechanic has potential.
Staff of Entwined Elements - Mostly voted against. I have a personal bias against items that blend all the elements. Allowing changing of energy types of the spells just excaerbates the situation. I'd strongly prefer that an item pick one and run with it. Otherwise it starts to feel a little SAK, trying to be all things in all situations.
Honeycomb Cuirass - Mostly voted for this one. Loved the flavor (so to speak). A perfect fit for druid-y armor. Laughed when I saw profession (beekeeper) in the requirements. Probably this needed something more, an additional cool power, but it was on the right track.
Deadeye's Shepherd - Mostly voted for. Like the name. Sort of an obvious niche for a bow, which helps and hurts. Probably would have left out the interaction with the ring. I get what it's going for, but that kind of thing usually hurts in the contest. If anything, I'd focus on expanding the central bull rush theme with additional related powers.
Rod Of Ghost Teeth - Voted for and against. Nice creepiness factor, but it's basically a dressed up magic missile in a can. The tongues is a nice touch. Not sure it's all that rod-ly.
Grandmaster's Plate- Mostly voted against. Personal bias against mass battlefield repositioning. Seems like there's a chess themed item for this every year. I get the appeal, but it's a little too meta for me. The particular mechanics of this item would incline me to use it for the extra damage alone in a key fight. Also, doens't seem particularly armor-y.
Sightstealer Rapier - Mostly voted against. As you mention, it's not exciting enough. Also not sure why it's a weapon, at least not as described. You made the right choice adding 'rapier' to the name. In the end, though, I just don't know that the benefit is enough to make it interesting.
Thieving Buckler - Mostly voted against. The basic idea is cool, and it works as a buckler where it would seem out of place as a shield. The text seems a little disjointed and unclear in places. If I snatch arrow or disarm on an attack, does the weapon go to the extra dimensional space? OK with the bit about it taking some time to find an item, but the time required for the item start acting like a handy haversack is trivial.
Dimensional Skewer - Mostly voted against. It seems in practice this effect wouldn't be very useful. An opponent who was skewered is more likely to be around your allies than theirs, so most of your potential targets would be your own allies. There are circumstances where this would be useful, but I feel like you'd always be trying to create them rather than just fighting as your normally would.
Phantom Guardian's Ring - Mostly voted against. Limited uses, so a ring to switch in and out of the slot. A lot of work describing an effect that's not super-exciting. Certainly useful, but it doesn't feel very ring-ish. I feel like this is better suited to a wondrous item, or even just a plain ol spell.
Mummer's Slapstick - Mostly voted against. Personal bias against jokey items. Pink flamingos and cartoon birds take me out of it. I like that hitting someone laughing keeps everyone laughing. I like the gems made out of paste. Just didn't click with the basic idea.
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Riftcarver Bow - Mostly voted against. A lot of cool flavorful build up, then goes into...a ranged trip mechanic. Kind of a letdown. The second mechanic is better, but still not super-exciting. I do like your description, though. Good stuff.
Rerouting Shield - Mostly voted against. I had a similar idea for a shield, but it would reroute attacks to allies only. In any case, I felt it was a bit too obvious and mechanically messy, and the same things pretty much apply here. The second mechanic is more interesting, and with some development and flavor it might have done well.
Rod Of Illusory Casting - Mostly voted for. Very rod-ish. Neat, logical effects, but fairly circumstantial for their usefulness. Seems like there should be some sort of save to see through it. As it is, in the right circumstances, this could be a cheap way to a deadly effect at higher levels.
Dwarven Armor Of Exploration - Mostly voted against. A little hard to get excited about turning into mud. The powers are useful, but a bit too utilitarian and not enough flavor and/or mojo. There's probably something in this idea, but it needs a better theme.
Gnome Splat-Pelter - Mostly voted against. The name was a turn-off. Having said that, an ooze firing weapon has its place, it's just not exciting. I think the parts about firing other items are distracting, though if you tightened that up with some themes and some additional powers when you do that, it might well be the basis for a better item overall.
Black-And-White Sword - Mostly voted against. The text jumps around a bit and doesn't quite gel into a coherent whole. I think you knew what you wanted this to be, but I don't think it comes across on the page. Tighten this up and work at getting across what's in your head and you may have something.
Varisian Dancing Chain - Mostly voted against. I like what this is doing, and I like the implied flavor. It's not really exciting enough, but it's thematically strong. I think it might have benefited from making the flavor more explicit, and from adding on some additional thematic power.
Springheart - Mostly voted against. Wonderful description and flavor. I now this was a crowd favorite, but I couldn't get past it being a single use spell-in-a-can. You've got the mojo. Just channel it into something more exciting and you'll do very well.
Raw Meat Hook - Voted for and against. Thematically very strong. Very much an ogre weapon. Promises some very gory combat! And that might have hurt it. For whatever reasons, a certain percentage of voters don't like gore. It could probably use a bit more oomph that plays with the same theme.
Shield Of The Fallen - Mostly voted against. Two things seriously hurt this item. One is that its primary value comes from the player's death. As a rule, that's something to avoid. Two, it references real world Spartans. You'd have been much better off leaving that implied. Having said all that, it's a logical item, just mostly misdirected for this contest.
Warbreaker's Staff - Don't remember how I voted. Decent theme. Needs a better name, and some sort of capstone power than really drives it home. The sunder doesn't quite do it.
Ring of the Clockwork Sentinel - Voted for and against. It's a neat idea. I feel like a bit too much time is spent explaining the rotating combination rings. At first I thought it was alarm-in-a-can, but the compulsion to not steal the item is a nice add. The ability to locate the stolen item sort of works and sort of doesn't. It could be more elegant. Overall, the problem is that voters likely wouldn't find this item exciting enough. It's trying to avoid a nuisance problem.
Talon - Mostly voted against. The name seems a little more unique than it should, particularly engraved on the item. Also don't think the name suits what is essentially a ranged healing item. Along those lines, it just doesn't feel weapon-y overall.
Celerity Blade - Voted for and against. Not sure the main power is appropriate for a weapon, more like boots. Hiding the movement and the flat footed effect are interesting though. There might be a direction to explore there.
Outrider's Band - Mostly voted against. I see what you're going for, but the problem is one that's often been addressed in various ways in previous contests. Vocabulary probably hurt you too. I don't think this is too gonzo, I just think it's not 'cool' in the way that voters enjoy. There's a lot of text spent on things that make sense, but players won't find exciting.
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Sleeper's Vessel - Don't remember it from voting. I like all the Golarian flavor. What this does, though, is very specialized, to the point of being a plot device item. I don't know that it's a weapon and not a wondrous item. Three minutes seems like an awfully short time for its intended use. Not sure this could see a lot of in-game use.
Ring Of Utmost Need - Mostly voted against. As a general rule, skill boost items of any sort have a tough time in the contest. One that lets you pick any skill for emergency use will have an even tougher time. Personally, I don't like once per week uses, the bookkeeping is easily lost in the shuffle. Plus I'm only wearing this ring for a few minutes very week, then immediately replacing it until it recharges.
Cryohydra's Coil - Voted for and against. Nice flavor, but fairly run of the mill powers. What's the pilfering hand spell doing? This is a fun weapon, but needs an exciting twist to it.
Arroweater Shield - Mostly voted against. Feels overly complicated for a shield that destroys arrows. The effect of two of them close together feels exploitable. Maybe could be used to shoot around corners, etc.
Thriving Branch - Mostly voted against. Nice theme, but it needed more. Just not exciting. Would be worth exploring other idea with the same root theme.
Breakaway Sword of Beguilling - Mostly voted against. When would I ever use this in place of a real weapon? Should this actually count as a weapon? This feels like a very specialized plot device item. On the other hand, it's very cheap, for whatever uses it has.
Shillelagh of Legions - Mostly voted for. I like what this does, and it seems to all fit in its theme. It's maybe not the most exciting staff, but it fits well with its intended use. I think it needed a better capstone power and it might have had a shot.
Hermetic Armor - Mostly voted against. Doesn't seem very armor-y. Most exists to allow more alchemical attacks per day. The idea that comes to me reading is armor that gives extra protection against alchemical mishaps with bombs and such. Not that such things ever happen!
Late I know, but here's mine
Staff of Infiltration (Submitted to RPGS)
Aura moderate varied; CL 8th
Slot none; Price 104,700 gp; Weight 5 lbs.
Description
This tall, thick, polished black staff is capped at both ends with soft black leather, and makes no sound upon striking any surface. The staff allows use of the following spells:
Detect Secret Doors (1 charge)
Detect Thoughts (1 charge)
Nondetection (2 charges)
Greater Invisibility (2 charges)
While holding the staff, the wielder is also centered in the effect of a silent table spell. The staff can also be used as a +1/+1 quarterstaff. If the wielder hits a creature with the staff, the effects of the silent table spell are centered on the creature hit for one round. A creature struck by the staff can not be the center of the staff's silent table effect again for 24 hours.
Construction
Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, Craft Staff; detect secret doors, detect thoughts, nondetection, greater invisibility; Cost 52,350 gp
Phloid has already done a little critiquing and an edit, and showing me that perhaps some of the spells I'd originally had on in and worried I'd people'd see them and so TO OVERPOWERED and pass on it. So while I'd like a critique of what I posted, I'd also like an opinion of whether or not the version I had before worrying about it being too much would have been a better choice.
Staff of Infiltration
Aura moderate varied; CL 8th
Slot none; Price 115,900 gp; Weight 5 lbs.
Description
This tall, thick, polished black staff is capped at both ends with soft black leather, and makes no sound upon striking any surface. The staff allows use of the following spells:
Detect Secret Doors (1 charge)
Detect Thoughts (1 charge)
Disguise Self (1 charge)
Nondetection (2 charges)
Greater Invisibility (2 charges)
Clairaudience-Clairvoyance (2 charges)
While holding the staff, the wielder is also centered in the effect of a silent table spell. The staff can also be used as a +1/+1 quarterstaff. If the wielder hits a creature with the staff, the effects of the silent table spell are centered on the creature hit for one minute. A creature struck by the staff can not be the center of the staff's silent table effect again for 24 hours.
Construction
Requirements Craft Arms and Armor, Craft Staff; detect secret doors, detect thoughts, disguise self,nondetection, greater invisibility, clairaudience/clairvoyance; Cost 57,950 gp
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Disruption Disc - Mostly voted for. I like the concept here a lot. I think you hit on areas of improvement in your notes, particularly increasing the failure chance per disc. The risk is that then 2 of them might mean a 50% chance of failure, yikes! It might be worth making the effect non-stackable. You still keep the cool core idea and lose a lot of the mechanical complication.
Traitor's Blade - Mostly voted for. An assassin's dagger that exists partially in the shadow plane is cooooool. I think two things hurt this- One, several other daggers with betrayal as a theme, even though they weren't like this one. Two, the damage to the wielder. I see what you were after, but I don't think it was necessary.
Rod of Resonance - Voted for and against. Logical item, but maybe a little too obvious. Needed an additional twist or two.
Rheumatic Rod - Mostly voted for. I liked the flavor, and the idea of aging creatures painfully is kinda neat. Needed to push that theme further with another idea or two, though.
Mimic Skin - Voted for and against. Thematically tight, but needed to step out of the monster in a can vibe. Needed more of its own unique flavor.
Norgorber's Lens - Voted for and against. I couldn't make up my mind about this one. Still can't. I'd drop the dimension door effect. The lens effect of being totally concealed by the item is cool. There's some mojo there, though the cone aspect of it is potentially messy in play. Some streamlining and you could get this to Top 32 material.
Thundering Shield - Don't remember it from voting. Feels pretty spell in a can, and not particularly shield-y. Also, a thunderous sound seems like it should affect more than a 15 foot cone.
Ring of the Forgotten Acquaintance. Mostly voted against. Skill bonus item, and only in limited circumstances. Those things have a hard time with voters. There's maybe a cool idea there, but it needs to be more than skill bonuses.
Tempest Bow - Voted for and against. Cool visuals. 100 feet is a long way! Feels like it could use a bit more to it. The basic idea is strong, but it needs another level.
Dynamic Staff - Voted for and against. I feel like this is violating the spirit of staffs somehow. I admit that's a fine line, and others will feel differently. But a staff that lets you store whatever feels a little to meta for me.
Staff of Thin Air - Mostly voted against. A dimension door item, of sorts. A bit too much teleporting for my taste. I get the escape theme from the spells, I wonder if the teleportation could be tied more closely to that idea somehow?
Skywalker's Cloth - Voted for and against. Unfortunate name, even though it's appropriate. I like the theme of it, but it's maybe a little too specialized. Mostly players would want this for constant air walk as that's useful most anywhere.
So, what am I looking for, here, when I judge these items? Well, my crtique is going to be a little different than most others because 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 that blinds and has pilfering hand in it is thematic enough--I don't need to read about what different kinds of dark wood were used and how many crow parts are sticking out of it. Honestly, I'm just going to describe your item however I like when I run the game anyway.
Finally, know that I did not read any other 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 it!
Unlike, it seems, most other reviewers, I do understand why this is Adamantine--it's like a wry smile at a ginsu knife cutting through a tin can--and I get the Resist Fire. What I don't understand is, well, any other aspect of this weapon, especially when the price and concept are so at odds with each other.
There are some issues with the implementation of the skill rank bonus. First, it shouldn't be left to GM discrection. Just say, Profession: Chef, and GMs will adjust it from there. Then, you add a strange progression of abilities (after Resist Fire--that makes lots of sense). Haste? What is that for in the kitchen? And DR/Bludgeoning? Huh? Is that to cover accidentlly cutting yourself? It's weird and powerful. I really don't like Heroes' Feast as the capstone, since, it basically sidesteps being a chef. "You're so good at cooking that you...don't need to cook anymore...?"
The thing I really dislike, though, is that this is supposed to be an item made by great chefs for great chefs that is just incidentally a good weapon, but its only in the price range for 14th+ level PCs. That means only adventurers could make or buy this item. Actual professional chefs would need to go looting tombs in order to get it. So, it's not accidentally a good weapon anymore, it's a weapon specifically for adventurers that also cook sometimes.
To put this into context, D&D 3rd edition's skills and whatnot were designed with the idea that the absolute greatest people that ever lived in the real world were about 6th level. You used 10th level, which, I think is absolutely insane for a non-adventurer, but we'll go with that. A 10th level chef with 10 ranks in Profession: Chef, skill focus in the same, a masterwork tool, and a 16 Wisdom has a +24 bonus to Profession: Chef rolls. Taking 10, that's a 34 total, for 17 gp made per week. Even assuming absolutely no expenses at all, it'll take 88 years to make enough money to buy this knife on a chef's salary (even a totally ridiculous level 10 chef with above average stats). The price and story just don't mesh.
What might have worked, maybe, was a +1 Adamantine knife that gave Resist Fire 1 or 2 and gave a limited per day ability to make meals you cooked into psuedo goodberries or something, I don't know. Just make it low level so I might believe it's really for a chef and accidentally for an adventurer, rather than only being purchaseable by earthshaking heroes and epic adventurers.
P.S., even though it's priced for 14th level characters, it's horrible as a weapon for them, because it's only +3 adamantine, and all the other effects are unrelated to actually stabbing people. It makes a much better offhand weapon for someone that doesn't intend to actually dual wield with it.
Overall, great concept, not so great execution--a common theme, it seems.
I think my big problems with this item are:
1) There's no action type listed, so it's unclear when this energy resistance applies. It says after 5 damage from one source is applied to the bearer, the gemstones transform and give energy damage. If someone shot me with a Scorching Ray for 14 damage, do I take 14 damage and the energy resist kicks in after, or do I take the first 5, the energy resist kick in, and I resist the final 9?
2) The Detonate is unclear, too. Am I still resistant to the energy when it detonates?
3) It doesn't super matter, I guess, because monsters that deal X energy are generally also immune or resistant to it, and it kills your ability to resist energy that is obviously getting thrown around here, so, it seems like a very foolish choice, both for the person holding the shield and designing it. I get you did this to give it some more oomph beyond "this shield resists variable energy," but, it wasn't the right "oomph" in my opinion.
In the end, it's just kind of boring and weak. By the time you could afford this, your caster's regular Resist Energy is resisting 30 and lasting a long time, so, I don't see the point.
This item is vastly underpriced. A normal +10 weapon costs 200k. You can get one here for 73k and a few spell slots. There's no way the duration is worth that much of a discount, plus, it just makes it tedious to use, as you're constantly adding and subtracting bonuses.
The sundering clause just makes it worse, because you can sunder your own stuff (that isn't affected by being broken). Make Whole suddenly becomes your power fuel. Not good. Overall, just way too powerful and tedious to use.
The DR doesn't work against Bludgeoning, and both Claws and Bites deal Bludgeoning, making the most common foes easily able to overcome it. The regenerating THP is interesting, but, since you'll be getting hit so much more often, I don't think it balances.
I don't know, at least it's solidly written. It just didn't appeal to me at all.
Well, anyway, I have no particular feedback otherwise, just this feeling that this isn't appropriate as an item. Sorry, I know that's not super helpful compared to my other critiques in general.
That said, this isn't actually very powerful--you just take one less hit and then shoot a junky 15' cone with an easy save for, at most, 5d6 damage (halved on that joke of a save).
Even though the calculations would call for a much hgher price tag here, I feel like your guess is closer to the real value of the item. However, since it is so weak, I still don't think it's ultimately really worth the cost. I'd rather just have a +2 Shield and another 1,000 gold.
So, you can put 4 doses of poison in at once--do they all discharge at once, too? So, the next hit is just one dose of poisoning with +8 DC? Or is it one with +8 DC, one with +6 DC, on with +4 DC, and one at +2 DC?
From there, the item gets even weirder and just about solidifies its position as a PC item only, as, I believe the vast majority of creatures stabbed by a PC neither walk away from the fight nor drink potions "offscreen."
The idea of a Craft (Alchemy) or Heal check to notice the effect is really weird, and the idea that it's an action to spit out a potion, rather than just free like talking or dropping an item is, well, weird--I'm using that word a lot, aren't?
Well, it gets even weirder, because tacked on at the end here, we have this random, mindbending, non-illusionary illusion effect that makes the drinker (who probably just took Con damage or maybe even became paralyzed or fell asleep or something) think the potion did what it was supposed to do ("Oh, yes, falling asleep is totally the same as, say, flying."). There's not even a save for it, just a weird skill check that seems to serve as a pseudo save here. That is absolutely crazy--they're not even skills every party is going to have covered.
It's also unclear as to whether a potion of Neutralize Poison would work or become poison.
Overall, it's interesting design space, but, it's just really weird and severely lacking in clarity and focus.
But yeah, awesome job. No complaints. It's not too powerful or too expensive. It's just damn good.
It probably did not do well for the same reason my item failed--it's probably not a good idea to try and fix crappy rules (like how useless the Heal skill is or how bad throwing weapons are) with magic item band-aids.
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Aegis of the Martyr - Voted for and against. It's a shield with a shield-like power. Feels a little too basic about it, though. Redirecting damage to the wielder is a start, but it's not enough for the voters. Has its place in the game, though.
Blade of Unabating Wounds - Don't remember it from voting. And a sword with sword-like power! Like the flavor of it. I like what it's aiming to do, though I feel like it needs some more care mechanically. Also, it needs another layer of mojo, another twist. There's something here, it just needs to be pushed a bit further.
Chakram of Cyclic Existence - Voted mostly for. I like what you're trying to do here. The theme seems strong, and you've mostly hit the notes it needs to hit. I just think it needs more than healing at a distance for a mechanic. The name promises something deeper, something about existence.
Demonmaw Gnasher - Voted for and against. I wasn't crazy about the core conceit. And why can't the target be put in a space that's intrinsically dangerous? How does the magic of the item know? Why take away that tactic?
Serpentine Staff - Voted mostly against. A staff that becomes a snake is one of the oldest tricks around. While this did so in a logical way, it didn't really add anything new. Feels pricey too, for what it does. Maybe if it didn't take a move action to command the snake it would be worth the price.
Staff of Strategems - Voted for and against. A thematic set of spells and power. Once per combat is sort of vague, as what is a 'combat' isn't defined. You're right about the visuals. Playing with the action economy will always cost you some votes, fairly or not. Your basic idea was a good one, but it needed to be realized in a more exciting way. Not just visuals, but a more exciting core power.
Sarenrae's Desert Caller - Mostly voted against. First impression was template-in-a-can. That's not wholly fair, but something about the idea of it turned me off. Not sure it's really a weapon doing weapony things rather than a wondrous item. The idea of something for summoners is cool, I'd just prefer it did it a way more suited to a weapon.
Housebreaker Bow - Mostly voted against. A bow/staff hybrid. Actually, I do like the idea of a ranged lockpick in the form of an arrow. That might have been the idea to run with here. The name is unfortunate, and "shh" as a power name is a little awkward too.
Blowgun of the Accursed Serpent - Mostly voted against. Spell in a can, essentially. I like the flavor of it, it just needed to do something else.
Blade of the Dark Betrayer - Mostly voted against. This felt really familiar, and I thought I'd essentially seen it before. Cutting lose shadows is a common enough idea, and that it provides flanking seemed like something I'd seen too. This may not be true, and thus unfair, but it felt that way.
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Pen of Mirado - Consistently voted against. Not a weapon, couldn't vote for it against anything. Background history should be avoided. Your idea isn't a bad one here, but I'm not sure there's a way to make it work. The Bardic Knowledge check mechanic seems off. DC 25 might not tell you anything about more obscure creatures. Way, way overpowered if it hits.
Motherly Love - Mostly voted against. This one was just weird. Singing, having to call it mother. Not sure why 'mother' and 'bow' go together. Just a strange mix of ideas.
Axle of Sky and Storm - Mostly voted against. Chariot-in-a-can. Is there a mythological basis for this one? If not, it seems an odd connection to make. Also seems much more wondrous item than a weapon. A great deal of text is dealing with the chariot, not the spear.
Eremite Rod - Mostly voted for. High blood n guts factor probably cost you votes, but I mostly liked the way this worked. Choosing the ability score for evisceration damage is maybe too powerful.
Hammer of Besting - Don't remember it from voting. The effect is a little basic, but at the same time those could be some big bonuses. Probably too big.
Ephemeral Staff - voted for and against. Like the idea and the imagery, but it's too basic. Needs a cool power to seal the deal. The spell list is kind of boring too.
Staff of the Auraboros - Voted for and against. The aura capture is the star here, but it feels underdeveloped. That idea is something worth exploring and finding the right cinematics for.
Staff of the Twinned Path - Voted mostly against. I like the shifting weight, and to some extent using that to allow a second attack. But I feel like it should have done more. An extra attack with a staff is rarely going to make much difference to anything. Run with the shifting weight allowing something else. Also, the spell list feels pretty random.
Cuirass of Distortion - Voted mostly against. Didn't like that the distorted misses auto-hit the attacker. Dimension door ability doesn't feel organic. This needed some thematic tightening. I did like the flavor of colors shifting at different angles.
Energizing Breastplate - Don't remember it from voting. I don't get what this is going for. I read it and it makes sense internally, but I'm not sure why it does what it does. A better name may have cleared that up.
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Kudzu Wrap - Usually voted for. Odd that it looks like a single wooden leaf when not worn. Something using kudzu should play off kudzu's extremely fast growth rate, and this kind of does that the the 'explosion' thing. I feel like it's a power that won't come up often in play, though. Not a bad start for an item, but needs something more.
Ring of Remembrance - Usually voted against. This is just a pearl of power. It is a ring-y idea, other than that.
Clangoring Chime - Usually voted against. Not a bad idea, I think I usually voted against it because it seemed like a really annoying thing to have in a party, always making noise. Not just stealth, but walking around town would be annoying. Needs clarification on any penalties "stowed and muffled" would have on readying time.
Counter Shield - Usually voted against. Another redirecting shield, and a basic take on the idea. The concept is one that readily comes to mind, so it really needs some serious mojo to click with voters.
Vestment of the Twin Soul - Voted for and against it. Not sure it's very armor-y. The idea of increased bonding is cool, but none of the manifestations of that idea here knock it out of the park. It basically just lets the bonded roam further from each other. Needs more.
O-yoroi of the Eternal Flame - Voted for and against it. Yes, it's super-expensive. But I think its main weakness was that the really cool power is activated on death. Players just don't want to spend that kind of money for something that only works when they failed. I also think the random round later resurrection could end up being very bad situationally.
Freebooter's Longcoat - Voted for and against. Too situational. Even if you're a pirate, it's only useful in very limited circumstances of pirating. And even then, when its big moment comes...it's not a very big moment.
Dagger of Dretch Dominion - Don't remember it from voting. This is even more situational than the last item. Seems very, very niche. Seeing it's from a former Top 16'er, I'm wondering if I'm missing something.
Corpse Thicket Javelin - Mostly voted for. I like the idea of it, and the images. Does a fair amount of ongoing and removal damage. I like the implied end result of a forest of trees after a battle.
Ghastly Plate - Mostly voted against. Too basic an idea. Nice name, probably worth thinking on that name and seeing what it leads you to that's worthy of the name.
Rod of Eldritch Horror - Mostly voted against. Somewhere along the line I've picked up a personal bias against Lovecraftian items. I feel like they're trying to leverage something that isn't theirs. Probably not fair of me. In any case, if your item is "of Eldritch Horror", I have very high expectations for it to meet. This doesn't quite get there, needs more...eldritch horror. I'd also cut the gibbering mouther. I get what that's going for, but it's the kind of thing voters don't generally like.
Dreaming Star - Voted for and against. Some nice imagery, would like that same feeling to carry over to its main power. The main power feels exploitable with the permanence factor, though I appreciate you tried to limit that via gold value. But I'm nearly certain players would find ways to take advantage of it that skirted around that limit.
Lash of Wild Roses - Usually voted for. I like the flavor and fluff. Not really a fan of specifying command words, these are items anyone can make. Probably should say the only way to escape is X. There are likely other ways that should work.
Foe Stitcher - Usually voted for. Neat idea, in some ways. But overly complicated in execution. I'd drop the whole drag aspect and focus on them not being able to move further apart. In a way, that implies some of the drag aspect. Seems relatively cheap for what you could do with it.