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Alturmentis
🕑 Added 2023-11-30 16:00:05 +0000 UTCGreetings adventurers!
A dwarf wandered into our shop stinking something fierce and obviously intoxicated. He opined for a few moments about lost comrades and something about a whole party of them. I felt a little bad for the chap as he’d obviously been through the wringer. I invited him in for some water and to at least humor his story. He told me of a creature that lurked below the surface with the power to alter minds and shape them to its will. I had never heard of such a beast, but I was intrigued. It was then that he produced this from his belt. A menacing skull mounted to a wooden handle forming a brutal mace. He told me I could keep it as it brought only pain. I let him sleep off the hangover upstairs, but by the next more he was gone leaving only the mace behind.
Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play for D&D and Pathfinder 2E. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.
If that strikes your fancy, consider becoming a Patron
Design notes from Matthew:
I have to mention it every time, but I absolutely love making creature and item pairs that go together like this. It’s one of my absolute FAVORITE things to do. There’s just something fascinating about taking the mechanics of a beast and distilling them down to work for an item you would actually be fine to give your players. The creative exercise is a great one for folks that are new to creating magic items. Try writing something that adapts a creature ability to an item. I think you’ll learn a lot.
In 5E there’s a longstanding tradition that people often don’t modify the damage type of weapons, but I’ve always found that kind of silly. I want people to have choices when it comes to their interactions even if that interaction is as straightforward as a bonk on the head. In this case, you can learn something about those that you give a firm bonk to. I had to give it a limit of once a day for the payoff part of this as charm is extremely powerful. It kind of puts the brakes on a fight and lets you pick targets, so it needed some limits.
For the PF2E version of it, there was an option of doing something with charm as well, but I’ve found the mechanics for disposition to be a bit too granular for what I’d want to bring in for an item. I went instead with a more straightforward stun and allowed it to be used more times per day to compensate for the power difference from what I had in mind. Remember you can force a lot of things in PF2E, but you’re much better off just working with the system.
This is our last release for November and on this very day we’re heading to Philadelphia for PAX Unplugged. If you’d like to come join us, you can find us at the Tom Cartos booth #4300 on Friday and Saturday and roaming the floor Sunday. We’ll have some swag to give out and will be happy to meet folks that stop by! We look forward to seeing you there.
We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more.
Rewards for Patrons!
Kraken's Kollaborators ($10 Tier)
Keep your head about you,
- Fernando & Matthew
