Flustering Blouse
Flustering blouse
Aura faint enchantment; CL 1st
Slot: chest Price 20,000 gp; Weight -
Description
This lavishly decorated silk shirt is ostentatious beyond any reasonable taste. Consisting of bountiful ruffles and unnecessary gold thread stitching, it draws the attention of those around it. Enemies adjacent to you who can see you (and are not immune to mind-affecting effects) are subject to the following:
- They take a -4 penalty on perception checks to notice creatures other than you.
- They take a -4 penalty on attacks of opportunity against creatures other than you.
- They are flat footed against creatures who are flanking with you.
While wearing this shirt you take a -4 penalty to your stealth checks. You gain a +4 bonus on bluff checks to feint, and as part of making such a check, you can use the result to create a diversion for an ally to hide in addition to the normal effects. This allows an ally to attempt a stealth check, provided they do so before the target of the feint takes their next turn.
Construction Requirements
Craft Wondrous Item, hypnotism, lock gaze; Cost 10,000 gp
COMMENTS FROM THE JUDGES:
JACOB: First of all, congratulations; welcome to the Top 16 of the very first DesignFinder! This was a fun item, which deftly toes the line (for me, at least) between being neat and being a little too whimsical. My ostentatious swashbuckler character would absolutely wear something like this.
In terms of template and style, there are a few small errors: You don’t need a colon after slot, and Requirements should be on the next line (Construction stands by itself). More important, any skills (Perception, Stealth, Bluff) are capitalized. Magic items typically don’t use second person so everyone this says “you” should probably say “the wearer” or something along those lines. Also, it looks like you have hyphens where you’re indicating a penalty; these should actually be en-dashes. There’s a great breakdown of these that Sean K. Reynolds wrote in 2012 (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p4ke?How-to-properly-use-dashes-in-text). They’re probably not necessarily something the average layperson will notice, but your developer will love you for using the right ones. More discussion on that can be found in a 2015 thread (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rz29?What-the-heck-is-an-en-dash#1)
KATE: I absolutely love the phrase “ostentatious beyond any reasonable taste.” I like how the author took one core concept (this item is distractingly gaudy), and thought through many implications of that, without leaning too heavily on the specific effects of the spells in the construction requirements. This is a vivid, fun, and strongly thematic item.
There are a few issues not with basic spelling or grammar, but with writing consistently with Pathfinder magic item styles. Although spells and feats use second person, magic items use third person. I also would have written things out in paragraph style, rather than using bullet points. I can see that Jacob just linked to some good resources, and I think that familiarity with those conventions would take this to the next level. The creativity and thoughtfulness to make cool magic items are already there!
MIKE: This is a fun item, with specific effects that apply directly to adjacent creatures. You presented evocative imagery with this item and I can really see how this would work in combat (or even non-combat) situations. The penalty to Stealth makes sense, since it’s hard not to draw attention to the wearer, and I liked the addition of using it to create a distraction for an ally. Jacob and Kate hit the highlights for presentation, and I don’t have anything to add. It was not enough to detract from a creative item.
Congratulations and welcome to the top 16!
REP: Congratulations! This is fun without being a joke, backed by solid theming and consistent mechanics, and is moreover definitely something I’ve not seen before in a magic item. Well done! While I have become wary of an item with too many drawbacks as well as benefits, the mechanics here make sense, are balanced, and suit the item. Moreover, I LOVE that this item basically encourages teamwork, and I have a few “flanking buddy” bard characters that would willingly bear the risks of wearing this shirt to assist their allies. The flanking buddy issue is however oddly where I worry about one of the effects--rendering a flanked foe flatfooted to the other opponent feels powerful, but I understand that is also why the item has drawbacks. Template is good and is reasonably polished and proofread (though FYI, skills are capitalized).
Comments
I like that this shirt is so distracting and the ways that translates mechanically avoid if from being spell-in-a-can. Providing a distraction so others can hide is a great use and the item's best ability. The others are not very exciting or are confusing. Flanking and flat-footed are a rogue's best position, so it took me a couple read-throughs to gather what advantages this offers outside of sneak attack. But denying attacks-of-opportunities, denying Dex to AC as well as a +2 to hit, goes a bit far into swiss-army-knife territory for me.
The description gives plenty of concrete images and yet lets me (the reader) decide just how many ruffles are bountiful and how much stitching is unnecessary. It is a nice balance that really draws the reader in.