Cloudwrangler's Gloves

[Chris Shaeffer]

Cloudwrangler's Gloves
Aura strong transmutation; CL 14th
Slot hands; Price 40,000 gp; Weight 3 lbs.
Description
Wisps of dust and moisture visibly accumulate in the air around these dark gray leather gloves. Finely embossed swirls adorn their length, giving the impression of clouds and wind.

The wearer treats creatures using gaseous form (or effects stated to be similar) as solid when touching them or making unarmed attacks and combat maneuvers.

At will as a standard action, the wearer may seize with both hands any airborne accumulation of dust, mist, smoke, or similar substances within 5 feet as if it were a cohesive physical object. This includes both mundane clouds and the effects of spells or abilities whose names contain cloud, fog, or mist. Such effects must also target an area and have neither instant nor permanent duration. The gloves offer no protection against these effects. As long as the wearer grasps the cloud, it stops moving and any wind speed requirement for dissipating it increases by two categories.

If the wearer succeeds at a Strength check with a DC equal to 12 plus 1 for every 5 feet of the cloud's radius, he may push or pull the grabbed cloud as a move action up to a distance equal to half of his speed. He may move with the cloud or remain stationary and move the cloud around him, but part of the cloud must always be within 5 feet and it cannot be rotated. The wearer may release the cloud as a free action. Upon release, the cloud will either stop moving or continue in the direction it was last moved at a rate of up to 15 feet per round, as determined by the wearer of the gloves.

Construction
Requirements Craft Wondrous Item, control weather; Cost 20,000 gp

[Clark Peterson]

Damn. Now that is a great item. That is what superstar looks like. Super-creative idea. Yes, it is a tad limited because how often do you deal with gasses. But the amazingness of the design trumps that. Manipulating the gas is a really fun idea. Well done mechanically, too. Very, very good. This is one of the top items, in my view. Very nice work!

[Wolfgang Baur]

Based on pure flavor, this is one of the coolest items I've seen in this year's entries. I'm not sure that it is really super-useful (how often do you need to move a cloud or even a stinking cloud around?).

But yeah, I love these. Vampires probably hate them.

Keep on coolness more than utility.

[Sean K Reynolds]

Flavor makes this very cool, but I'm not sure how often you'd need an item like this.

The coolness is offset by the limited utility.

[Mike Welham]

Welcome back to the Top 32, Chris!

I get a little wary when I see an item that hits the exact word limit, but you didn't waste any words in your item's description. This is a very imaginative item, and I like how you've thought out all the possibilities the gloves open up. My only complaint echoes the judges' concern, and I think the gloves' limited application makes them fairly pricy. Still, the idea of a character dragging a cloudkill behind him makes me smile.

You've been here before, so you have some idea what to expect with the contest, which should serve you well in the subsequent rounds. Keep that strong imagination going for the rest of the contest, and I believe you'll do well.

Best of luck to you!

[Tom Phillips]

First of all, congratulations on making it back into the Top 32, Chris! That in itself is a major accomplishment and it’s something you should take great pride in. You rock!

This is a cool item. It’s unique and does some fun things to the rules regarding gaseous form and the various fog and cloud spells. It also has the potential to crank up a typical combat encounter's tactical elements to 11. I absolutely love the image of a character moving a stinking cloud or acid fog spell around a battlefield. Bravo!

[Steve Miller]

Nice idea and descriptive text. Keep your clouds in place or toss aside annoying ones. Good thought put into the item, but there are still outstanding questions.
gaseous form grants a number of advantages and disadvantages. Do cloudwrangler’s gloves negate all of these when touching the misty creature?
I would have changed “within 5 feet” to “within reach.” Creatures with more than 5 ft reach would thank you. I’m confused by “includes both mundane clouds...” and “such effects must...have neither instant nor permanent duration.” Doesn’t a cloud spell with instantaneous duration essentially become a mundane cloud?

[Jacob Trier]

Chris! Way to go, man. These are awesome, and made it into my personal keep pile. I'm cheering for you all the way.

[John Bennett]

Glad to see this item made it in. My players could have used these when fighting a piscodaemon awhile back that kept casting stinking cloud on them!

[Kiel Howell]

This was my favorite item during voting. I think I saw it 10 times or so, and every single time I smiled, read the other item, and clicked Vote for Cloudwrangler's Gloves. Seriously well done and congratulations.

There is not much here to tear apart! My only super light beef is the DC of 12. At the time these gloves are affordable, DC 12 Str check just seems too easy. You didn't have the word count to get into it, but DC's based on what they were trying to move would have been cool to me.

Anyways, congrats again and great job!

[Thomas LeBlanc]

Congrats Chris! This was one of my favorites during the voting!

[Maurice de Mare]

Your item was the first or second item I read which was truly superstar, it's good to see you and it here.

[Chris Shaeffer]

You like me. You really like me! :')

I'm going to refrain from responding to your questions right away so I can do them all at once. But keep them coming! I really appreciate all you guys (and ladies!) so much.

And a special shout out to Anthony Adam (and by extension, Template Fu)! He's one of my secret critiquing buddies. :)

[Paul Brown]

Awesome! I didn't see it while voting. I want to push a cloudkill at someone.

[Orthos]

I remember being rather underwhelmed with these the first time I saw them, then every further encounter going "wait, whoa" and eventually upvoting it nearly every time I saw the name. Well played sir.

[Garrett Guillotte]

I loved this item and voted for it both times I saw it. It's pure cinema; it's not very useful on first blush, but it's so well done that as a GM I'd find ways to make it useful, and that's Superstar enough for me.

This is up there with last year's spell-punching gauntlets in sheer fun. I'm waiting for AM BARBARIAN to show up and ground-pound some mist spells.

[Chris Shaeffer]

I'm not going to say that Spellbreaker Gauntlets didn't cross my mind at least a few (hundred) times when I wrote it. :p

[Matthew Duval]

This was one of my favorite items I saw when voting. A real boon for and against controller casters. Well done!

[CHEERS]

Very nice item I saw it quite a bit and it did well in most pairings. Looking forward to your archetype.

[Jeff Lee]

Chris,

I was hoping your item would make it in just by the sheer "rule of cool" factor it has. It ranked in my own personal top 32. I must play with a lot more dickish GMs than most because I don't exactly see these as limited use. We get gassed a lot, and this is a novel way to deal with the issue. Congratulations!

[James Conder]

Cool! I never came across this one during the voting rounds, but I love it! Wonderfully evocative idea.

[Effie Schwartz-Craighill]

Yes, Glove Bros!

This item is awesome. Seems a unanimous sentiment :)

[Jacob W. Michaels]

Congrats, Chris. Good to see someone from last year's run get another chance. These were one of my favorite items. Just thought they were really cool. Sure, you don't always run up against clouds and whatnot, but still, you're going to want these when you do.

Chris Shaeffer wrote:

You like me. You really like me! :')

Heh. That's exactly what I was going to say if I got back in.

[Neil Spicer]

Well done, Chris. You've achieved the rare back-to-back selection for Top 32. So, there's no doubt that you've got the mojo down for wondrous item submissions. Make sure you apply all the lessons you learned last year and keep swinging for the fences. Best of luck to you!

[James Olchak]

It's good. I'm not sure of all the functionality, here, but being able to push around the poison gas-cube left behind by an Iron Golem seals it for me. I also get a little of the "Pecos Bill" vibe from the name. Recommended.

[Wild Gazebo]

This is a very impressive item. Congrats!

[Charlie Bell]

This was the only item I can recall seeing while voting about which I was in no doubt whatsoever that it would be Top 32. I told all my gaming buddies about this one.

What an awesome item. Finally a way to keep those pesky cloudkills from wandering off all on their own. Also handy for when the bad guys just walk out of your clouds, thinking they can simply carry on. But "NEGATIVE," say you, cloudwrangler!

[Tels]

I never saw this item during voting, but I wish I had. This is just a genuinely fun and neat item and I look forward to more from you in the future.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Wow, I actually wasn't expecting this positive of a response. I see so many potential issues with the things since I've been mulling on it so long! Thanks so much. :D

Before I get all into addressing your comments, I think I'll do what I did last year and give you some insight to my inspiration and design process this time around. It might even answer some of your questions:

Inspiration:

Last year when I read over the rules, I literally looked at the first thing in front of me (a bottle of cologne) and went, "Yeah, that'll work."

It wasn't quite so easy this year. One day in the Fall, I came upon a curled up slug and thought, "If that were a magic ring, it would do something like..."

That fired me up for the coming competition, but I hate TRYING to get inspired. I'd rather it just come to me in a flash of insight. So it wasn't until almost 2 weeks into December, I was at my stove staring into space at my kettle... Kettle. Kettle! I had an idea for a kettle-based item that you could boil different substances in to make cloud-like effects (I'll post it on my blog and the boards later), which was actually quite cool! But halfway through making it, it dawned on me:

Why is there no reliable way of moving cloud-like effects around? Wouldn't it be cool if you could just... grab 'em?

Things just went from there.

Brainstorm File:

Whenever I design something, I just open a blank notepad file and unload, no matter how disjointed or ridiculous some of it is. Anything related, I just go for it.

Chris' Brain wrote:

Cloudwrangler's Gloves

Grab cloud or fog effect as standard, drag as move, release as free. Bonus to saving throws against spells with cloud or fog in the name.

Wow. That's actually my whole brainstorming file. So much for that insight. I must have just jumped into writing the item after that. Well, the brainstorming for my other item is much more involved. I'll show you that later. Another thing I DID do for the gloves was go through the entire spell list to search for spells that could be possibly be affected, and then also did a search on gaseous form to see what monsters have effects similar to it (the answer: quite a few).

Foreseen Uses:

I figured they could be used for:

- Monks and Unarmed Fighters vs. creatures in Gaseous Form/ Scorching Ash Form, etc.
- People that want to ride cloud/mist dragons in Gaseous Form (arguably. I decided not to address this directly and leave it up to GM discretion)
- As protection against Cloud/Mist/Fog spells or Alchemists' bombs
- As an enhancement to use with Cloud/Mist/Fog spells or Alchemists' bombs
- As a method of stealth for use in conjunction with fog spells (get in the middle of a fog cloud and approach the castle walls! Or what-have-you)
- For fun effects like tugging at candle smoke and the like

And the affected spells I found that met my criteria were:
- Acid Fog
- Mind Fog
- Solid Fog
- Fog cloud
- Cloudkill
- Euphoric Cloud
- Incendiary Cloud
- Stinking Cloud
- Blood Mist
- Haunting Mists
- Obscuring Mist
- NOT Vitriolic Mist (it targets a single creature, not an area. Once again, as GM I might allow it somehow, but it's difficult to say what moving the effect would entail...)

And arguably these...? I decided to leave them out:
- Whirlwind
- Sand Whirlwind

Issues in Hindsight & Other Considerations:

- Can you use it to climb clouds or catch onto clouds when falling? That's not what I intended, but why might a gaseous form creature be mountable if other clouds can't support a character in a similar way? This makes me lean against the possibility of riding such creatures.
- Just how dense does a cloud have to be to be manipulated? How do you distinguish a "cloud" when there might be a bunch of other "clouds" nearby and perhaps somewhat connected to it? (I assume that if there is a general haze or fog, its radius pretty much makes it impossible to move, but it does bring up the next question...)
- So wait, you can just stop any cloud without any checks whatsoever? No matter how big it is? Maybe the Strength check should apply to the initial "grappling" of the cloud, with movement being without checks, or maybe have checks for both.
- It's costly. I always tend to go overboard with that...
- 3 pounds is really heavy for leather gloves. I wanted them to be pretty thick, but 1 or 2 pounds would have matched up better with already-existing items (and my own image of them).
- In my post-submission edits, I did actually change "within 5 feet" to "within reach".
- I wondered if maybe the maximum speed of the cloud after releasing it should have also been half the wearer's speed. Or up to the distance the wearer moved that round, if you think of it as momentum. But then you have level 20 Monks hurling the damn things at a speed of 180 feet per round, which is... well, kind of awesome, actually!
- I wavered a bit on making the base DC of moving it 12 or 14, but I went with 12 because I wanted Wizards to actually have a shot of pushing their own spells around. Remember, most cloud/fog/mist spells have a radius of 20 feet, so that brings the 12 up to a 16. But if you had, say, a widened blood mist spell, it would have a radius of 120 feet, which makes the DC 32.

When it comes down to it, I just hope that someday, someone out there uses these to rip the pesh smoke right out of some bad guy's nostrils. :)

[Reckless]

Congratulations on making the top 32! This was one of the items in my personal keep file and I look forward to seeing your efforts in round 2.

[Oceanshieldwolf]

Interesting item. I saw it a number of times and dismissed it as "sounds cool, but perhaps too situational". Guess I'm wrong! Happy to be wrong too!

I loved your brainstorm file - a lot of my items/abilities/ideas/archetypes start ou like that, sometimes just a few sentences to inspire myself later when I make a concerted writing pass. Your Foressen Uses, spells affected and Issues in Hindsight show you are really cranking the mechanical gears and teasing out the flavor. Riding cloud dragons! But of course!!!

Well done, Chris - quite an achievement two years running with two very different judging/voting methods. Keep on!

[Joel Flank]

This is pretty cool, I'm a sucker for items that let you manipulate spells in unusual ways. For the limited utility of a fairly narrow group of effects, I'd have knocked the price down to something in the teens probably, but otherwise, wouldn't change a thing.

[Nicholas Herold]

Two years in a row! Very impressive! I got an Avatar: the Last Airbender visual from this item, which endeared it to me instantly.

Congratulations, and I'll see you in Round 2!

[Dan Jones]

This really reminded me of my Claw of the Crawling Spell from last year.

[Chris Shaeffer]

Dan Jones wrote:

This really reminded me of my Claw of the Crawling Spell from last year.

Oh yeah, I took a hard look at that, Dan. Believe me. You're directly responsible for my "can't be rotated" line!

I guess where our items diverge is that mine can only be used on cloud effects, while yours is magical area effects in general. Also, mine interacts with mundane clouds and those gaseous form creatures, and I'm pretty sure your item could be used from a certain distance away.

But yeah, definite parallels! Yours was a good item to compare to. It might be fun to have the items "face off" somehow in play.

[Template Fu]

As prior entries will tell you, Template Fu is one mean point eating machine, but will also praise where praise is due.

These reviews being this in depth usually take me a while to do and they get fitted in around other demands on my time, so please bear with me if I haven’t gotten to your item yet. I will get there in the end.

There are a couple of feedback categories that are easy to score high on as I do like everyone to get a good grade somewhere, conversely, there are also some categories that will sting everyone – you have been warned ;)

Review Caveat: I try to keep things totally dispassionate and all comments herein are my own. Having not made the illustrious levels that you have achieved this year, I can only caveat that anything I propose in feedback may not be totally in line with what Paizo thinks or needs of its freelance game designers, so do consider carefully any and all feedback I make under this light.

I start your review with…

Congratulations on being selected by the public at large and then the stalwart judges!

Review Breakdown:

Template: 5/5
Hungry! Staying Hungry!

This is good, used italics in the right places including the spell reference in the description itself – sure signs that you did some research on the template – big props and 5 out of 5!

Spelling: 5/5
Everyone should know to use US English, so you just know that I am going to eat points for stray ‘u’ letters and similar.

Template Fu falls asleep with nothing to eat here!

Readability: 5/5
For me, I believe the rule system target comprehension level is 11 year olds and up, so I have included this to review everyone’s entry using the MS Word Grammar scoring system, which measures passivity, and the reading scores that determine age comprehension. Then using my self appointed expectation of target comprehension level, I have tried to score everyone consistently in this category as it is an area whereby I can mathematically deduce a score.[/i]

Passive Sentences 16% (very well done)
There are whole threads on this and it is possible to get 0%, which is wicked, but I would expect scores of less than 20% to be around the ideal mark for item descriptions (sometimes, you need the passive, but only rarely).

Flesch Reading Ease 61.3 (no points deducted for 60+!)
(0-30 best understood by university graduates, 60-70 easily understood by 13-15 year olds, 90-100 easily understood by 11 year olds)

Flesh-Kincaid Grade Level 10.3 (good, I start docking points from 11 and up)
(This equates to the grades found in the US schooling system, e,g. 8.2 means it should be understandable by the average 8th grade student)

Me as a Designer Review: 4/5
Evocative start, I liked this description straight away and could easily picture them in my mind’s eye. You may have been able to merge both sentences with a bit of re-working and saved a few words, but I am only saying this because when reading the text aloud, there is a distinct focus shift between the two sentences that almost acts as a speed bump if that makes sense.

I did wonder of paragraph two about the touching aspect, if you are wearing these items and a cloud forms around you, does it instantly come under your sway or do you have to actively reach out to it?

The default item activation action is a standard action, so most often, you don’t need to state it is a standard action, you need only state when it isn’t.

I really loved that if the cloud had negative effects, that the gloves didn’t provide protection against them, so that acid cloud would indeed still hurt you. But then the designer within said, wouldn’t touching an acid cloud wear away at the leather gloves? So I did wonder if some sort of stats for the gloves should have been provided to cover for this eventuality.

I then thought about the solid aspect, if you are at the centre of a cloud effect when it appears due to spell casting, and for you it is treated as solid, can you still move through the cloud? This question is pretty guaranteed to arise in game play. I think this is due to the use of the word solid, had the word been something like tangible, I might have been ok on this.

The rest of the rules made sense, but I didn’t get why it couldn’t be rotated – if I were standing beside the cloud at a corner, holding that corner, why shouldn’t I be able to walk in a circle turning the cloud? I think if you could have rotated the cloud and thus changed its direction for release, that would have been cooler but that’s just me.

Template Fu happily dines on the single point meal the game play questions provided.

Overall Impression: 5/5
There was excellent attention and execution of the template indeed (so much so, I privately hope some of it came from reading my template thread from last year, one can but hope).

The name was illustrative and very evocative and would look good on a character sheet, I wish I were as good at naming as this.

Another very close to a perfect entry for me, so I am going to give you 5/5 for the overall impression and feel of this entry. Ohhh look, you dropped only a single point in my review process this year – very impressive indeed.

Final Score: 24/25
I won’t give a final score comment as I haven’t reviewed all the items in this detail yet, I suggest that if it interests, you can watch as I progress through the items to see your final placement in my review scoring system.

Closing, as I started…

Congratulations on being selected!

[Andrew Marlowe]

Congratulations I was pretty sure we'd see your item here in the top 32 while I was voting, its clever and fun. Best of luck going forward, I am looking forward to your round two archetype.

[RonarsCorruption]

Chris, congratulations on making it in. Your item in particular makes me super jealous, because it's extremely similar to my own orb of mists from last year that didn't make the cut, right down to it affecting "spells or abilities whose names contain cloud, fog, or mist."

Still, similarities aside, your item is very clearly better than mine was, so good on you. I'm just going to be jealous over here. ;)

[Coridan]

TBH, I could never see my players choosing this item over another item. It is kind of neat, but at 40k, I woukd rather just a couple of scrolls of gust of wind to deal with the occasional cloud spell.

[agirlnamedbob]

Congrats on making it to the Top 32! I'm really stunned because I don't remember seeing this item during voting...but reading it, it does sort of ring a bell like maybe I saw it really early on and then not again? ...Regardless, I'm quite fond of it. I agree that it really ramps up the coolness factor.

To me, it really feels like an item that's as useful as the player using it is creative. If I find this item or buy it for a character, I'm going to come up with as many ways I can take advantage of it as possible. But I'm something of an item hoarder, and I love finding as many uses as possible for things, so I that's where I'm coming from.

Good luck next round! I hope you bring the same coolness factor to the table with your archetype. :)

[Richard Moore]

I saw this item several times in pairings and voted for it about 50% of the time that it came up. It is very creative and solidly written. The mechanics were a bit fiddly for my tastes, though. I think it would be a pain to use at the table at first, but once a player and his/her GM got used to the math, that problem would likely fade away. I also agree that its value is somewhat diminished by the limited situations in which it will see any use.

This is a great start, but I think you'll need to ramp things up next round to stay in the game.

[PhineasGage]

Such cool factor! I can imagine entire combat strategies based around fog cloud with these gloves and yet they'd be hard to abuse. This is exactly what I think about when I consider a "superstar" wondrous item. Well done!

[frank gori]

The good: Awesome flavor, interesting utility, no serious flaws in format and good description.

The Bad: No Limits on Use!

The Ugly: I would love it if this included ways to interact with wind effects. I could see usaing these to say batterdown a windwall or move it either would further amp up the cool factor for me, especially at the price!

OVerall nice work and Congraqts on makign top 32!

[George Cunningham]

Love this one - no question that its superstar! Really evocative description and effect.

Great job!

[Curaigh]

Congratulations Chris and back-to-back: Nice!

On one hand these gloves seem to do a lot. On another they seem very limited to spells. But my warforged mage needs these. In the end I think you played the balance nicely.

suggestions for R2: bring a similar mix of balance and mojo.

Congratulations and nice job!

[Thunderbuckets]

Tight, smart, makes a complicated concept simple, and immediately useful and understandable. Best item of R1 for me, both during voting and out of the top 32. In voting, actually, this was the only item I was 100% sure it would make it through.

It's also proof for the Rule of Awesome that Clark mentioned on another thread. A lot of the now-posted top 89 were simple little gizmos that would make a book of magic items, but lacking significant mojo for superstardom. I was worried about the definition of the contest changing. And then I realized that the dozen items I had picked that overlapped the top tier proved it was possible to have a major spark of mojo coupled with mass appeal. The secret is just to do better. To me, the Cloudwrangler's Gloves are the epitome of that concept. Exceptional job.

Also, control weather is the best possible prerequisite spell here.

[Giorgios Abate]

This item is incredibly creative, flavorful, and AWESOME!
There is this female monk on a campaign I'm running as GM, I can totally picture her face when she gets her hands on something like this.

AWESOME! Congratulations, and good luck on the next round Chris!

[Kent T.]

Very neat item, but at 4.000 players would use it, at 40.000 it's a sure sell.

As someone else said, Control wind scrolls.

Price is a major factor for wonderous items, which makes so many items converted directly from 3.5 close to useless.

In 3.5 they figured it out, and made the Magic Item Compendium, with more reasonably priced items. Some people would actually use, instead of just +X to stat item.