abyssalbrews

Putrefaction

Added 2024-02-01 16:00:10 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

Those who deal in dark magics often do so in shrouded caves or deep within long forgotten crypts far away from the prying eyes of the public. Seeking to twist and pervert the very fabric of the magics we rely on leads them to studies of disease, sickness, necromancy, and many other dark persuasions. When this everburning torch smelling slightly of death showed up on my counter and the robed figure in front of me seemingly desperate to get rid of it, I knew I had something interesting in my hands. Now, normally I wouldn’t just show this to any client, but you seem to be a person with discerning tastes.

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Design notes from Matthew:

Sometimes I get a spark of inspiration and I’m able to bang out several ideas in a short amount of time. This whole month of releases in fact was conceived in one day. Now, I didn’t do all of the writing on that same day, but all of the ideas came from one session. That’s a bit rare, but that’s how my brain tends to function. I’ve always loved the idea of breath weapons and I wanted there to be more options to add that sort of thing to multiple characters. The first thing that started me down the line of a torch was firebreathers. It became quite obvious that a torch would be a great venue to add a type of breath weapon.

For the 5E version, we have a bit less granularity with degrees of success, but with that came the opportunity to utilize a condition I don’t often feel right applying, poisoned. It’s a very powerful condition and something that you need to offer ways out of if you’re going to apply it. That’s why I added the somewhat limited duration and the ability to repeat saves at the end of turns. Additionally, the once per day note keeps it balanced, though still quite powerful. Some additional necrotic damage makes it an interesting off hand to keep around.

For PF2E, the 4 stages of success and failure allowed me to open up some more interesting possibilities. With this being a once a day frequency, I wanted to make sure people would get value out of it still. That’s why I made even basic success have an effect. If you’re sacrificing a once a day and using two actions, it needs to have some impact. The failure states also needed to be quite powerful though obviously in fitting with the level of the item.

We’re into February now and humorously, though this is the shortest month of the year, it’s also a five item month for us due to the leap year and the way that Thursdays fall on the calendar. We haven’t missed a Thursday release in 112 weeks and we’re not about to start now. We look forward to bringing you the rest of them!

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