abyssalbrews

Butterfly Effect

Added 2022-08-25 16:01:07 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

While the dagger itself may seem beautiful with its swirling butterfly pattern around it, it’s impossible to deny the deadly nature of it. The juxtaposition of looks and the brutality it is capable of were quite a contrast to us as we became more aware of its abilities. The adventurers that brought it to us said that a horrible creature capable of manipulating time itself wielded this deadly blade. Now it can be yours.

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Design notes from Matthew:

Designing things that work over time is always a challenge in balancing. You have to take a lot of care in your decision making as it’s possible to let things run away from you very quickly if you aren’t paying attention to the stacking capabilities.

I find when working with mechanics like that, it’s best to just focus on one mechanic for the item. Sometimes I like putting forward things that offer multiple options for the players, but in certain circumstances, it’s important to just key in on the crux of what the item actually does and execute that well. Whether you’re able to succeed at that or not really sets the tone for the rest of the item.

In this case, I was extremely focused on making sure we didn’t blow out any damage thresholds with it. While designing it, I had to add a lot of language to make sure that the players couldn’t manipulate the amount of scars forming in any other way that time. It’s surprisingly difficult to do that in the technical language of the system funnily enough.

Also I ran across a last minute problem when I realized that if the attack did no damage, someone could do this to an unaware person completely. That wouldn’t really fly for me, so I had to add a bit detailing that the person was aware of the scars. Overall this was a challenging piece to creature, but in the end it came out well.

I’m sure the rogues in parties will be clamoring to get their hands on this dagger, but honestly I can see a lot of other classes that could benefit from it as a side piece. Stacking damage over time on a big creature could definitely help a lot of encounters move along. It’s just about keeping the party alive long enough to make it worthwhile compared to your normal attacks.

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