abyssalbrews

Pellar's Purse

Added 2022-06-09 16:01:04 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

Wizards of the world are always flitting back and forth with the flights of fancy and fanciful flying. They rarely have time to get down to the nitty gritty of dictation. It can be such a chore when all you want to do is spend the day casting instead of copying texts and practicing somatic gestures. Thankfully, some enterprising individuals have come up with a way to relieve you of such a burden with a Pellar’s Purse.

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. 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’ve expressed before that I have an absolute affinity toward uncommon items simply because they require me to think outside of power and get into utility. That’s one of my favorite spaces to design in. I know it doesn’t get the big, flashy fancy of some +2 sword with bloodied roses, but I still think uncommons are really neat. The nice part as well is that you can give them out relatively early with little problem.

I knew from the start I wanted this to be a component pouch that could copy spells on the go. I’ve heard the complaint before that some folks don’t offer a lot of downtime in their campaigns and because of that, wizards can often end up without time to convert those spell scrolls into their actual book. Really the only thing stopping you from doing that is time spent sitting around, so I wanted to create something for active wizards that may not get that time.

I had to spend a bit of time reminding myself of the spell copying rules. For instance, I had completely forgotten about the arcana check to do it successfully. When I saw that, I knew I had another small point of power for this item.

Fernando and I are also huge fans of giving items something fun and quirky that will come in handy, but not necessarily be obviously useful all of the time. That was the kind of “copy machine” functionality at the end here. I could see it being used to do all kind of things from forgery to simply handing out copies of notes to everyone in the party. There’s a ton of utility that can be unlocked with a magical copy machine.

Illustration notes from Fernando:

It’s relatively easy to illustrate a cool looking sword because the base item is already exciting, it’s more of a challenge to illustrate something like a backpack, or a satchel and make it look exciting, fun, utilitarian, and recognizable as part of the AB Universe.

One way to make an item like this exciting is to go the Rob Liefeld route and add a bunch of pouches! Different sizes, colors, textures, but each pouch comes with a sense of mystery and wonder “What’s in it? What would I put in it?”

Another key trick is to play with color, contrast, and texture. I made the scroll case, for instance, have a cool texture that is a mix between abstract art and arcane runes; I also gave it a bit of gold/brass to highlight its importance. When illustrating any type of bag or backpack my approach is always to think “If this was my bag, what would I put in it, how many pockets and pouches do I want it to have? How would I want to carry it?”

Part of Matthew’s brief was to have a spellbook in the main compartment, I don’t know why, my go-to color for spellbooks is always red, but it blended too much with the already reddish color of the bag’s leather so I switched it to blue and it works infinitely better!

We hope you love this new fashion accessory for the active wizard. I was really enamored by this idea and I’m so glad we were able to make it and get it into your hands. I hope it finds its way to the shoulder of many a wizard in your campaigns.

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