Cloak of Ugliness

[TheLe]

I was working on my new book, 17 Magic Cloaks & Capes, and I thought I would share with you my latest creation:

Cloak of Ugliness
This Cloak flickers with a green, red, and blue glow normally, but this glow ends when it is worn. As long as the owner is wearing this cloak, his face will become deformed and grotesque, effectively lowering his Charisma score by 3. However, all is not lost. Three times per day as a standard action, the wearer of this Cloak may attempt an Ugly Strike (Su) with a touch attack. Upon a successful strike, the recipient will be drained of 1 charisma point for two hours, while the wearer will gain 1 charisma point for that same amount of time. Furthermore, as the wearer becomes more seasoned, he will be able to use this Ugly Strike to drain other abilities, but doing so will still only grant him extra charisma. A creature may only have 1 ability point of any kind drained this way every two hours daily. If the wearer misses an Ugly Strike, that attempt will have been used up for the day.

The following chart describes the type of abilities that can be drained, and the minimum level required for it.

Table: Ugly Strike
Min Level / Ability Drained
1 / Charisma
3 / Wisdom
6 / Intelligence
9 / Fortitude
12 / Strength
16 / Dexterity



There you go. Unfortunately I am horrible at writing Creation Costs and Market Value, so I will leave it up to all of you (I hire someone else to write that portion for me)

Thoughts? Opinions?

The Le Games, we enhance your world.

 

[DreamChaser]

by Fortitude, i assume you mean Constitution. it should be the last one because it is the truly deadly one.

Second, do you mean drain or damage? this is very important, as one is permanent and the other is not. What you are describing is a penalty, not a drain (which is permanent) or damage (which comes back at 1 point per day).

Third, this is just asking for abuse of a stat that is already a dump stat for many melee characters. What does a half-orc barbarian care if his Charisma drops by 3? But the chance to ability damage someone is great.

Overall, i think it is an interesting concept but needs work.

DC

 

[Bront]

Interesting idea, a cloak that's powers depend on the user's level. Problem is that a low level character won't likely have it.

Also, con damage is very nasty. I like how it comes back after 2 hours though, and only one point isn't too bad.

My suggestion, is create 6 different cloak, one for each ability score, make it damage (so it heals), and have each point last one day (so it fades like the damage heals). Since, with 3 uses, you can't drain more than 3 points per day, it's not deadly unless you're fighting something with 3 con.

 

[TheLe]

Thanks!

Excellent points. Thanks. I just wrote it today and have not gone through it a second time yet.

Yes it should be con and not Fort. And yes it should be the last one. I was not aware that "drain" is permanent -- I will reword it accordingly, thanks.

I worded it so that you can only use it successfully once against a given creature every 2 hours -- so you can not deal ability damage 3 times to it in a single battle (well, unless it is a really long battle). It is more useful against 3 different creatures.

So, although con damage is very nasty, they can really only do it once to that big creature they are fighting. Not to mention they might miss their attack roll.

I try to balance it as best as possible.

Although I considered making 6 different cloaks, I thought a single unified cloak would be more interesting, and allows it to scale up a little better.

~Le

 

[Bront]

Cool, sounds good. The scaling is a little odd, but it works. I can't think of a better mechanic to get it to work better other than use magic device, which is class limiting to a point.

I might suggest having it do 2 points of damage instead of one, and the user only gets one. 2 points of damage means that it acctualy will hurt an opponent, while 1 is only 50/50. Just a random thought.

 

[TheLe]

Cool, sounds good. The scaling is a little odd, but it works. I can't think of a better mechanic to get it to work better other than use magic device, which is class limiting to a point.

I might suggest having it do 2 points of damage instead of one, and the user only gets one. 2 points of damage means that it acctualy will hurt an opponent, while 1 is only 50/50. Just a random thought.

That is funny you should say that, because I was thinking of the opposite -- deal 1 point of ability damage, while the wearer gains 2 points of charisma. this way, he may want to smack three of his allies for +6 to charisma (+3 total since he is penalized initially).

In anycase, using your method would work too -- but do you think 2 points of ability damage is balanced? That seems awfully powerful.

`Le

 

[Bront]

Ray of enfieblement is a 1st level spell that does 1D6+lv/2 str damage. 2 points per hit is nothing.

Also, the way I read it, if you drain another ability, you gain that ability score. If you only gain charisma, that's a different issue entirely (and then 2 points of damage is definately in order).

 

[wuyanei]

Very interesting concept, but the legalese needs some work. I suggest you phrase the cloak as:

'As long as the owner is wearing this cloak, his face will become deformed and grotesque, imposing a -3 penalty to his charisma score.'

and

'Upon a successful strike, the target of the strike suffers a 1-point charisma penalty for two hours, while the wearer gains a +1 bonus to his charisma for the same duration.'

However, IMHO, a meager -1 ability penalty is not worth wasting a standard-action on. I suggest that the '-3 penalty to his charisma score' be changed to:

'-3 penalty to all Charisma checks and Charisma-based skill checks'

and the effect of the Ugly Strike be changed to:

'Upon a successful strike, the target of the strike suffers a 2-point charisma penalty for two hours, while the wearer gains a +1 bonus to to all Charisma checks and Charisma-based skill checks for the same duration. The penality to ability scores caused by a Cloak of Ugliness stacks with itself, but not with any other penalty to ability scores. The penalty due to a Cloak of Ugliness cannot reduce any ability score below 1.'

The first change is so that sorcerers, bards and spell-like ability users can still cast spells effectively, even while all social skills suffer what amounts to a -6 penalty to Charisma. Sorcerers have their spells based on their inner personality, not on their looks, so being hideously ugly should not weaken their spells anyways. (Bards still suffer when using their Bard song, ie. Performance skill.)

The second is simply to give the cloak a minimum of bite. It's still nothing compaired to RoE, though. And by the time you reach 16 char lvl, save or die spells are flying like hail anyways.

 

[yennico]

I totally agree with wuyanei ´s changes.

D&D favors even numbers. -1 to an attribute reduces the bonus by this attribute only if the number is even.
So increase the penalty of the cloak to -4 and the damage to an attribute to -2.

It´s an interesting and new concept that you tie abilities of the cloak to the level of the wearer. It is a new mechanic.
I would change the attributes to:
1 charisma
3 strength
6 intelligence
9 wisdom
12 dexterity
16 constitution

 

[TheLe]

Thanks!

Thank you all for the wonderful comments. I have made the changes you suggested. Here is the new and hopefully final draft:



Cloak of Ugliness
This Cloak flickers with a green, red, and blue glow normally, but this glow ends when it is worn. As long as the owner is wearing this cloak, his face will become deformed and grotesque, effectively imposing a –4 penalty to all charisma checks and charisma-based skill checks. However, all is not lost. Three times per day as a standard action, the wearer of this Cloak may attempt a Ugly Strike (Su) with a touch attack. Upon a successful strike, the recipient of the strike takes 1-point of temporary charisma damage, which lasts for two hours, while the wearer of the cloak gains a +1 bonus to all charisma checks and charisma-based skill checks for the same duration. While this charisma bonus stacks with itself, a given creature may only be affected by this Strike once per two hours.

If the wearer of the Cloak of Ugliness is 7th level or higher, his Ugly Strike will deal 2 points of ability damage rather than 1, but his charisma bonus does not change.

Furthermore, as the wearer becomes more seasoned, he will be able to use this Ugly Strike to deal ability damage to other attributes, but doing so will still only grant him charisma bonuses. If the wearer misses an Ugly Strike, that attempt will have been used up for the day.

Using Ugly Strike cannot cause an ability score to drop below 1.

The following chart describes the type of abilities that can be drained, and the minimum level required for it.

Table: Ugly Strike

Level/Ability
1 Charisma
3 Strength
6 Intelligence
7 +2 ability damage
9 Wisdom
12 Dexterity
16 Constitution



I realize that my items are a bit unorthodox in nature, but I am really trying to re-invent the wheel here. And I really like scaling things up so that the players have something to keep for longer periods of time. It's a slow process...

~Le