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View Full Version : Would this be a good Minor artifact?



Cicciograna
2010-01-22, 09:30 AM
Or just a powerful magic item? Tell me your opinion.

Gloves of the Hands
These gloves are woven with a strange, translucent silk, and on the back of each glove there is the picture of a stylized hand.
On wearing the gloves, they meld with the wearer's hands, which become ghostly and incorporeal: the wearer doesn't get any damage, but he finds that his hands pass through objects, can't pick up anything and can't use them to manipulate things. However, in front of him appear two Large hands, akin to those created by the Interposing Hand spell: the wearer can control the Hands as he pleases, and can thus duplicate the effects of the spells Interposing hand, Grasping hand, Forceful hand, Clenched fist and Crushing hand as he pleases. He can use each Hand to attack a different target, or he can combine the efforts of both Hands against a single opponent: should he choose the second option, the combined Hands work as a single Hand of Huge size. Changing target(s) is a move action.
The Gloves can stay active for a maximum of 20 rounds. When the wearer dismisses the Hands, he cannot immediately remove the gloves: they stay melded with his hands (which in turn stay ghostly) for 10 minutes x number of rounds he kept the Hands active (so if he used the Hands for 5 rounds, he can remove the Gloves, and regain the use of his hands, only after 50 minutes).
While the Gloves are active or in the "downtime" period, the wearer can pick and use only weapons and objects with the Ghost touch special ability: he can use such weapons (or his unarmed attack) to attack incorporeal beings without penalities. However, against corporeal beings, Ghost touch weapons he uses suffer a 50% miss chance.
If some effect destroys one of the Hands, it reappears in front of the wearer the following round; however, if both Hands are destroyed in the same round the effect is disrupted as if the wearer had dismissed it, so to remove the gloves and regain his hands he must wait accordingly.
Casting spells with the Gloves in place is difficult: the wearer can't get material components or foci, and it's harder to provide the somatic components. He can cast spells with no material components or foci (or use the Eschew materials feat); to cast a spell requiring somatic components he must succeed in a DC (20 + spell level) Spellcraft check.
Both Gloves must be worn to use them. Finally, the wearer can use Mage hand at will.
Caster level: 20th.

Human Paragon 3
2010-01-22, 09:44 AM
Sounds pretty awesome. It may be a little under-powered, since it essentially ammounts to a nerfed spell-storing staff with those spells on it. The image is really cool, however, and it never run out of juice. Well, until your 20 rounds are up, anyway. If you have two encounters in a row, you'll be almost useless for the second encounter since you can't use or remove the gloves, can't wield a weapon, and must make checks to cast the few spells you can use.

Iceforge
2010-01-22, 09:45 AM
It sounds sort of fun, I would add a bit to it through.

1) The downtime after seems a tad harsh, but with some of the other things I am going to suggest, it might work out

2) Allow the player to use unarmed attack against incorporal enemies without any penalties for them being incorporal

3) Allow the player to use ghost-touched weapons, but with 50% miss chance against non-incorporal enemies, i.e. threat non-incorporal enemies as if they were incorporal to the player

4) Seeing as it is an artifact, consider giving the power of at-will mage hand to the user while wearing the gloves as well, so even without incorporal enemies and a ghost-touched weapon, he is not entirely useless while the gloves are active.

5) I don't think this one will work out good (so not recommending it, just a random thought) is to make the gloves perform ability damage on touch on non-incorporal creatures (including allies), but don't make it drain (permanent ability loss sucks AND no reason it should give hit points to the player)

Keshay
2010-01-22, 09:47 AM
Interesting enough item, but as a player I probably would not use it twice.

I like my hands, after all I've had them all my life.

Cicciograna
2010-01-22, 09:49 AM
2) Allow the player to use unarmed attack against incorporal enemies without any penalties for them being incorporal

3) Allow the player to use ghost-touched weapons, but with 50% miss chance against non-incorporal enemies, i.e. threat non-incorporal enemies as if they were incorporal to the player


Yeah! I just forgot to add these two qualities, but I thought about them (I made up this item last night, waiting to fall asleep). Thank you for reminding me.
I really like your #4.

EDIT: fixed the description.

Lapak
2010-01-22, 10:04 AM
I'd probably cut the post-usage downtime to 1 minute per round of use rather than 10; losing your hands for almost an hour is a pretty stiff penalty for making use of a specific spell effect for the length of a typical combat. I like the idea of allowing Mage Hand at will while wearing them - it's not a spell that allows precise manipulation, but it keeps the character from being completely dependent on other people to, say, open doors for him.

I find it amusing this is one of the few items that works absolutely best in an unarmed build. Monks, unarmed swordsages, and others who can use any limbs they please for their attacks end up being much less concerned about the lack of hands.

Though come to think of it, how do these gloves work on a multi-limbed creature? Do you get extra Hands and lose your extra hands, or do you get 2 / lose 2, or get 2 / lose all?

Cicciograna
2010-01-22, 10:17 AM
I'd probably cut the post-usage downtime to 1 minute per round of use rather than 10; losing your hands for almost an hour is a pretty stiff penalty for making use of a specific spell effect for the length of a typical combat.

The long downtime is to prevent abusing: the * hand spells are really nice both as damage dealers and for controlling the battlefield, and using them repeatedly could unbalance the fights; and BTW, ate least in my experience, unless the DM is strict in in-game time keeping, waiting for an hour shouldn't be an issue (I repeat, at least in my experience). Obviously, if you plan to incorporate this item in your campaign, nothing prevents you to cut the downtime to 1 minute/round of use.
More, the addition of the Ghost touch thing gives the wearer some sort of effectiveness even in the downtime.


I find it amusing this is one of the few items that works absolutely best in an unarmed build. Monks, unarmed swordsages, and others who can use any limbs they please for their attacks end up being much less concerned about the lack of hands.

And indeed it was of them I was thinking about when I made up this magical item.


Though come to think of it, how do these gloves work on a multi-limbed creature? Do you get extra Hands and lose your extra hands, or do you get 2 / lose 2, or get 2 / lose all?

Maybe I'd rule that the creature loses just the hands wearing the Gloves, with no effect on the remaining limbs.

Skaven
2010-01-22, 10:18 AM
Seems a little poor for a minor artifact due to the downtime.

The downtime is pretty much only something that will affect combat classes, and won't affect spellcasters much. And well, that's the opposite way round to the power of those classes.

Nix the downtime to rounds, and make it affect spellcasting.. but again: still spell feat so...

Yeah, I would remove the downtime. Why kick fighters down more?