abyssalbrews

Earthmovers

Added 2022-12-08 18:00:07 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

“The power to move mountains” is a term often uttered by those that are movers and shakers on the earth’s crust, but what about those that actually want to move the earth. Well, some enterprising geologist thought that the best way to study rocks was to be able to bring them out at their leisure. Little did they realize that in commissioning an artificer to create these gloves, they were actually creating quite a useful tool for adventurers as well. No matter, now that they’ve been recovered from an unfortunate cave in, we’re happy to be able to present them to you!

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Design notes from Matthew:

I’ll fully admit that I’m a huge fan of Avatar. Yes, the good one, not the blue one. These gloves were made to go along with the Marching Citadel in some ways as I love the idea of being able to control and animate earth to the whims of the caster. It’s exciting to me to think about manipulating the earth around you in interesting and perhaps unexpected ways. Using the elements as part of a character always felt like something that should be more of a part of 5E and hopefully this can help.

One of the things I really love with our items is trying to give them a way to bring creativity into the turn. I think if you can give players tools that allow them to express themselves in an interesting way whether in combat or exploration, then you’ve created something special. There are many players who would look at an item like this and simply see a way to knock someone down, a way to take cover, and a way to deal some damage, but there’s so much more potential in it for a creative player.

Just one of the things I thought about when designing it was raising a ranged character up on a pillar. Typically they’re rather dexy and could stay standing as you lift them. Then they get a nice 10 foot high perch to fire from where not many others could get to. You could use them to block off hallways, pummel someone off a ledge, ugh the possibilities are so fun and THAT’s the kind of item I want to make.

Illustration notes from Fernando:

While I love Avatar as well, I haven’t gotten past the 2nd season because there’s just too much good TV to watch all of the sudden and not nearly enough time in my life. Watch Andor

This was one of those items where as soon as we came up with the concept I had the visuals in my head, they are a bit similar to the boots we made a while back which I don’t dislike because you could combo these two for a seriously fun time!

In my original vision I had an orb made of swirling rocks between both gloves which is why they are posed as if they are revealing something, but it made the image much too busy, and took attention away from the item itself which is supposed to be the star of the illustration. I also added a bit more detail in the sketch phase but dialed it back, I kept finding that with this particular illustration less was certainly more.

You can definitely see what I mean if you watch the 30 second process video.

As I said, giving players tools to paint with is something that inspires me to create. I want to give players ways to express themselves with their items and skills and I think this could be a great way to do it. These gloves are a matching pair for the Marching Citadel so if your players happen to come across one, maybe they could find these within!

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