abyssalbrews

No-Fall Knapsack

Added 2022-07-28 16:01:03 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

This one came to us in a rather odd fashion. You see, we were conducting some research on oceanic coral formations and their impacts on mythical aquatic civilizations when suddenly a goblin landed on the deck of the ship. He had this thing strapped to his back and the only words he said were “Guess I missed the target…” before hopping overboard and swimming to shore. Not one to pass up a good item, we did some research and found out what it’s capable of. Now, it’s yours if you’re brave enough to use it.

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Design notes from Matthew:

Writing custom flying mechanics is hard. Normally I would sugar coat it a bit more for these, but no it was hard to figure out how to get this to work properly. In the end, I came up with the idea of separating horizontal and vertical flying speed. I just wanted people to be able to slow their descent like you can with Featherfall, yet also be able to control themselves horizontally. In the end, I definitely took some heavy inspiration from Featherfall. I always tell people when writing magic items that if the mechanic exists elsewhere, use the language from it (so long as it’s in the SRD).

I tackled the flight mechanic first as it was definitely the most complicated part for me. The rest kind of came together. I wanted this to act as sort of a parachute/safety net for people so the idea of it being a reaction to falling that lets you pull the cord seemed pretty on point and straightforward to implement.

I made the decision pretty late into the process that I wanted it to be a stable platform for ranged attacks and spells. The idea being that melee would be really difficult to execute from this. Giving it the ability to harass from air with range and spells, I didn’t want to let it be something that was always open and convenient. I needed to give it a downside, so I figured the cumbersome nature of it would make for a great balancing point. You can’t just run around once you land so it’s better to ditch it more than likely and get to fighting.

Illustration notes from Fernando:

I love illustrating Goblins and Goblin Tech, one of my first and still best selling token packs is Goblin themed. I draw a lot of inspiration for the goblin aesthetic from Blizzard’s Warcraft series, in spite of not playing those games anymore, I still love the art and visual style of the series. I also drew inspiration for this from DaVinci’s glider and the Wright Brothers plane, usually I like making Goblin stuff asymmetrical, but an asymmetrical glider wouldn’t glide or fly at all, so we Matthew came up with the idea of introducing asymmetry in the form of different materials which was brilliant and fit what I was looking to do perfectly.

Lastly, I added a kite-style tail just to give it a sense of whimsy, which I feel is also needed when it comes to Goblins.

This item is the first part of a collaboration with the wonder Borough Bound team. We’ve created two more bonus items to go along with their Gruuk Jit’Jit setting that we’ll be delivering more of this weekend. Look forward to our “One More Thing” release in a few days with two more goblin themed items and some additional content from Borough Bound. We can’t wait to get that into your hands.

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