Designer’s Notes: The Hunter’s Reliquary

I’ve actually had this article cooking for quite a while (early September 2013), it was one of those that could just never have a home found for it. I shopped it around and eventually it made it’s way into Pyramid #3/82: Magical Creations. The writing was actually fairly easy and I’d knocked it out in 30 hours. I knew what I wanted to do and I had the concept down pat. Revisions were also really fast and done in 23 hours. No, what killed me was editing. I have no idea why but editing this thing was INTENSELY difficult and time-consuming (nearly 110 hours total). Some stuff I could suss out, other stuff I needed Beth’s help with and I spent almost 2 weeks fixing some prevalent errors I’ve long since conquered (that happens with my older work). Overall, I like what happened and how it turned out, but there were many, many, nights where I just wanted to can the entire thing and be done with it. Glad I didn’t.

Because of how this was made I didn’t have much extra material left over. That said, I hate leaving folks with something crunchy. So here’s how I priced Focusers: For just a skill bonus the base cost is equal to 2.5 x Average Starting Wealth. For an Adept Focusers cost is 12.5 x Average Starting Wealth. For a Dual Focuser the cost is 20 x Average Starting Wealth. I originally derived these values using the Typical Monthly Pay per TL and then “smoothed” the cost. For those who want such numbers Skill Focusers are 20 x Typical Monthly Pay, Adept Focusers are x 100, and Dual Focusers are x 150. I then used the following numbers to narrow it down: