Molten Chelae (Patreon)

Greetings adventurers! 

The ocean frankly terrifies me. With all of the jelly beings and stingy things, not to mention whatever horrors may lie in the deepest parts of the oceans. This dagger seems to be crafted from the still moving, and pinching, claws of some malformed crab that dwells below the surface. Superheated ichor dripping from some gland within. I tell you, the ocean is not something you wish to delve into. I’ve heard of these fissure crabs before and they are not something you want to come across as a hapless adventuring party. You’ll likely end up boiled for a crab dinner instead of the other way around.

Our patrons get early access to all of these items as well as additional formats that are easily usable in both physical and online play for D&D and Pathfinder 2E. Additionally they get high-res art exports, easy to use text exports, behind the scenes updates, and a lot more.

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Design notes from Matthew:

This is our paired item for the fissure crab that will be released to patrons later on today. I love getting the opportunity to pair an item with a creature as it provides a unique opportunity to figure out how to apply creature abilities to a player character without making it feel like you did a one to one port. My opinion is that just copy and pasting a creature's ability is an easy way to make items, but it isn’t always the most interesting way to build something. As I’ve said before, I want to make good items for each system rather than direct ports and this item is a good reason why.

For 5E, a dagger is typically a rogue’s weapon of choice and I felt it was only right to lean into that. I needed a way to balance the grab and additional fire damage that can potentially come with it and I chose to do that by balancing it around the rogue’s sneak attack. Any time you can latch on to another mechanic so that you don’t have to invent one of your own, I think you should take it. The actual numbers for this were fairly straightforward so the biggest choice was always figuring out how to limit it properly.

In our PF2E version, weapons are a lot more neutral to classes and all types will use all sorts of weapons. I didn’t want to lock this to just a rogue weapon there, so instead I looked into how it’s balanced on creature abilities. The grab ability is already present in the game, so I took the opportunity to latch on to that which makes rule building a lot easier. It’s funny how the theme in this item’s design came “sometimes it’s fine to just grab onto what’s there and use it properly”. 

I’m excited to get the Fissure crab out to you all later today. It was a lot of fun to write and I hope that you’ll find appropriate ways to terrorize your players with this massive fiery, pinchy boy. This also wraps up our April releases and next week we’ll be getting started with May. We already have plenty of ideas kicking around and we can’t wait to share them with you.

We highly encourage you to join our Discord server where you’ll get access to exclusive channels that have sneak peeks, behind the scenes chatter, and more. 

Rewards for Patrons!

Kraken's Kohorts ($3 tier)

Kraken's Kompanions ($6 tier)

Kraken's Kollaborators ($10 Tier)

I pinch,

- Fernando & Matthew