Rebranding Effort :D

[Elle]

I love it, on my monitor (which skews green) this is awesome!

[Mike]

I'm building from the concept of good flag design. So this is my thought for the flag version of this emblem. The entire dragon a solid rust color... a dark, slightly reddish orange, the star in gold, and the field in some outdoorsy green. All of them solid, bold colors.

Two elements. Three colors. Distinctive, meaningful, and easily recognizable from a distance.

Okay, and having typed all that, I realized I could at least do a mock-up to see how I feel about the colors. This obviously isn't a workable version, as my grab of the dragon is primitive and just for the color-test:

[Zen]

That looks pretty good for a flag design! If you want one more flag shaped, or want me to work on making the dragon more clean, I can work on it with those colors in mind over the weekend. I would probably go a little more olive on the green and a little deeper gold, but that could be my monitor here... monitors suck... all of them! I'll just go get some Adobe color codes and put them in and tell you what they are! LOL! (So, do we want a rectangular flag, or do we want the ends to have little tails?)

Do we want a badge version with the original dragon as well and the 3D look to the star? I like the gold star idea more than the red star, actually. Not with a blue background, that's to U of M... Maybe with the Olive hex background as well... I'll play with it.

[Elle]

I love these images, they are all awesome.

Regarding colors: the sacred colors of Sarenrae are blue/gold, of Desna are blue/white, and Erastil are brown/green (i.e. what you'd see in the forest/field).

[Elle]

What if we tweaked the simple version a little to get some more blue in there, while keeping a "natural" look with the rust and star that is reminiscent of Erastil colors?

[Elle]

Looks nice next to the Elk Father color palette:



At this point I have reached a kind of maximum nerd level and need to stop.

[Mike]

If you can make a clean version of the flag, I'm all for it. Tweak the colors as you see fit. I literally just grabbed "gold" and "dark green" off the color palette in MS Paint.

And yes, I'd still love to have the more detailed version for amulet/brooch/pendant/pin design. Heck, maybe we come up with some simple enchantment we can put on them. For example, Rusty Dragon pins that allow users to Message one another at will... selectively or as the whole group, but can only Message others who have a pin. We could make those for 500 each (construction cost)... or 1,000 each if we don't want them to take up a magic item slot.

[Mike]

Elle, I like your blue background better than my green. I'd still go more gold in the star, but it's all quibbles at this point. That blue works so well!

[Elle]

So basically, Star Trek communicators with our symbol. I'm not really sure how that idea could get BETTER.

[Mike]

[Elle]

Here's a more Golden version:

[Zen]

I love that blue!

[Tahlvin]

Wow, this started out as just changing our name, and now we have an awesome logo AND communicators!! I love this group!

[Mike]

The communicators require a redesign. At the 500/1000 gp level, Kay is assisting in their creation and casting Message at 1st level, which means it only connects to 1 other person at a time. If we want them to include the whole group, she'd need to cast it as a 7th level caster, which would boost the cost to 3500/7000. Not so practical.

I imagine there's another way to game this so that we can get a similar effect without spending so much cash, but it'll take some looking.

Or maybe we want them to do something else.

[Eliahad]

I call dibs on being standard bearer! Just kidding, I'm not tall enough.

[Mike]

I've put way too much thought into this.

We can do some item of worn jewelry, and if we double the cost it doesn't use up an item slot. If we knew someone with the magic tattoo feat, we could have it done as a tattoo for the same (slotless) price. Cuz I wouldn't mind the dragon-star as a tattoo on my neck, just below the ear.

Getting creative:

Cast it as a 2nd level spell, so that any one device can singly manage the connection to any 2 others. Thus, they all are now networked, and a message from one can go to any of the others through this open network. Depending on GM ruling, 3rd level might be better, but hopefully not.Then we add extra restrictions on it. Originally it was "can only connect to another person wearing a Whisper Pin" (or some variant of the Whisper Pin). That was a roughly 30% discount on the price. Now we add a restriction like "must be a contracted member of the Company of the Rusty Dragon" which is definitely a restriction, because it means I can't give one to Oshar and they have essentially no resale value, but it also acts as a security feature that no one can steal one and listen in our conversations. Although they could incapacitate one of us and just listen in while the pin is still on us. Grand total, let's say the two restrictions add up to a 50% discount.

Whisper Pins

Whisper Pins come in sets dedicated to a specific group or organization. Wearers of a Whisper Pin may choose to whisper as per the Message spell, and it will be heard by all other wearers of a pin from that set as long as each member of the listening group is within 120 feet of another wearer from the same set. Just like the Message spell, it only transmits whispers intended for the group and does not capture any other noises in the area regardless of volume. People nearby on either end of a transmission can overhear the whispers with a DC 25 perception check.

A wearer may choose to activate or deactivate their pin with a whispered command word at any time. All whispered messages are transmitted to ALL active pins within range.

Since Whisper Pins come in sets dedicated to a group, they only work for wearers who are official members of that group. Therefore, someone cannot steal or borrow a Whisper Pin and use it to listen in on the rest of the group. However, if a legitimate wearer is incapacitated, someone nearby could get close enough to listen in while the incapacitated person was still wearing their Pin.

For a Whisper Pin that takes up a magic item slot (ring, necklace, bracelet, brooch, headband, etc), the cost is 1500 gp. (750 gp construction cost).

For an item that does not take up a slot (pin, patch, tattoo, etc), the cost is 3000 gp (1500 gp construction cost).

Caster Level: 2

[Tahlvin]

What would be cool would be something that works like Telepathic Bond, so it would work at any distance (but not across different planes). But that's a level 5 spell, so the cost is probably pretty prohibitive. There's already a magic item called Captain's Horn that allows the captain of a ship and up to 9 of his crew (there are 10 earrings) to communicate with each other telepathically, as long as they are within 60 feet of the same ship, and that costs 20,000 GP for the set of 10 earrings. That works out to about 2,000 GP per earring. If we're looking for a custom item that doesn't have the "60 feet within the same ship" requirement, we're probably talking a bit more, but I think it could be done for a not-unreasonable amount per member, given the benefits of being able to communicate telepathically.

[Mike]

Whoa! If we can create a matched set from a single casting... as a single item, then all bets are off.

We can create a set of 8 matching pins, slotless, that work essentially as above for about 5,000 total creation cost.

Range increases to 170 ft.

[Mike]

Although, I'm looking at Captain's Horn, and it requires Telepathic Bond in creation as cast by a 24th level caster (to link 10 people). Which sets the base cost at 480,000 gp. Yeah limiting the range to within 60' of the boat is a huge limitation, but not one worth a 96% discount.

But then I saw that it's 3rd party material, created before Pathfinder and then adapted.

Reasonably, we could do the whisper pins for 5,000 for a set of 8.

Alternately, we could cast Telepathic Bond + Permanency 28 times (at a cost of 12,500 per throw) to get the whole group permanently linked. 350,000 gp.

OR... with Telepathic Bond on a slotted item, we could create 8 individual items, and if we limited the range to something like 20 miles, then we could probably get them for about 20,000-25,000 per item with a chance that we'll probably botch one of them in the construction, so we'd have to allow for a little overage. So allow for about 225,000 grand total.

OR... like the Captain's Horn, we create a set of 8 Telepathically Bonded items. Requires an 18th level casting of Telepathic Bond (we'll have to take a penalty on that), and then with the discounts for group and range, maybe we can get the cost down to just under 100,000 for the set of 8.

[Mike]

No wait! On that last one, make it 50,000 for a set of 8. I forgot to cut in half for creation cost.

I think I did the same for the one before it. So cut that in half too.

I'd have to recheck all my math on these.