[Collab] Item - The Boulder's Belt

This belt embodies the strength and endurance of the Boulder! With this belt on, one can enter the Boulder’s special stance and avoid being knocked out of the ring. The Boulder has finished explaining what the Boulder’s Belt does.

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The Boulder’s Belt

Wondrous item, rare (requires attunement by a monk)

The Boulder’s Vigor. While wearing this belt, your Constitution score increases by a value equal to your Wisdom modifier, to a maximum of 18. This property has no effect if your Constitution score is higher than 18.

Stomp of The Boulder. While wearing this belt, whenever you use your Step of the Wind feature, you gain one of the following benefits of your choice until the end of your turn:

• You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

• You are immune to grapples for which the DC to escape them is 14 or lower.

• You ignore difficult terrain.

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Uncommon Variant. The uncommon version of this belt increases the Constitution score to a maximum of 15 instead of 18, and renders its wearer immune to grapples with an escape DC of 12 or lower instead of 14.

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DESIGN COMMENTARY

This item is one of three parts of a collaboration with the Jhamkul Forge, who had designed a fun Way of the Earthen Fist monk subclass. Taking inspiration from Avatar, I identified several criteria split between the three items: 1. relate to a character whenever possible; 2. get a decent mix of offensive, defensive, and utility capabilities among the items; 3. create at least one item that is monk-specific and one that best benefits the monk; and 4. complement the monk subclass in flavor and mechanics.

This item was inspired by the Boulder, one of the best earthbender characters. Unlike the other two items, this one heavily focused on defense.

While at its best, the Belt is equivalent to the Amulet of Health (a rare attunement item), also consider that the increase is dependent on the Wisdom modifier. It also is restricted to monks, whose builds require Dexterity and Wisdom first, before Constitution. At the item's rarity level, the average increase to CON should be +3 for an average final score of 16-17. There's definitely ways to go up to 18, but that requires sacrifice in other ability score builds that I consider decent enough a downside. Also, a lot of the Amulet and Belt of Strength type items take into account their usefulness for characters with very low scores for whom the static increase is more significant. A wizard with 8 CON gets much more out of the Amulet than a barbarian with 15 CON. I would rate this feature at just slightly below rare with attunement.

So why not just do a limited increase? Well I wanted some uniqueness and a way for this item to "scale." Once the monk goes beyond Level 11 and has ASIs to increase Wisdom, the Belt stays competitive amongst the other options.

The additional properties for Step of the Wind fill the rest of the rarity value. These are minor bonuses for the monk (which this item is restricted to!), whose kit already equips them with decent ways to: avoid opportunity attacks (resistance to physical for that turn pretty much only works against opportunity attacks - or falling); avoid grapples (monks are proficient in Acrobatics; they can stun enemies to escape grapples; and enemy grapples usually don't matter if the monk is within reach); and move fast (circumventing most difficult terrain; particularly if using Step of the Wind already allows you to leap over said terrain).

Design-wise, it was more a challenge to avoid recreating the Belt from the show. I'd consider it an overall success, using an octagonal emerald-like motif with very painterly cloudlike design fills and beloved band patterns often seen on porcelain. The shape of a mountain is still there, but it otherwise looks distinct. My return to art after the short break didn't do me many favors, but I was also experimenting with some alternative techniques.