Item Name:
Stygian Knot
Granting class exclusive feats on items is best avoided. A player should invest in the feat to get its benefit.
Fair enough, although there is a number of items that give class restricted feats. I also see this as not much different from spell focus, which is available for most any school of magic on a multitude of magic items. A character that wants to specialize in DC invocations would have the option to gain greater invocation focus, making the Stygian Knot only interesting to warlocks who want to dabble in it, similar to a Staff of the Apprentice Evoker for example.
Item Name:
Book of Utter Dark Secrets
I absolutely love the concept of forbidden lore books, but were not going anymore for items that have that many penalties on them to offset the benefits. Not to mention they'd be pointless on this item as the book would be unequipped as soon as the spells are cast, and not picked back unless there is a need for a lore check. True seeing and ultravision both being readily available through herbalism also makes this item utterly not necessary.
Maybe i will think about a series of tomes for warlocks, that have more combat oriented spell charges, making downsides more relevant. Or maybe just less powerful in general, with less downsides, which is a tricky think to balance. First and formost i want to create items that people enjoy using and not just land at the next Vistani merchant every time. I would love for them to have a small chance to apply an adverse effect on the user (like blind or confusion) on use, that would make such a book interesting to use both in and out of dangerous scenarios. But that would probably not be feasible within the limits of item creation.
Item Name:
Cursed Loop of the Imp Archivist
Lots of issues with this.
1) As I often remarked in the past, the creation of the Staff of Scientific Wizardry is what I deem my biggest mistake where the addition of items is concerned. I seriously underestimated the feat's might when I added that one and I still believe it should be removed from the game entirely. You can bet that I will not repeat it by adding a new item with it. The fact that warlocks can also use the staff themselves further proves they do not require this item.
Note, if another DEV wishes to add items with Epic Feats that will be their prerogative, I do not block the addition of items, but I would strongly recommend against it.
2) At 2813 gp cost value this would drop WAY too often. Items with epic feats should be in the 7500 to 8000 gp value range and be as rare as a Roc teeth.
3) As stated in our guidelines to suggest items, ability score decreases are to be avoided.
4) We do not go for items with -8 skill penalties anymore.
1) I do understand your concern with the feat, given you created the staff that first implemented it. But at this point auto quicken spell I it is already available, adding another item that provides it will not change anything at the availability of the feat, given an equal rarity of the items (which i would address). Warmages and Sorcerers have their own version of it, even though it is arguably less important from them then Warlocks. It feels very odd that Warlocks are so reliant on the items of another class.
2) The item value might be to low, i am not very experienced at judging this. But i did want to create an item with a significant downside, afaik the value could still be adjusted to make it rarer. If i was aiming for your suggested 7500-8000 range the item would have no downsides at all, which is unreasonable for the power it grants.
3) I was looking for a penalty to makes sense for the item lore, a physical penalty. In earlier drafts i played around with -AC, -Reflex ... but those did not seem severe enough and easily outdone by the warlocks toolkit. -Str is a significant downside for any class, for the reduction in carrying capacity alone. Most warlocks do not rely on str in combat, but one thing that makes them very powerful is UMD (just like any class that has access to the skill). How much mileage you can get out of UMD is greatly determined by how many magic items/scrolls/gear sets you can lug around. There for the Str penalty, seems like a worthy trade off. Ideally i would put something like -15% movementspeed or chance to cast slow on self when it, but those are not really technically feasible, to my knowledge.
4) Fair enough this could be adjusted to a more reasonable number, to increase the items rarity. I would not want to see it gone entirely however, to counterbalance the fact the rings gives +2 sleight of hand as well. Setting the discipline penalty to around -4 would give it 1000gp more value then the warmage chains, which is probably a reasonable comparison.
