The name pretty much speaks for itself. The Magic Item Compendium
is a book chock full of magic items. The introduction discusses the fact that only a handful of magic items from the DM’s guide are widely used and that the goal of the book is to provide useful magic items with clearly defined effects and activtation times. Some of the magic items are from older products but there’s just as many that are brand new.
Probably the coolest part of Magic Item Compendium that I noticed when flipping through it the first time are the full color pictures. There’s a ton of them and in my opinion, they really add a lot to the product because now you can visualize what the magic item looks like.
Chapter One is Armor. You get a bunch of new effects for both armor and shields as well as some specific sets of armor. Spearblock armor helps deflect damage from ranged weapons while magic eating armor allows you to actually heal yourself when you make a save against a targeted spell. Foxhide Armor allows you to hide a little better and an overhead shield comes in really handy against an opponent that’s in the air. The chapter closes things out with some augment crystals, which can be attached to your armor for an extra effect. A restful crystal allows you to get adequate rest despite wearing your armor while a crystal of aquatic adaptation allows you some bonuses when you’re in the water.
Chapter Two has the weapons and it’s set up just like the armor section. You get magical effects, then specific weapons and then augment crystals. This is a much bigger chapter then the armor section and you get a lot of magical effects. If you’re into crossbows, you might like a quickloading variety which can hold up to 100 bolts and a warning weapon helps out your initiative.
Chapter Four has clothing. Robes, boots, amulets and just about anything worn on your body is in here. You get low end items like Armbands of Might which help you on strength based skill checks to some pretty high end items like the Amulet of Second Chances, which basically lets you restart an entire turn once per day as if it never happened. The most powerful magic item in the book is also in this section, the Vest of the Archmagi, which comes with a 200,000 price tage and a 20th caster level.
Chapter Four is tools, which is pretty much everything else. The portable foxhole is kind of neat and a play on the portable pit. There also several types of psychoactive skin, which would be similar to Spiderman’s black suit that eventually became Venom. In this section are the runestaffs, which are a pretty neat new item. Each runestaff comes with the capability to cast three or four spells. Then every day, you can replace one your memorized spells of equal or greater level with one of the spells the rune staff allows you to cast. It gives your spellcaster a bit of flexibility and basically gives him a handful of spells in the bag.
Chapter Five deals with magic item sets. Somewhat self explanatory, they’re individual magic items that give additional benefits if you complete the entire set. Kind of neat and it’s the kind of thing you could throw in a tomb, spreading out the magic items so the party has to find them. The Regalia of the Hero is a neat set for someone being groomed as an eventual military leader while the Wraith’s Woe is a set that is pretty impressive against undead.
Chapter Six deals with using magic items. It starts off with the identification process and then it gets into how to activate magic items. It then closes things out with crafting magic items.
Then there’s some interesting appendices. Appendix one lists all of the magic items by price (from both the DM’s Guide and the Magic Item Compendium). Appendix two is probably the most useful because it provides updated treasure tables to use and it also lists out all of the magic items by level. Then the final table is a pretty neat random armor, shield and weapon table that allows you to creat magic weapons on the fly.
All in all, there’s a lot of useful stuff in the Magic Item Compendium although honestly, the book didn’t live up to my high expectations. It’s not that there’s anything bad about it, I just thought this book was going to be very cool. Instead, it’s just cool. It’s still something I want to have on my shelf though so I recommened picking it up.