Dungeons and Dragons Blog

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.

There’s a new product out for the Ptolus campaign setting.  Secrets of the Delver is a sourcebook written by the man himself, Monte Cook, and provides 79 pages of goodies for the super city, Ptolus.  It’s on sale now for $6 so if you already own the campaign setting, this is a must buy (which I just did).  You can also now get the full Ptolus product in pdf form.  Before they had broken it up into eight or nine pdfs.  Although I have to say, the book is impressive and I’d much rather have the print copy then having this huge product in a pdf.

I know I’m late with my Magic Item Compendium review.  My life and livlihood revolves around baseball so as the season gets closer, my time is more limited.  I’m hoping to get to it tomorrow so be sure to check back (I know, I’ve said that before).   I also picked Queen of the Demonweb Pits as my Blast From the Past.

And if you haven’t gotten in on Wolfgang Baur’s Open Design project, what have you been waiting for.  You get a super top notch product and along the way, you can steer the design of the product (depending on how much you contribute to the product).

In part one, I talked about the muscle.  Today, we’re going to be a little more subtle with Calix the Ranger.  Calix grew up and spent a lot of his time under the stars and roaming the King’s Forest.  He’d spend his days trying to track both men and animals in the forest as well as making his way through the wilderness without getting spotted.  As he reached his early teens, he finally realized he wasn’t the only person doing these things and that he was actually being watched quite often as the resident Ranger and protector of the forest (still have to come up with a name) decided to take young Calix under his wing and teach him the ropes.  For days, Calix would disappear only to come back with a few new tricks of the trade.  In the meantime, he trained with Rothgar in swordcraft but practiced with his favorite weapon, the longbow.

I kind of hate to call Calix the leader because you have both Aragorn and Tanis as “leader rangers.”  Instead, I like to call him the glue that keeps the party together.  He’s even tempered to where Ronax (the Rogue) doesn’t get on his nerves and he’s tough enough to stand up to Rothgar.  He’s not the strongest, the fastest or the wisest, but he’s probably second best at all of those.  So he’s the jack of all trades in the party and he’ll be the guy the party relies on as they make their way through the wilderness.  And then he also provides a secondary fighting option and the primary guy when it comes to a ranged weapon.

Calix ended up with some pretty good scores.  He had 16s in both Dex and Con, and then a 14 in Wis.  To round things out, he has 13s in Str and Cha and then a 12 in Int.  When combined with his solid base saves, he’s has a pretty good saving throw modifier in all three categories.

When it came to skills, I maxed him out in a lot of the typical Ranger stuff.  He has four ranks in Handle Animal, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (Nature), Spot and Survival.  I then gave him two ranks in Climb, Heal, Hide and Listen.  I gave him the alertness feat which basically gives him a four rank in Listen and then he has Weapon Focus – Longbow.  His favored enemy is the Goblinoid.

As far as equipment, he has his longbow and short sword.  No shield but I gave him studded leather armor so while he’s not as capable of fending off attacks like Rothgar (who has an 18), his 16 AC is nothing to scoff at and should give most low level monsters a tough time.  He’ll be the guy who keeps the enemy busy from a distance while Rothgar can move up and do some real damage with his sword.

Next up will be Ronax, the rogue in the party.  I actually had a lot of fun with him and while creating him, I almost wanted to run out and get Complete Scoundral because that’s exactly how he turned out.

As sort of preview for the rest of the month, I’ll be taking a look at Dungeon Magazine #145 which I got in the mail today and as soon as I get it into my hands, I’ll review the Magic Item Compendium.  I’ll also probably put together a Blast from the Past although I’m not sure what I’ll be taking a look at.  If you have any suggestions, leave a comment (especially if it’s something you’ve heard of but have never been through).

In addition, Wolfgang Baur is soliciting help for his latest Open Design #3.  This one looks like it’ll be the biggest one yet, and after taking part in the first two, I can honestly say that these are top notch adventures and well worth taking part in.  Depending on your contribution, you can be a bystander and see how things develop all the way to having a big say in what actually goes into the design.  It’s a fun way to get an insider look at designing an adventure. 

There’s two new columns up on the Magic Item Compendium.  You have the Table of Contents as well as a discussion by the designer.  Good stuff here.