Dungeons and Dragons Blog

It’s been a while since I’ve been really excited about a D&D product.  Probably the last time was in anticipation of the Tome of Magic, which I thought was very cool.  Now with the Magic Item Compendium about a month away, Wizards.com has given us a couple of teasers which have really got me pumped about this product.

The first preview explains the augment crystals, which you can attach to a weapon or your armor to give you a specific ability.  So your fighter can his favorite sword and a variety of augment crystals he can use to give him extra bonsues depending on the encounter.  The truedeath crystal deals out extra damage to undead while a crystal of arrow deflection attached to your shield gives you an armor class bonus against ranged attacks.  This is a very neat concept and one I can see using quite often.  I mean, when your party gets to be higher levels, how many longsword +3’s do you really need?  Here you give out an augment crystal that may come in handy two or three gaming days down the road if used properly.

Preview two talks about the runestaff, which allows a spellcaster to replace one of their already memorized spells for one of the spells the staff is used for.  Also an interesting concept that gives your wizard a ton of flexibility.  If he knows he can cast a given spell using his runestaff, he can memorize something else knowing he has the spell in the bag if he needs it.

Fun stuff, and they’re also things to feed to the bad guys to spice things up.  I’ll be sure to write up a full review once the product is in my hands.  I’ve already preordered the book.