Dungeons and Dragons Blog

I’ve had my eyes on this pdf for a while and I finally picked it up when I purchased something else.  Treasure Chest Unlocked – Gems is a quality supplement provided by Sword’s Edge Publishing that provides a DM a detailed description of every gem in the Dungeon’s Master Guide.  For only $3.50, I picked it up on the title and description alone and after reading through it, I’m not disappointed.

Chapter One provides a good description of gemcutting.  It opens up several options for someone who’s taken a craft skill in gemcutting and it provides you with rules on how valuable your gems are after you cut them as well as an optional rule on trying to improve an already cut gem.  Good stuff here and by itself it could provide a solid source of income to a player who takes up the skill and does the job on the side.  Imagine when your players take some time off and your gemcutter increases the value of your lode just by working on the gems.

Chapter 2 is the meat of the book and this is the descriptions of all of the gems.  More importantly, they even provide color pictures and there’s a section on each gem on how hard it is to identify the gem. 

Chapter 3 includes some new rules for harmonizing and harnessing your gems.  Harmonizing allows a person with the harmonize gem feat to tap into the latent magical abilities of a particular gem stone.  Once done, it provides the wearer of the gem certain benefits, usually a small modifier to an ability check or a saving throw.  Harnessing a gem stone basically allows you to suck the life right out of the stone in one big blast.  In a lot of cases, the harnessing allows you to extend the life of a specific spell or increase it’s effectiveness.

Chapter 4 takes you inside the world of gems and provides some organizations you can drop into your world that have an interest in gems and gem cutting.  There’s also a cool cabal that have become obsessed with gem stones.  The cabal has even gone as far as creating a gem golem that’s described in the supplement. 

Overall, I liked the supplement and I have a new found appreciation for gems in my campaign.  I can see myself referring to this when I stock the treasure for a particular encounter and also plan on having a bad guy who can harness gems to blast the players out of the water.  If there’s one thing that I would have liked in the supplement, it would have been a list of the gems and what spells they’re components for.  This is a very minor complaint though because that’s all readily available.  For $3.50, it’s a bargain.