Loot 4 Less vol. 1: Rings & Things

So, your party of four 3rd level characters just killed a very young red dragon in the larger-than-life, adventure-ending battle that nearly killed them all. Good for them. Now imagine their faces as they dig into the little monster’s wee hoard ... and find nothing but potions, scrolls, and a few masterwork weapons. The disappointment is massive. But what can you do? Even at triple treasure, the poor CR 5 dragon had a total “hoard” of 4,800 gp. If you want the heroes to be able to divide things evenly, you can’t afford permanent magic items for that amount. Better they get one-shots than a single item everyone fights over. Right?

Well, now it’s not an issue. With the Loot 4 Less series, a GM can be sure he’ll have interesting, useful and cheap items whenever he needs them. Starting at just 36gp, the items in Loot 4 Less books never cost more than 2,500 gp and are always multi-use or permanent devices that even high-level characters can appreciate. In Loot 4 Less, vol. I: Rings & Things you’ll find weapons, armor and rings all aimed at the smaller budget. For example, within you’ll find:

* Tindertwig Ring (36 gp), it only does what a tindertwig does, but it does it as often as you like
* Ring of Literacy (100 gp), for barbarians who want to check their own contracts
* Tough Studded Leather (425 gp), takes a licking, and keeps on protecting
* Footman’s Glaive (808 gp), a hurtful weapon, for extra oomph when you hit
* Ring of Avoidance +2 (1,350), if you’re only worried about Reflex saves
* Tombkeeper (1,850), a spellforged, hammerblow, faux flaming greatsword for PCs looking to crush skeletons and scare mummies
* +1 elusive chain shirt (2,500 gp), the best cheap protection against archers

And dozens more!

In this book are 30 magic rings (Agility, Alchemist’s, Athletics, Aptitude, Avoidance, Brightmote, Canine Control, Cantrip, Clotting, Determination, Dowsing, Dweomersight, Ease, Harmony, Literacy, Medicinal, North Star, Raiment, Recovery, Scholar’s, Smoke, Stoutness, Sundial, Tanglefoot, Throwing, Thunderstone, Tinder, Undertaker’s, Vigor, Warning) and 8 special properties for magic armor (Elusive, Fleet, Leavened, Remedy, Restful, Spellforged, Tough, Willing) and 12 for weapons (Faux Flaming, Hammerblow, Hurtful, Leavened, Penetrating, Proficient, Sharp, Slicing, Spellforged, Swift Striking, Tough, Willing), with a few specific armor and weapon examples and the rules to make dozens more.

Download includes extensive bookmarks, a RTF resource document, and sidebars explaining how every non-standard magic item price was calculated.

Loot 4 Less Vol. 1: Rings & Things

LOOT 4 LESS VOL. 1: RINGS & THINGS
By Owen K.C. Stephens
ID Adventures product number IDA50011
12-page PDF, $1.25

Loot 4 Less vol. 1: Rings & Things is the first in a new series by renowned freelancer Owen K.C. Stephens dealing with inexpensive magic items, specifically those that can be purchased for under 2,500 gp. It's an interesting niche on which to concentrate, and Owen makes a good case for the necessity of a greater variety of low-priced magic items. This first volume deals with weapons, armor, and rings; presumably the other types of magic items will be covered in subsequent volumes in the series.

I normally cover the artwork in the second paragraph of my review. This will be a short paragraph, as there isn't any artwork in this product; the cover consists of the title in big bold font on a white background. Still, for $1.25, I hope you weren't expecting an Elmore painting! Owen chooses to forego artwork to keep the price down, and that's a perfectly acceptable choice by me.

There are a couple of main points I want to make in this review; since the PDF itself is only 12 pages long (and that includes the "front cover," a credits/table of contents page, an ad page for other ID Adventures products, the OGL page, and the "back cover"), this will be one of my shorter reviews. First of all, much of the mechanics stem around the "+1/2 bonus" concept that Owen concocts for magic armor and weapons pricing. He shaves some money off the cost of creating low-powered magic weapons and armor by allowing such items to be made from non-masterwork items, so long as the magic item only has a +1/2 bonus. This might strike some people as being inherently wrong, but Owen makes a good case for it and does a good job building on the concept to come up with some very nice sample items. He also figures out a way to convert many of the alchemical items into multi-use magic items, although I think some further tweaking to the system might be in order, because some of the results - particularly those items that can be made into weapons of a sort, like the tanglefoot ring, which can fire off the equivalent of a tanglefoot bag every round for a total cost of 900 gp - seem quite a bit underpriced.

I like the fact that Owen includes numerous sidebars throughout the PDF where he explains his reasoning for going the way he did with the pricing. While I don't agree with all of his explanations, I can at least see where he's coming from, and it makes it that much easier to tweak if you wish to do some altering to the cost calculations.

The biggest problem I have with Loot 4 Less vol. 1 (well, besides that silly "4" in the title; don't you think "Loot for Less" does the job much better, without sounding like Owen's desperately trying to be "cool" like all the hip-hoppers or whatnot?) is the proofreading/editing job. Let's just say that, in my own humble opinion, I shouldn't be able to compile a list of 48 proofreading glitches in a 12-page PDF, especially since only 7 pages of it contain actual gaming content. These run the gamut from incorrect d20 terminology (experience points are abbreviated here as "exp," not "xp" and the Quick Draw feat is referred to alternately as "Quickdraw" and "Quickness"), improper capitalization, improper alphabetization, typos ("that" instead of "than"), and a complete lack of understanding of the difference between "it's" and "its." Also, the ring of dowsing must have been cobbled together from a rod, as the write-up for that item not only refers to it once as a rod but also calls for the Craft Rod feat instead of the Forge Ring feat for its creation. What makes this even sadder is the fact that not only is Fern Stephens Thung (I'll go out on a limb and assume this is Owen's sister?) credited with the editing of this product, but Lj Stephens is also credited with "additional editing." I hate to have to say it, but I'm afraid a third editor is probably in order for any additional volumes in this series. (As always, I'll forward my list of errors to the IDA staff, and with any luck the product will be updated shortly.)

Loot 4 Less vol. 1: Rings & Things is not a bad product for a mere $1.25, if only for the "+1/2 bonus" concept and the much larger variety of low-priced magic items that concept opens up. A much stronger editing job would probably have pushed my rating up a notch; as it is, I'm going to go with a "3 (Average)" for this one, and hope for a stronger product the next time around.

Out of curiosity, did any of the errors you found ever make an item unusable for you? Or cause you to be unsure of the intent? I'm genuinely curious how it impacted the product's value, since obviously I'm trying to make these books as cheap as possible.

By the way, let me say that getting an itemized list of errors found is a huge help, and we appreciate the effort you make to do so. The book will be reviewed with your comments, since that'll take about a day.

And, thanks for the review!

Owen: As for the errors in this product making the items unusable or making me unsure of your intent - no, definitely not. In each case I could see exactly what was meant. That's hardly the point, though. I'm a firm believer that any printed product - even those only "printed" electronically - should be held to a professional standard. If you expect people to pay money for a product, then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the product to look polished and professional, and not like it was whipped together and put on the market in first-draft form.

Fortunately, this is one of the advantages of the PDF over the printed product - it's so much easier (and faster!) to incorporate errata. I figure as long as I'm reading through a given PDF and compiling errata anyway (I always jot notes to myself as I read; it helps me write up the actual review afterwards), I might as well pass my "unofficial errata" on to the company in question. The end result is a better product for the consumer, which after all is in everyone's best interests. (And that way I'm "giving something back" - I did, after all, receive a free copy of the PDF to review, and I often feel bad pointing out all the errors in a given product when I didn't even pay anything for it...but then I feel my first loyalty is to the customer, not the publisher.)

In any case, thanks for replying to the review, and keep up the good work. You're doing fine on the "providing gems" front, now if you can just get your editors to add a few ranks to their "gem polishing" skills, you'll be all set....

John,

I absolutely agree that any professional product should be as close to error free as possible. We certainly plan to go over the list you kindly provided and check each listed error and see if it needs correction. Then we'll put up a corrected copy of the book and send that corrected version to everyone who has already bought the existing version. I just wanted to know how serious the errors were to the function of the book. For myself, I don't really object to a book with the occasional use of exp rather than xp or failure to put "Bonus" rather than "bonus." It's embarassing when it's your book, but it means the people who bought it still get full game value out of it (especially since this one comes with an rtf file with the full text, so they can cut and paste as they desire). That isn't as serious a problem, in my opinion, as a book that has incorrect game stats or has errors that change the meaning or make thing unclear.

That said, we'll definitely be looking at a different process for editing the next book in the line, Vol II: Rods, Staves and Wands. And if that ends up with too many errors we'll come up with another process, until we finally put out books that are fairly clean on the first try.

Thanks for the valuable input!
Owen

Nice

Very professional exchange there. Owen, if you'll let us know when the updated version is ready, I'm buyin', and looking forward to the rest of the series.

It should just be a couple of days (barring the unforseen, which for some reason I never foresee), and I'll certainly put up a post here once we've got it up.

LOOT 4 LESS VOL. 1: RINGS & THINGS
By Owen K.C. Stephens
ID Adventures product number IDA50011
12-page PDF, $1.25

Owen K.C. Stephens brings his talent to bear on a subject that d20 hasn’t really struck before. That would be low powered, permanent magic items. The concept isn’t new to me, having been covered in Dragon magazine a few times back in the old edition. It’s nice to see someone try to bring that mentality, that it doesn’t have to be high powered to be effective.

The book has no art. It uses the standard two-column format. It makes excellent use of bookmarks, having bookmarks for each category, and then individual links to the direct items. It also includes a text file for those who don’t want the PDF formatting, which is designed to be printed with margins on the outer edge on each page, that look a little distracting with no other formatting. At it’s price though, it’s not a big deal. It’s short, it’s artless, and it’s inexpensive.

One of the core uses of this book, is the introduction of the one half bonus. Some things aren’t worth a full bonus on a magic weapon or suit or armor, so they get a half bonus. This bonus is calculated out and added to the base bonuses from the DMG so we have weapons from one to ten, with all the half bonuses calculated in there for us.

We get three categories here, rings, armor and weapons. For weapons and armor, we have some general properties, as well as examples for specific weapons. For rings, we have all unique items so to speak. Weapons include some properties like swift striking, allowing you to get more attacks of opportunity per round, or tough, increasing the hit points and hardness of the weapon. Armor includes goods like restful for medium or heavy armor where if the user makes a DC 15 Fort save (DC 20 for heavy armor), they can avoid becoming fatigued.

The rings vary in utility. Some are very minor, like the ring of alchemy that grants acid resistance one. Others like stoutness, give you a bonus on a saving throw of plus one or plus two. In this case, stoutness gives you a bonus to Fortitude saves.

One nice little surprise, was the page of other products. While advertising in and of itself isn’t my favorite thing, the fact that they have previews for counters that stand up as opposed to lay down, is a great thing.

If you’re looking for something to add to your low powered campaign, the first volume of Loot 4 Less may be for you.

Anybody know if the errors that John Cooper pointed out were revised yet? The author said he would post when it was fixed, but I don't see anything by him on either review.