Libertad
Hero
Chapter 13: Magic Items
This short 4-page chapter is far from sparse, with 23 new magic items. Quite a few are obvious shout-outs to superhero characters and tropes, such as a self-replenishing 3-use Creature Repellent that wards off a single creature if it fails a Wisdom Save, a Grappling Hook which can pull the character 20 feet to another location or pull an unattended item to the user, a Jump Jet which grants a 30 foot fly speed,* a Powered Gauntlet and Knuckleduster of Demonic Strength which boosts a user’s unarmed strike damage to 1d6 or 3d10 respectively, a Utility Belt with 6 extra-dimensional pouches that can hold up to 25 pounds/16 cubic feet each, and a returnable Throwing Shield which can act as a 1d6 thrown weapon that deals an additional 1d6 damage at 5th, 11th, and 17th level. There’s even a Lesser and normal Cape of Flying: both can take the form of any typical type of clothing and don’t need to be attuned to the wearer. The former grants a flight speed equal to the wearer’s walking speed but makes them fall like a Jump Jet, while the regular Cape of Flying grants a true flight of 50 feet.
*but the user starts to fall if they end their turn in midair.
Quite a few of these magic items have the Common level of rarity, and only the rarer ones require attunement. Even the ones granting vertical mobility such as the Grappling Hook and Jump Jets are Common, with the Lesser Cape of Flying Uncommon and the regular Cape being Rare. This means that it’s not so hard for a gadgeteer-type PC to stock up on these magic items or for low-level characters to not be limited by spellcasting and flying mounts in order to take to the air.
Appendix B: Lairs & Strongholds
The following are eight sample lairs which serve as mini-dungeon adventure locations. Most are tied to an existing supervillain, although a few are not. Each one has a suggested party level along with maps and listed rooms, and a few have suggested adventure hooks.
Cloud Castle is a floating fortress hanging from the underside of a mobile stormcloud. Owned by an elderly cloud giant, he devotes a fair portion of his domicile to obstacle course purposes for the training of superheroes. Beyond such accommodations there are a set of eight portals linked across various locations in Ghaistala.
Clouded Eye Courthouse is the Edgecutioner’s headquarters. It hovers high over Beacon, magically invisible to outside viewers. The solar sometimes teleports people into the area, where the wronged party and a set of randomly-chosen “jurors” are subject to a trial by combat to the death. Beyond the Edgecutioner and his gynosphinx sidekick there are deva guards and an armory of angelic weapons which deal 6d8 bonus radiant damage to the target if they hit (or the same damage to the wielder on a miss).
The Hall of the Forgotten Sun is one of Count Abramovich’s safehouses, containing various magical items he’s procured over the years. It is occupied by dozens of vampire Underlings, a gelatinous cube, and the Count himself and his Slayer lieutenant.
The Scriptorium is a fabled demiplane library outside the normal confines of time and space. Any tome, scroll, book, tablet, or any object with written words taken in spawns a copy within the seemingly infinite archives, making it a valued place for forgotten knowledge. The ruler of the Scriptorium is a sphinx known only as the Librarian, and is also home to a would-be conqueror warmage of a long-dead civilization searching for knowledge to take over his homeworld...which is deliciously ironic given that the text states how people can end up “lost in time” for spending too long in the Scriptorium’s deepest archives.
Scroungers’ Crater is a write-up of the Crater, and can house all kinds of opposition depending on the Villain of the Week. The Scroungers have various retractable buildings and tunnels they can use for safe cover, and there’s even a set of bleachers where they can watch battles and place bets on who wins. PCs who manage to help out the Scroungers in some way can gain one of their number as a sidekick in addition to typical material rewards.
The Silence Dread is the personal ship of the Pirate King. It is the odd man out as the only Lair without a map, and its location descriptions are rather hum-drum typical ship stuff.
Trieye Co-Op is the beginning of Idyllia’s planned utopian society. Currently a small neighborhood in Lowcity, it is oddly clean and quiet, and newcomers are encouraged to drink from the central fountain’s magical water in an attempt to bind them to the community. Their current major building project is a large waterpark, and Idyllia’s lair resides at the bottom of an underwater sinkhole that the rest of the Co-Op is discouraged from inspecting due to safety concerns. It is a sinkhole, after all.
XX’s Abstrusatorium is one of the Sciencelich’s primary research labs. The complex is guarded by an array of AI defenses in addition to mechanical and magical traps. The sample adventure hook has the PCs face off against the Dead Ringers, evil cloned versions of themselves via the Simulacrum spell. The complex has various traps as well as a Hyper Beam cannon that can be shot as a Lair Action by XX. Fortunately several areas marked on the map are “blind spots” in which the PCs can use to take cover.
Appendix C: Kaiju
The two primary sources of giant monster attacks in Beacon are XX’s failed experiments and Kaiju that managed to breach the natural defenses of the Protectorate Peaks. In the latter case, we have four sample creatures in this appendix. Without exception each of them is an Epic Tier foe, with all but one having a Challenge Rating of 30 (the odd one out is 27). They all generate Regional Effects which alter nearby terrain and life forms as an ominous foreshadowing of their approach.
Blodynbren, the Lotus Mother is a rather pacifistic entity of nature, only aggressive when her groves are endangered. She’s a gargantuan fey that takes the form of a fox-plant hybrid, and can generate radiant solar rays, gusts of wind, and giant petals that can deflect ranged attacks.
Golgomarauth, the Dread Hand of Death is a sea serpent capable of limited flight. It has a powerful Megaton Punch attack which can hit multiple creatures at once as well as a line of pressurized steam as a ranged attack. It can also absorb spells and cast them if it bites a spellcasting creature, and can fire a Paragite beam that can make a creature lose the ability to cast spells. Which is rather odd on account that Paragite’s initial entry mentions it only affects those whose abilities come from arkwaves.
Karyu, the Terror from Beyond the Stars crash-landed in the Grey Wastes* on a comet, residing at the bottom of a sinkhole before being awakened by the ambient energies of Beacon’s portals. Drawn by interdimensional energies for sustenance, Karyu is aggressive in feeding off of such things and has managed to gather a group of fringe cultists who become empowered with air elemental essence for their devotion. Karyu has no real physical description beyond having claws and pedipalps along with a stinger tail, indicating a bug-like form. It can fly at a rapid 220 feet per round and is fond of hit and run tactics. It has innate spellcasting of lightning and thunder-based magic, and lightning damage “overloads” it in the form of granting temporary hit points as well as new attacks. It can also change radiant, thunder, cold, or fire damage to lightning damage as a reaction.
*I don’t know if they actually meant the Nul Wastes, as a CTRL + F search for “Grey Wastes” reveals this entry as the only mention in the entire book.
Xort, the Warm Embrace is actually two organisms: a gigantic earth elemental known as Xai and a slime mold known as Orthax. The slime discovered that it was incapable of eating the elemental, so the two of them settled in a truce and combined their powers. Like Karyu, this kaiju also attracted a cult who can polymorph into oozes as their granted power. Xort appears as a rather straightforward combatant, wading into the thick of things and making multiattack slams. Once it takes enough damage, Orthax is vomited out and covers up the carapace’s cracks, regenerating hit points in a ‘second form’ with new attacks and abilities. Xort can also subsume creatures it grapples and kills, spitting out cloned thralls of such slain beings.
Unlike the other kaiju, Xort has no ranged attacks or alternate movement speeds, which like the Tarrasque makes it vulnerable to enemies that can keep out of its range by flight.
Thoughts So Far: I like the new magic items, and the kaiju have cool abilities. The use of a “second form” for half of them is a pretty nifty idea, and is something I’ve seen repeated throughout this book (the Resolute feat, Count Abramovich’s vampire hunter sidekick, Harlan/the Ghost, and the Hyper-Demon). I like this as a game mechanic in the “you haven’t even seen my final form” way, which also does a good job of emulating some superhero stories.
The Lairs I don’t have any strong feelings for one way or another. They’re mostly meant to be battle scenes for the book’s super-villains, while a few felt rather uninspired.
Final Thoughts: Supers & Sorcery is a great book, but mostly in terms of setting. It doesn’t shy away from said RPG’s more fantastic and high fantasy aspects in achieving a more “superheroic” feel, and there’s plenty of grist for the mill in coming up with conflict and adventures. The various characters in the book make for interesting foes for a party’s rogues’ gallery, and I can see myself using the material therein for an unconventional campaign.
That all being said, and I hate to say it, but the system it’s using is just not ideal for superheroes in the broadest sense of the term. 5th Edition just doesn’t hit that higher tier of power level you see in works such as Justice League or Superman, and the emphasis on resource based dungeon crawls doesn’t line up with the typical structure of a comic book adventure. Even house rules designed to push past bounded accuracy are a halfway measure, for the emphasis on weight tracking, the foot by foot dimensions of abilities and movement, and other such specifics cannot bring the system up to the lofty heights of superheroes who can fly between cities in seconds and punch meteors out of the sky barring very generous GM Fiat. Supers & Sorcery can emulate fantasy superheroes on the lower end of the power spectrum, but that isn’t the intended feel I get from this book.
New material for players feels similarly incomplete. Instead of discussing ways of how characters can keep their identities safe from diviners and other such measures, we merely have new Backgrounds for their ‘normal’ lives. We don’t get a “build your own powers” approach that so many other superhero RPGs do, instead given a few new archetypes, spells, and equipment which can mimic a few known Marvel/DC characters but falls short of a more holistic system. When I read such material it feels more like “spot the reference” rather than a means of making one’s own heroes in a four-colored D&D world.
Furthermore, there are aspects of the book that indicate the need for a second editing pass, which I touched on in the prior chapters. As such the book feels like it’s missing material even though it is for all intents and purposes a “complete” setting.
On the one hand, I understand that many self-publishers need to publish 5e material in order to get noticed, so I cannot begrudge the writers for going this way. But on the other hand I cannot help but notice the poor fit system-wise, and have to be honest in my judgement of the product.
I would love Supers & Sorcery more if it was published for another system better suited to superheroes, or made more radical changes for character creation a la the new 5e Spheres of Power or Beowulf: Age of Heroes. But as it stands, it’s a book full of cool ideas that I wouldn’t run as is at the gaming table, and the time and effort spent converting the material to my system of choice would be better spent making my own material instead.
Thank you to all those who read this far. I’m currently in the works of writing up another Let’s Read, but as I’m unsure when/if I’ll be done with enough drafts I don’t want to make any promises yet.
