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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="noffham" data-source="post: 2660445" data-attributes="member: 20233">17 Magic Hats and HelmetsAuthor: Eytan BernsteinPublisher: The Le GamesSystem: D20 (Fantasy)Pages: 36Format: Book-marked PDFPrice: $8.95What you get: As is usual for The Le Games you get a landscape pdf for on-screen use, a portrait pdf for printing, a rich text version for copy-and-paste, and a color jpeg file of the cover illustration. There is a bonus page of Disposable Heroes cut-out paper figures from Politically Incorrect Games included in the zip file. I’ll base this review on the print copy.Disclaimer: I received this as a free review copy as part of the Review Project.17 Magic Hats and Helmets is another in The Le Games series of  “17” magic items offerings. There are a small number of illustrations in the book, however few seem to relate to the text. Most are simply characters wearing helmets or hats, (one by Elmore). There is a strange and rough picture of an evil looking tree-monster as well, how that is supposed to relate to the subject is anybody’s guess. Low marks for the art.The front page has a brief table of contents. Next up are two tables for rolling a random selection of the included headgear, one for a d20 and one for percentile dice. Then there are two pages of what are called “mini-quests”. These are apparently meant to be plot hooks that DMs can use to provide opportunities to hand out either the items themselves or the recipes for making the magic headgear. The first is an assignment to bodyguard a merchant through dangerous terrain; the next is a children-gone-missing mystery and the third involves a bridge haunted by an evil but invisible creature.  How do you work magic helmets into these? Again, it’s anybody’s guess.Finally we reach the magic helmets. They are all fairly imaginative although some seem to verge on the silly. One, the cornucopia of plant mastery was designed for a Druid “who perpetually failed to prepare plant related spells”. Must be a very strange Druid that. Or the Mnemonic Device, an odd contraption that grants a bonus to skill checks related to memory (incl. Bardic Lore) and allows the wearer to memorize long and/or complex pieces of information as per the memorize spell. Other headgear is more interesting or practical. A wizards hat that provides various spell components when needed. The hat of preparedness that can transform into most of the mundane equipment you might need during adventures. There is also Nevoltain’s Hat of Habitation, which allows the wearer (or those he chooses) to disappear into a magnificent mansion (as the spell of the same name) within the hat. The catch is that the spirits of two warring magi inhabit the mansion and make the hat intelligent. These spirits will try to influence or dominate whoever visits the place or wears the hat. The hat allows the wearer to cast cause fear or status at will; but does the cost outweigh the benefits?I especially liked the Metalline Circlet that lets the wearer endow weapons within 60’ with whatever metal quality is needed, (cold iron, silver, etc.) for up to three hours. And the Crown of Balance that lets the wearer endow the weapons with a +1 enhancement that is good, evil, lawful or chaotic at need (again for up to three hours). These are a clever way to meet the need of various weapon qualities without carrying about a golf-bag of weapons.The various hats and helmets account for 13 of the 31 pages, the rest are taken up with an appendix that reprints the various SRD spells, skills or other items referenced in the headgear descriptions; and the OGL.The market prices seem a little wonky on a few of the hats, but nothing appears too off. There are a handful of misspelled words and editing gaffes, but nothing is rendered unintelligible. I’ve already pulled the weapon quality affecting items for my campaign and I will probably work at least a couple of the others in. I’ve found a few gems here as I have in most of the  The Le Games offerings, although it sometimes takes a good bit of work to separate the chaff from the wheat.Final score is 2.5 stars so I’ll be generous and round to 3 on the basis of providing the RTF version that makes copy/pasting so easy.</blockquote>

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