Ancestral Vault

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Ancestral Vault is a collection of equipment and magical items for the African-influenced Nyambe setting from Atlas Games.

Ancestral Vault is a 96-page mono softcover product costing $19.95. Space usage is average, with chunks of white space at the end of each chapter, average-sized margins and font, and no line between paragraphs. Art is pretty mixed in both quality and appropriateness to the text - generally, art taken from the public domain seems in general to be used as filler, whilst the rest of the art is more appropriate. Neither is outstanding. The writing style is engaging and intelligent, especially considering the nature of the subject matter. Editing seems good.

Chapter One: Equipment
A varied selection of new equipment is offered in this chapter, including a new exotic weapon (iron backscratcher), basketwork shields, class tools and skill kits, various ships (such as dhow, jato, and junk) with stats that I believe are taken from Living Imagination's 'Broadsides', cloths used as trade goods, description of a new skill - Craft (Weave), and a couple of new special items that may have an important impact on your Nyambe campaign - fetishes and ritual scars.

Fetishes are items made of animal parts (especially feathers) and stones, and hung on a cord with beads. They are created with the Natural Medicine skill and increase a character's BAB, but only for the purpose of Sanguar (the Nyambe feat that gives a dodge bonus based on the character's BAB). There is a short discussion on how these items affect existing AC-increasing magical items and AC-increasing spells, and integration into an ongoing campaign. Ritual scars also require the Natural Medicine skill to create, and can provide various possible bonuses such as to attack rolls, saving throws, or skill checks. In payment, the character loses a permanent hit point and there are limits to the number of ritual scars that can be taken.

Chapter Two: A Nyamban Herbal
This chapter begins with a new skill - Natural Medicine - and new feat - Plantbind - which are more or less taken from the Herbalism chapter in Atlas Games' 'Occult Lore', with a few twists to reflect the setting. The basic idea is that plants have certain traits that can be removed to create herbal concoctions, mundane (using the skill) or magical (by using the feat to imbue the plant with a spell effect). A dozen or so plants and trees are described in detail with a variety of mundane and magical concoctions that can be created from them explained in terms of their properties and game functionality. These include the baobab tree, formian daisy, honeybush, ironberry, and rooibos.

Chapter Three: Magic Weapons And Armor
Apart from the slew of special properties for armour and shields (e.g. healing, indestructible) and weapons (e.g. construct-destroying, quick, sundering) and specific examples (e.g. cheetah armour, force shield, beheading sword, psionic-powered crystal spear), the chapter offers a system for creating ancestral weapons and armour (whose magical powers can only be used by someone who shares the same bloodline as the items was originally created for). Ancestral items cost XP to create and must originally have been used to kill a challenging opponent, from which the XP is drawn to create the item. Rules for the amount of XP required for different items are given, along with general advice to the GM for how to handle the possibility of an ancestral item in a treasure horde being related to the finder in terms of bloodline.

Chapter Four: Magic Items
Nyambe expands the potential of item creation fairly significantly. This chapter begins with a range of generic item creation feats (craft charged or permanent items split into minor, medium, and major levels of power). Potions can hold spells above 3rd level, wands above 4th level, and multiple spells can be imbued into one item. A variety of magical items are included in the rest of the chapter, including potions (e.g. oil of astral projection, shield other potion), rings (which also include lip plugs and body piercings, e.g. lip-plug of diplomacy), rods (e.g. divining rod, rod of lightning), scrolls and gris-gris (with a range of planar ally/planar binding variants that could also be used as new spells), staffs (e.g. diplomat's staff, translator's staff), and wands (e.g. wand of extended bless, wand of lockjaw). Several of the sections have a rules recap - a reminder of the changes in creation and use of these types of magic items in Nyambe, and any rules expansion introduced in Ancestral Vault.

Chapter Five: Wondrous And Cursed Items
17 pages of wondrous and cursed items. The most notable of these are various beads, a number of different enchanted shrines (which link with the new planar ally variant spells in the previous chapter, and whose focus is in summoning orisha), spirit jars (whose focus is on capturing orisha, and link with the planar binding variant spells from the previous chapter), magical statues (providing protection against specific orisha), and trophies (animal parts that, when extracted correctly from a suitably challenging animal, can give a variety of bonuses).

Chapter Six: Artifacts
In the past of the Nyambe setting, evil Kosan orcs ruled using powerful magic. Though their culture has disappeared, ruins of their buildings still exist, and can contain any of the artifacts in this chapter. The chapter begins with some guidelines for creating Kosan artifacts (all of which come with a rather nasty curse if used by those with no orc blood running through their veins). A number of other artifacts presented here are based on the concept of dragon orisha, artifacts imbued with the spirits of Nyamban dragons, and offering certain draconic powers to the wielder.

Chapter Seven: Magical Games
This chapter contains two magical games played by Nyambans - a complex game, known as Bao, involving distribution of seeds across various holes in the ground, and Shahmatq, a chess variant. The games are enhanced when played by spellcasters, who can sacrifice spell slots to add further complexity to the game. The stakes put up are XP and the winner takes all.

Appendices:
This section gives various random charts for the weapons, armour, shields, and magical items presented in the book. Just over a page of errata for the Nyambe Campaign Setting core book is also provided, whilst there is a comprehensive (5-page) index to all the items in the book, divide by type.

High Points:
The product is designed with stats and rules for both 3.0 and 3.5, and advice is given in most cases for use outside the Nyambe setting, expanding its usability for a wider audience, though the items manage to retain their African ambience. All items are given a market price, and their level of power in relation to Detect Magic spells where appropriate. The comprehensive and logical index makes it easy to find the info on any of the items during game play. Most of the items come with some sort of interesting background information, which livens up even the less appealing items.

Low Points:
The most noticeable deficit to my mind was the quality of the presentation - both in terms of layout and artwork. Many of the magical items were not illustrated, and the frequent use of public domain artwork as filler did little to enhance the reader's understanding of the text. There were a few minor rules oddities, such as both a caster level and character level requirement for some of the items.

Conclusion:
Ancestral Vault adds new possibilities and depth to the Nyambe campaign setting, but also has its uses for anyone running an African-influenced campaign (indeed, there are some ideas for use in any campaign setting). The mediocre presentation should not stop those interested in adding these inspirational magical items and equipment to their Nyambe campaign.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

A treasury of exotic wonders...

Drawn from the sweltering rainforests and dangerous savannahs of Nyambe, Ancestral Vault brings gamers a rich hoard of African-flavored treasures and equipment. This 96-page perfect bound sourcebook describes mundane D20 System equipment, special and superior items, and magical objects of all degrees of power. Though designed for use with the Atlas Games Nyambe: African Adventures setting, these items can find their way into any campaign as exotic treasures from faraway lands.

Ancestral Vault includes:

New magical rings, rods, staves, wands, potions, wondrous items, cursed items, and artifacts.
Rules for magical games, and alternate magic item creation feats.
New adventuring equipment, tool kits, ship rules, trade goods, armor, shields, and weapons, as well as fixes for the lack of armor in Nyambe.
Rules for using natural medicine to create ritual scars and herbal concoctions.
Magic item tables for all the items in Ancestral Vault as well as those found in Nyambe: African Adventures.

 

[Mr. Patient]

Ancestral Vault is the second and unfortunately final supplement for the brilliant African-themed Nyambe campaign setting, written by Chris Dolunt and Chris Jones. The book focuses on equipment and magic items, but also introduces a few feats, spells, and other game mechanics. It is a 96-page softcover book, retailing for $20. Where applicable, the material is presented in both 3.0 and 3.5 form, which is quite handy. For the most part, Nyambe-specific rules are republished where necessary to make use of the material outside of Nyambe, or else generic d20 alternatives are provided. With some effort, much of the material in this book can be reused in non-Nyambe d20 campaign worlds.

As noted above, the focus is on items. There are a few mundane items, including basketwork shields, fetishes (which increase the utility of the Sanguar feat; they're a necessity, in my opinion) and some much-needed Nyamban ships. The ships use the rules from Living Imagination's Broadsides!, an all-too-rare example of reusing open content d20 material. Most of the book, however, is taken up with magic items of various sorts, including new weapons and armor, potions, rings, artifacts, and the like. Some of the more flavorful stuff includes beekeeper's armor, which has a permanent repel vermin effect; monkey armor, which grants a bonus on Climb checks; the ngoloko backscratcher, a weapon which upon command sprouts fangs and can poison opponents; walk among clouds soup, granting a wind walk effect; and trophies, animal parts that grant certain bonuses when worn. I also really enjoyed the trinkets, minor magical items that make life a little easier: a knife that is always clean, a ward against tooth decay, magical toys for children. These are terrific for flavoring a campaign, if not so useful to adventurers.

Ancestral Vault also includes rules borrowed from Atlas Games' Occult Lore for using the Natural Medicine skill to derive mundane and magical concoctions from plants. It also presents a set of new feats to replace the existing item creation feats: Craft Minor Charged Item, Craft Minor Permanent Item, Craft Medium Charged Item, etc. The reason offered is that Forge Ring and Craft Rod are quite useless, and no one will take them. These are true statements, but the solution provided here is no better, as I'll discuss below.

The last chapter of the book contains rules for Nyamban games called bao and shahmatq, which can be used in conjunction with spell duels of a sort. This is a fun idea, undone by the fact that bao is completely incomprehensible. Appendix B contains errata for Nyambe: African Adventures. They're great to have, but more are needed.

***

Most of the material in here is good to excellent. The magic items, particularly when they're really African-flavored, are very creative. You're not likely to find anything like the elder's rod, a dehydrated bull's penis with the ability to reverse the effects of aging, in any other book. If that's too weird for your tastes, there is plenty of stuff that will be more generally useful, like the stupefying weapon ability, which inflicts intelligence damage on its foes.

There are some weaknesses, however. For starters, the art is mostly just generic, public-domain African material reproduced from other sources. It's a bit drab and uninspiring. I also wish a little less real estate was devoted to the endless permutations of the planar ally/planar binding spells introduced in the book (e.g., lesser geographic ally, which calls a fey creature), and their accompanying items (the lesser geographic shrine). A "template"-style approach might have worked better here.

I would also like to have seen some discussion of Nyamban homes, architecture, and cities, which might have fallen under a loose interpretation of "items." What does a typical Nyamban house look like? How is it laid out? What's in it? These are things that a DM can really use, but they're not here or in Nyambe: African Adventures. You'll have to do your own research to find out.

The new item creation feats are a great idea, but there is no rules support to actually integrate them into a Nyamban campaign, or any other. Using these rules, do mchawi get Craft Minor Charged Item at 1st level, instead of Create Gris-Gris? If so, isn't this perhaps overly powerful, giving 1st-level characters the ability to craft wands? Which of the new feats replaces the Craft Magic Arms and Armor requirement of the inyanga yensimbi prestige class? If it's Craft Minor Permanent Item, doesn't that really lower the prerequisites for the prestige class? Basically, these new feats are thrown out there with no regard for how they fit with existing Nyambe rules, let alone core d20 rules. They'll require a lot of work from the DM to use. I decided not to bother, myself.

Overall, this is a pretty useful book if you're running a Nyambe-based or other African-themed campaign. If you're not, there are plenty of fairly portable ideas, but you'll need to get creative to integrate some of the more flavorful and interesting material.