Artifacts of the Ages: Rings

[JoeGKushner]

The Game Mechanics return to Artifacts of the Ages with a book on Rings. For those who’ve never caught the Artifacts of the Ages idea, it’s where a magic item has modest starting power and that those who enter into Scion PrCs, can unearth the true power of the item as it gradual gains more and more abilities as the character rises in levels in his PrC. The first book covered Swords and Staffs, while Wizards of the Coast, put these optional rules in Unearthed Arcana and added a few items of their own.

This entry clocks in at 80 black and white pages and costs $17.95. JD Wiker and Gary Astleford handle the writing with interior art performed by Pete Schlough. The book comes out under the Green Ronin publishing company and is written by the Game Mechanics. Internal layout is standard two columns with a border of interlocking rings. Interior art focuses mainly on the legendary items with a few illustrations of various heroes and villains thrown in. Art is solid and lends the items personality. You can see the screaming souls on the Crown of Screams for instance or feel the weight of ages on the Ring of Bone.

In terms of the book itself, each item has a different set of prerequisites for the character to enter the class and you can only serve one item at a time. No hoarding three different rings and advancing in the Scion class to gain those powers of each. One cool factor though, is that you can enter different Scion PrCs for different items, so that you could have a sword and a ring, and have Scion PrCs for each item. You’d never fully master either item mind you as the Scion is a 10-level PrC, but it would allow some interesting combinations.

For those who’ve never seen the Scion class, they are in essence, slightly toned down versions of the core four, fighter, wizard, cleric and rogue, being battle, spell, faith and swift scions. For example, the spell scion continues to gain spells, but gains no bonus feats as a standard wizard would. The battle scion continues to gain bonus feats, but not as many. In trade, the character’s magic item gives them unique powers.

The book is broken up into each scion type so chapter four for example, is Faithrings, while chapter five is Swiftrings. Each item starts off with a brief description of what the item is, then background ,which is broken up into different history DC levels so that the smarter the characters are and the more research they do, the more of the ring’s history they unveil. As before, there are interlocking background traits in these items. One of the rings might have details connecting to another ring. The items are not limited to just rings though as we have other forms of jewelry like Amulets, Brooches, Torc’s and even a Phylactery.

The items all include their requirements, as well as any restrictions and attributes, which include method of destruction and base value. Special abilities are provided with a table listing a level-by-level progression, and full explanation of the powers in the text. Some of the items also include Adventure Hooks, boxed text that provides the GM with a quick idea of how to use the item and get it into play immediately.

Some of the items favor certain classes. For example, the Broach of Bolan is of obvious use to a Ranger despite being in the Battlering section. See it requires you to have ranks in Knowledge nature and Profession Hunter, while having Survival and the Track Feat and the Favored enemy Class Feature, but it also provides you with sneak attack damage against your Favored enemy.

In some instances, you have to wonder if the items are worth the sacrifice. Take Eichenfols, the Oaken Clasp. This item is meant for a druid to wear but because you’ve got to enter the Faith Scion class to access it’s powers, you’ll lose all of the Druid’s abilities even as the Clasp provides you with druid or nature like abilities. Why not just stay a Druid? In that realm, most of the items that work with the non-four core, could probably do more for those classes. After all, how do you stay a ranger even with a ranger like item when you’re skill points are cut down every level? A fighter on the other hand may lose a few feats, but the powers of the item often make up for that.

Ironically enough, sorcerers don’t have that problem. Perhaps because they are in essence wizards without Spellbooks and don’t gain numerous special abilities like the other variants, some of the items here work perfectly for them, especially those made for them like Vlieyerda, an ear cuff made by dragons for their servants.

The book has a few uses. The first is that since several of the items here are of an ‘evil’ nature, they can act as campaign hooks for players to find the proper means of destruction. Taking it a step further, they can be used by villains in the campaign and force the players to find their own items of legendary power to stop them. The second is in finding legendary items for themselves. The problem with this approach is that unless everyone has a legendary item, the player can either be overpowered or underpowered, depending on how closely the GM follows standard D&D power levels. After all, 10th level in a low magic campaign can make these items almost artifacts but in a high powered campaign, players might still feel that they should’ve went with a different PrC for access to its abilities and powers.

A side benefit is that for GMs who haven’t done a lot of time investing in their campaign’s mythologies, a lot of the book can be used almost as if with little alteration. Take the story of the Tiger’s Eyes, crafted from Purushhavyghraa, the Tiger King, who allied with evil gods and when cast down, his flesh enabled rakshasas with supernatural abilities, his blood turned tigers into dire tigers, and those mortals who feasted on the tiny remnants left, became the first weretigers.

Artifacts of the Ages Rings, is a solid follow up product and provides more campaign options and potential tools for GMs who feel that items shouldn’t just be traded up as the characters move up in levels.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Magical rings for scions.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

b]Initiative Round[/b]
Artifacts of the Ages: Rings is a Dungeons & Dragons supplement from Green Ronin Publishing and The Game Mechanics. This 80-page black & white perfect-bound softcover features cover art by Clarence Harrison depicting a gold-skinned angelic woman giving a magical ring to a kneeling warrior. It is written by JD Wiker and Gary Astleford, with interior art by Pete Schlough. Artifacts of the Ages: Rings retails for $17.95.

The first part of the book describes the basics of the system, the scions. Even veterans to the Artifacts of the Ages series should thumb through this section, as the prestige classes change slightly from the information presented in Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves. For the uninformed, a scion is a prestige class that permits a character to make full use of a legendary magic item’s abilities. There are four scion classes; the battle scion, the spell scion, the faith scion, and the swift scion. In large part, there is little difference between a scion and the base class that the scion represents. Spell and faith scions continue to gain spells per day or spells known, battle scions continue to gain feats, and swift scions learn special abilities related to their base class. More importantly, only by attaining levels in the scion prestige class can a character unlock the special powers of legendary objects.

Each ring described in the next chapter has a set of requirements which a character must meet in order to become a scion. These requirements may be as simple as being a female of good alignment, having 5 ranks of Knowledge (nature), and having undead as a favored enemy to being of neutral alignment, having 8 ranks of Balance and a Will save bonus of at least +5, possessing the Mobility feat, and spending at least one month living no less than 200 feet above the ground. Once the requirements have been met, the individual can begin advancing as a scion of the item. Furthermore, each legendary item has its own scion path, even though they may be of the same type. Thus, two faithrings require entirely two different prestige classes, even though both utilize the faith scion class. What’s more, a character may not become the scion of two similar items (two different spellrings, for example). The scion class is not even open to a character until he or she meets the prerequisites to become a scion of the legendary item.

Each legendary ring comes complete with a history of the item, annotated as to the DC required for a Knowledge check of the appropriate type (history for battlerings, arcana for spellrings, religion for faithrings, or local for swift rings) or a standard bardic knowledge check to reveal a particular clue from the ring’s past. Each item also has the prerequisites to become a scion for the item, any restrictions the item imposes on the scion, notes on how to destroy the item, and the special abilities the item provides as the scion increases levels in the appropriate prestige class.

A total of twenty-nine legendary items are described in Artifacts of the Ages: Rings, ranging in power from minor magical items to minor artifacts. Generally, the more powerful an item has the potential to become, the more difficult it is to qualify as a scion for it. Still, the fact that powers are only gained as the character increases in level, the use of legendary items in play is well-balanced.

Critical Hit
Legendary items can add a lot of flavor to a campaign. These artifacts are more than mere magical goodies, they are heirlooms that any character will treasure for many years to come. Being selected as a scion (for no one comes into possession of a legendary item by mere coincidence) is a great honor, revealing that the character is worthy of greatness.

Critical Fumble
As cool as legendary items are, they tend to overshadow “normal” magical items in a campaign. After all, how much is a mere ring of air elemental command worth when you can claim yourself as the scion of Zafir, the Sapphire of the Summer Sky? The other problem with introducing these items of legend into a campaign is that they single out a particular character as being worthy of becoming a scion. What about the remainder of the party? Does the fact that they don’t have a legendary item make them any less worthy or important? Of course, you could correct this by simply offering a legendary item to each member of the group. After all, there are more than enough to go around, but does this create more problems than it solves? Just how did so many worthy scions come together in the first place?

The other weak point is the same as I discussed in my review of Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves; a typical campaign will probably see use of only one or two of these legendary items over the course of the entire campaign. Is it worth purchasing a whole book of them? That’s a question that individual GMs will have to answer for themselves.

Coup de Grace
It’s a good concept, but suffers from the same weaknesses as the other product in this line. The big issue is cost. Specifically, will a GM make enough use of the material herein to make it cost effective? If your campaign sees a lot of magic items, or if you play in a number of different campaigns, then by all means, this book will provide you with a wealth of material. Alternately, you could ignore the requirement to be a scion and the limitations on having more than one legendary item of the same type and simply allow the characters to gain the appropriate powers as they increase in level.

Overall, I can’t rate the artwork as superior, but it is visually appealing, and each of the legendary items is fully illustrated, a big help when describing something to your players. Just photocopy or scan the page, crop out the offending text, and hand the illustration to your players. If you’re handy with a paint program, you might even add some color to them. There’s no index, but that’s hardly a problem, considering the fact that the table of contents more than serves adequately.

Final Grade: B+

 

[GameWyrd]

Zzzz.

It's through no fault of the production quality nor quirk of The Game Mechanics' writing style that this book put me to sleep.

Artifacts of the Ages: Rings is actually 80 pages running through magical ring ideas. It's US$17.95. Magic rings... hmm. What an original idea for a fantasy roleplaying setting! I must pay for ideas and inspiration there. No really. Just in case we might have forgotten Artifacts of the Ages: Rings reminds us that magical rings feature in such books as Lord of the Rings. The introduction uses a few pages to tell us what to expect in the book (magic rings, perhaps) and how to use the book (as a source of magic rings, perhaps).

Artifacts of the Ages: Rings could have pulled something amazing out of the bag and found a whole new angle on magic rings and actually have found a reason to invest US$17.95. Let's have a look. There are four types of rings; battlerings, spellrings, faithrings and swiftrings. Battlerings are for battling type characters and boost battle abilities. Spellrings are for spellcasters and boost spell abilities. Faithrings are for divine magic users and boost their abilities. Swiftrings are for characters with speed and dexterity and boost dexterity and speed. There isn't an angle here which I find new or exciting.

To be fair there are some twists in the book. It turns out that gems and jewels are thrown into the "ring" classification too. Unfortunately this isn't a twist which appeals to me. The ring is symbolic. It's a closed loop. It's worn around flesh. It's man made. The same cannot be said for gems. I think there could have been scope in an Artifacts of the Ages book on gems - there's a whole interesting and complex chemistry in the creation of gems in this world and I think that could have been extrapolated into something inciting in a fantasy word (perhaps opals are only formed in the right humidity, on the right mineral rich surface and where there's 2% background divine magic). The first "ring" in the book is a magical broach. In fact we have jewellery as well as jewels in this supplement as well.

Sometimes the power-ups received for these artifacts are hard to justify or explain. A battlering, for example, grants the wearer the ability to hide from animals. I don't get the connection. Why craft such an impressive magic item for a powerful warrior and even consider that hiding from animals as a possibility! One cynical theory is that "hide from animals" is a cut down version of the invisibility power of the One Ring. Imagine trying to base a campaign or even a scenario around tracking down the rare and potent artifact. After years in the wilderness, countless battles against orcs, political intrigue and near death situations - one fighter in the party can now hide from animals! Hardly seems worth it (and certainly not worth nearly US$18). Another battlering grants the heroic barbarian the ability to create rock from mud (wow). The special powers granted by these items range from the afore mentioned poor examples, through the game useful and finally to the, game balance dangerous, very powerful.

If the "hide from animals" ability is painful copy of One Ring behaviour then the two standard qualities of each ring are worse - these rings are unbreakable and can't be lost. Lost rings have a way of making themselves found.

As is traditional for d20 products there are new prestige classes. In fact, prestige characters are tied closely to the ring types. If you have a battlering then you can become a Battle Scion prestige class, a spellring opens up the Spell Scion, the faithring allows the Faith Scion and the swiftring opens the Swift Scion. These are boring classes gaining either bonus feats or additional spell casting levels. If you loose your ring then you instantly transform your prestige class levels into levels of a suitable character class. You could leave your monastery as a young monk, find a swiftring (through luck or design), have it for years and gain levels in Swift Scion without ever spending any more time on monkish thoughts but then, weirdly, become an experienced monk should you loose your ring. I lost my ring and suddenly the cosmic truths of years of mediation are known to me! The Game Mechanics tries to apply some common sense to this weird character level reverting - you have to revert back to a related class (no becoming a barbarian after loosing your spellring) and you have to have at least one level in the fall back class. These are good ideas but it is possible to fall through the gap and not qualify for any character class.

It's not all useless though. Artifacts of the Ages: Rings does do some good. Each ring has plenty of history and this is divided up into suitable knowledge checks for investigating characters. There should be a good sense of discovery for each "ring". The unbreakable trait of each ring is used to good effect too - each ring does have a way of destruction - being tossed into a volcano, kept off the ground for a year, placed in the hands of a god or simply carefully dismantled.

In summary - no. Not impressed at all. In the unlikely event I can can't create a magic ring of my own, or even wing one without any advanced warning, I can probably find thousands of ideas for free on the Internet (and many of these free ideas will be more original and interesting too).

Buy Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves instead. The original book in the series proves that you can take a dangerously unoriginal concept and yet do enough with it to make the supplement a worthy addition to any RPG library.

* This Artifacts of the Ages: Rings was first published on GameWyrd.