Artifacts of the Ages: Swords & Staves

[JoeGKushner]

The question of disposable magic weapons is the root origin of Artifacts of the Ages. Fiery Dragon was one of the first on the scene with their runeswords, blades that gained power as the user gained levels. Others followed with methods that ranged from sacrificing experience points and gold to the item, to allowing the item to gain its own levels.

This book, a combination of the two PDF products Swords of Our Fathers and Staves of Ascendance, goes another route. Here, there are four prestige classes, four scions, battle, spell, faith and swift, that represent the broad archetypes of fighter, mage, cleric and rogue. Each one gains abilities pretty similar to their core class but in giving up a little power, gain special abilities with their unique weapons. The bad news is that you take the class for a particular weapon. The good news is that the book recommends that those who've spent the time and levels to gain these classes, don't lose their special weapons. Very similar to the attitude BESM d20 takes with weapons purchased with character points. As I guessed when the product was announced, the classes which are separate in the PDF files, are merged into one with notes on what abilities the blade and staff scions get as they gain slightly different feats and abilities.

This is an excellent idea and works well. In many ways, this is where a majority of the work of making this a 3.5 product came into play as the class skills and abilities have been changed to reflect the new rules. The other change occurs when the magic items in the book uses spells as many spells now underwent some changes but the product itself is very familiar to those who own the original PDF files.

The magic items are combined by chapters, which are broken up into scion sections so we've got battle, spell, faith and swift. Each section includes background information, legends, what knowledge check is required to recall information of the blade, the requirements to enter into the PrC, which vary according to the item in question, attributes or physical description, hardness hit points, value, special abilities, and the Scion Level Breakdown chart which shows when new powers become available to the user. Each item has a minimum amount of power and generally, the more powerful the base item is, the higher level the user must be to enter the prestige scion class in order to advance the weapon's power. Sidebars include general adventure hooks for those wishing to use the items right away but a little unsure of how best to proceed.

The book is very similar to the PDF files. The front cover is from the swords book while the rear illustration is from the staff book. In terms of layout, two columns of text with fairly good use of white space save for the end of some chapters which have lots of white space there. Art is crisp and clean, but reused from the PDF. The illustrations of the weapons allow a GM to quickly point out the item to the party and give each item personality beyond the text.

For those looking for a bit more than magic items, appendix A, Crafting Legendary Items goes into details about assigning a scion prestige class, making the requirements to enter, getting the right mix of abilities and spreading those abilities out through different levels, using an item from the book as an example.

This book is for those who don't want magic items that you throw away as you gain levels. It's for those who want a little backstory in the magic item design. If you didn't pick up the PDF books when they came out, now is a good time to get the collected edition, updated to 3.5 to save you the trouble.

REVIEWER'S NOTE: OgreCave will be showcasing my review of the original PDF files in due time to showcase some of the strengths and weaknesses of the individual books.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Ancestral magic swords whose names fill the pages of history, handed down through generations of heroes ... arcane staves of power, crafted by legendary mystics and passed from master to apprentice ... These are staples of fantasy literature-but difficult to recreate in the d20 System. Artifacts of the Ages provides rules for introducing legendary swords and staves that grow in power as their wielders advance in level. Special "scion" prestige classes ensure that the heroes only unlock an item's full power when the campaign is ready for it-helping to ensure that the game stays balanced. The book also presents over two dozen unique and interesting legendary magic items, with accurate d20 stats, detailed histories, and adventure hooks. Are you worthy to bear the Artifacts of the Ages?

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Artifacts Of The Ages: Swords And Staves is a resource detailing a system for allowing magical items to grow in power with their wielder as the character progresses through levels, along with example items. It's produced by The Game Mechanics but published by Green Ronin, a venture that seems likely to continue. It is an amalgamation of two original .pdf's upgraded to 3.5 and put into print.

Artifacts of the Ages: Swords And Staves is an 80-page mono softcover product costing $16.95. Margins and font size are average, and there is no space between paragraphs giving a high percentage of text per page, but there are large chunks of white space at the end of each chapter. Each of the items is illustrated and a few other illustrations dot the book which are also appropriate to the text. Unsurprisingly, considering the background of the authors, the writing style is evocative and almost fairy-tale-like in quality - you get the sense of legends running throughout the book. Top notch. Editing seems good - I noticed the odd typo here and there.

I've always felt that strewing a campaign world with increasingly powerful magical items demeans the joy of finding such items, yet fantasy legend and fairy-tale abound with powerful magical items that fate brings the naive hero's way. However, giving characters powerful artifacts at lower levels can unbalance a campaign to the point of destruction. The Earthdawn RPG had an attempt at resolving this issue by introducing the concept of weaving magical 'threads' into items after researching their possible powers as the character advanced. Fantasy Flight Games also had a d20 go with their section on personal growth items in Spells & Spellcraft. Artifacts Of The Ages brings a new concept to this issue, providing a way to give low-level characters artifact-level items whose powers only become revealed to the character as they advance through a Prestige Class. This in turn requires the definition of a new type of item, the Legendary Magical Item, which grows in power with the character.

Chapter One: The Basics
The Scion prestige class is actually five separate sub-prestige classes - two orientated towards fighting types (the battle scion incorporates both the staff scion and the blade scion), another for arcane spellcasters (the spell scion), another for divine spellcasters (faith scion), and the last for sneaky types (swift scion). The requirements of each scion are totally dependent on the item that they partner with - the item defines the prerequisites. The fighting and spellcasting scion class features generally resemble their class counterparts, with bonus feats or existing class spellcasting levels improving plus a virtual combat feat at 1st level. The swift scion instead gets a selection of class features taken from the bard, monk, rogue and barbarian classes and an additional couple of class skills as they progress.

Each legendary item has prerequisites defining the entry requirements for its related Scion prestige class, and increasing abilities that it provides dependent on scion level. At the beginning and end of the chapter a series of guidelines are given to help GMs introduce and keep legendary items in their campaign - from information on detecting and identifying legendary items to advice on facilitating a PC to retain his item in the case of possible destruction or loss, or designing an adventure to recapture a stolen legendary item belonging to a PC. There are also guidelines limiting the PC to a single legendary item in most cases.

Chapters 2-5:
The next four chapters are dedicated to examples of legendary items. Each item is described using a template describing the legend behind the item (along with DCs for Knowledge checks to see if a PC knows anything related to the legend to help them identify the item), the requirements (prerequisites to wield the item as its scion), any restrictions (how a scion could be denied the item's abilities), attributes (hardness, hp, value), and its abilities (presented by description and a table showing the scion level that must be gained to avail of the ability, along with caster level where appropriate). A sidebar also presents an adventure hook. Where there is additional information available as a web enhancement, this is noted. Examples of a couple of items are available at www.thegamemechanics.com if you want to test the quality of the examples given in the product.

As an example, I'll use the sword 'Mother's Venom' (for the swift scion) from the free download on the website, to illustrate the type of item we are talking about here:
* Legend - the introduction gives us the legend of The Doom Of The Dawn Prince, a tale of a prince imprisoned by an evil queen, who fashioned a magical sword from the walls of his dungeon with which to kill the queen. However, the poison of the queen's heart infected the sword when she is killed and it drew strength from the prince day by day as he wielded it, eventually killing him in turn. Two Knowledge checks are required to learn of the legend, and its sting in the tale.
* Prerequisites - The sword can be wielded as a scion from 3rd level - the authors state that prerequisites do not conform to the standard 5th/6th level entry point deliberately and this has been accounted for in the balance of the weapon/scion level.
* Restrictions - this section details the increasing effects of the poison on the wielder as they progress in level.
* Attributes - the sword appears as valuable as a +1 longsword to anyone other than its scion.
* Special Abilities - as can be expected from the comment above, the sword is effectively a +1 longsword to anyone that is not its scion wielding the blade. As the scion progresses, the sword gains increasing abilities such as an increased enhancement bonus, increased Con damage from contact poison, and allowing the swift scion to inflict moderate wounds through the sword (and destruction at the highest level).
* Adventure Hook - when the PCs discover the sword after defeating an orc attack, they begin to be harassed by a mysterious nobleman looking to get his hands on the sword.

Appendix A: Crafting Legendary Items
This should really be entitled Designing Legendary Items, as it's a GM guide to creating your own legendary items rather than rules for PCs or NPCs actually crafting them. Guidelines are given on choosing an appropriate prestige class (and their requirements), formulating the abilities the weapon gains by level (including enhancement bonuses and spell progressions linked to character level), and makes particular note of the ability gained at 10th level, which should be thematically and mechanically the goal of the scion. There is also a little advice on creating backstory and finalising details such as market price.

High Points:
I enjoyed the creativity, attention to game balance, and new solution to an old issue that Artifacts Of The Ages: Swords And Staves brings to the market. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I revelled in the fairy tale quality of the backgrounds and its overall epic fantasy feel. Chapter 1 and the appendix on crafting items I found the most valuable chapters - I certainly want to design my own legendary weapons for inclusion in my campaign setting and the product provides plenty of examples of how to apply the base information in Chapter 1 and in the appendix.

Low Points:
There is quite a lot of setting-specific material in the backgrounds to the items, which will obviously have to be changed to suit the GMs campaign (though I prefer this approach to boring genericism). The adventure hooks all end with a series of questions that open a slew of possibilities without answering the mystery posed by the rest of the hook - this can stimulate the GMs imagination or can be annoying dependent on whether you expect to have your adventure hooks laid out on a plate or not.

Conclusion:
The true value of this product for me lies in its template for creating one's own legendary items and the underlying concept behind these guidelines. The various legendary items presented, which take up much of the book, are useful as examples of how this is done by the authors and a limited number could be introduced into your campaign with some modification of the backgrounds. I thoroughly enjoyed the style of writing and the attention to detail given in the product and highly recommend it to GMs wanting to solve the issue of disposable items.

 

[Merova]

Hi all!

Simon, this was a very clear and informative review. I especially appreciated the "Mother's Venom" example. The review reads like a 5 to me; does the use of nongeneric backgrounds lower it to a 4? Or is there some other failing which keeps it from perfection?

In any case, this sounds like a good product to get. Thanks for writing. Great job!

---Merova

 

[Simon Collins]

Hi merova

Thanks for your comments. I thought long and hard about giving it a 5 actually. I guess the only reason I didn't in the end was because only a certain percentage of the example magical items are ever going to be useful to a GM and those examples take up a lot of the product - it was more of a macro issue than a micro issue.

If someone convinces me hard enough, I might change it to a 5. Any thoughts?

Simon Collins

 

[GameWyrd]

Magic swords... Zzzzz Zzz, oh? Huh? Let me wake up and try again.

It’s not just that I don’t find books filled with magic swords and staves boring, I think they’re one of the faults AD&D didn’t manage to shake in its evolution to d20. I hate the fact that challenge ratings /assume/ characters will have X amount of Y strength magic items. Even worse is the suggestion that entire classes – d4 hit points – are balanced on the assumption that there will be plenty of magical healing around. Too much magic can be a bad thing.

I want carefully paced, tense, and dramatic fantasy. I’ll play high fantasy as readily as low fantasy but when the game dissolves into a magical shopping trip then I start to protest. It’s hard to suspend belief when you feel the local peasants only need to look into the rain barrel around the corner to find a potent magic item (hello Neverwinter Nights), sell it to a merchant with a never ending supply of gold (providing you don’t try and rob him) and walk away rich.

In my opinion it is a bad call for a publisher to encourage people, to tempt people, to flood their games with a sea of magic items. A tsunami of extremely powerful magic items is even worse. Yeah, I know, there are some extremely high fantasy settings; Forgotten Realms, for one, Oathbound more so, in which the world isn’t short of magical weapons – but that just means the GM has a finer, harder, balance to maintain.

I know. This is supposed to be a review of Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves. Before anyone accuses me of ranting let me assure you that this is a review, I’m simply describing backdrop and mind set that the book is being reviewed against. It’s worth doing, it would be impossible to describe how successfully Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves won me over otherwise.

It’s a strong book. Artifacts of the Ages adds the magic back to magic weapons. This is more than I was expecting.

There are prestigious names attached to the book; the authors have that panache which has grown around those ex-Wizards of the Coast staff who left in round #2.4 of corporate cleaning and, perhaps more importantly, experience elsewhere. There’s a Green Ronin logo on the front cover of the book although the term "imprint" isn’t bandied around.

The key to Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves success is that rather than being an unrestrained crunch fest it’s a carefully gauged, story enhancing, GM aid. The book is interested in legendary items but in this case legendary isn’t purely a synonym for power; it’s also a plot device. Legendary Weapons grow in power as their wielder does. This is a remarkably simple but effective idea. This means that the weapon doesn’t overshadow the character, that the GM doesn’t have to worry about the weapon as a Deux Ex Machina and it means the players are more likely to get attached to the weapon.

The legendary weapons, this artifacts, don’t attach themselves to just anyone – it took Author to draw Excalibur from the stone. To wield either a sword or a stave from Artifacts of the Ages a PC needs to meet the artifact’s requirements; just like a feat or prestige class. In fact, prestige classes are the key. The Battle Scion, Spell Scion, Faith Scion and Swift Scion are prestige classes that allow the character to become (meet one of the requirement) an artifact wielder and maintain core mechanics of their character.

Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves is an 80-paged book and we finish up with the prestige classes and sundry information at page 12. The rest of the book delivers the bang for your buck: the artifacts. Lingering a while on bang for your buck – Artifacts of the Ages costs US$ 16.95. That’s pretty good these days. That’s just about US$ 5 more than this 32-paged supplement beside me and US$ 4 cheaper than a GM screen behind that.

As you’d expect there are swords and staves in the book but there’s no sudden dive into stat crunching. These are legendary items and so have histories of the own. In a rather nice touch the book retells these histories, breaking up the titbits of information into levels of knowledge (history) DC values. Each item has a host of special abilities and powers but, as promised, they only kick in as the hero wielding the item advances in level.

It’s a pretty book too. The supplement is dominated by illustrations of swords and staves but this never becomes a problem, the pictures are often set on the far right of the page, inset with the sidebar. The effect is a pleasant one.

If the goal of Artifacts of the Ages was counter the disposable magic item culture in D&D then it’s been a wholesale success. This might be a book about magic swords but I can read it without falling asleep and after reading I want to use these rules.

* This Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Psion]

Artifacts of the Ages: Swords and Staves

Artifacts of the Ages is d20 System fantasy supplement that introduces a system to create artifact style magic items that progress with the character. The book is written by JD Wiker and Rich Redman of The Game Mechanics, an upstart game design house started by some ex-WotC game designers. The book is published by Green Ronin, and is actually a compilation and updating of two PDF products released by the Game Mechanics: Swords of Our Fathers and Staves of Ascendance.

A First Look

Format: 80 page perfect-bound softcover; $16.95.

Art: Both cover and interior art is by Clarence Harrison. The cover features the art from the PDF forerunners of this book. The front cover shows an evocative illustration of a warrior reaching for the sword in the grasp of a skeleton. The back cover depicts a woman holding a staff overhead with lightning behind it, under the instruction of an old man. The interior illustrations are mostly limited to depictions of the described items, but there are a few larger pieces. Overall, the art is of good quality and I found it appealing.

Layout: Two column layout throughout, with occasional sidebars that protrude into one column and use some margin space. A moderately dense font is used, with closely spaced lines and paragraphs; overall the text density is good.

OGL note: For those for whom OGL issues are important, and who are used to the typical generous and praiseworthy open content statements by Green Ronin, beware. Perhaps due to the fact that this book was written by another design house, it has the sort of "crippled OGL" statement that closes names of game elements that Sword & Sorcery Studios and Malhavoc typically use.

A Deeper Look

The need that Artifacts of the Ages hopes to address is that of legendary items in the D&D game. Longtime players of the game know that a weapon that is wonderful when it is acquired may be discarded as a worthless trinket a few levels later. You would never see this sort of thing in a fantasy novel.

The way it achieves this is through prestige classes. Each legendary item has an associated prestige class. These prestige classes have basic features similar to major core class. However, each legendary item starts out as a minor magic item, but as the character gains levels in the associated class, more powers of the item may be accessed.

Each class is patterned after one of four central classes, called scions, the battle scion (most appropriate for fighter types), the spell scion (for arcane spellcasters), the faith scion (for divine spellcasters), and the swift scion (for rogues and monks). Each legendary item is keyed to one of these central classes, but actually represents a distinct class; for example, a battle scion for one item cannot activate the extra abilities of another item. In most cases, the basic abilities of two scions of the same type are the same (though there are some differences between those who use staves and those who use swords), but the entry requirements for each legendary item is different.

The first chapter provides the rules for the scion prestige classes. Chapters two through five are each dedicated to the legendary items for battle, spell, faith, and swift scions respectively. Each legendary item entry contains the entry requirements for the scion prestige class when used with that item, an advancement table of sorts that describes the abilities the item gains as the character gains levels, as well as the history of the item complete with DCs for knowledge checks that reveal useful information about the item.

The items are essentially treated as artifacts. They are not assessed any price, though I wonder if that is a wise decision. Though I understand that artifacts are considered "priceless" in the D&D game, it seems obvious that the power of the legendary items are such that they grant a character more power than can be explained by loss of class abilities of the scion classes compared to core classes; the scion class abilities are almost as potent as core classes. That being the case, GMs who rigorously regulate the value of magic items per the DMG would probably want to consider who much of the standard treasure allotment the character should be considered to be consuming.

Scattered throughout the text in the item chapters are a number of interesting adventure hooks to give the GM ideas for integrating the items into the game.

One appendix discusses how to design legendary items the way that the book does, so GMs can make their own if they desire.

Conclusion

Overall, I like the concept a lot. It provides a method to pull d20 System fantasy games a bit closer to some of their literary roots, and make artifact style items a more intriguing addition to the game without unbalancing it.

As stated, the most significant drawback I see of this system is that while it does a good job of making the items level appropriate, it doesn't give you very good guidelines on how to adjust normal treasure allotments to account for the character's possession of the legendary item.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler