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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Simon Collins" data-source="post: 2010650" data-attributes="member: 9860">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 BasicsThe 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 ItemsThis 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.</blockquote>

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