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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="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2011733" data-attributes="member: 1129">Blood and Shadows is another entry in the Kingdoms of Kalamar racial books, this time covering the dark elves of Tellene. The book weighs in at 114 black and white pages for $19.99, coming in at the lower end of the market, as most books of that price range are 96 pages. Authors Trvis Forshee and Mark Plemmons provide all you need to bring the dark elves to life in your Kalamar campaign or to provide alternative origins to them in another campaign setting.The section on history, told by one Mithelizek, covers when the dark elves were actually known as the twilight elves and what happened to bring them down. Using a character to tell the history allows the GM to pick and take what he likes about the history as an individual, no matter how sure of his convictions or history he is, rarely knows the whole story. More importantly, the section is easy to read with some personality coming through, “The grey elves lived in the most remote places, doing Gods-know-what ever it is they do.”The history reveals that even back in the time before humans, that the twilight elves, who ruled the mountains, were often arrogant and that war threatened to loom. Attempts to forestall this were made with a arranged marriage, but the bride, a fierce and dangerous worshipper of the Lord of Scorn, used this time to set her people, the twilight elves, against the other elves and use that war, to lead her people down below where she eventually gave birth to a divine being of evil who continued to lead the twilight people into darkness and shadow until their skin took on the color of shadows itself.Now Drow’deltha wasn’t alone as she had a sister who was pure of skin and heart and actually serves Lady Love. Drow’deltha’s ascension leads to madness as she declares herself a god, and the people who worship the Hatemonger are turned against themselves until Lady Love and the Hatemonger put a new plan in place where Persephaine, the worshipper of Lady Love, leads her people against Drow’deltha and wins over her twin sister. At this point, the race is given an option, follow Lady Love or the Hatemonger and the two split off forming the twilight elves and the shadow elves, also known as the dark elves or the drow.Other events happen that shape the history of the shadow elves. One event for example, the intrusion of mind flayers on their territory, makes good use of their official Dungeons and Dragons license and also introduces the Githzerai to fill out background details. In this case, an alliance between the Githzerai and the shadow elves that leads to the defat of the Mind Flayers as well as the creation of two monk orders.Other events are sprinkled through the text from several viewpoints as the narrator who first learns of the shadow elves goes and discovers the lost twilight elves and gets their view of things. One of the things I enjoyed about this from a ‘meta’ thinking view if you will, is that it helps explain why females have such power, as their rulers were all powerful woman. It also helps explain the name drow, as one of a set of twins who was the pinnacle of the evil of the race, was named Drow’deltha. It helps keep the continuity of drow in other settings without relying on a spidery patron goddess.For those wondering about role playing potential, information on how the races approach the different core classes and variant Kalamar classes like Brigand and Infiltrator is included but no information on psionic based classes is included.In terms of playability, the races here, the dark elves and twilight elves, are not like the drow found in the monster manual as the dark elves have no magical bonuses and have no listing of an ECL adjustment meaning that they can be played from first level. In utility, the book includes starting packages for dark elves using all of the core and alternative core classes. This allows you to get playing with the new races right away, but on the other hand, as a GM, I would’ve rather seen NPC’s of various level so that when a party is invading a dark elf lair, I can just pull out some warriors level 1 or warriors level 5.For those wondering how the dark elves specialize on this world though, there are several PrCs. Some, like the Brotherhood of the Twilight Fist and Sisterhood of the obsidian Gaz’zirad are easy to pinpoint in this setting’s background while others could come from any campaign setting like the Guild Artificers, mages who master crafting items or the Demonbound who swear oaths to demons in exchange for power. Most of the classes are well done but one thing I hate about the format of PrCs is that the hit dice is separated from the class information and some times, like with the Demonbound, those hit dice get lost.One thing that some, including myself, feel is overpowered, are spellcasting PrCs that gain abilities and spellcasting power at every level. The Keel’thaile is a divine spell caster that gains spell advancement every level in addition to special abilities. Their first level includes detect good, poison use, and combat knowledge, which gives them a bonus on all Knowledge skills relating to art of war or military checks equal to their level.While there aren’t a lot of new skills, most of the standard skills are discusses in the scope of what utility they’d have underground. For example, using Handle Animal allows you to breed animals while Craft allows them to work bones. A few feats and new weapons and armor help round out the material, but really, this is a book about fluff, not about crunch. In some cases, some of the weapon descriptions are a little vague like the Jelyenesh, a sword that’s over 5 feet from pommel to blade tip and inflicts a massive amount of damage, clocking in at 1d12+1 with a x3 multipler. Why is it so dangerous and not an exotic weapon? I don’t know.One of the things I wasn’t expecting is the section on poisons as it includes several sample poisons in addition to rules for modifying poisons.The writers do the GM an extra service by having a chapter of secrets, information that is not known to the general population or is known, but is wrong. This allows the GM to customize the dark elves and provides an excellent example of how misinformation is the GM’s friend. Perhaps a little out of place is that this section includes information on how various secret societies interact and view the shadow elves.  This includes information on the Golden Alliance, The Secret Network of the Blue Salamander and Vilhellites, amont others.The appendices including information on the gods, such as their name according to the dark elves, as well as their symbols, alignment, divine focus, and other important bits of information. New magic items are included like the Elemental Anthame, a double-edged knife that cast’s a summon nature’s ally spell to conjure an elemental. The good news is that they’ve included the caster level, feats, and price, the bad news is that they didn’t include the caster cost in gold or experience points.A few new monsters, like the werebat and umber bulk (think rothe from the Forgotten Realms) are included to help round out the book.For those bad with names or desiring random starting ages like those found in older editions per class and race, that information is also included. I love having a table of names as it makes my job as the GM much easier.  For those who love indexes, one is included.The layout is two-columns with the familiar border at the top of the page with the title of the book on one page and the chapter identification on the other page. Outer borders are about an inch while inner and bottom borders almost hug the page.  Most of the interior artwork is solid with a few great full page illustrations breaking up the chapters.  Some of my favorite illustrations are those that show various dark elves belonging to different classes lined up against one another. It’s especially amusing when you see how much taller the twilight elves are in comparison to their dark elf cousins.As a player resource, the book serves it’s purpose in providing a lot of options in terms of new races, PrCs, and a few options in the new spells, magic items, poisons, and alchemical items. The starting packages are a blessing for any time pressed player or GM who just wants to outfit a bunch of dark elves at 1st level and throw them against a low level party. As a GM resource, it provides a great deal of information, but because it doesn’t include maps, NPC statistics or pregenerated adventurers, isn’t as useful as it could be.The Kingdoms of Kalamar Dark Elves aren’t magically inherent like those of the Forgotten Realms, but that doesn’t make them any less interesting and those looking to see how Kalamar handles it, now have their own resource.</blockquote>

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