The
Book of Artifacts is the last entry in the "Expanded Core," and in some ways it's also the least. I say that not as an indictment of its contents, but rather in simple recognition that this book, compared to the other two, has left the smallest overall footprint in the game's history.
Legends & Lore, for instance, inherited its name with its AD&D 1E counterpart (and said counterpart's original name would then go on to become the D&D 3E
Deities and Demigods). Likewise, the
Tome of Magic had its name recycled for the 3E
Tome of Magic, which like its predecessor introduced new magical options for characters. But the
Book of Artifacts, at least as far as being (the name of) a discrete product unto itself, had no such past or future history.
But before I go any further into that, I want to take a moment to touch on something that, while in this book, isn't technically part of it: the product ads inside the front and back covers.
I don't know if anyone besides me even remembers these, but looking at them now whisked me back to when I was a kid just starting out. Having come to AD&D 2E by way of the
Black Boxed Set and, subsequently, the
Rules Cyclopedia, I recall being dazzled by just how expansive the AD&D 2E lineup was. Considering how little spending money I had as a kid, reading about such diverse campaign settings as Greyhawk, Dark Sun, Ravenloft, Dragonlance, and others - along with seeing the lineup of product covers for each one - only made me more eager to acquire them all. The listing of "generic" products inside the back cover, from
Dragon Mountain to the various
leatherette books, only compounded that.
I swore, as a kid, that one day I'd own all the products listed inside the covers. To date, I'm close...but not
quite there. Yet.
But bringing things back around to the
Book of Artifacts, this is exactly what's on the tin: a book of major artifacts, though if I remember correctly, this is before the qualifier "major" (as opposed to "minor" artifacts) came into use. There are fifty altogether here, more if you count artifacts that are part of a set, such as the Regalia of Evil - about half of which were new to this book - for various campaign settings (as well as some that are campaign agnostic) and I'll say right off the bat that I appreciated that these were formatted much like monster entries in that each one was given a full page (often more than one page, if necessary) to itself; that might seem like a minor thing to mention, but somehow it seems to fit the grandeur of these mightiest of magic items; it might be silly, but it seems like having the entries here run together, rather than having such striking divisions, would somehow work against the tone that was being evoked.
Of course, I for one found that tone to be rather intimidating. Maybe I read too much into it at the time, but the tone around artifacts - both in this book and elsewhere - was that they were (supposed to be) Really Big Deals. When an artifact showed up in your campaign, armies would march, nations would mobilize, and even the gods would take notice. Everyone wanted them, but few had what it took to possess them. They could wreck the your campaign if not carefully managed. Over and over again, the tone surrounding these things came across as something you'd hear at a gun safety seminar. I'm honestly amazed the book didn't just come out and tell GMs, "with great power comes great responsibility."
The ironic thing is that, even taking into account how the book plainly states that artifacts are "about wonder, rather than power," quite a few of the items here simply don't warrant the heavy tenor mentioned above. Or at least, they don't
seem like they do. Take, for example, Queen Ehlissa's Marvelous Nightingale. It utilizes a grand total of five effects (none of them randomly determined, which is something I'll speak to more below):
bless (7/day),
music of the spheres (5/day),
unceasing vigilance of the holy sentinel (1/week),
zone of truth (1/week, no save), and
emotion (1/day).
That's...not really that impressive. I mean, the
zone of truth effect having no save is certainly notable, as is the fact that these powers are stated to fill whatever room they're used in, and if used outside have their area of effect determined at caster level 20, but those details aside, you can come pretty close to this with a 9th-level cleric, and having one on your staff won't hit you with a curse that makes you increasingly child-like in temperament and attitude, has you always tell the truth, and lose experience levels (and, potentially, attribute points) over time.
Now,
some of these artifacts do have an impressive pedigree that outshines their particular powers. The Hand and Eye of Vecna, for instance, were not only mentioned in the original
Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry before reappearing in the AD&D 1E
Dungeon Masters Guide, then the
AD&D 2E DMG, and even being central (along with the Sword of Kas) to the plot of
WGA4 Vecna Lives! (and would reappear in
Die Vecna Die!)
Of course, the Hand and Eye were much cooler in WGA4 than they were here, in my opinion, because that adventure not only noted all of the Hand's powers, but also established what gestures were tied to what powers, which was awesome. The
Book of Artifacts, by contrast, had set powers for each artifact here, but most of them also included notations to roll randomly for their various secondary powers and abilities.
Now, the idea of randomly determining (at least some of) what an artifact can do is one that goes back throughout the various supplements I mentioned previously. And I get the idea: even if your players read what's here, they can't predict what you'll end up rolling. But it still strikes me as weird that these artifacts, which have histories behind them (and which also tie into their suggested means of destruction, since it's another characteristic that artifacts can only be destroyed in particular ways), histories which are presumably tied to the powers that they grant, would have some of their abilities be random; I know that's only in terms of DM prep, and that from the in-character perspective each artifact has "always" had the powers that the DM rolls up (Heward's Mystical Organ and the Machine of Lum the Mad being the notable exceptions) but it's still a bit awkward to consider.
For instance, the Jacinth of Inestimable Beauty has some decent effects (+5 Charisma, max of 21;
charm person 2/day,
suggestion 3/day), but if you also roll that it can, say, cause all of the wearer's spells to operate at maximum effect (a roll of 20 on Table 22: Fate and Fortune) and cast
resurrection 1/week (a roll of 63-67 on Table 25: Major Spell-like Powers), then that's probably going to overshadow those altogether minor enchantment abilities.
Though, having said that, I can't help but think the tables of random powers, organized by theme at the end of the book, would make a great substitute if you were going to roll for a wild surge should you be playing a wild mage from the
Tome of Magic.
And speaking of stuff that seems more appropriate for the
Tome of Magic, why are the rules for creating and recharging magic items here and not there? Or in the DMG, for that matter? I can only imagine that this was a page-count issue, with them needing to cut pages from those books and fill some out for this one, because while it's not
entirely out of left field for these to be here - I mentioned before that artifacts were essentially the mightiest magic items - having thirty pages on creating and recharging magic items (just shy of a quarter of the book) seems like a notable digression.
Overall, the
Book of Artifacts has become something of an artifact unto itself, not in the D&D sense of the word, but in the traditional meaning of something characteristic of a bygone era. While D&D has had plenty of magic item books after this one, I don't think there's ever been one specific to artifacts after this, and even when we
did see artifacts again, they tended to be lighter on history and have greater raw power. In some ways that makes it easier to insert them into your campaign and predict what impact they'll have, while in others it seems like a DM is being given less to work with.
I'm still not sure how I feel about that particular tradeoff these days, but re-reading this book now, I get a nostalgic kick out of seeing the old "wonder, not power" take on things.
Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.
