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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: 2009839" data-attributes="member: 1129">The d20 waves of similar products or themes rises again.  A year ago you couldn’t find a book on poisons or assassins to save your unlife.  Now they’ve sprung up in abundance. Green Ronin, Bastion, Mongoose and Ambient all have their sourcebooks in the pool now and Crimson Contracts is certainly one of the better books for all things dark and dangerous.The book starts off with some ideas on how assassins differ from one another.  It’s a quick look at the different ways assassins move about and showcases why in many instances, assassins are lousy player characters.  You know, PCs who dress up in all black, being super obvious that they are bad men.  Those generally aren’t the ways an assassin works as an assassin must be subtle and have a background that allows him to work in society without being detected.  There are variations though, where the assassin is employed by the court, or by an illegal citadel where their status perhaps isn’t quite so shadowy.For those looking for crunch, the book offers a mixed bag.  To me, the new skills seem a little out of place.  It’s not that they’re bad skills, but knowledge of antitoxins and medicinal venoms, and perhaps even preserve flesh, could all fall under variants of the Heal skill.  Knowledge of Assassin Groups and the Professional Ability to Gather Venom help round out the skills, but once again, with Seduction, couldn’t this have been handled by an existing skill?Those looking for tons of new feats will be a little disappointed as there are nine in the book.  Some like Invisible Spell are potential campaign watchers while Spell Thematic, the ability to have your spells take on a certain appearance and style, is something I’ve seen many GM’s allow their players to do without spending a feat on it.  The ability to Exude Venom however, provided you have the Toxic Immunity Feat, should make for some interesting encounters when players think they’ve disarmed their enemies.One of the things that bothered me as a GM in the new Core and Prestige Classes, is that the core classes are NPCs.  Nothing wrong with adding some more material to the kettle, but perhaps some variants of the Expert, Warrior or the Thug from Fantasy Flight Game’s book, Traps & Treachery, with some ideas on skill and feat selection, would go over better than Brawler, Hit Man, and Thief.  The PrCs bothered me too.  I have nothing against variant power levels in classes.  Sometimes it’s the only way to do a class to grant it a certain feel, but when creating overly and under powered classes, perhaps some recommendations on adjustments to the CR would be a good idea?  Yes, it would.  Now I can either eyeball the classes or use them in small numbers at lower levels to test their balance, but some advice would’ve went a long way.  Take the Brutal Killer, a PrC that gets 1d12 hit dice, spell resistance, and at higher levels, vampiric regeneration.  Probably a little more powerful than a standard PrC.  Now the bad news, in addition to having various power levels, I have to decide on a case by case basis which ones are prone by rules raping by my players.  More work for the GM.There are a lot of fields covered by the PrCs though.  The Dancer of the Scarves and the Femme Fatale provide female NPCs with some new and impressive ways to get close to their targets and finish them off, while the holy assassin gets another variant with the Fist of Righteousness, a PrC fit for those with the Smite Evil ability and a lawful good alignment.  I wonder what class this PrC is for eh?  This class is another example of one that may be too powerful.  They gain special abilities at each level, have a spell progression table, 1d10 hit dice, and six skill points a level.All in all, while a massive selection of PrCs can expand your world, DMs should take care with these PrCs.  It’s nice to have assassin style concepts for different races like the Little Death for the Halflings and the Stone Heart for the dwarves.For me, the chapter Tools of the Trade brought a lot to the table.  It seems that you can never have enough types of poison and there are a ton of new poisons here.  One look at the table provides you with a quick breakdown of what each type of poison does and the individual descriptions provide more details on things like taste, method of application and even a little history.  Some of the materials aren’t just stat poisons either.  Things like Psi-Away block a character’s use of psionic abilities.  This is something I like, poisons that aren’t just meant to kill.  I know that some like Thrapra’ak would see use by the jokers of the party as this poison is often used as a laxative.The sections on anti-toxins and magical diseases were a little too short for me to really get into them.  It was something I noted, made a few notes on and moved on to the larger section of equipment.  Ah, here we have some things like bladed cloaks and razored leather armor.  Nice little touches that can give your character a slight edge like the archer glove, a +1 bonus to hit with a bow, or the bow sight, another +1 to hit with the bow, but only as long as it’s properly sighted.Now I’m currently reading the Black Company books and they have a cult of stranglers within it.  They use an old trick of cloth with a weighted coin to strangle their victims.  Well, now that’s come to D20 with the Arm of Kali, a long strip of cloth weighed down with a coin.  Other standards like boot blades, blowguns and a variety of garrotes, help round out the new weapons section.Those looking for new magic items will get a pleasant surprise with the new weapon special abilities like Heartseeker, increasing the critical multiplier by 1, or Phasing, weapons that ignore stone, wood and plaster.  I would’ve liked to see some more magic weapons, especially the sword held by one of the narrators of the book.  Still, the Shadow Blade, a weapon that makes no noise and provides a massive bonus to hide and move silently checks, will have to do.Of equal interest to me though, were the psionic items.  One of the weapons, Assassin’s Second Chance, allows the user to reroll a bad die roll once a week, while the Gauntlets of Concussion allows the user to strike the ground and send forth a wave of energy that strikes a single target.  The nice thing about these items is that they all have the requirements to make them, and if you don’t own the Psionicist book, you can still use most of them for they don’t rely on psionic powers to work.Eldritch Sorceries, brings new spells to the d20 system.  It starts off with a breakdown by class and level of each spell, and then provides the details.  There is a bit of a lack of higher-level spells here as the highest is 6th level, for both clerics and wizards.  Take Vampiric Regeneration, a 5th level spell that does what the old ring of vampiric regeneration did.  Provides the user with half the hit points he gained from any damage inflicted in hand-to-hand combat.  Remember that heartseeker weapon property?  It’s also a 4th level spell.  I guess my question here then is, where are the psionic powers?GMs looking for more tools will enjoy Creature Templates.  Here we have beings like Death’s Assassin, an undead assassin created by an assassin who failed his original mission.  Others like the Wirebound provide even more options as there are several types of wirebound.  Each one of these uses a different type of metal in the creation so the weakest, Bronze, gains 2 bonus hit dice, and a +3 AC, along with other abilities, while the Mithril gains a 6 bonus hit dice, +5 to AC and a more advanced abilities.Those GMs who are intrigued by all these goods but don’t have the time to work them into their own campaign will enjoy Murderous Organizations, a section devoted to providing numerous types of guilds.  This section comes across much better than the one in Green Ronin’s the Assassins’ Handbook.  While neither devotes a lot of time to making your own guilds, the variety, despite the shortness, in Crimson Contracts, allows the GM to pick and choose from several guilds instead of just two.Each guild starts off with a stat block including leader, ranking, apparel, markings, weaponry, and other details that help the GM capture the feel of the guild at a glance.  The background are roughly a page to two pages and help set the stage for what type of guild each one represents.  Have a decadent city where assassination is legal?  Look at the Crimson Brotherhood for some ideas on how such a guild might work.  Want to get some more use out of the Yuan-ti in your game?  Well, there are not one, but two guilds with links to them.  Now this seems to tie into one of the PrCs from Librum Equitis 2 and perhaps even the upcoming adventure module so I’m eager to see how these all will function in a campaign.  Just as impressive though is the promise of future material for the Wraith-Killers, a guild of assassins ruled by the undead.The book closes out with some things for Game Masters to mull over rule wise.  Want some variant torture rules?  How about rules for breaking a creatures neck or options for strangulation with a garrote?  Their in here.  The book ends with a brief encounter so that GMs can prepare their players for pain.Now in terms of setup, the book follows the conversation of two powerful individuals as one is seeking to hire an assassin for a very specific mission and the other, the guild master, is showing this death knight around the guild.  This allows each chapter and section to flow into another but is at times a little distracting.  While the characters are interesting, they aren’t provided any stats and while it’s a good method of introducing ideas, it’s used too much.The chapter breaks are excellent full color illustrations but stand out in direct contract to the rest of the book.  The black and white illustrations aren’t bad but not in the same league as the cover or interior color chapter breaks.  The text is fair and white space is average.I was disappointed in the whole core and PrC section.  I don’t enjoy products I have to work extensively at making fit and the idea that the power levels varied so much so that something would be useful to you no matter what your style, without providing alternative CRs and method of toning down or powering up the classes, is a cop out.To get a five star rating out of me, the book would have to minimize the dialog, improve the playability of the core and PrCs, provide rules on making and running assassin guilds,  and provide more anti-toxins. As a player resource, the book does have spells, weapons, feats and a few ideas that will go a long way in helping players portray assassins in a new and more dangerous light but it’s more of a Game Master’s resource book filled with poisons, templates, organizations and other goods.</blockquote>

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