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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010743" data-attributes="member: 172">Devilish DevicesDevilish Devices is a supplement by Fast Forward Entertainment presenting new artifact-style items for use in the game, much in the same vein as FFE's Items of Power series of books. The book's contributing designers include John Cassie, Jarad Fennell, Eric Haddock, Timothy Kidwell, Timothy O'Brien, Christoffer Trossen, and James M. Ward.A First LookDevilish Devices is a 128-page hardcover book priced at $24.99 US. For this price, B&W hardbounds of this price are historically thicker (176 pages for books by FFG and as much as 256 page by White Wolf published books), but prices are trending up for those thicker books. Also worth noting is that FFE's current hardbounds aren't any more expensive that softbound books of the same size.The cover of the book has the FFE signature red grainy background. The front cover picture, by William W. Connors, appears to be a computer generated picture of a sword with a circular handguard laying atop several papers depicting items in the book.The interior is black and white. William W. Connors is credited as the interior artist. Most of the interior images appear to be computer-processed images of photos. Much of the remaining art is clipart of the same sort that has been used in other FFE books.The interior body font text is conservatively sized, and the line and paragraphs are closely spaced, yielding a good amount of content per page. However, the beginning of each section starts with a full page with nothing but the section title and an unattractive touched up photo.A Deeper LookThe bulk of Devilish Devices is new magic items. In addition to the items, the book has a chapter introducing new prestige classes and a game statistics appendix. Unlike prior items books by Fast Forward, Devilish Devices does not separate the game statistics of the magic items from the fictional text. The only thing in the game mechanics appendix is statistics for creatures mentioned in the stories.The items are sorted by type into 6 chapters: pendants, tankards and glasses, jewelry, implements of torture, figurines, and miscellany.Each item includes around 1/4 to a full column of game statistics and power descriptions. The remaining 1-4 pages are fiction related to the item. The fiction is generally well written and relates the story behind the item. The fiction is generally well written, but I found some of the concepts and stories in Wondrous Items of Power (like those of the Fetish of the Thunderer Talisman and the Terpsichorean Charm talisman) to be a bit more copelling.Unlike many of the previous item books, many of the items in this book are actually not artifacts, but standard magic items. This is a stride forward, as it creates more items that GMs will be willing to put in their campaigns, which are just as deserving of background as artifacts are. The item statistics for the standard magic items include d20 statistics like caster level and crafting prerequisites, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, artifacts are still lacking caster levels, which is pertinent for the purposes of resolving spell effects.The book introduces six new prestige classes used by NPCs introduced in the book: -Court Seer: The court seer is essentially an arcane spellcaster that gathers secrets through scrying. The seer gain lore similar to the way that a loremaster does, though their secrets aren't seemingly as potent as a loremaster's. Their abilities also optimize their scrying, and they progress as a spellcaster at the full rate. Overall the class seems balanced, playable, and true to the concept. The only problem is that the BAB is off by one level of what is normal for poor BAB advancement. -Dragon Hunter: The Dragon Hunter is a good fighter equipped with special abilities that defend them against and helps them track dragons. Dragons hunters also receive an exotic weapon proficiency every odd level. This latter feature is never explained. If there was some sort of special weapons that Dragon hunters use that these proficiencies would be used for, that would have been beneficial to know, but the proficiencies aren't mentioned anywhere other than the class table. -Learned Scholar: The learned scholar is fundamentally similar to the Court Seer and Loremaster, so much so that I consider this class somewhat redundant. The only thing that distinguishes this class from those two in flavor is that the character is not required to be a spellcaster. However, the learned scholar does gain spellcasting levels if the character was a spellcaster before, but apparently, character who were not spellcasters do not gain any spellcasting abilities, making this class a much weaker choice for some possible entrants. -Life Giver: The life giver is a sort of dedicated healer. The life giver gets spells, primarily healing spells, including extra healing spells much like a domain. The class is a weak fighter, making it much like a poor man's cleric at low levels. However, this class has very liberal entry requirements, allowing a character to enter the class at third level. However, the Life Giver gains access to high level spells like true ressurection by 10th level. So by 12th level, the character has a class normally denied to clerics of less than 18th level. I doubt many players will want to enter this class, but including this class in a campaign could seriously change the kilter of the campaign. -Religious Elder: The religious elder is a senior member of an organized church, with class abilities relating to the congregation and the organization, such as the ability to call on favors. Though seemingly primarily targeted at cleric, like the Life Giver, you can enter this class early and you don't gain its spellcasting abilities if you weren't already a spellcaster. Much like the court seer, the BAB progression is apparently calculated wrong. -Tribal Lieutenant: Tribal Lieutenants are leaders in primitive cultures. The tribal lieutenant is a strong fighter, and has class abilities focused on protecting the chieftan of a tribe.The mechanics chapter provides stat blocks for creatures mentioned in the main text. The stat blocks are generally solid. However, like Enchanted Locations: Tombs & Crypts, this book had statistics blocks for creatures pulled from the Monster Manual II. This surprised me as this is exactly what got Enchanted Locations: Crypts & Tombs in trouble with WotC for license violations. Whether this means that WotC is turning a blind eye to this one or if they merely aren't aware of this book, I don't know. But if you are concerned about this book disappearing, you may want to grab a copy now.ConclusionOverall, this is a fairly decent book. If you liked the "Items of Power" series, there is generally more here to like. The text is denser (albeit the book is about 30 pages smaller for $1 less), the statistics are more complete and thus easier to implement than in the earlier books, and the arrangement is a little more convenient.However, I wasn't as taken in by the stories and concepts as I was by some of those in Wondrous Items of Power. And if you (like me) think that gaming products are not well served by such a high ratio of fiction, then you will probably not like this book much more than previous books. Finally, compared to two books that came out at the same time and several books that have come out since, the presentation is sort of lackluster, much as with the older Items of Power books.Overall Grade: C--Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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