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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: 2009371" data-attributes="member: 1129">e-MinionsEdited by Michael CantrellPublished by Bastion Presswww.bastionpress.com24 full color pagese-Minions is a .pdf supplement for Minions, the first release by Bastion Press.  Like that print book, Minions focuses on monsters in full color, to add to the campaign.  This supplement covers sixteen new creatures for GM’s.Monsters are listed in alphabetical order broken down by name, combat stats, background information/appearance, combat information and special abilities and campaign notes.  One of the nice things about the Combat section though is that under Construct you’ll find the information needed to craft your own.  This is very useful for the Amber Goelm and the force Guardian, two servants that the Gm may wish to use in his campaign to showcase the different styles of construct creation.Unfortunately, this book came out a while ago and when it does provide characters suitable for play like the Groundling, it only gives them an ECL and not stats to actually make such a character.  Worse, no favored class is listed for such characters.  Still, since most Groundlings lair in or near undead tombs and barrows, perhaps it’s best that no stats are provided?Outside of the two constructs, the Amber Golem and the Force guardian, my favorite creatures include monsters like the Xoleroth, the Heart Stalker, and the Udamentaz.  Some of the other creatures have more interesting uses, but I’m a person who looks towards crunchy bits, especially monsters, on a visual basis.  If I think it looks cool, it’s going to be something I want to throw into my campaign.  The Xoleroth is an outisder from the lower planes.  These creatures are slavers and can make excellent foes for mid-teen level parties.  The Heart Stalker is an undead with spikes and horns giving it a very gothic appearance.  The cool thing about the creature though isn’t only its looks as it can create other spawn like itself and the campaign seed suggests having the party witness a death of a friend.  After defeating the Heart Stalker, they have to take the body back for proper burial and during that time, WHAM! It rises as a Heart Stalker of it’s own.  Another interesting campaign idea is that the hearts and souls that the creatures take feed the original Heart Stalker, a unique entity that grows in power as more people die at its undead servants claws.  Lastly, I like the spider like Udamentaz because despite its natural camouflage ability, including the ability to polymorph into human form, these creatures often take levels in the rogue or cleric class to make them even more formidable.  Such a nice twist when you throw some romance into a campaign and shatter the player’s dreams by having their love turn into a sickly red bloated human faced spider.Only two artists do the art for this book, Todd Morasch and Yannick Zogg.  This gives the product a fairly uniform feel.  The bad news though, is if you don’t’ like the artist, then you’ve got problems.  I find that I enjoy the artist’s take on the constructs and the undead as it gives them a lithe yet powerful figrue.e-Minions has some problems though.  First, because it’s a .pdf file and its in full color, your printer will hate you.  Now don’t get me wrong, not too long ago your printer would’ve hated you more because there used to be only one version of e-Minions which had a full color border.  E-Minions now has two options so you don’t have to print the border if you don’t want to.  Another problem is that there are no listings of the monsters.  While it’s only sixteen monsters, would it have killed Bastion to include a quick CR chart?  Well if it would’ve, I’ve included such a chart at the bottom of this review.  Lastly, some of these monsters have seen publication elsewhere since the product’s original publication such as in the electronic Egyptian Gods and the sourcebook Villains.To get a 5, they’d have to put this CR chart in the book, add racial notes for the playable monsters, and add at least two new monsters to make up for the ones that have appeared in other works.Still, for $2.99, let’s not kid anyone.  Full color monsters with or without borders makes this a great product.CR 2Groundling (Small magical Beast)Skin Wraith (Medium-size Undead)Ushabti Small ConstructCR 3Brainweed (Small Plant)Heart Stalker (Medium-Size Undead)Serpard (Medium-size Magical Beast)CR 4Fox Maiden (Small Shapechanger)CR 5Hound of Insanity (Large Magical Beast)Ka Spirit (Medium-Size Undead-Incorporeal)Lockling (Fine Outsider)Rocanny (Large Magical Beast)CR 6Udamentaz (Medium-size shapechanger)CR 9Lifetap (Medium-size Aberration)CR 10Force Guardian (Medium-size Construct)CR 14Amber Golem (Large Construct)Xoleroth (Large Outsider)</blockquote>

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