Polyhedron Issue 82: April 1993
part 3/5
Magnificent Magic: They had two adventures last issue, so it's not that surprising that they're skipping that this issue for another centrepiece packed with new magic items, as submitted in one of their recent contests. Let's see just how inventive and potentially unbalancing this collection is.
Amazing Mice are a quartet of brightly coloured mice that run a maze when activated, and then cast a different spell depending on which one wins. Interesting, but not very reliably useful in a combat situation. Wild mages will love them.
Amulets of Lathander give you autohealing when you drop to 0. This works particularly well when you're a priest of said god. Since keeping your cleric alive helps everyone else recover after the fight, one of these can be a big boost to the overall survivability of a party.
Arabel's Huggable Bear protects sleeping holders from possession, dream invasion and other nocturnal mental violations. That'll prevent several of the more annoying adventures I've seen along the way from ever getting started.
Armor of Underwater Action is obviously immensely handy if you have an underwater adventure, and no better than any other outside that. It's air supply only lasts 24 hours, so extended trips under the sea will still be a problem.
Arrows of Connection create a floating rope attached to whatever you hit. A classic bit of utility magic for the whole party to get across cliffs & chasms.
Arrows of Detonation can go boom, or harmlessly create light at the user's command. This is very handy in keeping them from being turned against their shooter, unlike a fireball in an enclosed space.
Arrows of Illumination are another handy utility one if your wizard didn't prepare for delving dark dungeons today.
Bags of the Woodland give a druid a near unlimited amount of seeds. Perfect both for feeding your mounts and increasing the biodiversity of an area.
Barding of Flight lets your mount grow wings. As with the underwater one, watch out for duration limits, otherwise you may crash abruptly while high. It's not a no effort solution to your travel needs for the whole party.
Barding of Missile Protection is very handy if you're planning to charge through lots of enemies with a lance. Perfect for the paladin who prefers aboveground adventures.
The Blade of Lightning is one of those powerful weapons that's almost as much of a hazard to the user as it is to enemies unless you have something else to give you electricity resistance. Don't draw it unless you have a lot of enemies to fry, for trying to hold the charge in is not pleasant.
Blood Swords are also a decidedly mixed blessing, as they need to taste blood before you can put them away again. Against constructs or incorporeal undead, you'll need a different weapon.
Bows of Neverending Arrows are your basic removal of resource tracking from the D&D cartoon, including the arrows disappearing so you can't create unlimited amounts of wood and break the construction economy. Important to remember those bits.
Bracers of Blasting make devastating sound waves when clashed together. Great for both destroying people and fortifications. So long, Jericho.
Bridles of Control mean you no longer have to worry about how you train & treat your mount. Just don't ignore their needs until it kills them, because that's terribly wasteful and will still make you unpopular with other adventurers.
Cans of Preserving are yet another one that removes tracking of basic resource issues like food spoiling. Presuming your DM bothers with those in the first place, which has grown increasingly rare over the years & editions.
The Censor gags naughty characters, keeping everything in your campaign family friendly. Can't be violating the code of conduct, can we?
A Chalice of Food-like Liquid gives you enough soup to keep three people decently fed per day, or slow resource depletion amongst your group accordingly if shared out between more. Another one that just makes extended adventuring that little bit more comfortable.
The Chess Pieces of Fextree are 6 typically themed types of chess piece that animate if you speak the correct command words. They have lots of utility tricks as well as the expected combat skills, with the king able to create an entire village temporarily to serve you, which seems very exploitable indeed. Good luck assembling the whole board.
Circlets of Psionic Enhancement double your PSP recovery, halve your cost to establish telepathic contact, and generally make your life much easier as a psionicist. If your group doesn't have one, they should probably fix that.
Cloaks of Strength are one of those weird items that permanently boost your stat then disappear. Who makes those and why? Why do they keep on showing up in treasure hoards instead of being used already by their owners? It's all very suspicious if you start examining it closely.
Cloaks of Weather remove worrying about penalties from another basic everyday thing we have to deal with frequently in the real world.
Collars of Protection make your pets & familiars a little less fragile. Always good to see wizards showing a bit of consideration for others.
Courtesan's Cream is your basic charisma booster, as we've seen quite a few times before. Yawn. At least they've mostly stopped trying to make Comeliness happen as a separate ability score, several years after the rest of the company.
Defender's Harps can shatter all nonmagical glass and metal in the vicinity, including your armor and weapons, making a fight seem much less viable while leaving spellcasters as dangerous as ever. Very humiliating for an army.
Dragon Cloaks protect you against breath weapons, but weirdly enough, not other examples of the same element. Only useful in very specialised situations then, and old dragons with spells will still have plenty of other ways to put the hurt on you.
Earrings of Understanding are your basic babel fish effect. Also generally handy if your adventures take you far and wide.
Familiar Protection Enhancement Bands let them go farther away from you while maintaining the bond. Specialised, but definitely not useless.
Gloves of the Feline obviously give you cat-like climbing, jumping & clawing abilities. A perennially popular idea.
Hefiz's Superb Shiny Shoes are cursed items that turn into massive garishly coloured glowing squeaky clown shoes when worn, and are near impossible to remove like most cursed items. The perfect way to make any thief's life a misery if you're a sadistic wizard.
The Helm of the Insect looks like a bug head, gives you 360 degree vision and nasty mandibles to bite with, plus insect summoning if you really want to annoy your enemies. Usefully thematic but not overpowering.
Honing Stones randomly increase or decrease the plus of any weapon sharpened by them. Best used on your currently nonmagical ones rather than trying to further boost already enchanted weapons, but you won't know that unless you properly analyze it.
Hugrin's Spice Shaker can produce any spice desired with the right command word. If you know of particularly high scoville rating ones, this seems very abusable.
Itzpix's Collapsible Water Barrel is obviously nowhere near as useful as a decanter of endless water, but still reduces your encumbrance when carrying large amounts of water considerably.
Kura, The Darkness is a sneaky extraplanar being trapped in a shard of onyx. It'll grant you a whole range of sneaky darkness based powers, and teach you the ways of the ninja, but also try to trick or persuade you into freeing it. You know the drill. Don't trust everything it says if you want to come out ahead.
Magic Mice can dig or gnaw through nearly anything. This makes them excellent for escaping bonds, spying on things, springing traps and all sorts of utility tricks with an inventive owner.
Mondasso's Automated Spell Scrolls give you 20 spell levels worth of extra storage. Much cheaper long-term than making one-shot scrolls.
Monocles of Magic mean you don't have to memorise read magic, freeing up yet more resource tracking. yay
Norval's Timely Portrait reflects the ageing and injury taken by it's subject, letting someone back home know if you're still alive and well. Halfway to the Dorian Grey trick, but the less useful half. I guess it gives any nonadventuring SO peace of mind.
Ohm's Black Box can safely trap nearly anything within it's 12 inch cube for up to 5 days. Perfect for transporting a prisoner back to more permanent accommodation.
The Oyori of the Unknown Warrior transforms into armor of any shape, with any heraldic crest you desire, which is quite handy for disguise as long as you want to look like a noble warrior in heavy armor. Careful not to give the game away, because other knights or samurai tend to respond with large amounts of violence when they find out they've been tricked or you've been doing dishonourable things while pretending to be them.
Padriac's Portable Purveyor of Parfait Potions produces one of 24 different kinds of potion per day depending on what sequence of buttons you push. Some are booby prizes, so if you don't have the key it can be dangerous to experiment with.
Parchment of Spell Stealing absorbs the first spell cast near it, ruining your wizard's day. They often come in rolls of multiple sheets, which would be very useful for a fighter who expects magical trouble and wants to use straightforward violence to get through it.
The Pegleg of Immurk the Invincible instantly gives you all the skills of a powerful pirate when attached, both mundane and fighting, including automatically summoning a parrot to sit on your shoulder and being able to magically open any treasure chest. Not that you're planning on losing a leg, but at least this is much less of a risk to your self-control and sanity than Vecna's body parts.
Potions of Curing Lycanthropy do exactly what it says on the vial. If you're not already sick, the side effects are pretty unpleasant so taking recreationally is a bad idea, like many a medicine.
Potions of Poison Negation, on the other hand, need to be taken as a precautionary measure. If you've already been bitten by a random snake in the woods they won't be of any use.
Pouches of Duplication do exactly what they say, although they only work on nonliving, nonmagical items small enough to fit, and only have limited charges. Duplicating coins is not the best way to use them, find a particularly valuable gem first and sell it several times in different places if you want maximum profit.
Puppy Putty needs to be rolled into a cute little ball and stuck on your nose to activate it's powers. How many adventurers are going to figure that one out on their own?
Quills of Pyrophilius transcribe everything you say as long as there's something around to write on. Perfect for the wizard who likes to ramble and sort out organisation of their papers later in the edit.
Razors of Close Shaving are guaranteed to get you ultrasmooth with no nasty little cuts. This does not boost your charisma as much as the female equivalent, but definitely doesn't hurt.
Rings of Keys come in groups of 10. Each has a 10% chance of opening any lock. For those that don't understand combinatoric math, that gives you about a 65% chance of success, which isn't terrible, but you'll still sometimes need a dedicated rogue to get places.
Rings of Lighting are convenient for the habitual smoker, and anyone else who likes to start fires. Direct damage in combat isn't great, but burning down a house and killing them in their sleep without a fight will make up for that.
Rings of the Phoenix put paid to that plan. If you die from fire while wearing one, you're reborn as a half-phoenix with a whole load of spell-like powers. Another one where the chances of you getting full use out of it by dumb luck seems pretty small.
Rings of the Valiant can be turned into any weapon you're proficient with, and are near impossible to remove without killing you, ensuring you can always summon a weapon to hand even if otherwise completely stripped of your gear. No matter what happens, you can always go down fighting with dignity.
Roses of Ravenloft turn you into an immortal goth engine of destruction as long as you touch them, but you'll rapidly wither and die as soon as you let go. This makes life very inconvenient, because being unable to touch things without them crumbling to dust as soon as you stop is a very obvious tell that will make people want to kill you. (somewhat hindered by their weapons disintegrating after one successful strike. ) This definitely wasn't properly examined for all the awkward edge cases.
Saddles of Taming are very similar to bridles of control, only slightly nicer. Having both in the same collection seems kinda redundant.
Scrollcases of Document Transmission are magical fax machines, sending anything put in one to the other. Handy, but not as useful as real life due to lack of scalable network externalities.
Shakuhachi of Peace are bamboo flutes that cast spells when you play the correct tunes on them. Unsurprisingly, said spells strongly lean on the defensive side.
Slack's Seamless Spellbook makes sure no-one can peek at your spells without knowing the command word. If you find one of these in a treasure hoard, better hope they were absent-minded enough to need to write it down. At least it won't have numbers, symbols and uppercase letter strewn randomly throughout.
Spectral Swords have an incorporeal blade that only hurts undead. Extra handy in Ravenloft, where detect evil spells don't work, and the undead often come in disguise.
Staves of Conjuration can cast any spell in the monster summoning series for the same number of charges. This makes it very flexible in how you increase your action economy for a fight. Lots of little disposable minions or a few more powerful ones.
Swords of the Avoreen are halfling swords that are extra dangerous when you're defending your home. Not that useful for most PC's, but it'll make sure they treat the NPC's a bit more seriously.
Talking Skulls let you speak with dead by feeding them bits of bone, but they're picky eaters and prone to sulking. Another of those things you really need an instruction manual if you want it to be more boon than bane.
Thieves Tools of Stealth are more effective than mundane ones, and can merge into your body and then be extruded again at will, ensuring you're never without a lockpick if you find yourself in prison.
Trap-Springers are remote controllable slinkys. They can pretend to be all sorts of heights & weights when sproinging down a corridor. Much more flexible and reusable than sending in zombies to trigger suspicious areas.
Troll's Bane is an intelligent magical sword with the expected favored enemy. Regenerators beware, because wounds from this won't heal as quickly as you're used too.
Vladium's Fabulous Equine Brush is another utility timesaver, letting you groom any furred creature extra clean and glossy in a fraction of the normal time.
Wands of Arc Lightning come in pairs and electrocute everything in between them when commanded. This will probably require careful tracking of movement on a battlemat to properly adjudicate and use to best effect.
Wands of Cluny write misspelled graffiti on command. The perils of enchantment when you're a dyslexic wizard.
Wands of Feathers have various duster related powers, both cleaning and tickling. Comedic, but still useful.
Weapons of Adaption turn into any weapon you want on command. Another one that seems kinda redundant with the earlier, more powerful one just a few pages ago. They really should have been a bit more selective with this collection.
) then putting it in a file so you can grab them, and then know where to find the more detailed information. Props and handouts may take time to make, but they can save a lot of time at the table - just showing a photo or drawing has more impact than several minutes of exposition. If you really are burnt out despite all this help, then better to admit it openly and rotate GM's or take a break than struggle on with an uninspired game. All very familiar stuff by this point, but he phrases it better than most.
