TSR [Let's Read] Polyhedron/Dungeon

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 84: Jan/Feb 2001



part 3/6



Demonclaw: Another adventure set in Greyhawk, showing that they’re taking the mandate to make it the default campaign setting for the new edition seriously. You’re sent off to Wragby, where a paladin has failed to return after visiting the tower of a wizard. Your main mission is to find and retrieve his body so they can raise him, but I’m sure they won’t object to any other heroics in the process. Turns out he accidentally summoned a demon he couldn’t control, and in the process of trying to get rid of it, wound up becoming fused with it instead, becoming a half-glabrezu (and more than half insane) abomination. He killed the paladin, but retained enough of a conscience to not kill his squire, ( :Bob Marley intensifies: ) imprisoning him instead. So this could be played as a typical short dungeoncrawl where you kill everything, but if you explore it in the right order and read the wizard’s notes before encountering him you might realise what’s happened and play it more as a mission of mercy, figuring out how to subdue and capture him (not easy with demonic teleport without error at will) and go on another quest to reverse the transformation. That’s enough moral ambiguity to keep it interesting as a scenario, giving you harder but ultimately more rewarding options than just hack & slash, while also showcasing that this isn’t your daddy’s Greyhawk, with both more racial diversity (a half-orc paladin!) and a higher average magic level that’s also well integrated into society. So long pretending D&D campaign worlds are basically real world medieval with the weird stuff hovering around the edges, now everyone with any experience has a suitable collection of magic items. Some people will like that, others very much won’t, and hopefully we’ll see a few more letters on the topic in the near future.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 84: Jan/Feb 2001



part 4/6



The Dying of the Light: After a couple of quite distinctive adventures, it’s time to go back to a very familiar idea. Off to a castle to defeat the vampires that have taken over a small town and are using it as their personal blood bank. Still, it’s the first time this edition, and they put an appropriate spin on it, giving you plenty of warning of what you’ll be facing courtesy of a rebellious sage in the village, encouraging you to load up on gear, go first thing in the morning and take them all out before it gets dark. Much more sensible than the 2e method of coming across the castle while it’s raining at night and being invited in for dinner. So it’s a tactical dungeoncrawl where you don’t absolutely have to do it all in one sitting, but if you don’t keep strict track of time and finish it within the time limit, things get much harder for you and possibly the whole town, as if you leave before sundown to save your own hides the surviving vampires will assume you’re probably back there and massacre the place in revenge. Even during the day it’s no cakewalk, with a decent number of monsters that aren’t affected by the light, plus plenty of mind-controlled human servants that aren’t particularly dangerous in a fight and you probably don’t want to kill, but will raise the alarm if you don’t do something to stop them, once again raising the difficulty level. All the vampires get full stats with class levels and distinct personalities, with a hierarchy and different reactions based on who and how many of them are still alive when night falls or they’re aroused by the alarm. The kind of adventure that suits people who play 3e with all the ruthlessness the ruleset allows, scrying out the lay of the land beforehand, stacking all the buffs they can and then taking out the enemy before they get a chance to react. Very of it’s time, but in a way that I approve of.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 84: Jan/Feb 2001



part 5/6



Dungeon of the Fire Opal: Well, here’s a familiar sight I’ve occasionally wondered about over the years. The 1e DMG included a sample dungeon map, which was repeated with upgraded visuals in the 3.0 one as well, but even though each room was numbered, the descriptions petered out after number 3. Looks like Jonathan Tweet decided to finish it off, but it got cut for space and the rest of it only appears in here. Do you have what it takes to succeed where Tordek, Mialee, Jozan & Lidda failed and penetrate the maze of rooms beneath the ruins of the Fire Opal Monastery? It turns out they were actually devil-worshippers, which gives a definite theme to many of the encounters, although there’s still plenty of random rodents and giant insects to make a nuisance of themselves if you sit around too long and keep you from getting a decent nights sleep if you try the 15 minute workday approach. It’s written to showcase that you can build weaker versions of iconic monsters for 3e and still make them interesting as combat encounters, making them more accessible than they were under the old rules. Oysluth skeletons & zombies, a baby fiendish red dragon, a ghost gnoll, a lizardfolk druid, plus plenty of ghouls to keep you on your toes and punish you for splitting the party. So it’s a pure dungeoncrawl that lacks the story depth of most 2e adventures, but does lots of interesting things mechanically that you couldn’t before save by pure DM fiat and is easily expanded by adding more dungeon levels underneath. There are far worse ways to start a campaign off.



Nodwick breaks the 4th wall and has the group play backseat editor to the adventure writer.

 

[(un)reason]

Dungeon Issue 84: Jan/Feb 2001



part 6/6



Armstice: Back to the more morally complex adventures that feel like they were probably written under the old edition’s rules then converted to the new. The PC’s are sent to the Griff mountains, where two feuding tribes have theoretically signed up to Pholtus worship and settled their differences, but in practice the decades of old grudges and alternating revenges run as strong as ever. Their armies are locked into a brutal guerrilla war over the area and you have to persuade them to cut that naughty word out with as little killing as possible, which is not easy when they’re scattered into lots of little companies all edgy and jumping at shadows. A decent enough premise for an adventure on it’s own, with a decent mix of exploration, random wilderness encounters and roleplaying, but then the writer just has to add an extra twist. Several centuries ago a pack of winter werewolves were magically imprisoned in a cave in the mountains. One of the commanders released them and thinks he can control them to only attack the other side. He is sorely mistaken, and they’re looking for any opportunity to free the rest of their trapped family and resume a life of bloody lycanthropic hunting. They’ll try and trick the PC’s into doing just that. So with two morally grey sides, plus one unambiguously monstrous one to deal with, this seems a pretty interesting scenario that could go quite differently depending on who they encounter first and talk to, and if they take what they’re told at face value or not. Another pretty cool idea for an adventure that they haven’t done before and I’d have no problem using.



A very interesting issue where all the adventures are good, although it is dominated somewhat by staff writers, reminding us that their slush pile is still low after the big changeover and they’re relying on in-house material that in other times would have been books of their own. Let’s find out if next issue is dominated by big names, or sees the arrival of someone who isn’t famous yet but will go on to be.

 

[(un)reason]

Living Greyhawk Journal 03: February 2001



part 1/4



36 pages. Just another day in the dungeon, fighting humanoids that look considerably larger and stronger, but will probably fall before superior equipment and skill. What, the contents page inside says they’re supposed to be a demigod & demon lords? You’d think they’d have the budget for better lighting then. I guess real world budgetary limitations always supersede in game stats. We’ll just have to use our imagination to make the battle as epic as it ought to be.



To remind us that they’re going to be strict about tracking everything in this campaign, they include a log sheet on the inside cover so you can say exactly where you got or when you created every magical item in your inventory. If you play regularly, you’re probably going to need to photocopy this a lot.



Campaign News: The news is quite short this time and mainly concerns new adventures. The Fright at Tristor is the big one, being both an official release available to the general public, but also one that can be played as a Living adventure and give points to RPGA members. If it works they hope to do more like it. Other new ones include What Lies Beneath, which seems like your typical undead infested graveyard dungeoncrawl, or the more social Festival Knight, where you try to spot the genuine monsters amid the masquerade party before they get a chance to carry out their evil plans. Were these ones any good in actual play?

There are some problems though. They screwed up the stats in Find My Son, forcing them to nerf the magical battleaxe Retribution. Anyone who played the old version needs to contact them and swap the old certificate for a new one or lose the axe outright. Just how broken was it in it’s original incarnation? They also update the character creation guidelines. New prestige classes are added to the approved list thanks to the release of Sword & Fist, Dullstrand is added to the allowed regions, which is a 3 pages of copy-pasting for only a few minor changes, but I guess they have picked up a fair number of new players in the past 4 months. At least they haven’t had to add any significant new restrictions.

 

[(un)reason]

Living Greyhawk Journal 03: February 2001



part 2/4



Blood of Heroes: Our big feature this time throws the spotlight on various characters who made their way to the bottom tier of godhood by their notable deeds. Some are well known because their names are attached to spells or magic items that appear in the corebooks, others are only mentioned in one or two obscure supplements. Will they actually play any part in your games, or just be another footnote in the past for people to idly wonder about?

Azor’alq is your basic warrior of light type popular with paladins, only from Oerths arabian equivalent culture. Good to start us off with one that’s adventurer friendly and very easy to roleplay.

Charmalaine is new as far as I can tell, but is also a familiar adventurer archetype - the halfling rogue who reached high levels by keen situational awareness and lots of lucky escapes. Her holy book is basically just a massive series of pulp cliffhanger stories. Whether the exploits are exaggerated in your campaign is up to you.

Daern is our first big name, as well known for her fortresses as Bigby is for hands and Otiluke for spheres. Without her work, many high level adventurers would sleep considerably less comfortably on extended adventures, although her clerics seem slightly less likely to actually go out adventuring themselves.

Daoud’s portfolio is ironically the exact opposite of what his infamous Lanthorn encourages, humility, honesty, poverty and clarity of thought. A reminder that many artifacts are booby prizes that’ll bring you more grief than benefit. Sometimes they were even designed that way deliberately.

Gadhelyn is another one created just for this article as far as I can tell. Your typical Robin Hood style elf hero, he’d rather just live in the forest, hunting and partying, but try to put regulations on him and those hunting skills are also pretty effective at dealing with interlopers. Better not get on the bad side of his whimsy.

Gendwar Agrim is also new, and the exact opposite personality-wise. Obsessed with exterminating goblinoids, yet also aware that this is probably a futile task given how much more quickly they breed than dwarves, he embodies grim fatalism. Maybe if you introduced them to the concept of contraception instead, so you don’t have to constantly battle for living space and resources or risk outgrowing your supply, then you could learn to co-exist.

Johydee is one of the odder ones around here. A NG character with a portfolio of deception & espionage? There’s an interesting story behind that. Well, I suppose many creatures of evil do use trickery and you have to be able to keep up to compete. Just watch you don’t lose your original identity after thousands of years of swapping between personas to fit the situation.

Kelanen is the Prince of Swords, making his clerics very non-stereotypical looking indeed since they only use edged weapons. He’s part of Greyhawk’s axis of active neutrality, siding with whatever alignment is currently the underdog to make sure none of them ever win overall and the great game of life continues. This obviously gives him plenty of opportunity to hone those fighting skills to their peak.

Keoghtom is obviously famed for his healing skills, but there’s a lot more to him than that. He understands not just the sciences of this world, but a whole bunch of other ones as well, probably including earth given how often early D&D games would break the 4th wall. He might not have a huge number of worshippers, but they could turn up nearly anywhere and be equipped with nearly anything, including stuff that seems out of genre.

Kuroth is another roguish sort, more concerned with the actual theft than the lucky escapes or indeed accumulating wealth. Often, he’ll leave it somewhere easily found afterwards, having had his fun and proved to the owners that any protections they may have had were sorely inadequate. Better luck next time guys.

Kyuss should be a very familiar name, as his undead creations have livened up many a dungeon and will do so even more in the future. Life is short and cruel, undeath is forever. It would be a sin not to grant the gift of undeath to as many as possible, even if they won’t properly appreciate it until afterwards.

Murlynd is of course our old school six-gun shootin’ cowboy paladin, proving you can be Lawful Good, but also smart and love technology. Most of his priests will have to settle for crossbows though, because we can’t be having too much technological advancement round these parts. Might upset the balance and all that.

Nazarn is god of gladiators, duelists and other forms of formal public combat, who obviously earned his XP and fame by being very good at that job as a mortal. As long as you fight with style and are willing to stick to the rules of the game, you can follow him and be any alignment.

Roykyn is also new here and rarely mentioned again. An evil gnomish goddess of cruel pranks? That seems like a good reason to construct whimsical deathtrap dungeons as any. If she were in a more modern day setting her youtube channel would have many millions of views.

Tsolorandril is old but very obscure. A sexless alien from another world which stuck around Oerth to explore the ethereal plane, wave motion and chaos theory in general. Another one that deliberately feels like it stepped in from another genre entirely and will confuse most PC’s even if their players understand the references.

Vathris is what happens when your Jesus metaphors go horribly wrong. Once a god of progress which was slain by a rival culture, his priests tried to resurrect him, but couldn’t properly heal all his wounds and got a half-crazed perpetually tormented martyr god instead who’s only goal when lucid is revenge. Understandable, but not improving the overall state of the world. Maybe if you could fix him where others failed you could finally move Oerth forward to a better future.

 

[(un)reason]

Living Greyhawk Journal 03: February 2001



part 3/4



The Gods of Oerth: Following directly on from last article, they list all 111 deities that are currently allowed in Living Greyhawk, including repeating the 16 we just saw. Name, gender, (all but the one from another planet are firmly binary, Oerth doesn’t have time for any of that sticky gender fluid stuff apart from gag girdles in treasure piles, unlike the Realms. ) areas of concern, alignment, domains granted and favored weapons. Obviously some of them are evil, so PC’s aren’t allowed to worship them, but you still need those as antagonists. All pretty similar to the FR list in Polyhedron 144, albeit with a little more detail and a format that turns the writing sideways to accommodate it.



Enchiridion of the Fiend-Sage: Our narrator is on a somewhat more even footing this time around, having secured some new minions, ferreted out a traitor and made interesting process in it’s research in general. You can conceal obvious things using magic, but there’s still useful information to be found if you look in the right way and know how to analyse the data. I guess when you’re immortal you have a lot of time to figure things out. Let’s see what creatures it’s managed to dissect specimens of this time.

Amedian Gutwrms are scaled up tapeworms, a nasty fight in their adult form, and likely to lay eggs in you if they hit you successfully. Better get treatment soon after if you don’t want an inconvenient chestburster situation a few weeks later. They don’t work too well on fiend’s extraplanar biology, but the fiend-sage is looking for ways to fix that and if he does, watch out Baatezu.

Losel are orc-baboon hybrids, a reminder that 3e loves some of that hot unprotected interracial action, consensual or not. They do show up sometimes naturally, but Iuz has made a point of breeding whole tribes of them, which says more about his kinks than his competence as they don’t have any particularly cool powers, just further exaggerating the high str/low int & cha nature of regular orcs and adding a climb speed. They could easily be used as an ECL+0 PC race, and would work perfectly as the stats for horriblins, if you’ve been playing the latest Zelda game lately.

Norkers are another rarely used one from the old books that Iuz seems determined to increase the numbers of. In this case the reason is a little more obvious. That high natural armor score is easily worth at least an ECL+1 and not having to worry about crafting them is a significant cost saver compared to getting your goblin legions up and running. If only he could figure out how to make them better at working in a team. (but not too much better, otherwise they wouldn’t be chaotic evil and might switch sides outright)

Swordwraiths are one of the many types of undead who come back simply because they don’t know how to do anything else. In this case, it’s because they’re fighters who just refuse to quit. Despite their insubstantial appearance they’re actually fully solid, but gain decent DR, strength draining attacks and the usual suite of undead resistances. Probably better at representing ringwraiths mechanically than the regular D&D version.

 

[(un)reason]

Living Greyhawk Journal 03: February 2001



part 4/4



Dispatches: This continues to grow in both number of entries and length of individual entries, with 29 countries over 6 pages. Mysterious golden dragon statuettes in Ahlissa, which are being sought by lots of adventuring groups hired by multiple mysterious strangers. (or maybe the same one using disguises) A young soldier named Traynen disappearing in the Bandit Kingdoms. Ethnic tensions in Bissel about who gets the abandoned homesteads in the northern regions after the war. A whole spate of shipwrecks along the coast of the Bright Desert. Just bad luck or an evil druid striking against the agents of civilisation? The annual trading festival approaches in Divers, complete with special scavenger hunt many groups will want to compete in. Blight continues to wrack Furyondy, resulting in desperate scrambles for what food they can import and a grand council convened to find a solution. Giants are once again a problem in Geoff, as they have been many times in the past. The Gran March is also involved in the same conflict, although there are still some tensions between the countries despite the seriousness of their common enemy. A mysterious monolith recently appeared just outside the Free City of Greyhawk, prompting the wizard’s guild to send adventurers to investigate. Mysterious fires and a serial killer plague the highfolk. A single magical word has every ketite who heard it terrified and refusing to repeat it, and everyone else baffled and torn between wanting to find out what it is and what will happen to them once they too know the terrible truth. The Lordship of the Isles captured a group of elves that have been a thorn in their side for some time, sinking multiple ships. Some people still don’t think this deserves the death penalty though, particularly not a gruesome one like ritual disembowelment, and are making plans to break them out. The North Kingdom is losing the battle against the undead hordes of Rinloru, with new acid secreting bone golems chewing through the weapons of the soldiers. Nyrond continues to make it very clear that you do not mess with the mail service, for their response shall be swift and disproportionate. Onnwal suffers from diplomatic breakdown with the neighbouring demihumans. The bishop of Hatherly falls out of a window and dies in the Pale. Resurrection attempts fail, hinting that more complicated foul play is involved rather than simple accident. Perrenland holds an election for the next Voorman, which looks like it’ll be hard fought by the various political factions. The orcs of the Pomarj have suffered several recent massacres, which leaves people feartful about what worse creatures now stalk the night. Dragons? Vampires? Do you dare to go find out? Ratik managed to defeat their own humanoid invaders, only to fall out with their Frost Barbarian neighbours on the other side. The Sea Princes continue their campaign to crush Utavo the Wise and his ideas of freedom & kindness, with help from the Scarlet Brotherhood and a force of summoned devils. Yet more humanoids attack the Shieldlands, reminding us that fighting them is a perennial low level adventurer staple. The high priest of Heironeous is discovered brutally murdered in Sterich. The priests of Erythnul are engaging in witch-hunts against Iuz influences in the Stonehold, slaughtering plenty of innocent people along the way. Definitely a case where whoever wins, we all lose. Both County and Principality of Ulek struggle with thieves and humanoid raiders, resulting in quite a bit of valuable stuff going missing. The future is so bright in Veluna that someone has invented shades. Giant-kin are raiding the gnomes in Verbobonc. One of the sons of the Wolf Nomad Khan is captured by Iuz, then sent back as an armless zombie, which has predictably made a lot of people very angry and is likely to lead to full-on war. Finally, the Yeomanry is another country holding elections, some of which are settled by civic construction contests such as bridge building among the candidates. Well, that’s one way to get around politicians making big promises then breaking them as soon as they get into office. Get your product upfront, before the corruption has time to set in. Whew, that’s definitely a lot going on. Goes to show just how many people are already writing adventures in these various places, putting the effort into making them seem alive. Let’s hope they’ll actually be allowed to make changes in the countries stick and become part of the massive tapestry of Oerth’s history.



Living Greyhawk Contact List is relatively stable this time, with no departures and two previously vacant positions filled. Andre Vermak from South Africa takes the Dullstrand slot, while Philip Wrabel from Qubec fills the Tusmit position. Now it’s just Sweden & Greece that have conspicuously unfilled slots, although I’m sure they’d partner up other countries as well if the fanbase really seemed to be growing there.



An issue dominated by its two big lists of things, showing I have more to say per page when the issue is heavily subdivided like this. There’s definitely lots of useful material in this one, although you’d struggle to use all of it at once even if you were playing in Greyhawk. Let’s see if next issue continues to add to the setting at the same pace and what old stuff it’ll reference along the way.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 146: March 2001



part 1/6



56 pages. The many faces of Myrkyssa Jelan. Now she’s been defeated for good, (or at least a century) they can reveal just how well she managed to lead multiple lives without even casting any spells. A bit of acting talent, different outfits and wigs and somehow no-one noticed that the new mayor is also the warlord who tried to invade the city last year. Time to see how the process of converting Raven’s Bluff to the new edition is going, and if they’ll be able to add anything new to the setting in the process.



Network News: They obviously have a lot of news this time, as this is 8 pages long and divided into multiple sections. The Living City conversions are not going as well as hoped, so they’re extending the deadline for you to convert your certificates over and appointing a new PR director to make sure all the new announcements get out to everyone in a timely fashion & you have someone specific to complain at when things go wrong. Despite the massive gains in membership they’ve made over the past year, they’re still having their budget cut overall because of trouble elsewhere in the company. The firehose of Pokemon money is dropping in pressure, and while the drop in profits isn’t so large as to put Hasbro in danger, that means they can’t subsidise the smaller departments as much. The amount they’ve provided for gamers has always been worth far more than the nominal subscription costs, but borne by the company because they think it’s good for gaming as a whole. Another sign that there’s trouble on the horizon that will eventually lead to Polyhedron being rolled into Dungeon and membership fees dropped entirely, which seems an odd choice if the department is already losing them money but I guess they thought it’d help long-term. The international news is more cheery, but as that’s just the usual round of recent conventions that’s not nearly as interesting. A demonstration of how a change in one thing can have complex knock-on effects somewhere else that you didn’t expect. Who would have though Pokemon had such an impact on the history of tabletop RPG’s?



The magic of Raven's Bluff: They may be struggling to get people to convert their individual characters over to 3e, but they have done a lot of work converting many of the magic items that appeared in Living City modules over the years. Since some of them only appeared in a single adventure played at one specific convention, they can be quite rare, particularly if they were from the early years and many of the characters who originally earned them have since died or had their players drop out due to real life events. They were always fairly strict about not putting game-breaking stuff in compared to home campaigns, plus they’ve got an opportunity to further tweak things in the conversion process, so I doubt any of these will be too powerful, but hopefully they’ve still managed to put some interestingly quirky ideas in.

Arvoreen’s Shield of the Protector is only +1 for you, but extra effective when used to protect your allies from attacks. Good for encouraging teams to actually work together and not split up to do their own thing.

Dragon Shields of Protection have a whole suite of extra powers that only activate when facing dragons. They also glow when near one, which is good for spotting shapeshifted dragons, but bad for your own stealth. Whether this applies only to true dragons, or any monster with the dragon type in 3e is not entirely clear, so I guess it’s up to your DM.

Half-Plate of the Moon can be used to cast Moonbeam once per day, which is mostly useful for forcing lycanthropes to change shape and cut to the climax of a mystery plot. Better make sure you’re ready for the ensuing combat.

Bracer Blades let you extend and retract out a blue blade of magical energy from your wrist at will, effectively giving you your own lightsaber. Not that much more dangerous than a regular magic sword, but stylish and might let you be prepared for trouble somewhere regular weapons are banned.

Crysmal Swords have several sound based special powers that are activated by spending your daily uses of bardic music, which means only bards can get full potential out of it. That’s not very in spirit with the new edition’s rules for qualifying for feats and prestige classes.

The Daggers of Clan Shado don’t have any particularly impressive powers, but they are individually numbered, and the head of the clan keep records of who received each of them as a gift. If you’re the legit owner, that means you have the respect of the halflings. If not, well, it probably won’t be quite as unpleasant as owning a githyanki silver sword, but you can definitely expect some negative social consequences.

 

[(un)reason]

Polyhedron Issue 146: March 2001



part 2/6



The magic of Raven's Bluff (continued):

Deathstryke is an intelligent bastard sword with some quite amusing quirks. If you’re the wrong alignment, it’ll scream constantly until you let go. If you’ve got the right stuff, it’ll act as your personal cheerleading squad. Definitely sounds like a fun one for the DM to roleplay.

The Mace of the Positive Material Plane is predictably good at smashing undead, but also constantly glows, once again making a stealthy solution trickier. But a lot of the Living City railroads will just autofail that kind of thing anyway, so might as well not bother with the illusion of freedom of choice.

Pax is another intelligent sword that only works properly for the righteous. It has 6 hollow slots where gems were obviously supposed to go, and rumours that it’ll become even more powerful if reunited with those. That seems like a good premise for a significant multi-part arc of a campaign.

Quarterstaves of Rapid Magery are a reminder that people wanted to cast spells faster even before 3e, they just didn’t have a standardised method to do it. That makes this still useful, but somewhat less impactful than it would have been getting this in a treasure pile in the old days.

Six Shooter Crossbows aren’t quite full-on guns, but have a similar style and on the plus side, don’t need regular supples of smoke powder to work. Mainly useful if you’re high enough level to gain iterative attacks, so you can shoot several times a round for 2-3 rounds before needing to reload.

Storm Reaver has electrical powers, completely unsurprisingly. Protection from electricity and a very limited number of lightning bolts. (and if you use them up, it loses it’s other powers as well, so best to save the last one unless it’s life or death.)

Viper’s Brood Daggers are not poisonous, as that’s still an alignment violation in the strict Living City rules, but instead turn into little snakes after being thrown and slither back to their owner. That’s still a useful trick with decent flavour as well.

Moon Rings of Selune combine a minor AC boost with equally minor light-generating spells. Another one where the social prestige of owning one when shown to the right people is probably more important than the powers.

Rings of Last Request send a telepathic message to a whole bunch of designated people if you die. This seems very specifically designed to start adventures, or get around the most annoying bits of the Raven’s Bluff will system so items don’t just disappear if their owner dies and can’t be raised.

Rings of the Rat are pretty self explanatory. Rat form, once per day, for up to 7 hours. Excellent for spying and theft, although the once per day limitation means you’ll probably need to figure out a different escape route once you’ve nabbed what you were after unless it’s very small.

Staves of Storm’s Fury are the wizardly counterpart to Storm Reaver, casting various electrical effects for different numbers of charges. Were they found in the same adventure originally?

Amulets of Life Protection give you an extra window to save someone’s life before you’ll need to pay for an expensive Raise spell, and also prevent possession into the bargain. If you don’t have a more urgent use for the item slot it’s a solid all-rounder for any class.

Amulets of Neutrality protect you from alignment detection and mind-reading effects without making it instantly obvious that blocking is taking place, by giving a neutral result to everything. Not as effective long-term as an active layer of second thoughts, but those are much harder work to build and you take what you can get when you find it in adventures.

Amulets of the Silver Dragon are another one that has some minor practical benefits, but mainly show you’ve done a big favour for a dragon at some point in the past, which gets you plenty of respect from some but pisses off others before they know you personally.

Ash of Envisioning lets you see the last few memories of a dead person by sprinkling it on them. Much less gruesome than the Corax method of eating their eyeball.

Bags of Monkeys are exactly that, only the monkeys are magical creations so you don’t have to worry about them starving, suffocating or escaping before you release them to cause comical chaos intentionally.

Beholder Pendants glow when a beholder is near, but much more faintly than most of their peers, because if there’s a monster you really want to get the drop on instead of fighting fair, it’s them. The bonus against their eye powers is also rather weaker than the one targeted against dragons. Despite their power, they don’t have quite the same prestige as the monster who’s name is in the title of the game.

Boots of the Windrider are a cool name, but a relatively minor power, letting you ignore wind effects short of a hurricane. Only useful if your GM regularly remembers to apply random weather effects to your journeys.