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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9118675" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 146: March 2001part 2/6The 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.</blockquote>

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