Dragon Issue 297: July 2002
part 4/10
Relics of myth: In the original D&D sets, magic items directly based upon real world ones were pretty light on the ground. Until the master set, where they did include stats for a whole load of real things, generally with interesting drawbacks along with their pretty impressive powers. While that has been eroded since then, with tons of articles converting real world stuff at a rather lower power level, it looks like we're having a callback here. Let's see exactly which items they've picked, and if they're ones that already have D&D versions, or are all new to the game.
The Codex Hammer isn't actually a hammer, it's Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. Reading them gives you a free epic skill focus in something appropriately techy. There's 31 volumes in it, so you can build a whole campaign around collecting the set, and becoming a true renaissance man in a way normally built D&D characters can't match. 31 free extra feats is entirely worth the effort.
Crocea Mors is Julius Ceasar's sword, it's deeds suitably exaggerated by time. It's powerful in combat, and intelligent as well, helping you command armies and govern nations, but if you show weakness, it'll desert you and leave you to die. Sounds about right. These sort of legends always have a tragic ending, no matter how much awesome stuff you accomplish in the meantime.
The Crystal Skulls of Doom have yet to be associated with Indiana jones and the nuke-proof fridge, so I guess they're still cool. They have all sorts of divinatory powers, but will drive the weak willed insane, or even make their heads explode. Pretty powerful, and also exactly what you'd expect. Sometimes playing it straight just works.
The English Regalia gives the wearer +12 to a whole load of ruling appropriate stuff, plus the choice of four +7 swords so you have a good set of options against people who refuse to bend knee and acknowledge your sovereignty. It's pretty devoid of drawbacks, which makes sense, since the english monarchy has been relatively stable as these things go. Individual ones may screw up, go mad, or occasionally be overthrown, but the job continues onwards. That's their failings, not the equipment.
The First Folio is the original version of Shakespear's (nearly) full works. The performance bonus is enough to ensure people'll be plagiarising it for centuries to come. Nuff said.
The Hope Diamond doesn't have any useful powers, it just randomly
s with it's owner. Sell it on fast, because you ain't resisting this very easily.
The Lamentation stone of the Taj Mahal is also pretty pointless, it's only powers devoted to making itself more impressive and emotionally resonant. Still, I guess that means it'll have no shortage of people hoping to own it.
Rabbi Loew's Golem is suitably epic in physical power, and just smart enough to realise it's not a real boy, and so become problematic. Still, if you can get a castle built in the meantime, you might be able to get some profit out of this.
The Rosetta Stone also gets exaggerated. If you know enough languages, you can gain the ability to understand all of them, and the more you know, the easier it becomes. Here, the only epic thing about it is that the bonus is permanent. Meh.
The Sphinx is a bit of a pain to animate, and a bit slow, but with hundreds of HD, and 300 points of damage resistance, it's pretty much invulnerable to even most epic characters. If a hecatoncheires shows up, you may have to get this to deal with it, because at least you can control and outmaneuver the sphinx, for all it's power.
The Stones of destiny are another one which grants permanent buffs, this time ones that scale with you so be you at first or epic level, the bonuses will be appropriate for the challenges you'll be facing.
Stonehenge and other standing circles let you apply a ton of metamagic feats to appropriate spells if you meet some very specific conditions. When the spells include things like elemental swarm, what's a few bees (not the bees) as a price for dealing with that pesky town that's been upsetting the balance of nature? So while not all of the items here are suitably epic, some of them are, and their powers are distinctive and fun enough that including them in your game will definitely be a memorable experience. I approve.
Given the way blip is going, it's probably either because I was doing too much straight filming and not enough actual reviewing, or because I wasn't getting enough views to pay for all the storage I was using.
