Magic Item Compendium

[Felon]

Spell Compendium is more than 90 percent reprints, although the campaign setting-specific names have all been dropped, so a fair number have slightly different names.

Although the spells are 100% reprints, many spells appearing there were revised. Close wounds and clutch of Orcus spring to mind readily.

 

[Felon]

MIC is... err.. 500 new items in 1250 items, IIRC.

Somewhat vexing that so many new items were included while so much other material was selectively left out. I was hoping they'd try to be as inclusive as possible, which is after all the point of a compendium.

 

[Vocenoctum]

I don't know either, but my distributor wouldn't send it to me until the day before the street date they had (Mar 20th), despite the fact that I quibbled with them about people already having it from Amazon.

It looks like it's pretty much a WotC thing though, as I can get, say, White Wolf stuff with the same street date as is listed for the "big guys."

It is an awesome book though. Seriously.

I think it was just this book though, since I haven't heard of this problem previously. It wasn't just Amazon though, my local borders is 4 minutes from home, the LGS is 45 minutes. I get a coupon for borders (20-30% off) vs retail at LGS. Borders had it a week earlier...

 

[Vocenoctum]

Somewhat vexing that so many new items were included while so much other material was selectively left out. I was hoping they'd try to be as inclusive as possible, which is after all the point of a compendium.

I wanted a grouping of all magic items, DMG as well as supplements. Figured they'd rework some of the stuff. Give me just one book to consult when equipping a PC.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I didn't see any rules about NOT crafting the rest of the set once you have a piece; in fact, they talk about how to make the remaining pieces.

I plan on making people either go after the other pieces if they want them, or else, the set benefits will be drastically lower; I mean, part of the effect from sets - although it might be more from Diablo flavor-text - is that the powers 'rubbed off' from being used by great heroes and villains.

Really, the set benefits aren't terribly great, in my opinion, with one or two exceptions. I don't see a point to not allowing people to complete them.

Brad

 

[MerricB]

Somewhat vexing that so many new items were included while so much other material was selectively left out. I was hoping they'd try to be as inclusive as possible, which is after all the point of a compendium.

I'm quite happy that they didn't up the price to include material I wouldn't use.

Cheers!

 

[Kafkonia]

I just got mine today, and one thing that stands out is that the maiming property is completely different from the similarly-named property from the Miniatures Handbook.

MIC -- extra damage on a critical
MH -- random critical modifier

I prefer the MH version.

 

[Felon]

I'm quite happy that they didn't up the price to include material I wouldn't use.

Please elaborate on this peculiar response. How exactly do you know that everything they cut was material you wouldn't use? Then we can go into the implicit notion that all the new items they included instead was stuff you have greater use for.

 

[johnnype]

Somewhat vexing that so many new items were included while so much other material was selectively left out. I was hoping they'd try to be as inclusive as possible, which is after all the point of a compendium.

you might want to read the articles WotC has on their website about how they put the book together. Bottom line is that many, if not most, of the magic items that have appeared before the MIC sucked ass so they dropped them completely.

 

[Arnwyn]

There's a fascinating assumption with the item levels that I'm surprised no one has mentioned yet:

The MIC assumes that no one item a character has will be worth more than 1/8 of the character's wealth for a particular level, and recommends against going much higher for the most part. (I know, for example, there are some ENWorlders that use 1/2...) Interesting.