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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 3667064" data-attributes="member: 24255">MAGIC ITEM COMPENDIUMBy Andy Collins, Eytan Bernstein, Frank Brunner, Owen K.C. Stephens, and John SneadWizards of the Coast product number 107627200288-page hardcover, $34.95What the Spell Compendium (which I do not have, and have not read) does for spells, Magic Item Compendium does for magic items: reorganizes them, takes a fresh look at them ,and then plunks a whole lot of them all in one place so you can (hopefully) just lug around the one book for your magic item needs.  (Of course, there are only a handful of magic items in this book that come from the Dungeon Master's Guide, so you'll likely need that book as well for your "one-stop shopping" as far as magic items go.)  As far as I can tell, the only "repeats" from the DMG are those that needed a rules overhaul in some fashion, although I did recognize a few from other sources (the beholder crown and troll gut rope originally appeared in Magic of Faerûn, for instance).The major reorganization in Magic Item Compendium deals with how magic items are divided up and categorized.  The DMG, if you'll recall, divides magic items into the following categories:  armor/shields, weapons, potions/oils, rings, rods, scrolls, staffs, wands, and wondrous items.  Magic Item Compendium streamlines it into the following categories: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Armor: Includes armor, shields, and armor/shield augment crystals (more on these later), plus armor and shield qualities</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Weapons: Includes weapons and weapon augment crystals (again, I'll discuss these latter items later), plus weapon qualities</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Clothing: Includes amulets, belts, boots, bracelets, bracers, brooches, capes, circlets, cloaks, gauntlets, gloves, goggles, hats, headbands, helms, masks, medallions, rings, robes, sandals, scarabs, shirts, shoes, tabards, torcs, vests, and vestments - in short, anything you actually wear on your body</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tools: Includes those items that generally must be carried to be of use, including bags, chimes, dusts, lanterns, mirrors, musical instruments, orbs, potions/oils/elixirs/draughts, rods, ropes, scrolls, staffs/runestaffs, talismans, tomes, and wands</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Magic Item Sets: A side category where groups of related magic items (each of which can be from any of the other four categories) work together to provide synergy bonuses the more of them in the "set" you have</li> </ul>This is a pretty logical way of going about it, and while you don't really gain a whole lot of new utility in the first four categories, the fifth is definitely a new deal; I can't recall "synergy bonuses" in regards to magic items before, and it's a pretty cool concept.  Best of all, there's a sort of "behind the scenes" sidebar (I love those, incidentally) on page 193 explaining the logic behind magic item sets, and suggestions on how to go about creating your own sets, with definite boundaries on what sorts of synergy bonuses you'll want to stick to, and specific pricing guidelines.Let me get my one major gripe out of the way (there will be other, smaller gripes later): while there are a lot of pretty cool and interesting magic items in Magic Item Compendium, I have to confess I got pretty tired of the "charged" items, of which there are a butt-ton in this book.  (For readers in the UK and Canada, never fear: this converts to a metric butt-ton quite easily.)  Here's the general set-up: the cool new magic item has three "charges" that replenish each dawn.  If you use one charge, you get a little bit of power out of it (let's use the ring of mystic lightning as an example: one charge gets you +2d6 electricity damage when casting an electricity-based spell, like lightning bolt).  If you use two charges, you get a little bit more power (+3d6 electricity in our example), and if you use all three charges at once, you get even more power (+4d6 electricity damage).  Now, I have no problem with the concept; in fact, it's kind of nice that you get to choose whether you want to use up all of the charges for one day in one shot (and maximize the power you can get all at once) or parcel it out into three smaller doses that maximize the overall power you're getting from the item (a total of +6d6 electricity damage spread throughout the day).  But man, there are a whole lot of different items in here that use the exact same method.  Maybe I'm too old school, but when I buy a magic ring, I kind of want it to do something cool all the time (like give me an armor bonus), or whenever I want it to (like turn me invisible upon command), not have one more thing I have to track status on.  It seems to me that while there are some cool concepts being employed lately (affiliation rules from Player's Handbook II is another prime example), quite a few of them force you to become a bookkeeper to keep it all straight.  Given a chunk of cash on which to spend on magic items from this book, I think I'd steer away from a great many of them just because I don't want another damn thing to have to keep track of over the course of each day of adventuring.  So screw the ring of mystic lightning - I'll spend my gp on something that doesn't require me as a player to devote real-life skill points on Profession (bookkeeper).Okay, major gripe over with - let's get back to the cool stuff in the book.There are a couple of really, really cool ideas in this book that make it shine and stand out in what could easily have just been a collection of magic items that the five authors cranked out.  I've already mentioned the synergy bonuses inherent in the magic item sets, and I'll just add this to the concept: searching for the other items in the set gives the DM a built-in plot hook for his adventures, and that's always a good thing.  But let's look at some of the other really cool things.First up, let's address those augment crystals that I mentioned earlier in my discussion about how magic items have now been reorganized into five broad categories.  Whoever came up with the concept of augment crystals, it's time to take a bow!  These are magic gems that have been enhanced with a weapon or armor or shield magic property.  So, instead of having a +1 flaming longsword, you could have a plain old +1 longsword and a crystal of fire assault.  You attach the augment crystal onto the weapon (simply touching it to the hilt will do - it automatically adheres), and now your +1 longsword also deals fire damage with each successful hit: 1 point if it's a least crystal, 1d6 points if it's a lesser crystal, and 1d6 points on each of two successive rounds if it's a greater crystal.  (Of course, you need a +3 or greater enhancement on your magic weapon for a greater augment crystal to work, but you get the idea.)  So, suddenly you find yourself in combat with a fire elemental?  Take a move action to remove the crystal of fire assault and slap on a crystal of cold assault, and now that "generic" +1 longsword is adding cold damage with each hit!  It's a great concept, and it's much better than the "golf bag syndrome" where a high-level fighter needs a caddy to carry around his various magic weapons - the silver sword for battle against lycanthropes, the flame blade, the frost brand, the cold iron longsword for fighting evil fey, and so on.  There are augment crystals that you can adhere to your armor and shield, too, and the examples given in the book cover a wide variety of useful effects.  I've already decided that a couple augment crystals are showing up as part of the treasure in my next adventure, and that's always an excellent sign that the book in question is delivering on the goods.Next up on the coolness list are runestaffs.  Like regular staffs, these are designed to cast a small list of specific spells; however, for whatever reason, the designers have limited runestaffs to only work with arcane spells, not divine spells.  Furthermore, while a normal magic staff has a number of charges, and once used up becomes practically useless (I suppose you can still use it as a walking stick or a quarterstaff), a runestaff can be used over and over.  The way it works - and this is the really cool bit - is it channels arcane spell energy and "translates" it into one of the spells bound into the runestaff.  So, for example (and let's pick a simple one), a runestaff of charming holds two spells: charm person and charm monster.  To use it to cast charm person (a 1st-level spell), the arcane spellcaster uses one of his 1st-level spells (or spell slots) to "activate" a charm person spell.  The end result is that you're getting a bit of versatility; a sorcerer with a limited spell selection can expand his spell repertoire by the simple purchase of a runestaff.  And to prevent the "golf bag syndrome" mentioned earlier - this time with runestaffs - you have to be "attuned" to a runestaff to use it, and that takes 8 hours, and you can only be attuned to one runestaff at a time.  So you get some spell versatility without it running amok.  It's an excellent concept, and again one that I'll be adding to my own game as soon as possible.  I suppose the "arcane-only" rule is to prevent any trespassing over the cleric's class ability to convert prepared spells into cure/inflict spells (and the same deals with druids and summon nature's ally spells), but I don't see anything inherently wrong with expanding the runestaff concept to include divine runestaffs.  (Of course, since a cleric has access to all of the spells on the cleric list already, you could argue that divine runestaffs aren't needed - but then again, they would be a good way to introduce new divine spells into the game, and a divine runestaff would still allow a cleric to prepare a wider variety of spells confident in the knowledge that he could always convert one to a runestaff-provided spell as needed.)  Depending on how strict you are in separating arcane and divine magic, I could also envision a runestaff that converts divine spell energy into arcane spells (or vice-versa), perhaps with a +1 spell level penalty (it would take a 4th-level arcane spell or spell slot to crank out a 3rd-level divine spell from such a runestaff, in other words).  In any case, in my humble opinion, runestaffs are an excellent addition to the game.  (Of course, each runestaff only allows you to cast each spell from it three times per day, which means more status tracking, but runestaffs are a cool enough idea that I can either overlook the extra hassle, or, better yet, ignore the "three times a day" rule and just let it keep on changing arcane energy as long as I keep powering it with equivalent-level spells.  After all, what's the real harm?  Plus, it's almost as if that rule was intended to be ignored: "RUNESTAFF" is an anagram of "FASTER FUN" - coincidence, or not?  I'll let you be the judge; ignoring the limitation does make for "faster fun," though.)Finally, there's the concept that each of the magic items in this book have been assigned a "level."  That doesn't mean, for example, that just because a pair of boots of tremorsense are 9th-level items that you can't get a set at 7th level, but it's a useful indicator at about what level they're best suited for.  Best yet, there are quick-use rules guidelines in the back of the book that allow a DM to use the magic item levels to outfit an NPC villain with a minimum of muss and fuss.  (The 46 pages of appendices in the back, which detail each magic item in Magic Item Compendium and the Dungeon Master's Guide, organized by type, level, and price, make this a snap.)There's also quite a bit of support for a bunch of the optional rules that have come out in recent books.  Magic Item Compendium has magic items specifically geared towards some of the new character classes (like marshals, knights, psionic classes, warmages, warlocks, and incarnum users, to name a few).  I realize that if you don't use those classes in your campaign (I generally don't), those items are pretty much useless to you, but it's still nice to see some support for the optional rules now and again - they don't always get a whole lot of love.Of course, not everything about this book is top-notch.  There were the usual proofreading and editing gaffes; nothing too bad this time, just a few instances where the descriptive, italicized paragraphs weren't separated by a blank line from either the "stats" above or the rules-mechanics paragraphs below; sentences with a word or two missing (including one that just kind of stopped in mid-stride: "Cut to cover the mouth and nose, this clear crystal half-mask has tiny, bubblelike imperfections that mar the interior surface of."); typos ("for" instead of "foe," "servers" instead of "serves"); sentences missing punctuation (like a period at the end); a copy-and-paste error (where a runestaff of size alteration is referred to as a runestaff of illumination); two words squished into one by lack of a space between them ("daylow"); some tabbing errors in a few of the tables (one of which broke the phrase "(armor crystal)" into two columns that weren't even adjacent to each other!); and at least one instance of incorrect terminology being used (the "Throat" body slot is called the "Neck" slot once, which doesn't exist according to the reorganization of body slots).There were also a few "scratch your head" moments with some of the magic items, like why dragonrider armor, which automatically produces a feather fall effect if you fall more than 5 feet while wearing it, doesn't require feather fall as a prerequisite, or why ghoul shell armor, which allows you to use the ghoul touch spell 3 times per day, doesn't require ghoul touch as a prerequisite.  Other puzzlers include why there are so many magic items in the Magic Item Compendium that reference specific spells in the Spell Compendium without reprinting the spells or anything.  Sure, it's no big deal in a staff, where if I don't have the Spell Compendium I can always replace it with a different spell from the Player's Handbook, but there are items whose only magical ability is tied up in a spell that anyone buying just this book won't be able to use.  That's not very user-friendly!  (The biggest offenders here were the scrolls of uncertain provenance, which can create a renewal pact or death pact for yourself if you read them - both are spells from the Spell Compendium, but neither effect is explained - but always cause a debilitating negative effect when used.  Useless!)  I was also a bit confused by the vest of the archmagi, which takes up a whole column of space stating that this item is way too powerful to actually exist, but if it did, this is what it would be like, and this is how much it would cost.  Was this just a sneaky way to get some epic level material in, or what?  Finally, while most of the item descriptions do a fine job of giving you all the rules you need to use them (with the major exception of those dependent upon Spell Compendium spells), a few have some rules gaps, like blessed bandages (are they one-shot magic items, or can they be reused?) or questionable attributes (why exactly are blast globes reusable, if they're basically fire-based hand grenades?).Wrapping up, I should mention the artwork, which is something I usually tackle first.  The cover art is a piece by Francis Tsai, depicting a male human warrior of some type wielding a longsword, wearing an eye patch, tabard, pendant, and heavy bracers, and holding a rolled-up carpet in his left hand - presumably, these are all magic items.  It's not a bad piece, despite its small size, and it's kind of neat that he's actually standing on the border outline around him (the rest of the book is made to look as if it's a magical tome), so that it looks like it's a window that he's about to leap out of.The interior artwork consists of 6 monochromatic and 249 full-color illustrations by 28 different artists.  Most of the artwork is pretty good, but there are a few "rerun" pieces (Heather Hudson's psychoactive skin from Expanded Psionic Handbook shows up on page 171; Eric Deschamps's painting of a bunch of Eberron-specific magic items from Magic of Eberron is in this book on page 163) here and there.  A couple of the illustrations don't match their written descriptions, but worse yet, a great deal of them aren't anywhere near the pages where the descriptions of the respective magic items are on.  This is because many of the artists did "group shots" of related magic items (like a bunch of boots, or a bunch of spherical objects in a carrying case), but the naming conventions aren't standard - some boots are "boots of _______," and are thus clumped all together under "B" in the clothing chapter, while others are "________ boots," and are thus scattered all across the alphabet.  It makes it frustrating to try to find an illustration of a given magic item, especially since not every item gets an illustration.  In fact, if there isn't a picture of the magic item on the same page or the facing page, it's just going to be a matter of frustration trying to find out whether there is one in the book or not, because you're basically reduced to flipping page by page through a 288-page book - not a whole lot of fun.Taken as a whole, Magic Item Compendium is a good resource for magic items.  While it isn't the "be all, end all" book on the subject, it brings a lot of cool new ideas into the game and provides a little bit of support for some of the new classes and concepts that have appeared in recent Wizards of the Coast books.  I rate it as a very high "4 (Good)," with just a few too many irritating little things present for it to rank as a "5."</blockquote>

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