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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2890791" data-attributes="member: 1129">Magic of EberronWritten by Bruce R. Cordell, Stephen Schubert, and Chris ThomassonPublished by Wizards of the Coast<a href="http://www.wizards.com/eberron" target="_blank">www.wizards.com/eberron</a>ISBN: 0-7869-3696-7$29.95160 full color pagesEberron is a bit different than the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk in that it embraces the magic nature of the d20 system with both arms and incorporates some of the logical progressions into the actual setting. Magic of Eberron follows up on that idea with new options for players and GMs including spells, feats, prestige classes, magic items and monsters.At 160 full color pages in hardcover format for $29.95, the book is almost at the top of the food chain in page-format ratio. This is reduced by the off colored reproduction of part of the cover on the first page with the authors listed. The authors are listed again with the rest of the design team like the editors, managers, and art directors. The awesome two-page spread reproduction of the cover, and the two pages of ads at the back of the book also cut into the page count.The book has no index, but does have a fleshed out table of contents. The book uses standard two-column layout. There are a wide range of artists including Anne Stokes, David Michael Beck, Draxhall Jump Entertainment, Eric Deschamps, Francis Tsai, Lucio Parrillo, Mark Tedin, Steve Prescott and Tomas Giorello. I don’t know what they did, but the art in this book has been kicked up several notches. Several of the full-page illustrations between chapters are top-notch artwork for any setting. The only things holding the book back in design are the maps. They’re very clean, too clean in my opinion and almost look like they were done out in a standard grid format as opposed to some of the more artistic style maps in other WoTC products.Magic of Eberron is broken up into six chapters. Chapter One, Magic In Eberron, is a quick walk through the different broad aspects of magic in the setting, briefly covering such topics as dragonshards, artifice, psionics, and daelkry magic. Each section includes a sidebar with information on where further details can be found. For example, when looking at the section on the draconic prophecy, the sidebar notes that dragon prophet abilities are represented by feats, found in chapter two, and that there is a prestige class in chapter three, as well as appropriate spells, which are found in chapter four. It’s a nice touch but at the same time, a little wasteful if you’re reading the book page to page as you’ll know that feats are found in the chapter options chapter, etc…Speaking of character options, chapter two provides some new toys. It starts off with daelkry half-blood, and provides details about their powers, including their personal symbiont. This symbiont can change as the character gains levels, and how they fit into the setting, including ideas on role playing, why they adventure, and a few statted out NPCs including a rogue and a wizard.While the half-blood is cool, I like the idea of the psiforged more. It’s not a brand new race per say, but rather, one that crops up from a warforged character taking the Psiforged Body feat at 1st level. The warforged race’s ability to chance based on a first level feat is intriguing, and might prompt me to try a soulforged for something like the Magic of Incarnum.Other things of interest include rituals and feats. Feats include things like augmenting elementals or use of action points with feats like Heroic Focus or Heroic Companion. For the dragon totem rituals, you have to meet a prerequisite, and then you get the benefit, which includes a cost in Siberys dragonshards required to benefit from it. For example, the Ritual of Vision requires Wis 11 or Spot 1 rank and 8 hit dice. You get darkvision out to 60 feet and +2 on Spot checks. If you have the Dragon Totem feat, you get blindsense with a range of 10 feet. The cost is 1,200 gp worth of Siberys draognshards. The benefits last for 24 hours. It’s a nice touch that adds another touch of magic to the campaign. I haven’t playtested it enough to see if the gold cost makes up for the new abilities, but if the campaign is following fairly standard gold piece distribution, it shouldn’t pose a huge threat to the game if the benefits are used to effect game play at the time. Chapter three covers the prestige classes. These PrCs include the standard background bits, as well as the expanded information on role playing, how the PrC can be adapted, sample encounters, and NPC reactions among other bits of lore. There are also some maps to go with some of the background details. For example, the dragon prophet PrC has a dragon prophet retreat with four separate aeries. My favorite PrC in this bunch, is the quori mindhunter. These individuals hunt dow nthe quori spirits that corrupt humans. To become one, you have to defeat a quori spirit in a dreamstate combat. Yeah, a game requirement is very cool to me. In exchange for that, you get medium bab, d6 hit dice, +1 manifester level for every level but first, and extra powers from your bound quori. My second favorite, would be the renegade mastermaker. If you ever wanted a cyborg in D&D, this is it. They take the methods of crafting warforged to their own flesh. The ygain spellcasting abilities at almost every level, medium bab, good fort and will saves, d6 hit dice, and damage reduction among other abilities. For example, they can heal 1d6 hit points of damage per spell level or infusion sacrificed to repair themselves. On the other hand, they have a battlefist that they can use as a natural weapon for slam attacks that gains enhancement bonuses as they gain levels. Chapter four moves into spells and powers. This includes new infusions. Spells are broken up by class and level. For arcane casters, there is no breakdown of school, which is a break from traditional listings of sorcery and wizard spells. The spells here cover the lower levels and don’t provide a ton of new options. For example, there are no eight or ninth level cleric spells, and well, no ninth level spells at all. In some ways this fits the tradition of Eberron being highly magical, but not high powered magic. This isn’t to say that none of the spells are powerful though. The Orb of Dancing Death is a 5th level cleric and wizard spell that inflicts a negative level every round and it lasts for one round per three levels. The good thing for characters facing such an attack is that the negative levels don’t require a saving throw to overcome. For a setting that’s supposed to embrace psionics, I was a little disappointed at how few psionic powers there were. We have some second, third, and fifth level abilities, and one third level psychic warrior power. The powers are interesting and fit the setting well, like stun quori spirit or induce awe, where you gain a bonus to diplomacy and intimidate and opponents can become shaken, but I wanted more. ]Chapter five follows up on the magic with new magic items and equipment. This includes new artificer items like cannith goggles that provide a +5 bonus to Search and Spot checks and can be powered with infusions for greater effects. The items include lore, description, activation, effect, aura/caster level, construction, variant, weight, and price. It’s a bit much for magic items, but I think new players and game masters will get a lot more out of having so much information at hand. Some of the items for offense include blasting chimes, a siberys shard item that releases a line of sonic energy or the empowered spellshard, a shard that is attuned to a certain spell and empowers that sspell as if the empowered feat was used. Those looking for new warforged components get things like an expanded reservoid, that includes the number of power points the warforged can store, as well as power crystals and psychic generators, both things that can benefit the psiforged. Chapter six closes out with new monsters. This includes several quori. Included are opponents like the tsoreva quori, a mind blade using monster that resembles a monstrous centaur with a lower half of a centipede and the upper half of a scorpion monster man with many eyes. It’s hard to explain, but the picture does the monster justice. Same thing for the dream master, a CR 11 creature that looks like something out of the Tyranid empire of Warhammer 40,000. Those looking for more symbionts have hteir choice with monsters like the crawling gauntlet or the spellwurm among others.With Magic of Eberron, I think WoTC is coming close to too much detail. While I would hate to see a return to the format of things like the Complete Warrior, I also don’t want to be buried in minute detail that’s obvious. It’ll be interesting to see if other products continue with the same format for magic items and other minor things or keep it more simple.Magic of Eberron could’ve easily been a 224-page book. Clerics for example, get the short stick this time around with very few bits that can be applied directly to them. I suspect that this may be fixed or addressed in another book devoted to the gods and divine powers of that setting in another book.Despite those issues, I’ve seen the book in play in another campaign and the players and GM are having a blast with some of the new options within it. The idea of creating a new race of warforged with a simple feat at first level provides many things to think on, and the new infusions and other spells will come in handy right away.The use of maps and pregenerated encounters are also a love it or hate it thing. I like the effort put into it and have used several of the sample encounters in my own game in the past from different books, and will be using them again in the future. I see their use, but at the same time, it’s another one of those things that the internet is rumbling about wasted space. Once again, we’ll see how WoTC can walk that fine line between too much and too little.For me, Magic of Eberron isn’t perfect. It is however, a book that any one looking to increase the role of magic in Eberron should explore and see how it fits into their own campaign.</blockquote>

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