(MME) Is it just me...

[the Jester]

...or is Mordenkainen's Magnificent Emporium the best thing to happen to 4e since, well, pretty much since 4e?

I just had a chance to flip through it today, and wow, I'm impressed. Items with flavour and crunch. Flails finally get support. Henchmen get made into actual rules. Quick rules for building structures. Levelling up items (yay! another way off the item economy treadmill!). Quest Items. Artifacts. Curses. Curses! Sweet!

In short, this is what both Adventurer's Vaults should have been. Just excellent, cover to cover. I'll be buying it shortly.

I'd like it a lot more if it was, you know, available closer to me than a three hour drive.

The "specialty gaming shop only" approach SUXXORS.

I'm too wary to buy it sight unseen and not willing to make a three-hour drive to buy a book. None of the stores in my area are gonna be able to get this in. Well done, WotC; I'm an almost certain sale, if I can only thumb through the book first.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

I'd like it a lot more if it was, you know, available closer to me than a three hour drive.

The "specialty gaming shop only" approach SUXXORS.

I'm too wary to buy it sight unseen and not willing to make a three-hour drive to buy a book. None of the stores in my area are gonna be able to get this in. Well done, WotC; I'm an almost certain sale, if I can only thumb through the book first.

Unfortunately, short of breaking laws, I don't know what you can do about that. Any local libraries likely to get a copy in?

Frankly though, I was sold with the preview material alone, and I've been pretty choosy about what 4e books I've actually bought so far.

That said, I agree; from a customer standpoint, and as someone who for many years lived a two hour drive from the nearest game store (and it was subpar at best), that does, in fact suck. I mean, I see what they're trying to do here, but it fails.

Now, I live in a town with two game stores, but one of them stopped caring about D&D after 3.x, and the other one is mostly interested in Warhammer.

 

[Scribble]

Some of the online game stores have it- just not amazon.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Some of the online game stores have it- just not amazon.

That's fine, but if you're like him and you need to see it first, before buying, it's a no-go.

 

[Scribble]

That's fine, but if you're like him and you need to see it first, before buying, it's a no-go.

Shrug- just trying to be helpful.

 

[Mirtek]

I picked this up last night. I'm not that impressed by it, especially since it duplicates many items I already paid for in the AV and has large chunks of HUGE font text to take up as much space as humanly possible in addition to the already extensive fluff blocks,[...] It doesn't seem to be a bad book, but with all the filler and copy-pasted content, it feels overpriced.

I have to agree. So far I found exactly one item that I want to take, I am mostly unimpressed

 

[darkdragoon]

It looks like a parody except for the cheese items and the ridiculous flail feats.

 

[Marshall]

It looks like a parody except for the cheese items and the ridiculous flail feats.

The whole book is disappointing. For every halfway decent item there are a dozen junk ones and a couple wacky "What were they thinking?" choices.

Then there are the non-sentient Artifacts that should just be Rares and the Rares and Uncommons that dont deserve the rating. Again.

 

[Bold or Stupid]

So what does the new Expertises do?

 

[Kelvor Ravenstar]

There are two things in this book that are getting a lot of discussion, and I think they're problematic.

Flail Expertise: In addition to the scaling bonus to hit, when you hit with a melee weapon attack using a flail and the attack lets you slide the target, you can knock the target prone instead of sliding it.

Elven Chain Shirt: Level 9,19,29 Uncommon Item
Wondrous Item
Property
You gain a +1 item bonus to AC while wearing this shirt with light armor or no armor.
Level 19: +2 item bonus Level 29: +3 item bonus

Flail Expertise is unlikely to come up in my games, and its only just a small improvement to an already very powerful build (so I'll know ahead of time if any of my players want to make a Kulkor Arms Master).

But as soon as Elven Chain Shirt was discovered by my group, every light armor character wanted to make one. So until it undergoes erratta I'm just making it a Rare item. It really helps light armor characters that don't use Dex or Int as their primary or secondary ability score, but it feels too overpowered for those that do.