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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="Psion" data-source="post: 2011170" data-attributes="member: 172">Modern Player's CompanionThe Modern Player's Companion is a resource adding additional game elements (primarily character options) to the d20 Modern game. The game is written by Stan! (For those not familiar, yes, "Stan!" is his pen name) along with Rich Redman and Charles Ryan, all who contributed to d20 Modern in some capacity.The material in the book was originally distributed in two volumes under the authors' banner, The Game Mechanics. This version re-releases the two volumes in a single print volume.A First LookThe Modern Player's Companion is an 80-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $16.95.The cover uses a metallic tone and figures in action poses (by James Ryman) which makes it look somewhat familiar to D20 Modern fans, without crossing the line on WotC's trade dress. A closer look really reveals that this is an instance of The Game Mechanic's computer hardware motif, with screws and fan ports making it resemble the back of a computer.The interior art is by Clarence Harrison, who provides a variety of nicely detailed and content-appropriate ink drawings.A Deeper LookThe book is organized into five chapters and three appendices.The first chapter, Characters, provides variants and new options regarding some of the more basic character creation options and details such as base classes, talents, wealth, and occupations.The first rules expansion is a number of new talents for each of the d20 modern base classes. As these classes are fairly ubiquitous in the game, these new options stand to add a lot of variety. The new talents are intriguing and should whet many a d20 Modern player's appetite. Examples of new talents include stay in the game (allows a tough hero to reroll massive damage saves) and adapt (either in or out of combat, allows a character to learn from his challenges.)To round out the selection of occupations in the d20 Modern book, the Modern Player's Companion brings you Bohemian, Bereaucrat, Craftsperson, Domestic, Educator, Political, and Tribal.If you subscribe to the Dragon magazine, you may be familiar with the concept of Class Combinations, scheduled combinations of classes to achieve a specific concept. Nine class combinations are presented here, using the base classes to build many character concepts such as rock star or lawyer. A fair amount of space is devoted to these, but I must say I find their value a bit dubious. Though some professional or similar character concepts may require certain base classes, it seems to me that the starting occupation mechanic picks up much of that duty, and a large part of the role of selecting base classes is to emphasize differences within a character type due to personality, approach, or role. I have a hard time ever using any of these class combinations.In addition to these options, there are a number of optional rules and variants tucked away in the chapter, such as multilingual characters and variant wealth rules for simulating credit and for tracking wealth as money instead of a Wealth rating.The second chapter in entirely concerned with advanced and prestige classes. The advanced classes follow the same pattern as the advanced classes in the d20 Modern book do: essentially, a bundles of class abilities designed to fit a general concept in a bit more specialized fashion than the base classes can with talents and feats.The advanced classes are adept (adept is to D&D sorcerer as the d20 modern mage class is to the D&D wizard), arcane scholar (non-spellcasting expert in the occult, including incantations as they appear in Urban Arcana), bounty hunter, confidence artist, criminologist, dead shot, enforcer, fixer, gentle warrior, hacker, opinion maker, profiler, survivalist, and transporter.In d20 Modern, prestige classes are supposed to be distinct from advanced classes. In reality, the only sensible difference here is that they represent more advanced characters (and thus only 5 levels each), and/or are a bit more specialized in concept. The prestige classes include commander, dark sage (much like the arcane scholar but even more advanced in incantations), martial arts master, master tinkerer, mentalist, psionic assassin, and silent intruder.The third chapter, only five pages long, detail new feats. A few highlights include:- Back Off and Sidestep allow you to take 5 foot steps during combat. The name of the sidestep is a little deceiving, as it is actually offensive; it allows you to follow up another character's 5' step away from you.- Cohort is a stripped down version of the leadership feat in D&D/d20 fantasy. - Cross training is a curious feat. It basically lets you reallocate ability scores, adding +1 to two ability scores in exchange for -2 to another. Really, this feat's benefit depends heavily on if your best ability scores are odd.- Collector gives you a bonus to wealth checks to see if you have a particular collector's item on hand.- Guns Akimbo lets you attack with each of a pair of guns as an attack action; a must for John Woo fans.- Moonlighter gives you a second starting occupation with all benefits, with the exception of bonus feats (which become a prerequisite instead of a bonus for taking that starting occupation as a feat.).- Poker face gives opponents a penalty to make sense motive checks against you. It seems to me that skill focus(bluff) already represents this.I usually don't say much about equipment sections of book, and the beginning of the equipment chapter is similarly unremarkable, being occupied with a number of mundane items. What makes this chapter noteworthy are equipment packages. Despite the abstraction of the d20 Modern wealth system, gearing up can be tedious. Equipment packages (and the associated rule for their use) attempt address this issue by assembling pre-packaged selections of equipment for a variety of character types (academic, adventurer, criminal) at a variety of wealth levels. You simple select the appropriate package and deduct the wealth level from your current bonus. This is probably the single best contribution of the book (I wonder if the authors took some time pondering Spycraft's "bundle" concept.)The fifth chapter introduces new spells and fx items. The new spells have a very "Urban Arcana" feel to them, attaching new meaning to various modern concepts (like the item teleportation spell you can only cast through a computer network, Send as Attachment),  or being useful with modern technology (like the spell you might wish you could cast sometimes, Ressurect Computer.)The first appendix provides rules (and purchase details) for variant ammunition types, and the second provides an index of feats in this book, the d20 Modern book, Green Ronin's Ultramodern Firearms, and WotC's Urban Arcana.ConclusionsThe Modern Player's Companion provides a big serving of new crunch for d20 Modern players. The most useful elements for a campaign are probably the new class talents and the equipment packages. Some elements (particularly the class combinations) are of much more dubious value.Overall, the material is well written and balances well with existing material, but the book is more appropriate if you are looking for new tools rather than new ideas.Overall Grade: B- -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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