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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="Archer" data-source="post: 2009138" data-attributes="member: 2950">Quick summary: This is a 3rd party d20 product that doesn’t try to cover up the 4 guys in a basement feel. If that bothers you, you might as well stop reading now because you’ll never like Mystic Warriors. I think it’s a good effort to have an idea and a setting and develop it into a product.. This product is a labor of love but as Monte Cook says, that doesn’t always make a great product. Mystic Warriors is most like the Psionics Handbook, with all the love/hate that entails. The vitus mechanic is very similar to PSPs and techniques substitute for powers. Vitus doesn’t scale upward like PSPs, you start with a bunch and get a fixed amount per level. I would have been impressed if this product had come out 6 months before the PsiHB instead of 6 months after.I really wanted to like this product but it ended up the 3rd most disappointing. (For those who have been keeping track the other two were Librum Equis and Hero Builders Guidebook.) I remember the ads on ENworld for this product and reading the preview material. I even tried to order it (not directly though) 6 months ago but after 4 months of being out of stock I gave up but ended up getting a copy through an auction bundle last month. I’m sure that given time, experience and money this team could come up with some products that would rival the top of the lineI rate this a 2 even though I think Sword and Fist is a better product overall and I gave that a 1. Mystic Warriors has more pages and costs less plus it’s a 3rd party product which all combined improve its rating one step.I really don’t want to write the negative review that I’m writing but I’m not comfortable writing a positive review. Hopefully it can be construed as constructive criticism. I was put off by the amateurish artwork, odd writing, rules errors and balance questions. Assume I like everything about the book except the points I bring up here. Jason's artwork is very good by the way.http://www.sjgames.com/general/guidelines/writers/writers-guide-style.htmlI suggest everyone who ever writes anything for publication read this. It totally changed the way I looked at everything when I first read it many years ago. See? My reviews are both educational and informative! Everyone knows that Monte Cook has incredible tips on good gaming and writing but not everyone knows that Steve Jackson has been doing the same for many more years.Mystic Warriors is what Steve Jackson would call a first draft, which is entirely different from what the majority of people call a first draft. I’ll include a short quote from the above link. A final draft for Mystic Warriors would probably merit a 4 or 5 rating.“We require two drafts on each project. The first draft is a complete draft. If any sections are missing, it's not an acceptable first-draft submission. It should be good; when the writer sends his first draft, he should feel that it's ready to be typeset and printed, as is!”I could nitpick about literally hundreds of small details but others have done this enough to give you an idea of this work. It is my personal belief that this book could have been published in 64 pages and lost nothing. Anything dealing with facing should have been put in a web enhancement.Here's a quick playtest element I'll just throw in here. The leader of the stone soldiers was killed by an 8th level party even though he is listed as CR24. An ancient red dragon is CR24, not any mystic warrior. I never told them what they had beaten, they thought it was an earth elemental with a few variant powers. Too bad he can never be resurrected (a stone soldier drawback) Not being able to talk is a real problem too. It makes stone soldiers unusable as both a player and NPC.I'm surprised some people felt the classes were too powerful overall. There are maybe 2-3 classes that are too powerful. Dealing 1000+ damage in a round is too much and so is the stackable dagger stance feat. A fighter could take that for +20 to hit and dump it into power attack. Those 2 things were the most egregious examples of broken mechanics. I don't know what is up with the 10-100% tithes on nearly every mystic warrior class. That just drove me crazy. Gear is twice as important as character level. See the playtest example above for the results of having no gear.I feel that mystic warriors are best left as NPCs.</blockquote>

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