Pocket Magica

[JoeGKushner]

Pocket Magica follows in the footprints of the two Pocket Grimoire books. A no frills collection edited and slightly revised for compact and easy use. In this case, instead of working on spells though, the focus is on magic items.

My problem with the book isn’t the layout or format, both standard from the previous books, but rather, the coverage. Much as I didn’t like Mongoose’s detailed coverage of their books in the Ultimate Prestige Class books with what seemed to me samplings of other books, this book collects material from a very few publishers including Mystic Eye Games (and Thunderhead), Bastion Press, Fantasy Flight Games, and one or two other sources. Notably missing is Mongoose, AEG, and Malhavok among others.

When it lays out the tables, it does so by subject and alphabetical order, it does so only with name and gold cost. No minimum level, and no caster cost to create with gold and experience points not listed. Bad Green Ronin. In other areas, the book does give you a gold and experience point cost to create, but not in all of them. This, for a book that collects and puts in the gold and xp costs for some things but not all, is for me a failure.

In all other aspects, Pocket Magica is a top-notch book. It collects and reorganizes almost all of the Bastion and Green Ronin magic items and throws in some from other goods. Of course this is the no frills collection so there’s no illustrations, meaning that if you really enjoyed the visuals or new types of armor and weapons in Bastion Press Arms and Armor, you’ll still be referencing the book despite the fact that almost everything else from Arms and Armor, like the infamous Hammer of the Sun and the Thunder Clash great axe, are found here.

Another good thing about this book is the appendix where spells referenced by the magic items are listed out for ease of reference. Same thing with appendix two where a template, the Iron Souled, is statted out.

The Pocket Magica book isn’t perfect and I’m hoping a volume two is right around the corner, but it does its job well and has already gotten a healthy workout from my group.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Pocket Magica is your indispensable reference guide to the magic items of the d20 System. It collects magic items from the core rules and over a dozen of the best d20 supplements, including Hammer & Helm and Shaman's Handbook. These are arranged alphabetically and by type for easy reference. Like Green Ronin's acclaimed Pocket Grimoires, Pocket Magica is sure to find a permanent place on your gaming table.

 

[GameWyrd]

Pocket Magica is a small book. Pocket Magica is 240 pages long. It manages both of these feats at the same time by having half the typical height and width dimensions of RPG supplements.

Pocket Magica is a late triplet. Green Ronin managed wonders with Pocket Grimoire: Arcane and Pocket Grimoire: Divine; two similar books that brought together Arcane and Divine spells from around the d20 publisher spectrum and stuck them together for convenience. It’s convenience that I’m looking for in Pocket Magica. Not entirely convenience I suppose. I’m eyeing the US $14.95 price tag too since that seems to be the value for money you’d expect for this "mini" book. It’s quite appealing.

The book begins with 28 pages of indices. Not bad, huh? They could be better though. The first index is unusual in that it lists special ability beside market price modifier. Thereafter the indices are presented by topic first (Specific Armour and Shields, Cursed Items, Potions, Rings, etc) where the item is listed beside market price. Pocket Magica is concerned with magic items and so the market prices are all measured in vast amounts of gold. The indices list the cheapest items first. There is room for a page number reference on all of the tables but to my annoyance that option’s not taken.

Inside the book proper the magic items are still presented by topic first but alphabetically therein. An entry begins with a description of the item and what it does. It then quotes the item’s source (the DMG, Witch’s Handbook, Spells & Magic, etc), caster level, prerequisites, spellcaster level, market price and cost to create.

There’s quite a range of books that provide source items. There’s the System Reference Document, of course, and 25 others.
- Arms & Amour (Bastion Press)
- Villains (Bastion Press)
- Spells & Magic (Bastion Press)
- Oathbound: Domains of the Forge (Bastion Press)
- Traps & Treachery (Fantasy Flight)
- Seafarer’s Handbook (Fantasy Flight)
- Spells & Spellcraft (Fantasy Flight)
- Arcana: Societies of Magic (Green Ronin)
- The Assassin’s Handbook (Green Ronin)
- Freeport: The City of Adventure (Green Ronin)
- Hammer & Helm (Green Ronin)
- The Shaman’s Handbook (Green Ronin)
- The Witch’s Handbook (Green Ronin)
- Wrath & Rage (Green Ronin)
- Bluffside: City on the Edge (Thunderhead Games / Mystic Eye)
- Dry Lands: Empires of the Dragon Sands (Mystic Eye)
- Hall of Healing: A Bluffside Web Enhancement (Thunderhead Games / Mystic Eye)
- Interludes: Brief Expeditions to Bluffside (Thunderhead Games / Mystic Eye)
- Interludes: Sands of Pain (Thunderhead Games / Mystic Eye)
- Thorn Faerie’s Abode: An Interludes Web Enhancement (Thunderhead Games / Mystic Eye)
- Relics & Rituals (Sword and Sorcery Studio)

And there’s material taken from SKR’s SeanKReynolds.com website too.

(Note: The above isn’t the copyright list. I shamelessly missed out author’s copyrights and included publishing companies instead. That seemed best for the review.)

There are a few of the usual suspects missing there; Malhavoc, Mongoose, Paradigm Concepts, Atlas Games and AEG aren’t there. The token offering from Sword and Sorcery Studio doesn’t look impressive either. That is a long list of contributing publishers and it’s long enough to count as a plus point for the Pocket Magica.

There’s not quite the same pressing demand to have a complete collection of magic items as there is for magic spells. Arcane and Divine spellcasters can go through dozens of different spells and many can pick and choose freely from vast lists. I suspect only the most generous of GMs let their players do that with magic items. The cost of the magic items is the key reference point in the Pocket Magica’s indices but gold point cost isn’t perhaps so important when the GM is putting together an NPC. Perhaps.

A book like Pocket Magica either sinks or swims. We have a swimmer. It would have been better if you could find items you wanted more quickly in the 200+ pages.

* This Pocket Magica review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Psion]

Pocket Magica

Pocket Magica is a compilation of magic items from the SRD and other d20 System resources published by Green Ronin. The material is assembled into a small pocket-book sized book, similar to the previous Pocket Grimoires, also by Green Ronin.

A First Look

Pocket Magica is a 240 page softcover perfect-bound book priced at $14.95. The book uses smaller pages, with approximately half-sized sheets.

The cover has a simple green faux-textured cover with gold lettering. The interior is black and white, and eschews artwork except for Celtic-knot designs at chapter ends.

The interior text is small, and paragraphs are double spaced within the same entry.

A Deeper Look

Pocket Magica includes all of the magic items from the SRD and many from other d20 System sources. This includes cursed items in addition to all of the major item categories, but excludes artifacts.

Arguably, there are four major third party d20 System magic item resources: Arms & Armor by Bastion Press, Relics & Rituals by Sword & Sorcery Studios, the Book of Eldritch Might by Malhavoc Press, and Forged in Magic by Paradigm Concepts. Pocket Magica only incorporates material from the first two of these books. This being the case, this is a less than complete cross section of the market.

Of the other products incorporated, many are other Green Ronin products. A few of these only have a smattering of items (like the Shaman's Handbook and Witch's Handbook), but some (like Hammer & Helm) are substantial resources.

Other contributors include FFG (with Spells & Spellcraft and Traps & Treachery), Sean K. Reynolds, and Thunderhead Games/Mystic Eye Games.

The book does not include all of the items from the cited books. For example, I did a spot check to see which items from Arms & Armor that are in my campaign are listed here. Of the icicle bow, Sash of the Master and the Tunic of Vivid Harmony, only the first is in this books. Similarly, I noticed that new item types, such as the glyph eggs and wards from Spells & Spellcraft are not included.

The book is sorted into categories similar to the DMG, though armor, weapons, and cursed items are all put in proper alphabetical order. There are no random item tables consolidating the items herein, but there is an index of prices that lists all items in each category by price. The items themselves have complete details, including the source (a detail which other "compilation" type products miss.)

In addition to the items, there are two short appendices. The first includes spells from the listed resources referenced my included magic items. The second includes the iron-souled template from Hammer & Helm.

Conclusion

Pocket Magica is a nice compilation of magic items. A product of this sort is probably of less use as a reference that the more character oriented Pocket Grimoires are, and the sheer number of d20 System magic items preclude a universal handbook. But if you have not had a chance to take advantage of many of the products out there, Pocket Magica gathers a lot of the more balanced items in one place, and could cut down a little bit on the books that the GM has to bring to the table.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Pocket Magica is an OGL collection of magic items including those from Core Rulebook II.

Pocket Magica is a mono softcover product costing $14.95. Page size is non-standard, being slightly larger than A5 and is 240 of these pages in length. Three of these pages are taken up with ads. Margin, font and space use are all fairly standard. There is no art as such (just i-ching-like designs at the end of each chapter). The writing style fits the subject matter - clear and concise, but evocative (obviously varies with source). Editing seems good.

The first 26 pages of Pocket Magica are taken up with an index of prices, giving market price for each of the items offered in the book, providing easy reference all in one place. The items are arranged by section (potions, rings, rods, etc.) in alphabetical order. There is no facility for random generation of an item in this section, nor are there page references for the items, but various special qualities of weapons, armour, and shields, are marked with the bonuses to apply to their market price.

The remainder of the book provides the detailed information on these items. It is split into sections:

Armour And Shields - 15 pages, including special qualities and specific items.
Cursed Items - 13 pages, including generic curse effects as well as specific examples.
Potions - 8 pages.
Rings - 13 pages.
Rods - 14 pages.
Staffs - 7 pages.
Wands - 1 page - simply gives the one-use Rune Wand from the Witch's Handbook.
Weapons - 33 pages, including special abilities, and specific weapons.
Wondrous Items - 92 pages.

There is also an appendix of twenty referenced spells - i.e. spells referenced within item descriptions that are not available in the Core Rulebook. A second appendix gives the Iron-Souled creature template referenced in the Talisman Of The Wild item.

As well as containing all the items from the DMG, various other OGL sources are plundered for magical items, particularly those from Bastion Press (e.g. Arms & Armor, Spells & Magic), FFG (e.g. Spells & Spellcraft), Thunderhead/MEG (e.g. Bluffside, Interludes), and Green Ronin's own products (Freeport COA and Hammer & Helm amongst others). Material from Relics & Rituals was also included. A rough guess would be that approximately 50% of this material is taken from the DMG, with the rest from the aforementioned OGL sources.

Conclusion
The usefulness of this book to you should be easily divined - if you want a reference book for a lot of magic items, and are pleased by the idea of tables with market prices all in one place, then Pocket Magica is for you. If you are disappointed by a lack of random generation facility and page number references it may not be. Personally, I can't enthuse about a book full of magic items, irrelevant of its pros and cons, and my grading reflects this bias.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

"Personally, I can't enthuse about a book full of magic items, irrelevant of its pros and cons, and my grading reflects this bias."

Then you should never have reviewed it. If you knew of this bias beforehand, and knew that you wouldn't be able to overcome that bias in writing your review, then you should have recused yourself from the responsibility.

Kudos to you for being upfront about said bias, but since you are admittedly incapable of judging this book on its merits (or lack thereof), you may want to ask that the review be removed. In fact, were you to delete your statement of bias and the detailed summary of the books contents, you are left with all of two sentences of actual commentary. Which is hardly much of a review, is it?

 

[Simon Collins]

BeelzeBeBop

I believe every reviewer comes to a review with a bias (that is, a preference for one type of product compared to another). It should not stop the person from reviewing the product. The commentary aspect of a review is as much opinion as it is fact. Having said that, when I read a review, I'm far more interested in what the book contains than (as someone recently wrote) "some internet reviewer's" commentary.

My "summary of the books contents" allows people to form their own opinions regarding the subject matter, presentation, etc - I think you'll also find that points made in the summary (e.g. at a guess, 50% of the book is taken from the DMG) engender reactions that are as effective (or more so) than commentary. You'll find that other reviews of this product are also somewhat restricted in terms of their commentary since one is left with a choice of giving an opinion on the subject matter and presentation, or going into detail regarding a whole slew of magic items and their quality (or lack thereof) in terms of the rules balance, etc., which would be practically impossible without full playtesting, and since this is not a playtest review...

My bias does not make me "incapable of judging the book on its merits (or lack thereof)" - I can judge the book on its merits (for example, its well organised, it has a price list for all items in one place, it has a lot of items to choose from, and draws from a number of sources) or lack thereof (it has no facility for random generation and no page references, nor any illustrations of the items) and still allow my bias (or opinion) to inform me that a book that re-hashes magical items from other sources is (in my opinion, or in other words with my bias) necessarily limited in its usefulness and its level of interest despite these merits or lack thereof. The statement regarding my bias (or opinion) was merely another way of stating this.

 

[PenguinX]

[No message]

 

[PenguinX]

I have to agree with Simon. His review is written from a subjective standpoint, as is everyone's, but one that is valid because it is declared. I find it a lot easier to trust someone's opinion if I know their feelings before they speak.

If we were not permitted to give an opinion upon something we had no preconceptions then we would be unable to express any opinions at all. I dislike large font sizes, does that mean I cannot like what is written. I love D&D because I have played since I was 12 - does that make me incapable of producing a review of a D&D product?

[In fact what makes me incapable is laziness]

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I agree that it is very difficult (if not impossible) to approach a review without some bias on the reviewer's part. The semantics of how you presented that info was what triggered my response (not being able to enthuse on account of the book being about magic items).

Given your considered comments, and the fact that those comments added even more depth to the review itself, I'll retract my initial protest.