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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: 2011411" data-attributes="member: 1129">Relics and Rituals Excalibur is printed under the Relics and Rituals imprint. This is strange as it’s not Relics and Rituals III and rumor is that that particular numbering will return with the next Scarred Lands book. This hardcover runs for $34.95 and 216 black and white pages. A fair price but not the best we’ve seen from Sword and Sorcery Studios.This book is a strange bird. It has a lot of ideas and notes on how to bring two separate types of campaign elements to your campaign. The first type is the “Arthurian”. They use this “to refer to any campaign that is meant to evoke the general feel of an Arthurian myth.” While the “Excalibur” model uses pretty much everything from this book. This makes the setting fairly high fantasy and has little in common with a more historical or authentic setting.The book is broken up into six chapters with two appendices.  In some ways, the book is set up much like the Expanded Psionics Handbook in that it has elements of the Players Handbook with races, classes, skills, feats & equipment and spells, and some of the Dungeon Master’s Guide with magic items, setting information, tournament rules and new monsters. One of the things I notice is that nothing is necessarily brand new. Rather, it’s the familiar with a “How would this work in this setting” twist. For example, the setting has hobgoblins, Halflings, half-elves, half-orcs and dwarves, but most bear only a superficial resemblance to standard d20 races. This is even truer for the different races of elves, the Daoine sidhe and the Lledrith sidhe, elves that have an iron allergy and suffer damage when touching large amounts of iron or steel, such as when wearing armor.Humans of course, are the same. Most of the game stats themselves have been tweaked but a few are standard. Half-orcs for example, are standard +2 Str, -2 Int, -2 Cha, but others like the Dwarves, are now +2 Str and –2 Dex, while the Elf Lord is +2 Dex and –2 Wis. The real treatment of these beings as different races altogether comes in the background. The anhardd or hobgoblins, for example, have over three pages of information, including game stats.This tweaking goes on into the core D&D classes and prestige classes. For example, in an Excalibur style campaign, barbarians are from one of two cultures. Either they are the Picti or the Aesr, the former a hill and mountain people who raid others for food and sport, the latter, a ‘Norse-flavored culture”. Clerics have a new assortment of gods to worship, including the Daeos faith with it’s two branches and evil Adversary, in addition to the Old Faith of Druena and those of the Fae Gods. Each has a typical alignment, domains, and typical worshippers. This section is well illustrated, bringing to life both the males and females of the setting in various stances and professions. This images go well with those on the interior covers showing the construction of the various races.Some classes fit better than others, and some aspects of some classes fit better than others. Monks for example, are a poor fit for a setting that relies on knights in heavy armor. Wizards who cast fireballs are also a little genre breaking, so evocation spells often have expensive material components and take longer to cast. One interesting option for keeping fighters and knights separate, is that fighters have more freedom in what they can use and these weapon choices can show different backgrounds, ranging form peasant to mercenary. On the other hand, they are often barred from using the most famous or standard weapon, the longsword. The new core class, the Knight, is similar in many ways to a fighter in that it uses the best bab, good fort save, and gains a few bonus feats. As they don’t gain as many bonus feats as a fighter, they do gain some other abilities such as Leadership and the ability to bypass damage reduction. Another benefit is they start play with more funds, especially for purchasing weapons and armor, and horse. Thankfully, this mount goes up in ability as a druid’s animal companion. They also automatically have the new feat, Registered Devices.In terms of PrCs, the advice covers those found in the DMG. Dwarven defenders for example, make excellent dwarven knights but dragon disciples, due to the scarcity of dragons in the campaign, should be rare if not unheard of. Those who want more options though, have new PrCs like Fey Enchantresses, Giant-Killers, Green Knights, Houndmasters, Knights of the Realm (think round table here), Knight Templar, Malefic Enchanter, Reliquarian, and Voice of the Land. These specialists PrCs allow the PCs to focus on different aspects of Arthurian game play even as they provide the GM with new tools to counter them.For example, the Malefic Enchanter is an evil spellcaster who continues gaining spellpower even as he gains powers with a fiendish base to them. Take his 3rd level ability, Gluttonous Replenihsment. By eating huge amounts of food, the Enchanter can heal himself as if he had rested for a full day. Even his familiar isn’t safe as at 5th level, the creature gains the fiendish template, eventually gaining the half-fiend template. The white space use here is a little heavy as there are some pages where less than half the page is text. Due to Ron Spencer’s excellent visuals though, each one giving personality and weight to the PrC in question, I’m almost willing to overlook it. To help capture the proper feel of the setting, there are new subskills, such as Field Cooking and Tapestry Weaving for Craft, as well as new uses for Alchemy through Improved Brew.  New feats introduce us to Honor and Paragon feats. The former require the character to have a certain amount of honor points while the latter require you to be beyond your race, requiring you to have the required ability score at three points higher than your racial maximum.The feats help allow the setting to shine through in certain places. For example, Avoid Treacherous Blow allows you to reduce sneak attack damage for every full five points of honor you have over twenty. Others, like Paragon of Health, you gain immunity to non-magical poisons and diseases in addition to a +4 bonus against magical versions of poisons and diseases. A little too much text is spent discussing the virtues of the feats themselves, but otherwise, some interesting abilities. Some, like Gift of Prophecy or Landed require the GM to take more of a hand in their use. The former for example, allows you to see events into the future and the GM is supposed to help plot these details out, past the benefits in game mechanics. The latter requires the GM to map up the area and servants of the landed house.In terms of equipment, new equipment lists are provided to capture the feel of the setting, but go a little array when they use wood that’s been alchemically treated to overcome the elf inability to wear metal armor. The section on clothes and jewelry, as well as the expanded mount and mount gear, is also useful.In terms of spells, the spell lists here, include spells in italics, not recommended for Arthurian campaigns and not present in Excalibur settings. They’re included for inclusion’s sake however, a weak argument at best. The italics also suffer from not being that noticeable. I can’t tell for example, that Halt Undead is in italics until I really study the page. Perhaps putting those spells on their own list would’ve been easier, or at least not making them bold like the standard spells, or perhaps underlining them? The spell break down follows the standard format introduced in the Player’s Handbook, by class, and level, and then for wizards, school. This allows you to look through wizard schools by level. For a setting that tries to deny the evocation school, they’ve certainly put enough power within the setting. The first level Death Strike allows your next weapon attack to inflict double damage even as the sixth level spell Giant’s Might provides you with a +8 bonus to strength and a +2 bonus to Constitution. Still, these spells are small in nature and often personal, allowing one to overcome great odds as opposed to flinging a fire ball into a crowd of knights.Many people, including myself, will probably rush to Chapter Five, Magic Items, to see good old Excalibur, the sword of the High King. Well, it’s not quite as powerful as I would think, but as it’s ken, armor-piercing, and does damage as a greatsword, in addition to other enchantments, I think I’ll let it’s lowly +3 bonus slide. Other favorites of the saga, like the Sword in the Stone, the Round Table, and even the Holy Grail, are listed here.Chapter Six, setting, is probably my biggest disappointment in the book. While I understand that the writers are going out of their way to avoid making a setting, some more elements of a suggested setting, like maps of common buildings of the era, would be very appropriate. Instead, we get mechanics like honor and chivalry, the former a game mechanic in numbers that show how the character holds to a standard set of behavior, and the latter the rules of knights. Honor effects range from being honorless at –10 or below, gaining –2 modifier on all saves and –4 checks on diplomacy, bluff and leadership, while those who are most worthy, like 100+, can turn a critical hit scored against them into a normal wound, huge bonuses to their bluff and diplomacy skill checks, as well as a bonus to saving throws and either attack rolls or armor class.Advice on using courtly love, prophecy, religion, and named monsters, helps round out the setting chapter. The religion section is a bit weak, providing an Arthurian equivalent to the basic gods of the Player’s Handbook, while the named monsters is good for new GMs who may want to throw dozens upon dozens of strange denizens at his party, never realizing that most such creatures should probably be used sparingly.For those GMs wondering what standard monsters are common in the setting, there is a list, in alphabetical order, which shows the standard name and then the preferred name. For example, krenshars are skull leopards, while thoqquas are fire-worms. The book ends with two appendices. The first, Tournaments, provides a brief snit of background and then goes into the details. It starts with hosting a tournament, the requirements as far as land and lodgings, before moving into attendance and the selling booths.  One of the nice sidebars is that it shows how players can set up their own booth. Most however, will want to know about the various contents of arms ranging from archery and single combat, to the grand melee. Appendix two introduces new monsters. This includes two new types, manifestation and spirit, as well as the infamous questing beast and wyrms. Now the wyrms can be winged or wingless and are powerful, but lack the intelligence and magical abilities of their dragon cousins. Details for lesser and greater wyrms, as well as the age categories, from wyrmling to great wyrm, are provided to allow a great range of challenge for most players.The book does a good job of providing the tools that a GM needs, but does so at the cost of any setting details. What level is the high king? What does a typical castle look like? How far is it to the enchanted islands? None of those questions are asked, and this game is by no stretch of the imagination, a fitting d20 Pendragon substitute. What it is however, is a game that puts the potential mechanics of such a setting firmly in the hands of the GM and allows her to tweak the history and rules to her own preference.</blockquote>

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