Relics

[Messageboard Golem]

Since the dawn of role playing games, magical artifacts have held a special place in the lore of fantasy gaming. Some of the most popular items amongst gamers are powerful, unique artifacts whose detailed histories and unique traits cause them to stand out from the pack of magical swords, potions, and other items. Relics presents a bevy of artifacts that DMs can insert into their games. Each artifact includes a detailed history, complete rules for its use, and adventure hooks to inspire the imagination and enrich a d20 campaign.

* A complete toolbox for DMs looking to add detail to their campaigns or develop new adventures and plot lines.
* Dozens of new magical artifacts for use in d20 games.
* A wide spread of artifact types, from weapons and armor to strange, otherworldly items that defy easy categorization.
* Adventure ideas that can lead to anything from a simple one-night game session to an epic yearlong campaign

 

[Psion]

Relics

Relics is one of AEG's one-word title "topic" books for d20 System fantasy games. The book is a catalog of artifacts for use is such games.

The book's writing contributors include Steve Crow, Andrew Getting, Gareth Hanrahan, Andrew Hudson, Mike Tesca, and Patrick Younts.

A First Look

Relics is a 128-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $24.95 US. This is a reasonable price for a d20 System book of this size and format.

The cover of the book has a burgundy background with brown piping similar in style to that used in other books of the series. The cover illustration is a painting of a woman wielding a glowing yellow staff standing in the midst of a number of fiendish looking creatures, illustrated by Kari Christensen.

The interior of the book is black-and-white, with one illustration for each artifact. The interior artists include Shane Coppage, Cris Dornaus, and Lisa Hunt. The quality of the illustrations is generally good, though most illustrations are simple pencil sketches.

The interior uses a conservative but readable body text font, and paragraphs and lines are single spaced, providing a fairly good text density. The layout is nice and simple, with one artifact being depicted per page in most cases.

A Deeper Look

Most of the entries in Relics take up a page of text, in most cases defining a single artifact-type item. Each item has an illustration and three text section. The first text section is an expisitional background or history explaining a little backstory of the item. The second is a game statistics section containing all the necessary d20 System statistics for using the item, including powers and other effects and important details like caster level and weight.

The final text section is entitled "Legend." The Legend section varies in approach, but generally has the function of providing the GM with game ideas for integrating the artifact into the game. For example, so "Legend" section contain stat blocks and details of the current owner and their activities, while others have tables of rumors on where the item may be located or obtained.

Some items that appear in these pages include The Book That Never Was, a book has a number of contrived histories that have never been. By inscribing things in the book, the user can cause other historical facts to not have been. The Cloak of Life is another interesting entry. By plucking a thread from the cloak, the user can sacrifice a year of her life to grant life to another. Overall, the items are generally powerful, and primarily suitable for a high-level campaign.

Conclusion

The concept of Relics is fundamentally similar to that of Fast Forward Entetainment's various "items of power" books, presenting the background and abilities of a number of artifacts. The fundamental difference between this book and those by Fast Forward seems to be that a smaller amount of background is devoted to each item and the game statistics follow d20 System conventions much more closely.

In the d20 System, artifacts are primarily defined as items that simply do not follow normal item creation rules; they need not be excessively powerful. This book could have followed that principle and included intriguing items more suitable for lower level games, but does not. The items in here tend to be fairly powerful. A side effect of this fact is that you will probably only ever use a small fraction of the items in this book.

Overall Grade: B-

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Frostmane]

With all due respect, I find this assessment, to be, well..a little harsh.
In honsety, while 'minor' artifacts are possible, and perhaps desireable, what most people think of as 'Artifacts' -are- in my
experience 'Items of Great Power!'.
Thus, I feel that the focus of this book wasn't inappropriate.
Personally, I'd give it an A, if not an A+. I'm hoping for a sequel.
I found that most of the items were suitable to my campaigns with only a handful that I couldn't conceive of ever using in some way.
Admittedly, most of my campaigns are level 10+, these days, so perhaps tere's some truth to the 'high-level' appellation.

 

[Merova]

Hi all!

Alan, I think you hit the nail square on the head. This book could have expanded the parameters of "relic" implementation by offering low-powered examples. It doesn't; instead it retreads the standard big "kewl" uber-standards.

This is a viable design choice, but it limits the books overall utility. Low-level PCs need "relics" too. It's a missed opportunity.

I'd have given this product a solid C. YMMV.

---Merova

 

[trancejeremy]

Relics is a 128 page softcover d20 sourcebook from AEG. It's priced at the somewhat high $24.95, but while it's softcover, has a somewhat plastic-ish cover, so that's probably worth an extra buck or two (though not really $5 extra). (I got it as part of a lot with 3 other AEG books, for about $10 each.)

This is one of those books that's really really hard to review (so this is going to be short), because it's simply a collection of items. As you might guess from the name of the book, in this case, it's a collection of "relics", aka "artifacts", basically really really powerful magic items, about a 100 of them.

Each relic gets a page (a few get two, and a couple of them get three, though these tend to be multi-part artifacts), and has a fairly standard write up. The write-up is very fluff heavy, that is, lots of background info about it, and often a few paragraphs of fiction to set the tone. Then comes the game mechanics of the objects, then generally some game related material, like stats for someone currently associated with the relic, or in a few cases, a new feat.

Unlike most traditional D&D relics or artifacts, these often don't have any drawbacks. Some do, but only a few.

"The Book That Never Was" is probably my favorite. It's a book of things that didn't happen, or never were. So if you write something in there, it didn't happen. (I keep trying to write "Highlander 2" in there, but it doesn't seem to be working)

Some are a bit munchkiny, like the Hurricane Bow, which is +5 keen short bow of speed which also endows it's arrows with a choice of different bursts. The book is best when the relic is not a weapon or piece of armor.

They are all illustrated.

The only real problem is that sometimes when there is a table of items for a relic, the table is either wrong, or has no explanation of what it's for (or both). For instance, there is a table for "The Crown of the Ironridge Thane". I'm guessing it's supposed to be a table of how the user becomes dwarf-like, because the first entry is "Transform into a Dwarf", and the second is "+/- 1 inch in height until 4 feet tall". However, the 3rd is a bit of a puzzler, saying "There is a hidden door in the western wall of the Krak du Nord fortress". The rest of the list are curious statements like that. But not a bit deal.

If you need relics, then this is your book. I would have liked a bit more info on relics in general, not just samples, much like the Monster Manual has info on monsters, not just specific monsters. So it's not stunning. But it's good, and it's perhaps the first AEG one word title book that accurately describes the content of the book. B.

But it's one of those books that isn't terribly useful for a game, even high powered games will only use a handful of these items. Much of the background also seems setting specific, though what setting it's for, I don't know. It is very interesting to read, and it has lots of potential adventure hooks and ideas for the GM.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

I also think your review said what needed to be said without going overboard, Psion. I liked Relics and if nothing else it made for fun reading, but FFE's similar product line whomps Relics in terms of variety (i.e. so many of the swords in Swords of Power are appropriate for a lvl 2-4 char). I also liked the storytelling better but that's a matter of style.

I liked Relics too but I must say this review is dead-on.