Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2010846" data-attributes="member: 924">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.</blockquote>

Verification