Staves of Ascendance

[Messageboard Golem]

Magic staves in d20 System games have limited charges, and thus are very expensive temporary tools. Rods often share the same high-price-tag-for-limited-utility drawback. A character buys a tool to handle a specific situation, and then keeps it only because he feels bad about selling it for half price (or less, since the item has fewer charges!). This is a far cry from wondrous tools that turn ordinary heroes into legends, from eldritch staves you'd expect to see wielded by the likes of Gandalf and Merlin.

Staves of Ascendance gives player characters reasons to cherish their magic staves and rods, just as Swords of Our Fathers gave reasons to cherish magic weapons. The legendary staves and rods found in this book are powerful enough to be useful at high levels, but they mete out their powers bit by bit, so that the GM needn't worry about putting a too powerful an item into the hands of a low-level character. The items increase in power as the wielders advance in level.

The magic staves and rods in Staves of Ascendance are always more than just sticks of wood, metal, bone, or crystal. They grant even greater abilities to those wielders who take one of four prestige classes: the staff scion classes. The wielder unlocks new abilities of the item by advancing in the item's associated prestige class. In short, the prestige classes reward the player for keeping an item.

Staves of Ascendance shows you how to make it so that no staff is just another multifunction wand, and how to ensure that every magic staff and rod in your campaign has the possibility to be the item of a lifetime for the right character.

Written by Rich Redman, designer of products such as the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game, Defenders of the Faith, Deities & Demigods, Monster Manual II, Savage Species, and the Dark*Matter Arms & Equipment Guide. Art by Clarence Harrison. Edited by Gary M. Sarli. Layout and design by Marc Schmalz. Cover Design by Jefferson Dunlap.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Staves of Ascendance is the second book in The Game Mechanics' legendary items series. The first book in the series, Swords of Our Fathers, introduced us to the concept of legendary weapons that stick with a character rather than simply being traded in for something "better" next time around. Like SoOF, this book focuses on providing rich backstory and numerous adventure hooks along with the basic game information needed to run the weapon, making this book more than simply a collection of magic items and crunchy bits.

The first chapter of the book contains both good news and bad news. The bad news is that much of the introduction is almost identical to that presented in SoOF. However, given the nature of the book and the need to explain certain basic concepts, this is understandable. The good news is that this makes the book a completely standalone tome and does not require the reader to have purchased the first book in the series. If this is your first time picking up a book in this series you won't be baffled or left out in the cold, which means that you don't have to spend more money. It's unfortunate that this material takes up so much of the book, though. In all honesty, this is the only reason this book gets a 4 instead of a 5. It would have been nice if they had padded the book with new information equal in size to the reprinted info; that way, readers of both books get equal amounts of new material while new readers can jump in at any point. There's even a Web Enhancement on TGM's site that details how to create new magic staves for spellcasters. Why couldn't this information have been included in the book? Sure, you get it for free anyways, but it seems like it would have made the book itself that much more well-rounded and would also have benefitted from the formatting of the book. It just seems as though we lose page space to reprinted material that could have been made up for with a longer supplement. After all, more pages doesn't mean a higher printing cost in this case. The chapter also includes some changes to the scion prestige classes that help delineate the differences between the wielders of swords and those that choose staves, particularly by adding bonus feats like Two-Weapon fighting so that the bearer gains full use of the weapon.

The second chapter really shines, though. Despite the fact that there are less staves overall than there were weapons in the previous book, there seems to be no lack of original and inspired material. Once again, each weapon contains not only game mechanics and crunchy bits but also a rich, vivid history and a plethora of adventure hooks. One of the great things about this section is that it draws upon a shared game world when developing histories; there are a number of references to backstories and legends from SoOF that help DMs flesh out intertwined backgrounds. In fact, one would imagine that as more books in the legendary items series comes out, intertwined histories can be used to logically give an entire party legendary items without it seeming like each one is completely random. Shared backstories are good! Another neat thing is that there is a large section devoted to the creation of staves that benefit a particular school of magic. Since these staves will be more likely to be wielded by arcane magic users, it makes sense to dedicate this kind of section to spellstaves. The neat thing is that the section details information on building staves for each of the schools of magic while providing examples for the Divination staff, meaning that you essentially get multiple staves for the price of one. Additionally, this chapter covers rods in addition to staves, thus making the selection a little more diverse.

One of the great things about this book is that the guys that crafted the PDF have done an outstanding job of addressing the complaints I had about the first PDF. The PDF contains both front and back covers, is indexed with bookmarks to easily jump from one section to another, and still remaind a decent filesize. With these changes to the PDF file, any points I took away from the first book have to be given back. It makes the file much easier to read, and still maintains a high level of quality. Well done!

I reccommend this book just as highly as SoOF, though buyers of both should beware rehashed material. The book does a lot of things right, and offers a lot of great ideas for DMs wishing to make magic items in their game more meaningful. As this series progresses, the diversity of items should prove to be useful so as not to have entire parties wielding legendary items of one type. TGM's high quality presentation of these weapons is worth the price of the file if only for the inspiration that the book incites in readers.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Staves of Ascendance is the second book in the series detailing weapons that grow in power as the PC does, the first being Swords of our Fathers. There are a total of thirteen new magical Staves and Rods detailed here. Staves of Ascendance is composed of two chapters as follows.


Chapter One: The Basics details rules for using staff scions (PRCs) and legendary weapons (minor artifacts whose powers can only be accessed by taking the one of the PRCs presented here) in your campaign. Losing your weapon, gaining additional legendary weapons and muticlassing are also covered. There are four prestige classes known as staff scions, each one has its own uniqueness. The four staff scions are broken down into the battlestaff scion which are combat orientated (granting bonus feats), the spellstaff scion which are orientated towards arcane casters and the faithstaff scion which are orientated towards divine casters (both alowing the continuation of spell progression), and the swiftstaff scion which is orientated towards the roguish types (granting bonus abilities and skills). The strange thing about these PRCs is that there are no prerequisites presented as a base for entering the PRC. Each weapon has its own prerequisites listed for gaining entrance into the PRC.


Chapter Two: Legendary Staves and Rods is the main part of the PDF. The first thing you come across is a section about identifying the weapons, which spells work and what information they reveal. Next are the weapons which are broken down by the PRC needed to awaken their powers, battlestaff, swiftstaff, etc. Each weapon is fully detailed, with a history broken down into knowledge checks so the players might have idea that the weapon is special. Next are the prerequisites for you to enter the PRC for that weapon, followed by any restrictions placed on the use of the weapon or its wielder. Following that are the game stats of that weapon, attributes, how much the weapon might be worth and what powers the weapon has or can have. The thing about the weapons are that they act as a normal magical weapon for anyone who wields them (granting a bonus of up to +3, possibly feats or special abilities), the only time that the true power shows through is when a person takes levels in the PRC. Also included for each weapon are an adventure hook and a picture.


Overall this is an excellent book, if you are looking for a way that your PCs can have weapons that are powerful but want the PCs to work for that power. The PRCs presented here give the player the ability to advance his/her weapon without losing to much of their previous class. Another thing that I liked is the histories of the weapons interconnected with each other and the first PDF in the series Swords of our Fathers.

 

[Psion]

Your reviews really need some paragraph breaks.