More cursed items for every fantasy d20 game
Tainted Troves
A Collection of Cursed Items
Written by Ian Johnston
Published by Silverthornegames
www.silverthornegames.com
40 b & w pages
Tainted Troves is aimed at game masters who find that there are simply not enough cursed magic items for d20 fantasy games. With that in mind, the author, added by several contributors, has decided to add some more to the game.
Layout is standard two-column layout with a border on the outer edge. Text use is good with tight margins on the inner, upper, and lower page and only the margin adding any ‘waste’ value to the text, but even that isn’t as broad as many print products. Layout is crisp and clean for the most part. Art is minimized for the most part with a few illustrations here and there for various items.
The book is organized by item type so we have the following: Armor & Shields, Potions, Rings, Rods, Scrolls, Staves, Wands, Weapons, Wondrous Items. When looking over the items, I notice that not all of the penalties are severe and might act as things to add a little touch of weirdness to a campaign. For example, imagine that a mage is cursed but suffers to apparent effects save when he creates magic items. Then he might craft something like the Armor of Flanking where the armor, while acting as +1 chainmail, curses the user so that he’s always considered to be flanked, even when there is no physically possible way that the user should be able to be flanked.
I think the authors made two mistakes here. The first is that they give an additional cost to the process of cursing an item. Normally that follows game mechanics, but what if you have a cheap mage and he cuts some corners? Shouldn’t that mage actually gain a reduction in cost? Second, too many of the items have specific descriptions. Why make Armor of Scalding +1 chain shirt as opposed to +1 armor of fire resistance?
Outside of that, the items vary in intensity and effect providing players with options on how to get rid of them. For some, it’s as simple as surviving the initial onslaught of the curse and getting rid of the armor. For others, it’s a remove curse spell.
In addition to the items in their categories, there are several appendices includes. The first is ‘classic cursed items’, all the bad boys from the DMG. On one hand, this is a page waster but on the other, it’s good to have all the items together.
The cursed artifacts and places in appendix II are of minor note. For example, the Book of Madness gives the user a +1 bonus to all Intelligence-based skills for every five pages read and a bonus feat for every fifteen pages read but the user must make a Will save for every page read, starting at DC 11 with a +1 per additional page. Those driven mad lose all benefits.
Of more use in generating general cursed items are the cursed qualities in appendix III. These include things like ‘Boon’, where a type of creature attacked with the weapon gains 2d6 points of damage to slowness, where the armor effects the user as a slow spell. Appendix IV follows up on this idea of creating cursed magic items with common curses, depending item conditions, like only during the night, day, etc…, and drawbacks, both major and minor.
Another neat inclusion in the appendices, is the Malign Artificer, a mage who can craft cursed items a bit easier than other mages. They still have to be able to craft the item in the first place, but they can effectively curse any item they create. In addition, they’re also resistant to curses, gaining a resistance against curses that increases as they gain in levels.
In the end, Tainted Troves is a very simple book with a very specific audience. Are you a GM looking for more cursed magic items and methods of creating them and adding them to your game? If the answer is yes, Tainted Troves is for you.
