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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="The Sigil" data-source="post: 2009716" data-attributes="member: 2013">The Book of Eldritch Might was Monte Cook/Malhavoc Press' debut onto the d20 scene (as an independent publisher) and is a sourcebook for arcane spellcasters of all stripes. OGC Designation: Not too good.  New Monsters and "all material wholly derived from the d20 SRD."  That second phrase is always problematic because it's redundant (in the OGL anyway) and unclear.  Given that Monte is not a lawyer and this is his first OGL/d20 foray, I won't hold this against him here.First Impressions: This is the book that essentially launched the entire PDF-as-RPG-Supplement industry.  There were releases prior to the BoEM but none had an impact even remotely comparable, as the BoEM immediately established that the PDF industry was indeed viable.  Production value was superb, the content was excellent, and the price was right.  For that in and of itself, the Book of Eldritch Might deserves a place in the annals of d20 lore.  While I loved this book, I did feel that there were a few things that appeared to be "stuff left on the cutting-room floor of the DMG" and a few "inspired by Magic cards" items (more on these in a bit).  Nonetheless, this was not really an annoyance as these were (thankfully) few and far between.Initial Annoyances: The vagueness OGC designation bothered me - I can't stress enough that it's important to me that there be no ambiguity whatsoever as to what is and is not OGC (and in a conversation with Monte, he told me that there is indeed ambiguity in the designation).  Other than that, the only real annoyance is the lack of an ink-saving version - though those who view this product on-screen only or have an inexpensive means of printing it *cough work cough* aren't going to have that hangup.Content Breakdown: Off the bat, Monte presents us with a hatful of Feats, including a new type of Feat - the "Eldritch" Feat (which can be taken in lieu of a Metamagic or Item Creation Feat if a class grants those as bonus feats).  In general, these provide special bonuses to spells or spell-like abilities, such as Conjure Mastery (any creature you summon gains a +2 bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution) or Lace Spell: Elemental Energies (when casting a single-target spell, you can add +1d6 points of energy damage, such as electricity, to the spell).  "Lace" Feats also exist to add damage against a specific enemy (an especially neat idea for a ranger character to use in conjunction with his Favored Enemy) or can be laced with "alignment" energy (law/chaos/holy/unholy).  Most of the Feats provide moderate and well-defined bonuses.  I do have deep reservations about the Item Image Feat, however; it allows the character with the Feat to scribe a tattoo on himself or others that allow the character to carry a magic item (though not use it, and each tattoo is specific to one magic item).  The character with the tattoo may call forth or store the item as a free action, and furthermore, the item gains extra magical enhancement.  There is no XP cost, only a gp cost (1/10 of the item's value) for this.  I would have had no problem with all of this if the tattoo had taken up a chakra (item slot) on the character's body or even if characters were limited to, say, four tattoos.  However, as written, the character can have unlimited tattoos... the potential for abuse is great, to say the least.After wrapping up a couple of pages of Feats, we move into Prestige Classes: The Ember Mage, the Graven One, and the Mirror Master.  The embermage is Monte's take on the "fire mage" stereotype, but with a twist - the character must have been killed (or nearly so) by fire.  The extremity of this experience bonds the mage to fire, and a character who takes this class literally begins to have fire coursing through his veins.  Most of the character's abilities center around fire, heat, and flame, specifically with the mage projecting flame (or burning blood) from various parts of his body.  A nice variant, but nothing too out of the ordinary.  The graven one is a little more off the beaten path; this is a mage whose power centers around runes - including (and especially) runes carved into his own body!  The graven one can gain ability score enhancements, natural armor, spell or damage resistance, or other benefits has he scrivens runes upon his own body (the power of the abilities he can gain is dependent upon his level and Int modifier).  Furthermore, the graven one has the ability to scribe tattoos that transform into animals (sort of a free summoning spell) on himself as well.  This class has what the Item Image Feat did not - a limit on the number of runes/tattoos the character can scribe on himself, so I see no major issues here.  Finally, the mirror master is essentially a diviner who specializes in seeing and affecting things remotely through mirrors, allowing him to do more than just scry, but to interact (assuming there is a mirror in the vicinity).  Not so exciting for PCs, but can make for an excellent NPC (friend or foe).The meat of the book, new spells, follows the prestige classes.  Two commonly recurring themes are found here - half-and-half damage spells (such as Coldscream or Flaming Corrosion, 4th level spells that does 1d6 damage/level up to 10d6; half the damage is sonic, half is cold for Coldscream, while Flaming Corrosion is half fire, half acid) and "Mark" spells - spells that place a special mark on a creature and provide it with a bonus of some sort but allow the recipient to voluntarily end the effect early for a one-shot spell effect (as an example, Mark of Earth provides a +2 enhancement bonus to strength but may be terminated early to conjure and throw a large mass of rock that inflicts 5d6 damage if it hits).  These reminded me very much of mechanics available in Magic: The Gathering cards (this is not necessarily a bad thing, I just thought it was interesting that I immediately thought of Magic cards on reading these spells).  There is also a small selection of spells that deal with teleport spells (Teleport Block, for instance, prevents teleporting into or out of an area, while Teleport Redirect creates an area where the caster of Teleport Redirect - not the caster of a subsequent teleport spell - chooses where any subsequent attempt to teleport out of the area will end up).  Finally, Freezing Claw allows you to literally freeze your enemies solid and introduces a new state that a character can be in - Frozen.  "Frozen creatures remain alive but cannot take actions. They stay frozen until they suffer 20 points of fire damage, after which point they are free (but sustain the 20 points of damage)."  Nifty little gem that a casual reading might miss.  I'm sure I'll find other things that can Freeze a character, too *evil laugh*.Monte then provides a nice selection of new magical items, including some that appear to have been left on the cutting room floor at WotC such as the Mirror of Vanity (check out the equipment for the NPC Bards in the DMG).  The ring of red conjures and ring of blue conjures are fascinating for a summoner - creatures summoned by the wearer gain a bonus to AC Constitution and, in the case of blue, to Strength.  Wandwrap is a very nifty wondrous item that can be wrapped around a wand - spells cast from the wand pull charges from the wandwrap instead of the wand itself (the wandwrap has 50 charges).  A must-have for the sorcerer or wizard with a unique wand (or one beyond his current ability to fashion) who doesn't want to burn its last charge and lose its capabilities.We then get a chapter on Magic Poisons - these carry a magical effect instead of (or as well as) simply assaulting the ability scores of a victim (for instance, Heartthief forces a Will Save DC 16 or the victim loses all memory of the person closest to him, while Shrivelsoul magically ages the corpse of a victim upon death by one year, precluding raise dead spells).  Also, we are presented with a small group of Artifacts.  Of these, I found Liquid Power to be the most intriguing - on drinking it, a character gains 6d6x100 "virtual" XP that do not advance him levels; they can only be used to create items or power spells with an XP cost (these last until used).  Cool stuff.The book concludes by presenting a new template - the Magical Construct.  This template is of use for creating stone or metal construct versions of other creatures.  A solid addition to the templates already out there, if not necessarily mind-numbingly creative (this sort of idea was old hat to me at least).Presentation: The BoEM is slightly cluttered - there are no clear section breaks and one topic moves right into the next without warning (much like the creature entries Monster Manual).  Graphically, it is very nice-looking, with fair to decent black-and-white artwork inside and nice borderwork on the page.  Conspicuously absent are bookmarks, a major advantage of a PDF publication, though its brevity (36 pages) does help mitigate the need for bookmarks somewhat.Conclusion: At the end of the day, there is a reason that the BoEM basically gave rise to the PDF industry as we know it today.  While it may not match more recent PDFs in terms of OGL clarity, features (such as providing an ink-saving version or being extensively bookmarked), artwork, or diversity of content, it is the benchmark by which all subsequent PDF releases has been measured.  It is certainly a worthy benchmark.  If it were released today, it would probably still garner a 4/5, but we must judge it compared its "contemporaries" - and there really is no comparison there.  This is easily "superb" (5/5) material.--The Sigil November 20, 2002</blockquote>

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