Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011307" data-attributes="member: 172">Book of Unusual Treasure[imager]http://www.badaxegames.com/mm/images/products/book_of_unusual_treasures/photo_unusual_treasures.jpg[/imager]The Book of Unusual Treasures is a collection of detailed (mostly) minor treasure items (such as books, jewelry, and spell components) for use with d20 System fantasy games. The book is primarily composed of content for Phillip J. Reed's "101" series of PDF products from Ronin Arts, but published in print under Bad Axe Games.A First LookThe Book of Unusual Treasures is a 96-page perfect bound softcover book priced at $13.95. In today's market of inflating game prices, this is pretty reasonable.Both cover and interior illustrations are by Christopher Shy, one half of Ronin Arts. The cover features a somewhat blurry depiction of a man with demonic horns an a twisted face sitting on some sort of throne. Shy has done work elsewhere in the RPG hobby and some of you may already be familiar with his art; he has a somewhat abstract style with intentional blurring or soft focus.A Deeper LookThe Book of Unusual Treasures is divided into five topic chapters and six appendices. The five chapters cover books, weapons and armor, clothing and jewelry, and miscellaneous treasure, respectively.The books chapter is further divided into the categories of "mundane" books, spellbooks (some of which include new spells included in the indices), and special books. The mundane books just have brief descriptions of the topic and a value; there is no game benefit to them other than what you can sell it for.The special books and some of the spellbooks have special features. These features can be a variety of things, including bonuses to specific sorts of rolls, additional skill ranks if studied, magical powers much akin to a magic item. Some books even approach artifact levels of power, though in many cases some very difficult rolls are required to obtain some benefits (e.g., one book requires a DC 30 intelligence check to gain a +2 will save to psionics.)In addition to the new spells, some books call out things like creation techniques for new items, which are given statistics in shaded blocks after the book's descriptive text.The spell components chapter contains possibly the largest rules variations in the book. The chapter list spells by descriptor, and under each descriptor is a list of several components that affect casting of spells of those types. Each component lists a knowledge arcana roll to know about it, additional casting time to utilize it, and most require spellcraft checks to utilize.When used, the components add effects to the spell, which can be the "free" application of metamagic or additional spell effects, or other benefits. Some, however, have negative side effects. For example, an ankheg poison sack (sic) adds a lot of damage to an acid descriptor spell, but sprays the caster inflicting damage.Some components listed here aren't material components at all, but conditions. For example, suffering damage from natural cold can help boost cold spells, and standing atop a barbarian's grave can give a caster of a force spell a quick boost in physical power.Some of these the GM may want to be careful to screen. For example, the side effects of a mephit's corpse used during a fire spell is pretty destructive, and the GM may be loath to use mephits as opponents in the game after PCs wise up to this effect...The weapon and armor section is ultimately similar to the special books section; each item has a description and appraisal information as well as special rules. None of the weapon or armors are magical, however, though it would be easy to make them so and use the descriptions just for flavor. As none of the items are magical, the special rules all pertain to the construction of the item, such as being clumsy or f Unlike the earlier book section, the gp section has a breakdown for different aspects of the item (e.g., might list artistic value as well as value for the weapon quality, etc.)The fourth chapter provides a variety of jewelry and clothing. The layout is very similar to the weapons and armor chapter, with descriptions, appraise information, value, and special rules (the last entry is seldom used.)The fifth chapter describes miscellaneous treasures that are not covered in any of the previous chapters. This includes such things as musical instruments, tools, banners, mugs, jars, and so forth, but it seems a few books escaped the first chapter. Again, the layout is similar to the weapon and armor section.The first five appendices introduce game mechanical aspects associated with the items in earlier sections such as spells, feats, poisons, special materials, and skills. The six appendix is an item listing by value that provides a quick reference allowing DMs to make best use of the book by looking up the value of an item in a randomly generated (or published) treasure horde to allow substitution of items.ConclusionsI'll be honest and say that this is not exactly the sort of book I expect to get a lot of use on. My campaign is not the sort where dwelling on the details of mundane items is all that important. However, I can see the sort of campaign, situation, or GM that would derive use from this book. To wit, I think that low magic campaigns that have more emphasis on minor items, or classic dungeon settings for those GMs that like dungeon dressing, are places where this book could see use. As well, if you are the sort who never describes anything to PCs unless its magical, the descriptions herein can throw the PCs off the scent.If you are in the market, the book does do what it attempts well. It is very affordable, nicely laid out, and provides some nice new rules material to boot.Overall Grade: B -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification