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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="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4250561" data-attributes="member: 5143">What are these supposed to do?  If given the choice between a feat that gives you +2 damage with all your attacks or one that gives you the ability to say "I was a farmer when I was young, so I can till fields.", a large majority of players will choose the damage one because it will be useful in almost every round of combat while the other feat will be useless as little as 0 times in some campaigns.If you are putting a feat or power into the game it has to have a purpose in game.  Something that you will use on at least a semi-regular basis.  Since the average D&D campaign is about dungeon delving, monster killing, and adventuring all the powers and feats in the book are useful for those activities.Here's where we get into...what game effect does making an illusion of a chair have?  If you cast it during a combat, do the monsters avoid it?  If you create an illusion of a dragon, does it have the ability to have all of the powers of a real dragon?  Can it do real damage?  What are the limitations of your illusion spells?  If you make yourself look like the King and create an illusionary retinue does that mean you can convince the local lord to give you control of his army and give you all his magic items?If that isn't complicated enough to try to adjudicate as a DM then we'll go back to a game balance standpoint.  The wizard can summon an illusionary army out of thin air in order to scare away the 200 orcs who are ready to assault the town.  And the fighter can....look menacing?On to enchantments...they have a similar problem to illusions.  If you can charm the local lord you can convince him to do almost anything.  Certainly, the loan of his Longsword +5 would be reasonable, right?  If you can charm monsters, then you have the ability so suddenly gain HUGE power.  Charm a dragon to fight for you?  Perfect!  That power is WAY better than the ability to do 2d6 damage with one of your attacks.  It's way better than the level 29 Dailies in the game.  And that's only the ability to charm a level 3 dragon.Knowledge spells completely negate the usefulness of skills.  Why have knowledge skills if you can cast a spell and know the answer to anything?  Why investigate a situation by talking to people when you can cast a spell and know the answer?  Not having these spells actually promotes roleplaying.  Players need to come up with plans to figure out who the murderer is instead of asking the gods.This might have been useful.  Still, these are all about setting the tone.  And skill challenges are perfect for mystery games.  Horror games can mean almost anything.  A standard game with all of the descriptions made horrifying can be a horror.Encounters are the easiest way to organize the concepts of an adventure into manageable chunks for DMs.  Almost any adventure you come up with can be broken down into encounters, even if you don't think of them as encounters.Especially if you are planning a plotline.  It is easiest to write in terms of encounters.  For instance:Encounter 1The PCs get to a town, the people all appear to be scared.  They have a chance to explore the town and eventually figure out that there is a ghost that haunts the town and they are all scared for their lives.Encounter 2The PCs meet an old man who tells them the story of the ghost, how it came to be here and what it wants.  But he tells them it in poem form.  It is mostly just hints.Encounter 3Lured by the old man's clues, the PCs likely go to the graveyard where the body of the ghost is buried.  There, they are attacked by zombies.Encounter 4The PCs explore the graveyard, find the body of the ghost.  They figure out they need to destroy the body to get rid of the ghost.  The ghost attacks them as they start digging and they are forced to fight him off, destroying him temporarily while they work.Encounter 5The PCs destroy the corpse and find a strange box buried with the body.  They likely take it.  On the way back to the town proper, they are attacked by some men who try to take the box from them.Simple enough, easy to run....and I think I just wasted a good adventure idea on a message board...but oh well...</blockquote>

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