Occult Items of Power by
Fast Forward entertainment.
It's a train wreck.
1. 127 pages long (slim volume) cost? $24.95 For 19 cents a page, i would hope for something decent, right? ... right?
The entirety of the books crunchy contents fit on 8 pages. EIGHT pages of actual original material. How do I know this? because the "index of Occult items" in the back takes exactly eight pages.
the other 119?
- "Illustrations" of the "occult items". which look suspiciously like ordinary photos of things you would buy at Hot Topic and Spencer Gifts. (seriously, look...)
This candlestick, this precise candle stick is statted up in the book.
The candle has different functions that vary based on what kind of candle you burn in it. You have to make a candle especially for this object to work, you have to sepnd between 250 gp and 2,000 gp to get any special effects out of it. Other candles put into the candlestick offend it, causing it to emit a firey burst of 2d10 damage to the person who lit the inferior candle.
It's an intelligent light source ladies and gentlemen, that's snooty.
- Long, aggressively long "histories" of the items, written by 5th-rate fantasy hacks.
Please consider the following character description.
Delilah was a weaver by trade, and her home was modest. The rumor was that she was the daughter of a king from the west, but she had borne Parnopius out of wedlock and had been disowned. She came to Sophos village empty handed and bearing a newborn. Though many men had been willing to mary the beautiful girl, Delilah prefered to make her own home and live out her days without a husband.nearly twenty years had passed, but her beauty still turned heads when she went around in public
Sound like a mary-sue? Yeah, there's lots of that in this book. Bad fantasy and worse faux-historical stories fluff out each entry, sometimes these stories are only tangentially connected to the artifact in question. Most of the time, they go on for two full pages, while the item itself gets squeezed into a tiny column.
-Incidentally, all the items in the book are ARTIFACTS. every last one. they all have "unique" powers or abilities (nevermind the fact that half of them are weaker than regular magic items found in the DMG. For example, who wants a wall-sconce candle that creates an area of "see invisibility" within 20 feet of it's light... if it has to be fastened to a wall for it to work?) so good luck working these things into a regular campaign.
In short: too expensive + too much fluff + Too much BAD fluff + really, really poorly though out = Damnit! i can't believe i bought this thing!
