Ultimate Equipment Preview: The Devil's in the Details

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

The pit fiend roared in triumph as it lifted Merisiel off the ground, crushing her in its mighty clawed fist. The elf struggled to free herself, but to no effect—the devil’s grasp was just too strong.

Brandishing a glowing longsword blessed by the gods, Valeros crept up behind the fiend, scrambling up a ridge of burning brimstone. With a grunt, the warrior leapt from the rock, bringing his holy blade down upon the devil with all the strength he could muster. The sword sliced through the devil’s arm, cleaving nearly to the bone, forcing the fiend to drop Merisiel and turning its roar of triumph into a howl of pain.

“Sorry it took me so long to save you,” Valeros remarked with a grin. “I was distracted by the mountain of treasure over there”.

Ultimate Equipment releases in just a few days at Gen Con! For our final preview of this gigantic tome of gear and magic items, our heroes are facing off against a terrible CR 20 pit fiend. While that’s certainly a tough fight, it also comes with a huge pile of loot!

Due to their varied nature, outsiders can possess treasure of any type, and this pit fiend has 200,000 gp worth of treasure to hand out. In addition to the mountain of more common loot, this is also a good time to look at some of the items you can’t get through one of the random tables—in this case, artifacts. In addition to the treasure from the tables, this pit fiend is also guarding a terrible artifact called the skullsoul, an object that Valeros and Merisiel are no doubt trying to destroy.

Treasure Type F: Combatant Gear
100,000 gp Reward (total value 99,235 gp)
celestial armor, +1 nullifying bastard sword, ring of foe focus, ring of counterspells, figurine of wondrous power (gold lions), void pennant

Treasure Type G: Spellcaster Gear
100,000 gp Reward (total value 101,125 gp)
ring of return, grounding rod, heretic’s bane, scroll of resurrection, wand of pain strike

Artifact
skullsoul

Now that’s a pile of magic items that might be worth braving the depths of hell for! Of course, they might end up using up some of the treasure to recover from their encounter with the pit fiend (I’m thinking that scroll of resurrection seems like it might see some use). There are so many new items in this pile, I can’t even show off every spread that contains them. I guess you’ll just have to check them out yourself in a few days.

Well, that brings to a close the final preview of Ultimate Equipment. We hope you like what you saw. This book is due to be hitting bookshelves and the mailboxes of subscribers any day now! If you’re planning on attending Gencon, we’ll have a huge pile of the books ready for all of your equipment needs first thing on Thursday...

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer