#30 Unique Magical Blades (PFRPG) PDF

This PDF weighs in at 16 pages, containing:
Cover (1)
PI (1)
30 Different Bladed Weapons (11)
OGL (1)
Ads (2)

I'm going to start by saying the concept of each entry having a specific drawing, very nice visually. I've read the comments, and know it was a fluke, and that's a shame, as it really helps to sell each individual weapon. Every weapon here has so much more personality thanks to the illustrations, and a few of them, the Ham'Molkosh in particular, would have suffered greatly without a visual to help understand the description of this weapon.

If you are looking for a book of generic weapons, this might not be the book for you. However, if you are looking for a kick ass tome of historically tried and tested, named in the heart of adventure bladed edges of heroism...well, now we're talking. These weapons are not simply presented with the standard Magic item statblock and description of effect. Each of them is given a history, a reason for their name, how they might fit into the lore of an area, and what hero or villains hand once held it, and for many of them, how they came to lose it.

A few choice examples would be
Bloody Moon – An Orc axe of simplistic design, with a wicked critical multiplier, has been the target of more than one orcen brawl over the right of ownership
Ham'Molkosh – Kiss of Molkosh, an ancient dwarven waraxe found by the man who named it, forged in a forgotten style lost to the dwarves, this one will be one seriously unique weapon at the table.
Leafwind – crafted by a master smith for a human obsessed with all things elven, this blade does a fair job of paying homage to the elven smiths, and would serve many a hero well.
Quinmoash – crafted as payment from a king for services rendered, Quinmoash was passed from Brinbow the Cat to his daughter, who passed it to her son...who lost it in a game of cards.

The beauty of the weapons being presented in this manner is that not only are presented with 30 fantastic, magical weapons....you are presented with at least 30 adventure hook ideas as well. And honestly, who couldn't use some free adventure hooks?

Formatting is the standard dual column, with grammatical errors kept to a minimum. My one complaint would be the naming of a pair of weapons, Dicer and Slicer...in a book full of seriously presented weapons with great stories, the name came off as kind of silly. Not a huge issue, just personal taste.

Giving this collection of fantastic Weapons a solid 5 stars.

The premise of this book, that every magical weapon should have a story behind it is one that I personally hold myself. Of course I also believe that there is no such thing as a “Magic Mart” where you can just go to pick up whatever you need. I have never liked this tendency in modern roleplaying games. My favorite part of gaming is the unique stories each player can tell about his or her characters. Heroic achievements and rewards gained are all equal parts of the fun of roleplaying games. Any warrior worth his salt should have a story behind a treasured weapon.

Enter Jonathan “Wicht” McAnulty and Rite Publishing’s Unique Magical Blades. For Game Masters who have limited time to create individualized weapons for their players to discover this book is a treasure trove. Obviously there are thirty items detailed in this work, as in all their #30 series. Each weapon has a background story that has some details that are fairly easy to alter to suit your individual campaign. For example, a particular sword mentions the warrior who once wielded it and the name of a battle in which he used it and then was killed in the conflict. It would be a simple matter to change the name, the battle, and the location to suit your own campaign.

In addition to a brief background for each weapon there is a brief but detailed description of it. This is the part I like the best. I like being able to tell my players what the item looks like rather than telling them, “Well, you find a sword. It looks well made. Detect magic indicates that it is magical.” Boring! Now I can try to make up details myself, and I really should be doing that anyway. But as we beleaguered GM’s know, there isn’t always time to do this.

The part I like the best is the fact that each and every one of these unique weapons has an interesting picture of it. I can make my own cards to hand out to players who get one of these weapons, with description and picture attached. Awesome! Kudos to Rite Publishing for finding just the right artist. The drawings are each appropriate according to the descriptive paragraphs and look neat and well drawn as if they were pictures of the real weapon, not cartoony at all.

To top it all off, there are several sidebars interspersed throughout that detail new magical weapon features with game rule information for creating this effect, assuming the core rules on magical item creation are used. I think this was particularly excellent as this makes a unique weapon all that much more so if there is no other weapon in the campaign that can do the same thing.

It is true that the background and description details are brief. Each is roughly a paragraph in length. Some might consider that a fault. I don’t. More details mean more things that I might have to adjust to suit my own campaign. And campaign world specific details would be a negative thing if too deeply imbedded in the item. I think that Jonathan got the balance just right between not enough information and too much. There is just enough in each background and description to use as is or modify as needed.

Even if you don’t use each and every one of the thirty weapons detailed in this work, I guarantee you’ll find at least one that fits a particular player’s character that they will cherish. Is that worth the cost of the pdf? I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Obviously I decided it was worth it sight unseen, based on previous work by Jonathan McAnulty and Rite Publishing. I was not disappointed. (Full five stars)

Beginning with the tagline 'Because every blade should tell a story' this work lays out details of an armoury-full of distintive and interesting weapons, the sort that any hero worth his place in a bard's repertoire should aspire to wield.

There's a table listing the weapons in value order, from a mere snip of just over 4,000gp for a glaive-guisarm called Horse Daughter's Kiss up to a staggering 175,000gp for Ice Queen, a spectacular sword magically-forged from a single piece of steel. Each weapon then gets about a third of a page to itself, with necessary game mechanical details, a paragraph giving its history and another with a vivid description of the item... and a full-colour picture. A reasonably tech-savvy GM could no doubt extract the pictures if he wants to display them to characters picking through treasure hoards or receiving rewards from grateful potentates - despite the 'price list' at the beginning, these are not the sort of thing you pick up at the corner weapons store!

Several of the weapons are truly unique, not just in terms of story or even powers, but having been crafted to original designs. For example, a pair of hand-blades were created at the behest of a halfling monk who worked as a chef - and Slicer and Dicer bear a passing resemblance to something you might chop herbs with in the kitchen! Or if you really want strange, how about an axe which can change from throwing-axe to great axe according to its wielder's whim...

There is plenty of scope here, from something unusual to spice up a treasure hoard - and give the characters something to research - to inspiration for a whole campaign revolving around one of thse unique magical weapons. The stories are self-contained enough that they can be dropped into your existing campaign world with minimal changes if so desired. Even the mages and clerics might be interested, and those characters who use edged weapons will be eager to get their hands on any that they hear about! A fine example of how to devise individual, interesting items.

30 Unique Magical Blades by Rite Publishing

This product is 16 pages long. It starts with a cover, and credits. (2 pages)

Next it jumps into the weapons. (11 pages)
Below is a list of weapons, they are listed in order from cheapest to most expensive. That’s how they was listed in the book and I just C&Ped the list for the review. Each weapon has a short history and lore about the weapon, they also each do something unique and special. I will give some details about a few of them to give you a feel for what to expect.
Horse Daughter's Kiss - +1 Glaive, when used against a rider. The rider must make a ride check to stay mounted and receives a penalty equal to the damage done by the weapon.
Bloodthorn
Joyous Cleft
Ebon Crow
Quinmoash
Crowd Pleaser
Lonkra
First Mate
Silvertongue
Song of Summer
Rivertongue
Bear Stalker - +1 short sword, animal bane(bears), +4 survival.
Bloody Moon
Thunderblow
Ham'Molkosh
Forest Dancer
Heart's Tooth
Blue Reaver - +2 shock longsword. Acts like a torch for light on command and once per day works like whirlwind feat regardless if you posses the feat or not.
Breath of Sorrow
Durndhas'lok
Oathbreaker
Leafwind
Dicer and Slicer
Heart of Flame - +2 fast bracing flaming burst long spear. Also when held grants a 5 fire resistance.
Shalma
Tooth 'n Claw
Drac'Malfas
Raven
Exaltation
Ice Queen

It ends with OGL and 2 ads. (3 pages)

Closing thoughts. While it is called unique blades it is really weapons, while most of them are swords, not all of them are. There is some axes, spear, pole-arm’s etc in there as well. As you can see by the examples they are all normal magic items that fit the theme and history of the weapon, then with a little something more. Most of the weapons have images, I counted 29 images but I might have missed one. The art work is good for the weapons and really helps to give a sense of what they look like. The history and fluff is well done, the book is pretty, good layout, editing etc.

I really have no critic of the book, the only thing I have negative to say is more of a nitpick. I wish the book was about 2 pages longer and each weapon given a bit more in terms of history. What was there was good but I would have loved to see more, especially on some of the higher end items. So what's my rating? Well it gives what it claims in a stylish well done way, while I would have liked to have had even more, the product gives what it claims and does it well. So giving it a 5 star review.

This full-color pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages ads, 1 page SRD, leaving 11 pages for the 30 magical blades. Enough to make them “unique” as per the premise of the book? We’ll see.
The pdf starts with a short table that lists the weapons according to their value, the cheapest being 4,312 GP, the most powerful one scoring at a whopping 175,325 GP. The book features a beautiful, full-color, digital artwork by Sade for each and every weapon in the book, which I definitely liked. The layout is also consistent and very nice to look at. Each of the thirty blades comes not only with a short story that could serve as a hook on how to get the weapon, but also with several abilities that go beyond +2 ice-bursting sword. I.e., each of the blades (There are also spears, btw.) has some distinctive quality besides its primary characteristics.

Editing and formatting very top-notch, I didn’t notice any mistakes.

Conclusion:
Magic item books tend to have a hard standing with me. I’m a sucker for elaborate backgrounds, weapons that level up and PCs with a very limited access to magic weapons and gadgets. I’m quite old-school there, every weapon or magic item in my campaign gets its own background story.
There is obviously not too much space for background-texts for the blades in this pdf, although you get more than in almost all item-supplements I’ve read so far, which is great news – while I love the modularity of recent editions when it comes to magic items, it also made many a weapon or armor a common commodity instead of an awe-inspiring item.

The production values are top-notch, as often a picture of a blade makes it MUCH MORE memorable than it would be without it. That being said, all the blades feature the Rite Publishing style, i.e. they have something rather unusual or special about them – for the low price, that is quite is something!

However, if you’re like me, you would probably have preferred less blades and more background on the weapons presented. I can’t find any serious flaw with this product, though. Thus, for me, this is a 4 star product, probably because it didn’t utterly grip me and make me shout “Hell yeah”. If you’re into equipment books, though, this is gold. For you, this may be a 4.5 or even 5 star-file.