Magical weapons are a necessity of most roleplaying games, yet the Core Rulebook presents so few of them. Magical weapons are loved by players and game masters alike, yet there is almost none to choose from. There is nothing like a memorable magical weapon to help define a character throughout a campaign, just think about your favorite fictional heroes of fantasy and the weapons that they carry!
These are the 15 specific weapons from Volume 1... Axe of the North (greataxe), Blood Reaver (falchion), Drunkard's Bane (greatclub), Eternal Darkness (hand crossbow), Face Destroyer (spiked light shield), Gauntlet of Growth (gauntlet), Laughing Spear (shortspear), Magefriend (club), Passage Disk (chakram), Poison Fang (punching dagger), Slaver Blowgun (blowgun), Soulcleaver (falchion), Summerfire (elven curve blade), Thunderstroke Falchion (falchion), Viper Blade (kukri)
Written by Ken Burnside, K. Axel Carlsson, Mark Gedak and Jonathan Palmer. Artwork by Marc Rødskov Jensen.
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This pdf is 11 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial and 1 page SRD, leaving 8 pages of content, so let's check out these items, shall we?
The pdf begins with 3 pages explaining the nature of the items herein and discusses a problem rather dear to me: Making magic items feel magical and not something you could buy mass-produced at your convenience store.
After that, we are introduced to a neat array of magic items that have some magical properties beyond e.g. thundering etc. A nice example would be the spiked shield called face destroyer: The shield features a screaming face that has its eyes poked out by the shield's spikes and every time a victim gets hit by the shield, they take charisma damage and the shield changes to reflect the face of said victim. Awesome idea and makes for a nice complication to a given story/investigation. The items feel unique and I considered them neat.
We also get a new magical weapon property (venomous) and the boil skin spell.
Conclusion:
Formatting is top-notch, editing unfortunately is not: There are quite some punctuation errors that make reading this less enjoyable than it otherwise would have been. Layout adheres to a beautiful 2-column standard and the pdf actually features excellent b/w-artworks of several items - awesome and not something I would have expected at this price point. The pdf has no bookmarks. Content-wise, I don't have anything to complain about, although I would have like the abilities go even a step beyond. In the end, the items fulfill their design goals and feel unique. The extremely fair price is another thing going for this pdf and in the end, I did enjoy this pdf. While the editing glitches keep it from being a full 5 stars, I still consider this pdf an awesome buy and give it a final verdict of 4 stars - for less than a buck you should definitely check this out!
This product is 11 pages long. It starts with a cover, credits, and intro. (3 pages)
Magic Items and the Character (2 pages)
This talks about the big 6, the walmart effect, themes for magic items, why they exist etc. Just getting a bit into the reasons for them and discussing it.
15 Specific Weapons (5 pages)
Each weapon has a description on what it does and what it looks like about 2 paragraphs on average for each weapons. Then it has about a 1 paragraph history for each weapon, with the cost, abilities, craft requirements etc. Each weapon is a themed weapon with a little something to make them see truly unique. A example...
Thundering Greataxe of Frost – Beyond the normal + and the thundering and frost effects, the weapon also effects the tempature around the user. It is always colder around the axe. The rest of the weapons are the same way. There is also one new spell and one new magical weapon ability in this PDF.
It ends with a OGL. (1 pages)
Closing thoughts. The art work is black and white and ok. Editing and layout was pretty good. Most of the weapons where pretty good, having the special ability or something made them seem more wonderious than just any old magic weapon which was nice. I would have liked to have seen things pushed a bit more. Like on Face Destoryer, a magical spiked shield that can scare people. I would have liked to perhaps on a crit make a save or it permenantly blinds. Since the shield has a face on it with it's eyes poked out by the spikes on the shield. So the magic weapons are solid but I would have liked to have seen them push things a bit more out there and make them stand out a bit more. So what's my rating? For the cheap price of less than a buck and the solid weapons I am giving this a 4 star review.
Just updated this product a bit. Hopefully I managed to catch some of the glitches that made it less than friendly to read. I also updated the layout a bit, making it look... prettier. Lastly, I changed a couple of the prices, to better reflect their worth, yes, I basically compared these to every weapon in the core rulebook and the APG. I also changed the mechanics of the Face Destroyer, slightly, just to make it a bit more balanced, and don't worry, I have not fiddled with the flavor of the item! I also lowered the price of the viper blade significantly, by changing it to a +1 venomous kukri... so now PCs actually has a chance of buying or creating this blade.
I hope the changes make sense and if not, let me know. Now, onwards to volume 2...
You know, since you asked nicely, I am going to give you the entire description! :)
Summerfire
The elves of the Summer Isles crafted these beautiful +2 mithril elven curve blades at the pinnacle of their power, to serve the elves who traveled into the world. Patterns of flowers and leaves have been etched into the mithril blade, and even continue into the hilt and pommel design. Once per day, the wielder can cast daylight (as a standard action), an effect that lasts for 1 hour. The daylight spell is centered on the blade.
In addition, the area around the summerfire blade is always considered hot with a temperature between 75 and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. The wielder decides the precise temperature, which can be changed as a free action.
If you buy this (fairly cheap) pdf, you even get an illustration of the Summerfire blade!
I just purchased all of the "Specific Weapons" line, primarily because of DM and EZG's reviews. Excellent products!!
There are two things that would make these products more useful, and I would truly appreciate:
1) II needs bookmarks. PDFs and bookmarks are an absolute must in my book.
2) Could we get a table with all of the weapons listed by GP value and what book they are, please? You did this list in the 1st and 4th volume, but not in the others. It would be great to have them all compiled, and perhaps additionally have the type of item it is in parentheses in the table. Just trying to get the maximum GM usage out of it.
Thank you for the kind words and for commenting on the series!
I'll look into adding bookmarks to volume II (this weekend), and I'll give some thought to making a big list of all the items from all the volumes, with a random table, but I can't promise that I'll make it before I start working on the collected edition of all the pdfs. I'll definitely make this a free download. All volumes from now own will contain their own random list.
