Welcome, adventurer, to the Dragon’s Hoard. Within you will find an assortment of magic items lovingly crafted by over two dozen budding and established designers. Perhaps not every dragon would have each of these items, but a proper dragon should! (If not, I'm sure your local magic shop has them in stock!)
Need to contact the cleric but cell phones won't be invented for another few centuries? Pick up a few hive rings for you and your friends, and let your cleric on the other side of the dungeon know that the rogue activated another party killing trap!
Just assassinated someone, but their body is producing a foul odor? We've all been there. Don't worry, though! Pick up the rod of corpse eating at your local magic shop, and let your insect pals gobble up that inert flesh in 6 seconds flat!
Are you that cleric who always has to save the party from the fireball-crazed sorcerer? Isn't it just the worst when you run up to heal your allies, and then YOU get caught in the fire? Don't worry, you can cast your cure moderate wounds outside of the explosion zone with the staff of inspired support!
And if those don't suit you, there are 30+ more rings, rods, and staves to discover within!
This PDF is brought to you by the feats Forge Rings, Craft Rod, and Craft Staff.
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The second of Flaming Crab Games' magic item-pdfs clocks in at 12 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 9 pages of content, so let's take a look!
We begin without much ado with 16 new rings - and ALL of them receive their own b/w-artwork - with one exception that has a black-red-artwork...don't know why - I think the b/w-version would have been a better aesthetic choice there...but I digress. The first ring is a winner: Anchor rings look like a bland dimensional anchor spell in a can...until you realize that you can throw your magical anchor at a creature who already teleported away. The target may have full concealment, but if you do hit, you'll drag the being back! Now that type of modification is what makes an item stand out. Nice!
Bands of Bortherhood are twinned and allow the wearer to know the location of the other as per status and add +1 to atk when both are flanking the same creature...which is pretty boring. The coil of vibrant ash at 45 K...is a bit underpriced. Not only does the wearer blow up in a 15d6-explosion if slain, on a melee crit, thankfully only 1/day, the ring adds a DC 20 disintegrate as insult to injury. There would be a serpent ring that fortifies versus poison and that can uncoil and inflict minor Con-damage (should be codified as poison for immunity-interaction, which it RAW is not) or a generally nice ring that lets you shoot blinding goo...with the issue being that it can be used an infinite number of times per day - for 4K, that is much too strong, considering that the item allows for no save!
Really cool: Gossiping rings let you whisper to the ring, point to a target...and then the ring pops up there, allowing for stealthy conversations perfect for intrigue-heavy games. Rings that generate telepathic bonds are nice, but e.g. a ring that nets you a bonus to AC and saves...is pretty much the definition of filler, as are skill-enhancing rings. A set of 3 rings, all worn in one slot on one hand that nets planar adaptation, though? Nice and makes sense, though weirdly, its text refers to a medallion...so do they also occupy that slot or not? I assume the latter, but I'm not sure. Horrible: a ring that replaces a barbarian's rage with monk class features. Not only outclasses it monks (granted, not hard), it fails to translate limited daily resources properly: No rage left? Put on the ring. *shakes head* A ring that glows when near goblins...is lame. On the plus-side, a one-use ring that deals damage as an immediate action when the wearer's reduced to 0 hp, healing him? Nice one! Rings that contain a magical garrote are cool...but the justification for allowing its use more often than a usual garrote would be allowed for is flimsy at best. A ring the extends Wepon Focus to a group of weapons is nice.
10 rods are up next, with the first being pretty cool: Capable of fanning out, it can make ray spells fan out into cones and cone-spells narrow down to rays. While there is a kminor typo here, the wording generally is pretty precise...oh, and no, spamming disintegrate through it won't work. That being said, the transition from ray to cone is not perfect: rays that allow for a save become opaque: Is it the new Ref-save and the original save or just the new save? A rod that summons forth insects that eat dead flesh is nice to get rid of evidence. Dragon breath duplicating rods erroneously refer to "electric" when it should be "electricity". Rods of elemental whips have cool visuals - but the air-version has a problematic option, providing potentially infinite charges,1 per hour, for technological items while touching them. Rods of enhanced summons are broken: 3/day as a swift action, cast a spell on a summoned creature. No casting duration-caveat, no spell-level caveat, nothing. Flavor-wise nice: A rod that lets you spell out a name, summoning yeth hounds that then proceed to hunt down the target. There would also be a truth-compelling rod that acts as a mace and minor skill enhancer. Amazing: There is one high-priced rod that can only be used by paladins: When the pala uses it, he's obliterated...but so is any nearby creature under the effects of smite evil. I'm pretty big on palas and heroic sacrifices...so yeah, amazing.
The pdf's final section features a total of 6 staves, most of which are pretty basic spells-in-a-can with minor bonuses, though two deserve special mention: The staff of relativity has an hourglass that can generate AoE haste...but after the duration elapsed, it's AoE slow! I love the visuals and the minimum charge required here - very cool. Similarly evocative: The staff of self-loathing can make a target perceive one an illusory version of the target, which attacks the target whenever it attacks, inflicting the same amount of damage as the attack on a hit. These two staves stand above the others and really got me thinking.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are excellent on a formal level. On a rules-level, some objects could have been tighter. Layout adheres to a relatively printer-friendly two-column color-standard. The pdf sports an impressive array of awesome b/w-artworks for the items. Kudos there! The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.
A metric ton of folks has contributed to this pdf: James Abendroth, Isaiah Burt, Kelce Casey, Chuck DiTusa, J Gray, JJ Jordan, Douglas “White Templar” Mawhinney, Jacob McCoy, David S. McCrae, Sean McGowan, Brian Minhinnick, Angel "ARMR" Miranda, Michael Ritter, Matt Roth, Thiago Shinken, Jeffrey Swank, Anthony Torretti, Chris Walter, C. J. Withers. Unfortunately, this does show in the relative strength of the items: Some designers adhere to a more cuatious power-curve, while others go for (too) strong...and in design philosophy, basic number/bonus-tweaks exist side-by-side with truly amazing gems. This pdf has some items that are 5 star + seal material...but also several that, in 2016's Pathfinder, are redundant or simply not that interesting.
In short: This is pretty much the epitome of a mixed bag. While there are more items in this that left me cold and unimpressed than gems, the gems that are here shine very, very brightly. Considering the low and fair price-point, I will hence settle on a final verdict of 3.5 stars, though I can't round up for it...if some of these captured your imagination, this is worth taking a look at.
Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this PDF by posting in the discussion thread when free copies were being offered. As is my usual habit, I am now providing a review.
This is a 12 page PDF, with 1 cover page, a copyright information page, and an OGL page, leaving 9 pages of actual content.
Included are 20 magic rings (five of which are part of a scaling +1 to +5 set), twelve rods (one lesser and one greater, in one case), and ten magic staves. The theme of this book is items that might be found in a dragon's hoard - and that's actually kind of important to keep in mind. When players KNOW everything that can be crafted, there's less of a sense of surprise and discovery when they find a major pile of treasure, and more of a series of checkboxes. These are some items players almost certainly won't have access to, and there's enough variety here to make it easy to find something that suits someone in the party.
Unfortunately, while I usually appreciate Flaming Crab Games' stuff, I think some of the items here could have used review by another pair of eyes before publishing. For example, the Goo Shooter Ring seems vastly overpowered for a 4000 GP ring (Ranged Touch Attack as a Standard Action to inflict Blinded on one foe within 20 feet, no save), and that's the sort of thing that seems horrifically easy for an intelligent party to abuse. A simple 3/day limit would have gone a long ways on that item, and the price should probably be higher too.
Of course, it's not like every item in this book is bad. The Hive Ring seems appropriate for giving parties telepathic communication (and, somewhat amusingly, is worded in a way that would let enemies wearing rings into the conversation...), while the Rod of Dragon's Breath is a fun toy for anyone who likes breath attacks. (Which includes me. XD)
The art in the book (aside from the cover) is mostly black-and-white sketches, which is kind of expected for a product in this price range.
Overall, I think this product is an option worth considering if you want to add some surprising new finds to piles of treasure, but you'll also want to carefully read each item's description before you pass it out. (Actually, you should do that anyway, but it's more true than usual. XD) The formatting is fine, and the editing is generally good (although they forgot to change a note on the copyright page, and this book says it's actually a different product... *Coughs*). I'd personally rate this product a 3.5/5, rounded up to 4 - it's not a bad choice, but it's not a must-have product, either.
Note: This product had a lot of contributors, which may account for a few of the errors. Nevertheless, as the publisher, it's FCG's duty to check for such things before the product is published (I absolutely believe every publisher should try to make their offerings as fair and balanced as possible unless they're specifically intended to be broken, like the Horrifically Overpowered Feats line is). PDFs from 3PPs don't get updated that often, so my advice for future releases of this sort is to give it to a fresh pair of eyes for a quick balance and wording check before it's finalized. Had that been done here, I would probably have rated it higher.
Note: I received a free copy of the PDF from being among the first 10 to post in the discussion thread.
Flaming Crab Games has created a fantastic lineup of new magic items in this installment of "The Dragon's Hoard".
This little PDF has a wide multitude of various brand new magic items, many of which have unique effects, that span a large range of Caster Levels and costs and have complete crafting information included for each item. I personally can't wait to use these items both for my campaign as a GM and for my own characters as a player!
And perhaps the best part is this little book of awesome costs only $3!
I highly recommend it to both players and GMs alike who are looking to add a little variety to the treasure troves.
Now available—and by Flaming Crab's will, the first ten posters in the thread will receive a free copy of the PDF!
Thanks for getting both the book out and handing out the free copies out right away!!
As always, we'd appreciate reviews from anyone that got a free PDF :)
Sorry, guys, those copies got snagged in one afternoon! Keep your eyes peeled this upcoming week, DoomedPaladin01 and Yrtalien. We've got something else coming out really soon!
I hope you don't mind Rednal, I took a cue from you and for transparency purposes edited my review to include a statement that I had received my copy for free.
I don't mind in the slightest. XD In fact, I encourage other reviewers to be clear about how they got access to something - trust is important, and citing any potential conflicts of interest helps establish it.