In 1992-3, TSR released The Magic Encyclopedia by Connie and Dale "slade" Henson in two volumes, and it was the most comprehensive reference for magical items in the complicated Dungeons & Dragons milieu - items culled from rulebooks, sourcebooks and supplements, published campaigns, adventures, Dragon and Dungeon magazines, etc.
It was a nice first try. However, The Magic Encyclopedia is really little more than a glorified index, pointing people toward magic items in supplements which are long out of print in an age before eBay and Amazon.com made purchasing rare and obscure roleplaying items a difficult endeavor. So they tried again.
From 1994-5, TSR produced the massive Encyclopedia Magica in 4 volumes, compiled by slade. It's the kind of book gamers tell stories about. Get enough grognards around the table and they'll tell you how it cost so much to print against the price they sold it at that TSR lost money on each volume sold, and that the cumulative loss helped tank TSR as a company and force its sale to Wizards of the Coast. Then maybe they'll tell you it was worth every trembling leaf.
RPG books in the 1990s were, almost to a man, shit. Most were black-and-white, perhaps with a selection of color plates, and the bulk of the art would be considered substandard entries on DeviantArt today. Hardcovers were rare, glossy color stock almost unheard of, and Brom and Tim Bradstreet were the kings of the motherfucking hill.
Then you had the Encyclopedia Magica. While there is a printing in paper covers, only the most poor bastards who couldn't afford the texture, shaped leatherette cover would buy those. The TSR dragon-logo with the full rune circle was embossed on the front cover. They had rounded spines with metallic ink that would eventually wear off as you handled it, and silk-esque ribbon bookmarks. Now, while these might not have been quite as slick as the limited edition leatherbound hardback of Shadowrun 2, keep in mind that these weren't main sourcebooks - the Encyclopedia Magica was a supplement. Nobody in 1994 was doing anything like it. Nobody else ever would again.
Even the inside is beautiful, the pages clean and white in a well-spaced two-column format, broken up by drawings that vary from filling up the white space to an entire color page. Again, this is something you'd never see in another company, because TSR had twenty years of art in the back catalog to recycle as necessary - and it's all tasteful, and sometimes even relevant. The page corners are rounded to match the front cover, headered and footered by simple elegant lines in gold ink; the capital letters of header titles are printed against a floral block so they appear to be illuminated, like a monk had sketched them out, and section titles are distinguished by gold ink.
But let's get down to brass tacks. Encyclopedia Magica, Volume One - Abacus of Calculation to Dust of Blinding. The agreeably brief and to-the-point Table of Contents lists:
The introduction assures us that this series will contain every magic item for AD&D, including those updated from D&D, and:Introduction ... 2
Artifact Tables ... 7
Enchanted Enhancements ... 21
A ... 25
B ... 123
C ... 233
D ... 355
(Which is not to say that this is a whole book full of reprints; many of the item descriptions and stats had to be tweaked and revised to fit the AD&D system, and there are dozens of new items original to the book. However, there remain a few oddities, like items that give ultravision. Light does not work that way.)Besides the magic items from game products, we have included those from DRAGON(R) Magazine, up to #200; DUNGEON(R) Magazine, issues 1 though 45; all 30 issues of IMAGINE Magazine; POLYHEDRON(R) Newzines through 90, and all seven issues of THE STRATEGIC REVIEW.
The introduction goes on to issue the general admonishments that despite what the contents of the book might suggest, magic items are not common and even a +1 dagger cost an inordinate amount of sweat, blood, and tears by some mage - and tucked into the last corner of the final paragraph of the first page is a relic of mighty TSR:
The second page of the introduction tells us how to read the given entries, most of which is straight-forward (but a good refresher for me, as I haven't looked at AD&D for some time). It's easy to forget that while these days Experience Points are spent to create magic items, in the old days XP was gained when you obtained and used a magic item. Among the belovedly OCD features of these entries is also a First Appearance or Best Reference, pointing readers towards the source material, and:ALWAYS AN ADVENTURE!(TM)
There are 416 pages covering 1,468 magic items just in this volume.Running Magic Item Total: Along the footer of each page is a series of numbers. These enumerate the number of magical items cited up to that page. Each new header for a magical tiem increases the number of items described in the entry. To find the total magical items detailed in this encyclopedia, look at the final magical item entry in the last volume
After some further references, clarifications, and a full-page Monetary Conversion Table that allows you to translate relative coin values between AD&D, Oriental Adventures, Dragonlance, and Dark Sun; we have the Artifact Tables. This is what people used before Java was a thing. It is quite literally a series of nested tables for rolling up a random artifact, taken in its entirety from the Book of Artifacts. It goes on for over a dozen pages. And there is a bit of fun in reading these lists of weird powers you will probably never gain in-game - because they are neat or cool or silly and pointless but fun. Case in point:
Enchanted Enhancements weren't really a thing before this book, they were a loose assortment of modifiers you could add to magical items like "Aquatic ___" or "Drow ___" - so this is the modifier to make your magical chainmail melt in sunlight.Imbue the user with the ability to sculpt normal fire by hand (no damage suffered). The fire can be fashioned into any shape the user is capable of making but does not gain any special powers because of it. Sculpted fire holds its form for 1d6 turns before returning to normal.
Now we're on to the encyclopedia proper. I'm just going to pick out some of the most interesting and notable items and weirdness. Gimme an
A
Air Spores, Chandraskar's - This magic item is first mentioned in "1992 Fantasy Collector Card 394", and I owned that card. I fucking loved that set. It was the best thing ever before we had wikipedia. Before I had porn, I had that set, and it was as precious to me as porn because I didn't have any porn, even though there was no porn in it. But this is a sign of how fucking dedicated slade is, man. He didn't even skimp on trawling through hundreds of collector cards for magic items.
This should also be a good place to mention that these magic items come from all of D&D's many worlds, including Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Planescape, Spelljammer, Kara-Tur, Al-Quasim, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, etc.
Page 30 features a full-page, full color painting of a woman in a white robe surrounded by green flames...summoning a pigeon?
Amulet of Extension is from Tome of Magic and is an early metamagic item, back when metamagic was in its infancy. Today we would call these Amulets of Extend Spell or something.
Some of these items have such limited use, and are from such obscure sources, and have such high XP/GP values you know only the anal retentive would retain them. Case in point: Amulet of Immunity to Charm from something called Top Ballista (go ahead, take a look. I'll wait here until you get back. Done? Great!) Provides total immunity to all forms of charm short of a limited wish or wish. 4,000XP/20,000XP. That's a lot, compared to some comparable amulets. The High Anvil of the Dwarves is only 5,000XP/50,000GP.
Noseeum Amulet. Protects against divinations. Source is listed as "Unidentified." I suspect that is a clever joke.
Amulet of Protection from Sleep. Properties of the device: one paragraph (prevents user from falling asleep). Consequences of not sleeping: three columns (a page and a half).
Apparatus of Kwalish! I love this thing. It's like a homemade mechanical lobster vehicle thing made out a metal barrel. Brilliant.
Arcane Formula are, basically, recipes for becoming a lich or a dracolich, and given in loving detail. You miss this, because it's both a benefit for MCs ("Okay, the dying arch-sorcerer needs a pint of vampire blood...") and for PCs to dream of.
Ardraken's Refreshment Simulacrum from The Book of Wondrous Inventions - which is mostly known as a joke supplement where various modern-day appliances are presented as magic items. In this case, a cola machine. It is from such entries we learn important things like:
It makes me think maybe Gary was dieting or something. Also, I should mention that the refreshment simulacrum is a complete fucking dick that is likely to steal your money or dispense poison rather than give you your Elixir of Cola.If found in Oerth markets, a 12-ounce cola is worth 600 gp.
p.68, an illustrated breakdown to the names to parts of a suit of medieval armor. Not sure where it's culled from, but a good reminder that old grognards put quite a lot of time and energy into research for their stuff.
Nilbog Arrow - Associated with the obscure Nilbog, which is sort of like an anti-goblin that was healed by damage dealt and harmed by damage healed - so of course, Nilbog arrows heal damage when they hit. On the next page is the picture of a medusa shot in the ass by an Arrow of Polymorphing.
A characteristic of D&D, because of its very long history, is sometimes you get very different magic items which happen to bear the same name. In the Encyclopedia Magica, these items are differentiated by adding roman numerals after the first. So, for example, there are Arrows of Slaying, Arrows of Slaying II, Arrows of Slaying III, and Arrows of Slaying IV. Some of the individual categories of these arrows are bizarre and fun:
Contrast this nuttiness with the much more modest Arrow of Slaying II:* Bugs includes all normal and giant-sized forms of arachnids (spider, tick, scorpion, etc.), insects (ant, beetle, fly, etc.), and chilopods (centipedes, etc.)
* Dragonkind includes dragons of all colors and sizes plus draconian monsters such as the chimera, hydra (all types), salamander, and wyvern.
* Enchanted monsters include those creatures that cannot be hit by normal or silver weapons.
* Regenerating monsters include all creatures that regain more than 1 hit point per day be rest or other means. This includes any creature wearing a ring of regeneration.
* Reptiles and dinosaurs include all normal and giant-sized forms of lizards, snakes, turtles, crocodiles, and dinosaurs.
* Spellcasters includes all priests, elves, wizards, and other creatures able to use spells.
* Weapon-using monsters include those creatures that have weapons in hand (not claws) at time of a melee. For example, a wererat wielding a sword would be affected by this additional bonus, but the wererat would not be affected it it were attacking only with its bite.
pp.112-3, The bottom half of both pages is taken up by an illustration showing different types of axes, from the hatchet to the eye-axe, the shoka to the lungi.Ineffective against "wild and crazy" comedians, even when struck in the head. In game terms, this arrow is -2 to attacks against bards.
Also included here is a new item from somebody home Forgotten Realms campaign, Azuredge, Slayer of the Netherborn, with about 1,000 words dedicated to powers and backstory if I'm any judge.
Less ambitious are two items at the end of the chapter, which I suspect were written to fill up the space on the last page: Zebulon's Axe of Leaving (which greatly resembles the red slippers from The Wizard of Oz, provided the marketing department had consulted a small barbarian horde as their focus group)
, and Zzzzzz's Axe of Snoring.When Zebulon swings this axe +1 three times around and concentrates, he can teleport to a single destination of his choice, and is protected from all magical attacks for 1d4 rounds. He can even transfer himself to another plane, but only to or from the Prime Material Plane. Planar creatures may not use this item.
B
The first nine pages of this chapter are pretty much taken up by the random tables for the bag of beans and bag of beans II, magic items which have since been lost in D&D, but are very much the sort of chaotic item that used to be so heavily prevalent in a game where most magic was just a straight bonus to an ordinary weapon or piece of armor. A distant relative to the bag of tricks.
Bag of Devouring - I love this mostly because of the Dragon Magazine article that was run on it back in the day, "The Ecology of the Bag of Devouring." Unlike most items, this was actually the feeding orifice of an extradimensional creature, which is either brilliant or retarded, depending on your age level and whether or not you are on the receiving end.
Feedbag of Plenty. Loses its magic forever if more than 10 horses feed from it in one day. No, you cannot pour out the oats, stop asking Jeremy, just play the game.
There are, I am noticing, an awful lot of bags devoted to seeds, including the ever-full bag of seeds, seed satchel, and bag of the woodlands.
Zagyg's Spell Component Pouch is, as you might have guessed, a way to get around annoying spell component issues, proving definitively for anyone that cares that it was an annoyance.
Among the entries for Balls are the base ball, bowling ball, cue ball, ball of endless string, and foot ball. Most of those are joke items.
There are also nine Balloons, all drawn from The Book of Marvelous Magic.
Among the magic items I well remember from a home campaign is the Neverending Barrel of Grog from the War Captain's Companion, which was a Spelljammer supplement strangely enough.
I think this is one of Ed Greenwood's inventions, but the infamous Beholder Mouthpick - mostly a non-magical item in 3.x, these are just the enchanted versions - with accompanying illustration. The basic idea was that the beholder, lacking arms or other limbs, would have this mechanical staff-thing in its mouth with a grabber-claw activated by its tongue, so it could pick up and use stuff. You wonder why they didn't just use the telekinesis eye, but maybe it's for handicapped beholders who have lost that eye?
As a young lad, the section on Books was a personal favorite that I would flip to and read many times. Being the detail-oriented fellow that he is, slade actually broke books down by different criteria and dispersed them throughout the volumes like so, sending me off on a merry chase:
Most of these books have been lost in recent editions, save for the Book of Exalted Deeds and Book of Vile Darkness. The one(s) I miss most are the Book of Golems, which were treatises explaining how to create a particular type of golem, and you can sacrifice the book to actualy make one,which is nifty.* Books may be used only by priests and sometimes raise a specific character statistic.
* Librams are books used only by wizards, and occasionally boost stats.
* Manuals may be used by both fighters and thieves, and some include boosts to stats.
* Spellbooks contains spells and surprises. Most are restricted to priests and wizards, but a few may be used by any class.
* Tomes may be used by all classes and some grant boosts to stats.
There are a vast number of Boots kick-slashers to the moccasins of free movement from the Maztica Campaign Set. I think I blame The Lord of the Rings (and, perhaps, supplementary work like the film Dragonslayer) for emphasizing how much fucking walking everyone is supposed to be doing in your average adventure.
People bitch a great deal about Eberron (often rightly), for the way it is deliberately set up differently than the grand D&D cosmology, and how many of the tropes of this or that D&D critter are upside down. This is, as you might imagine, nothing new. For example, I am looking in the category of Bottles and there are little notes at the end of the Efreeti Bottle and Eversmoking Bottle campaigns, informing me that they do not exist on Ansalon. Presumably because it would make Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman shit themselves lifeless.
Bowl of Blood, an Ed Greenwood joint.
A stirge, in case you have forgotten, is a giant fucking bloodsucking mosquito-bird thing.This bowl resembles any other magical bowl save that it fills with blood either once per day (24 hours), upon command, or of its own volition once every four rounds after being activated. While in the bowl, blood will not congeal, and can be used as a material component, writing ink, medical supply (it will be compatible with all to whom it is given), stirge lure, or hurled at opponents to blind them temporarily in a fight, et cetera. Eighty percent of these bowls contain human blood. Others contain elvish, gnome, and even (most rare) dragons' blood. Such bowls fill 9d10 times, then vanish.
Not to be forgotten is the Bowl of Watery Death, which is one of the trap items created to look exactly like a beneficial magical item like a Bowl of commanding Water Elementals - right until you shrink to the size of a small ant and it proceeds to try and drown you. Is this a Dick Move on the part of the MC? Yes and no. If your campaign is so by-the-numbers that the players can pick out what your magic items are just from the description, that's bad, and you might need to shake them up abit. On the other hand, making every magic item a trap item or something they can't use is dickish in the extreme.
The Money Changer Box...converts coins into different coins of an equivalent value. You put the 1 silver in the top, press the copper button, and it gives you 10 copper. That sort of thing. Bizarre, not entirely useless, but what mage would make it?
Unlike, say, the Mystical Brown Coating Box:
Aha! I bet you think this is from the same bullshit book that gave you the soda machine with the snarky attitude, but you're wrong! In fact, this is from Dragon magazine #30. Five issues later they would prove that gaming isn't just for boys by giving us the Brassier of Defense, which aside from not coming off except by the wielder's command (curses! The villain can never get to second base!) provides quite a substantial improvement in armor class and reduces the morale of males.The mystical brown coating box is often used with the eternal peanut. Up to 12 grape-sized objects, like raisins, placed in this box per day are given a sweet and delicious brown coating. The coating does not melt in the hand if the coated objects are held, but does dissolve in saliva or water.
No word on hermaphrodites, amazons, or pre-op transsexuals.This piece of clothing cannot be worn by males, and automatically adjusts to fit the female wearing it.
All of the artifacts and magic items from Gods, Demigods, & Heroes and related supplements are here (except for Stormbringer and the Necronomicon, obviously), and so let me give another example of why the Finnish Mythos as presented in D&D sucks:
Granted, mama was a goddess but still...Bush of Lemmikainen
This bush was left at home and would bleed noticeably if Lemmikainen were in trouble, thus warning his mother.
C
The introductory section on Candles is a full page, plus a full-page illustration from some particularly dingy accessory showing a priest letting candles hang to dry, and a wizard making dragon-shaped candles using a mold. To be fair, the section includes 39 different varieties of magic candles, and is quickly followed by a selection of 5 different candle snuffers.
This should illustrate that C doesn't get a lot of love. Not many magic items beginning with C jump out at you.
So, this may explain why there is a section for caparisons, an ornamental covering for a horse. It is made up entirely of new items invented for this volume. Really, they are the bee's knees for equine enhancements...and, presumably they would work for camels and such as well.
Before there ever was a Stronghold Builder's Guide...well, I tell a lie, I know damn well D&D had books on fortifications and whatnot, but anyway there are two multipage entries for cloud castles in the Encyclopedia Magica. Take notes.
Archdruid Cauldron is an example of a magic item which inexplicably replicates the powers of many, many other magic items:
The Encyclopedia Magica includes both the holy grail and holy grail II, or as I like to call it "Grail Harder."Traditionally in the possession of the Archdruid, this cauldron has all of the powers of all of the following cauldrons: cauldron of ambrosia, cauldron of blindness, cauldron of creatures, cauldron of entrancement, cauldron of foretelling, cauldron of fresh water, cauldron of healing, cauldron of restoring freshness, and cauldron of warming. Each power may be used once per week. Druids lower than 10th level have a 50% chance of not achieving the power desired. (Roll 1d10 for the effect. On a roll of 10 the cauldron cracks and is useless.)
p.279 - A full-color painting of a man and woman in a flaming chariot. The man has a sling and the woman is drawing a sword, both looking/aiming at a knight in full armor and armed with a spear on the back of a green dragon. This is presumably to illustrate the many benefits of hover chariots.
There are two types of magical cheese: cheese of odors, and cheese of vile odors. And you wonder why Polyhedron Magazine folded.
I suspect - though I can never prove it - that spellthieves can trace their literary DNA back to the Claw of Magic Stealing, which as it's name suggests is a claw you swipe a wizard with, and one of their spells may leave their head and enter yours.
Cloaks have a venerable place in D&D lore, mostly for the benefit of elves, thieves, rangers, and those that do not like to be rained upon. One of my favorite is the Cloak of Many Colors which shifts to make the user immune to the effects of prismatic ray, prismatic wall, prismatic sphere and like spells.
One I wish received more attention was the Cloak of Symbiotic Protection
The club is a venerable weapon, but not one that often receives fun enchantments. Therefore this section has a total of seven entries, four of which belong to godly avatars that ceased to progress technologically shortly after the stone age.This type of cloak is very rare. It is impregnated with an immobile, nonintelligent living substance of unknown origin and nature that cannot be isolated by alchemists and naturalists for study. The symbiote drains 1 hit point of vitality from the wearer every other time it is put on (or, if worn continuously, once every two days), and makes the wearer color blind while the cloak is worn.
In return, the cloak confers immunity to the effect of green slime, olive slime, obliviax, violet fungi, yellow musk creeper, yellow mold, and russet mold (but not brown mold). In addition the cloak gives a _4 to saving throws against spore attacks of all other sorts (including those of the mysconid, ascomoid, basidirond, and similar creatures). The symbiotic life form in the cloak seems to feed upon and neutralize spores and microscopic, airborne life of all sorts; in many cases, this ability gives the wearer a -6% penalty to chances of contracting diseases.
There are six pages of magical coins, most of them cursed, and a few that are fairly pointless. Case in point, the Returning Penny teleports to the bearer's hand - but it costs 250 gp. You would have to pull that con 250 times with a merchant just to make up your materials, and that's if its a gold piece. Ghost help you if it's a copper.
I always thought magical crystals were a bit of a rip, because they're lazy. You just have a glowy rock that does random shit, anything you want. Form does nothing to inform function. Now, crystal balls at least have their niche, and are available in a variety of flavors: crystal ball I, crystal ball II, crystal ball III, crystal ball IV, crystal ball avec Clairaudience, crystal hypnosis ball, Eye of the God and Moredlin's crystal ball.
Surprisingly - and I suspect this is because of the prevalence of d6s - there are a great variety of magical cubes. 18, in fact, of which the most enduring in later editions is Daern's Instant Fortress. Which is not available in Dragonlance.
D
D starts out on a right-hand page. On the left is a full-page painting of two scantily clad ladies admiring a floating, glowing cup. On the second thought, the girl on the left looks to have DDs, so maybe the illustration does go with this chapter.
D is for Dagger, and there are very many of them here. 16 pages of magic daggers. 74 by my count, using the little numbers on the bottom of the page.
Of course, some of these are cheating. The buckle knife and buckler knife, for example, are just mundane knives with a magical enhancement. Still, there are also some gems here, like the Dolphin's Bane:
Okay, so taking it as granted this isn't forged out of metal, because it's made underwater - it's a small, crappy knife enchanted to be maybe as good as a regular knife when used against a fucking dolphin. Can you imagine the character that gets this as treasure? Gets it identified? Imagine the PC that weighs the odds and then tucks the thing in his or her boot, "just in case" they have to shank Flipper one day. A variation, the Saguagin Dolphin Dagger has the same powers but is cursed when anyone that isn't Lawful Evil uses them.This dagger +1, created by sahuagin spellcasters, is a fairly common item among the sahuagin warrior coterie; it is +2 against dolphins.
While daggers aren't default for thieves, you have to wonder at how useful they are in the hands of...well, sneak attack or not. Take, for example, Golemblight, a +1 dagger that gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls and inflicts 2d8 points of damage against golems. You know, golems, those giant near-invulnerable fucking things which often have over a hundred hit points, and are generally invulnerable to sneak attacks.
The various decks bring to mind a specific point I have been meaning to bring up: the downside to random magic items in your game. It has nothing to do with the fact that a Deck of Many Things will inevitably destroy your campaign and kill all your PCs, but rather about the damage it does to the atmosphere of the campaign. The Deck allows PCs to play with abstract attributes much more directly than most spells or magic items, chaotically granting bonus to attributes, magic items, wealth, etc. It is a high fantasy concept to be sure, but almost at the surreal level of Alice in Wonderland rather than Lord of the Rings.
That said, the decks get a lot of love in the Encyclopedia Magica. There are three variations of the deck of many things, the third of which is the tarot deck of many things, with a unique descriptor and effect for each of the major and minor arcana, 77 cards in total, which requires a little over 22 pages.
The entry for Doors begins with two tables, requiring a d100 roll or equivalent. You roll on the first table to determine if it is an ordinary door, and if it is not (25% chance), you roll on the second d100 table to see what abilities it has, some of which are mundane (65-68 Door falls off hinges when opened), supermundane (50-54 Door is thief-proof), and some of which are weird (98 Doorknob casts miscellaneous spell if touched.) My favorite is 99 Doorknob gives disease if touched. - remember, this was before hand sanitizer became ubiquitous!
I love the little, weird variations of common/popular magic items that pop up. Case in point: Dunhill's Spelljamming Apparatus of Kwalish. Which you might have thought would be listed under "Apparatus" like the Apparatus of Kwalish, but you would be wrong! Because this baby has been fitted with a minor spelljamming helm, so you can fly your little lobster-can between the crystal spheres! Fuck yeah!
p.416 - the final page is blank, save for the word "Notes" emblazoned at the top. It's a nice touch.
Stay tuned next week for Encyclopedia Magica, Vol. 2
