A Look Inside the Book:
Okay, that should be Righteousness, but for an endeavor of this size I will forgive the occasional typo.
Page numbering and item count are continuous throughout the volumes of the Encyclopedia Magica, which means we pick up on page 418 and end on page 832 in this volume, for a total magic item count of 3,647. If you cranked through every magic item in every White Wolf game ever produced, I would be amazed if they would even get up to 3,000.
When last we left off, we were in magical dust - and here we are still. A lot of these tend to replicate the same general functions as...well...normal dust, just moreso. A couple are just bizarre. Case in point, Dust of Small Bird Repulsion:
I never really got into Mystara, the hole hollow world thing. But I do like a little magitech, so I like the dynamo of flying. It's basically a poor man's spelljammer helm, converting spell energy into motive power for flying ships and whatnot. A similar item later on is the [b[internal conjuration engine[/b].Probably a pest-control device, the dust of small bird repulsion, sprinkled on an area of up to 20 feet square, prevents any bird smaller than an eagle from landing there for one year.
E
I don't normally say this, but the stats for this item are whack. It costs 10 stl (steel coins, as we're in Krynn, where money is expected to rust) and one day to produce, replicates one cantrip effect when broken (if it works), yet the XP value is 2,000 and the GP value is 10,000. In game terms, that's like your wizard being able to pass a hundred-pound golden egg through their cloaca every fucking day.When a wizard of Krynn declares an alignment and passes the Test of High Sorcery, he or she is apprenticed to a greater wizard to learn the secrets of the craft. One such secret is the manufacture of magical items, and the apprentice's egg is a minor part of this training, usually forgotten by more accomplished wizards.
Still on eggs, here's an old favorite from the Tome of Magic: the philosopher's egg - a magical glassware retort primarily used in conjunction with the philosopher's stone, but also to speed up the creation of magical fluids. Now, this is a very appropriate wizardly/alchemical item, and almost completely fucking useless on your standard adventure, unless you're hauling your alchemist's lab around with you (which has happened). The big problem though is that while transmutation of elements was a pretty big goal for real-life alchemists, it's...rather mediocre by most D&D standards. You just don't get another gold for the effort.
I feel I should mention the specialty eggs from Kara-Tur/Oriental Adventures at this point. These were minor alchemical/magical items made out of eggshells stuffed with various stuff. So for example you have the pink egg, which is basically a flash-powder grenade.
The Eidolon of Khalk'Ru is not one of those legendary items that get passed on from edition to edition, but I feel it should be mentioned because it's derived from one of the oft-forgotten old masters of fantasy, A. Merritt. Specifically, his novel Dwellers in the Mirage (1932), which some think is an early Cthulhu Mythos pastiche. Khalk'Ru is a giant interdimensional kraken (which you cannot quite summon using the Eidolon, but close enough).
Elixir of Additional Weaponry:
You grow two extra arms. If you're an elf, you can even control them. Otherwise, they attack you. If you're an elf with four arms, every non-drow elf will attack you on sight. If you're not an elf and have four arms, the drow will kill you anyway. There's a picture accompanying this with a four-armed drow...kinda. It's not a modern drow, you understand. He looks kind of unhappy to be there, and is wearing a pointed hat.Every flask of this rare elixir carries this announcement in Common: "Whoever drinks this elixir will be able to use twice as many weapons as normal." What it does not say is that this elixir was created b drow worshipers of Lolth, the Spider Goddess.
Glitz & Klacx's Elixir are proof that if anyone does something, sooner or later they're going to want bigger and smaller versions of the same thing. Basically, these are "minor potions" that have 1/10 the effect but cost 1/2 the price.
Elixir of Photosynthesis is something you used to see more often; it basically turns the character's skin green and lets them photosynthesize like a plant (with an emphasis on sunlight rather than carbon dioxide). Which would really suck if you were a drow. On the other hand, if you were a photosynthetic drow, you could just drink an Elixir of Sunlight Resistance
I don't understand some things:
Most of the items listed as eyes...aren't. They're magical lenses, or gems, or images of eyes, or occasionally magically preserved eyes of some kind, but very few false eyes. Until you get to the Eye of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna II. The original version was a rather powerful but simple: one wish per week, some secondary powers like immunity to disease, water breathing, clairaudience (a magic eye that lets you hear?), and paralysis. Oh, and it turns you chaotic and had a cumulative chance of eating your soul and killing all of your friends. The revised version from the Book of Artifacts was given more backstory and less awesome: true seeing, eyebite 3/day, divination 1/day, random Divination powers, and Vecna still eats your soul. Given my money, I'll go for the weekly wish.The black opal is a stone of great magical power, usable only by those who know its secret. Three evil wizards drew power form it and a vile reign of terror followed. These three women were often referred to as the Platinum Sisters, even though the magic they wielded was corrupt and dark, and they were not related.
You occasionally see the term "arcanist" bandied about, usually in Forgotten Realms supplements, usually as a synonym for "arcane magic user." So you might be forgiven for thinking that the Eyeglasses of Arcanist are beneficial for wizards - and you would be right, but not for the reason you'd think. No, these glasses (available in versions I, II, and III) are named after their creator, the wizard Arcanist. Fucking Dragonlance, man.
F
The Kitten of Contemplation is a magical figurine:
Okay, so whoever wrote this was a cat lover. Also, I find the image of two wizards fighting over a fucking magical kitten to be hilarious.When the command word is spoken, the figurine becomes a fluffy white kitten, apparently only a few weeks old. The kitten immediately sits on the lap of its activator and begins purring. Due to the soothing and hypnotic nature of the kitten's purr, a spellcaster in contact with the kitten needs only half the normal time to memorize spells.
Eventually a vast number of these figurines were subsumed into the set of Figurines of Wondrous Power. Which has four different types of Marble Elephant: African, Asiatic, Mammoth, and Mastodon.
Fire! From the Complete Wizard's Handbook comes two types of magical fire: cold fire (which generates no heat) and dark fire (which generates no light). Both are pretty fucked up, and I'm not sure how cold fire spreads.
pp.486-7: Double-half-page spread of flail weapons, including the mighty flindbar. Remember those? There's like big nunchaku used by the bigger, more assholish brothers of gnolls.
Four-Leaf Clover
Faeries were weird back in early D&D. There was a stronger emphasis back on the day on traditional monsters and creatures from mythology first - pixies, nixies, brownies, etc. that were all vaguely related - and it was only after that they started to get really weird and creative. Elves were rather fey too, and gnomes.If worn visibly on outer clothing or armor, this item gives the user a bonus of +1 on all saving throws. However, any sprites, pixies, nixies, or other intelligent woodland beings seeing the user may become irritated (-2 penalty to reaction rolls) and either steal the item (70%) or attack (30%).
G
Alternate World Gates were an early form of cross-genre/crossover game nonsense. When touched, they would summon characters from a complete different game line - Top Secret(R), GammaWorld(R), Star Frontiers(R), Boot Hill(R), or Gangbusters(R). I'm surprised Knights of the Dinner Table hasn't made more of that - though they are generally adverse to cross-genre roleplaying.
pp.504-5: Double-half-page spread of gauntlets.
Gems! There's four and a half pages on general gem properties, including many tables. The actual entries for magical gems goes on much longer - about 13 pages. As with crystals, this is a bit of a rip, since gems don't do anything except look pretty. Weirdly, gems were also associated strongly with psionics in D&D, which means you got some bizarre magic-psionics items like the Gems of Shielding, small magical gemstones that rendered the user immune to specific psionic attacks (everybody remember Psionic Combat Modes?) The gems only worked if you actually had psionic powers, which was fine because you were only vulnerable to psionic attacks if you had psionic powers anyway. The gems worked by pushing them into your forehead.
p.530 - Table of Girdles
* I suspect this is a typo.Roll Girdle Type
01-10 Back Brace
11-20 Cestus*
21-30 Cincture
31-40 Cordon
41-50 Corset
51-60 Girdle
61-70 Obi
71-80 Surcingle (for a horse)
81-90 Truss
91-00 Waistband
Man, a surcingle of femininity/masculinity would be a weird treasure to have. Although I guess centaurs might still be able to use it? Weird fact: 10% of girdles of femininity/masculinity actually neuter the wearer rather than genderswap them. I bet there's a hentai being written about that as we speak.
Other genderbending items include the girdle of gender alteration and Kerisis's Girdle of Femininity - I chalk this up to the memetic idea of genderswap magic gear.
Long ago it was decided to connect various different campaign settings through Spelljammer, which is why we have books like Krynnspace. Krynn is home to the mad scientists of gnomedom, and when they spilled over into other crystal spheres it didn't get any better. Hence the Gnomewrecker, a magical walking stick which causes the gnomish device to stop working:
Needless to say, these anti-gnometech sticks are in high demand.No lights blink, no dials twirl, no more bleeps issue from the machine's recesses. THe device is rendered inoperable, and no amount of effort on the craftiest gnome's part can get it to work again-ever.
H
We start with hammers[/b]. P.559 has a quarter-page illustration of a winged hammer attacking a wyvern. Literally, the hammer has a pair of bird wings attached to the handle.
The Hand of Vecna and Hand of Vecna II get more love than the Eye of Vecna. Weird things from the version I hand include the ability to turn an opponent's bones to jelly by touch (1/day) and a cumulative chance of turning ethereal under stress.
p.568 - How can you have two magical harpoons and neither gives a bonus against whales or aquatic life?
p.573 - An old man with a headdress of peaceful contact is nuzzling a unicorn. That's creepy shit, proto-brony.
The Artifurnace is may favorite spelljamming helm. Normal furnace-type helms burn magic items to power the ship; this thing gets infinite power from an artifact. Other fun helms include the ki-helm (used by Oriental Adventure-type spellkamming), the lifejammer (drains hit points/life force), the orbus (technically a specially bred spelljamming beholder, but I won't hold that against it...much.), and the pool helm (uses Illithid life-pool).
Spirit Hut
On rare occasions, the native deities of Africa will grant their priests a special place of worship that focuses their power. This boon is rare; spirit huts are found in one village in a thousand.
This was written sometime in the 1980s, when presumably people should have known that Africa was something more than a bunch of villages from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.
I
I is pretty short - 13 pages from the Ichor of Intoxication to the Irons of Transference. I don't care because...
Ioun Stones! I love these things. There have been different takes on their origin over the years, from the earliest magical protections created (as they are used here) to naturally occurring magical items formed where the Quasielemental Plane of Mineral contacts the Positive Energy Plane, but we all really know they were borrowed more or less wholesale from Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories.
The brilliant thing about this is there are 38 varieties of ioun stone in this book - and that doesn't count the various ioun stone-esque items buried about. Many come in normal, cursed, and SUPERCHARGED! versions, which generally double the effect or duration.
J
Only five pages. Most interesting item might be the Alchemy Jug, which can produce mundane liquids in various quantities:
Salt water 16 gallons
Fresh water 8 gallons
Beer/Ale 4 gallons
Vinegar 2 gallons
Wine 1 gallon
Ammonia 1 quart
Oil 1 pint
Aqua regia 2 gills (8 oz.)
Alcohol 1 gill (4 oz.)
Chlorine 8 drams (1 oz.)
Cyanide 4 drams (1/2 oz.)
Restrictions: Can only produce one type of liquid a day. Can only produce up to seven pourings of that liquid a day. Can only pour two gallons a round - so it takes 4 rounds to pour out one use of fresh water.
K
Also short, but covers (among other things) Kettles, Keys, and three magical Kites. Bonus points for Kulver-Tam's Fruit of Extra Healing, each piece of which functions as a potion of extra-healing, except two pieces are infected by an explosive magical worm.
L
Ladders, Ladles, Lamps - 11 pages of lamps - Lances, Lenses etc. Oddities include Bashal's Tendrilight, which when you turn it on and open the shutter grows a long black tentacle that attacks people; the Lapland Wool you might remember from Gods, Demigods, & Heroes - if rubbed, it produces a flock of sheep; and the Lizardskin Bed, which can heal anyone but they start to turn into a lizardman.
Under lance we have the rather unimpressive dragonlance and lesser dragonlance, and the slightly-more impressive true dragonlance. Honestly, I've never been impressed by dragonlances of any sort; the lesser versions are moderate-to-strong magical weapons with no other notable properties, and the true ones require you to ride a dragon to use any of its abilities.
A footnote on the Lenses of Ultravision:
Note: Ultravision is no longer a part of the AD&D game system. This entry is included for historical reference only - We told you t his would be complete. Ed.
Librams! Like books, but for wizards. Some of these, like the Tome of the Black Heart and Mhzentul's Runes (Pages from the Mages!), are basically spellbooks. Others include the Codex o the Infinite Planes (two versions) and the Libram of Constructs, which is like a golem book but designed for variant golems, and the various Librams of Golems.
M
We begin with maces, including the Mace-Wand, which should have crept into later editions - it's a +4 mace whose handle as a wand. The staff-mace, sadly, is not similar - it's a wooden staff that can become a magical quarterstaff, great mace, or mace upon command.
There are four versions of the Mace of St. Cuthbert. (No relation..well, sortof).
The Machine of Lum the Mad! They really did love their random tables back in the day, though technically you could assign specific functions to various combinations of levers and dials, but the thing has 8.5x10^48 possible settings.
Manuals! Not to be confused with librams or books. There's only four of these, one for thieves (Manual of Stealthy Pilfering), one for assassins (Grim Grimoire), one for bards and fighters (Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms), and one for fighters, rangers, and paladins (Manual of Strategems).
There is the map of illusions, map of magic, map of mapping, map of secret doors, and map of traps. Then someone went mad and created map of illusions and secret doors, map of illusions and traps, map of magic and illusions, map of magic and secret doors, map of magic and traps, map of mapping and illusions, map of mapping and magic...you get the idea.
Jokes that people these days won't get: Medallion of EST (a joke on both EST and the Medallion of ESP).
Wearing this silver-plated medallion enables a character to fully experience inner oneness, take responsibility for personal space, and pontificate at length to fellow party members about how they must recontextualize adverse life events (such as an arrow in the eye) so as to remove their negative energy. Coincidentally, it also lowers the wearer's Charisma by 6 points.
6 sounds about right.
Muzzle of Lycanthrope Control - while wearing the muzzle, a werecreature cannot bite, talk, or transform. How the fuck are you going to get it on there in the first place?
N
Nails, necklaces...needles? Needle of Lively Tattoos (thank you, Raven's Bluff, The Living City) allows the user to once a day try to make a living tattoo, which is like a small programmed illusion.
Nemean Lion Skin
Heracles wears the Nemean lion skin which cannot be pierced by anything. Thus, piercing weapons do only 1 point of damage and slashing weapons do only half damage.
Later reports suggest Heracles was beaten to death by Thor.
Nithian Monolith
These are designed to "relay and enhance the tremendous pyramid energy network that criss-crosses Nithia" (it's from the Kingdom of Nithia sourcebook). Because pyramid power wasn't too silly for RPGs back in the day. (Still isn't entirely, if I'm to be honest - Shadowrun's Apep Consortium fucks about with it).
Noisesome Spirit Chasers
These magical items come ins trings of 100 and look like modern day firecrackers. When lit and cast to the ground, they magically explode with a loud bang.
I want these for Kara-Tur New Year.
O
No "Treasure Type O" jokes, please.
Most of this chapter is taken up by oils, some of which are whack - Absinthe Oil, African Ju Ju Oil, Anise Oile (doubles the range and effect of clairvoyance spells, enabling the user to see "infrared and ultraviolet", Bendover's Oil (wait, seriously? Oh gods it gives a +5 bonus to saving throws vs. death magic. He was being buggered by a lich.), Buddha oil, Caloric Shield Oil (despite the name, provides fire resistance), etc.
May I just say, I always found it really disturbing when someone disrobed to oil up at the gaming table.
After oils come ointments. Surprisingly, Keoghtom's Ointment isn't the centerpiece of this section - that would be the Ointment of Mage-Smelling (allows you to sniff out mages, not smell like mages).
Couple joke items - the Omelet of the Planes (remember when they served omelets on airplanes? Me neither.) and the Minionions of Set (which are small onions of inherent evil).
Under orbs you have (among other things) Orbs of Draconic Influence, Dragon Orbs, Orbs of Dragonkind (I & II), and the Orb of the Silver Dragon. Orbs, like gems and crystals, are generally useless items, and there is considerable crossover with balls, but that is perhaps as it should be.
P
Paddleboards, Oadriac's Portable Purveyor of Parfait Potions, []Pans, Paper, Parchment, Pearls...unlike a lot of gems, I can sort of get behind pearls when they have some intrinsic connection to the sea, otherwise they're just another pretty little talisman.
There are two peglegs, the shittiest of which is the Pegleg of Walking. Guess what it lets you do!
Percussion Instrument is a bit of a catch-all, and includes a number of Indian instruments sufficiently obscure slade decided to include pronunciation guidelines for them.
p.813 - A Beholder playing the drums by beating on them with its eye-stalks. An ogre with a gong. A kobold with a set of bells and a striker. A troglodyte or really retarded lizard-man playing a set of hanging percussion instruments, including a triangle. And finally, a medusa with a rattle. Fuck it, I'd listen to that ensemble.
The cow bell "summons all cowlike creatures (cattle, bison, buffalo, gorgons, oxen, and so one) within 300 yards." Wonder if it works on minotaurs?
Lei Kung's Drums
I think I was at that concert. The mosh pit had no survivors.The avatar of Lei Kung owns a set of drums that act as a horn of blasting when struck.
Butler Summoning Gong
Summons a subservient hill giant clad in black. Hell yes.
Periapt of Proof Against Sound - I'm amazed this didn't find it's way into 3rd edition, what with all the sonic damage.
Periapt of Prophecy Protection - Renders the subject invisible to attempts of prophecy, among other things. Top of the Evil Overlord Christmas Wish List.
Periapt of Protection from Vampiric Ixitxachitl and Lacedons
...okay. That's really specific.
Philters are like potions, but tend to be sillier. Seriously, I wish they'd just stuck these under potions.
Phylactery - Doesn't include lich or dracolich phylacteries (aww).
This book ends with another Notes page.
Tomorrow, Vol. 3!
