As you know from my last post, I recently picked up the Adventurer’s Vault 2 (AV2) at my local gaming store and I have been trying to get enough time to look at it and write a worthwhile review. Well, at long last, here it is…
Overall impressions: My first impression upon leafing through the pages was that WotC did a good job with this book. This product seems to have been written and laid out in a way that is a true benefit to players and DMs alike. The art, like most of the 4e products I have looked at, ranges from brilliant to mediocre, but I am pleased with about 80% of it. The book also brings a couple of things to the game that can be used to execute plot hooks that enhance running, not just a single adventure, but a whole campaign. Overall I think this is an excellent addition to my collection, and I think many of you will as well.
Part I – Magic Items: The first thing that I noticed when I started reading through the first part of the book is that, unlike the first Adventurer’s Vault (AV1), almost every page contains a little blurb of fluffy goodness with history and plot hooks for one of the items on the page. This goes a long way towards making the book a useful tool, rather than just a cyclopedia of items. I like the flavor that the fluff lends to the items described and the one or two paragraph blurbs act as lubricant for my own inspiration. As a DM with limited time to work on gaming logistics and campaign planning, I appreciate the boost to my own creative process that is offered by this small, but significant addition to the AV line.
Weapons and Armor: The AV1 devoted a lot of space to weapons and armor, with good reason, and the AV2 deviates from that (thankfully), also for good reason. While everyone likes a good choice of weapons and armor, I am pleased that they chose to spend less space on that type of magical item and more time on the new things they introduced. The AV2 spends about 24 pages on weapons and armor, compared to the AV1’s 50 pages. This allows the AV2 to have more variety in the other items, which is a very good thing.
Ammunition: They added a short ammunition section which looks relatively well done. It doesn’t really pique my interest too much as a DM because I do not tend to award ammunition in my treasure parcels (it just isn’t my style). Some of the ammunition seems overly expensive for the expendable nature of the item, but I suspect that is by design to keep the game balanced. The expense comes from the inherent powerful nature of these items. While the ammunition’s enhancement bonus over-rides the weapon enhancement bonus (just like normal, similar bonuses do not stack), the weapon’s properties still apply, so this could make for some really devastating combinations when in the hands of the right PC.
Implements: I like that the developers of 4e are sticking primarily to non-deity specific items (including holy symbols) which allows a DM to use their own world pantheon with little or no changes. The AV2 has a good selection of orbs, rods, staffs, wands, and rings, as well as items for location slots (arms, hands, feet, head, neck, and waist). The AV2 also officially introduces tomes, tattoos, and totems to 4e and each of those types of item gets their own section in chapter 1.
Tomes: The AV2 includes only 10 tomes for the players to use. While they are probably diverse enough that any good DM can generate their own tome-type magic items within the bounds of 4e, it seems that this section is a bit shallow compared to the sections that highlight other items. The tomes generally work when the character uses a certain spell or spell type. For example: the Tome of Striking Lightening works only when a wizard lightening attack power is used through the tome, and there are a couple of properties and a daily power available to the caster (page 42). As I said above, I would have liked to see more of these, especially if I was a tome-wielding player, so this section is a bit disappointing.
Tattoos: There is a small section of guidelines regarding tattoos as well as descriptions of several tattoos available from each class of tattoo (blood, bond, heart, and spirit). Tattoos are interesting in that they “interact with a character’s intrinsic properties, such as healing surges or action points” in order to change “something about your nature in a subtle way” (both excerpts from page 83). What that means is that these tattoos generally have effects that are activated under certain conditions, e.g. the Tattoo of Arcane Blood has an effect that occurs when you are first bloodied (it does 3 force damage to the enemy that bloodied you) and the Quick-Step Tattoo allows all allies within sight that also have the tattoo to shift one square when you use an action point to perform another action. These are interesting and I could see them being very useful to certain characters, as well as (from the DM perspective) creating a band of creatures that each have a tattoo of some sort and making that part of the plot hook for an adventure (e.g. maybe all of the members of the bandit group that has been raiding the local caravans have a Tattoo of Shared Vengeance and that is how the players can identify the members and sponsors, and also try and find out the significance of the tattoo).
Wondrous Items: There are a couple of interesting wondrous items that I will have to work into my game just for the pure entertainment value (the Vagabond’s Die, Page 78, is definitely going to be put to use). But the thing that I am most excited about in this section is what they are calling Wondrous Lair Items. These are items that are kept in the character’s or party’s home base and that are used in the downtime between adventures or legs of the campaign. These are great and I think they add lots of flavor to an ongoing campaign, but are basically worthless in a one-off (good thing I tend to run long campaigns). Some examples: the Alchemist’s Workshop allows you to generate alchemical items of equal to or less than your level +2; The Austere Dojo allows you, with 24 hours of training, to replace one martial power as if you had gained a level and retrained. These items can also be used by the DM to stock the evil wizard’s tower (Silence-Warded Room, page 82) or the goblin king’s lair (Spying Mirrors, page 82) or the rich governor’s manor (Feast Table, page 80).
Immurements: The developers added a new and interesting type of magic item to the game in the AV2. Immurements are rare but powerful magical items that unleash temporary terrain upon the world. These are consumable items that are played out via a blast effect (e.g. close blast 4) in which the affected area is completely replaced with the new terrain. For example, the Immurement of Seething Scoria (page 89) replaces a close blast 4 area of the battlemap with lava until the end of the encounter and each turn that a creature starts its turn within the area of effect, the caster makes a +30 vs reflex attack that does 3d8 fire damage and 10 ongoing fire damage. A save ends the ongoing damage, but the terrain change lasts throughout the whole encounter. This is powerful stuff and the use of an immurement is the same as using a daily magic item, so if the caster already used one, then they are unable to use an immurement.
Part II – Item Sets: Item sets are groups of magic items that were made to be used together. This idea is very cool and works on the idea of synergy, i.e. that these items, when wielded together, will have powers that are greater than the sum of their parts. As a DM I can say that, once again, the development team has scored a gold star. They split these up into heroic tier, paragon tier, and epic tier sets of items that one player could use. These are interesting and I like the idea of them – for example, the Gadgeteer’s Garb includes shockweave armor (lvl 5+), alchemy gloves (lvl 6), a deep pocket cloak (lvl 7), and gadgeteer’s goggles (lvl 8+), and then there is a synergy bonus gained by a player that has two of these items and also another bonus if a player has all 4 items. Many of these item sets have sidebars that tell the history or lore regarding the items, like I mentioned above, and it goes a long way to make these items special.
They end out this chapter with a type of item set called a group set which consists of items for each member of the party. I like this because it affords the DM a huge goal in a plot-hook. You know, it goes something like this: these items are the pieces of equipment wielded by the most famous adventuring group in the area when they performed their most valiant and important good deeds, the biggest legends of the last hundred years, and every single one of the characters have heard of and looked to them for inspiration and the party is interested in getting the items – they may have to go far and wide to obtain them – sounds like a long, interesting campaign to me…
Appendix: In the AV1, they placed a table at the beginning of each section that stated the level, name, and price of the items in that section. This table was also placed at the end of the book, in appendix 2, but arranged alphabetically by level with name, slot, and page number on the table. This was minimally helpful because it did arrange things by level, but some names are not self explanatory, so it was sometimes hard to know what I was looking at or for. The appendix was generally meaningless to me as I would just go to the section with the type of item I was looking for (e.g. feet slot items) and there was a more helpful table right there and I could go through the listings in that section faster than dealing with the appendix.
In the AV2 they have remedied this by changing the format of the appendix. They got rid of the tables at the beginning of each section and they greatly improved the layout of the appendix. The AV2 appendix is still listed by level, but in each level block the items are separated into item types, so under level 4 you see all level 4 armor listed in alphabetical order under the Armor subheading, then a level 4 weapons subheading has all of the lvl 4 weapons in alphabetical order, then the holy symbols, then rods, etc, etc. Each block contains the name, type, and page where you can find the listing in the book, along with the price.
Price: The AV1 was 223 pages and the AV2 is only 159 but they have the same manufacturer’s suggested retail price. That’s 64 more pages of material for the same price. The production values are just as high for the AV2 as they are for all of the new 4e products (e.g. good binding on hard cover, nice internal and exterior art, easily recognizable layout and format, well written with few typos or grammatical errors) and so I find myself not minding the page count differential. I think that may have to do with the following: 1) the new things in the AV2 that I anticipate using a great deal as a DM, and 2) the fact that the AV2 expands the equipment available to use by all of the released classes (whereas the AV1 was primarily for PH1 classes) and this is a much needed addition.
Also, a full 28 pages of the interior of the AV1 are taken up with tables at the beginning of sections (see above). These could have been put into the appendix and formatted like the AV2 is and saved that 28 pages. Also, there are 11 pages of mount/vehicle rules in the AV1 while the AV2 has no such large rule section; this section in the AV1 should have been in the DMG or the PH2 anyway. This means that almost 40 pages of the AV1 size differential could be cut out and the differential is really only about 20 pages.
Final Thoughts: So, overall I think this is a worthy buy, but not entirely necessary for all players or DMs. Unlike the miniatures sets, I am somewhat of a completist when it comes to the hard-bound rule books for DnD, so it was an obvious choice for me to purchase it. Because of my completist habit I often worry that they will keep putting out 30 or 40 dollar books once a month and I will forever be buying new WotC products. On the other hand, if the production value and care in design that was used in the production of the AV2 is maintained and improved upon for all future releases… well, then I guess it’s not so bad to be a completist. Besides, I really love this stuff, but it may not be necessary for everyone’s collection.
Last Word: If you are a completist, the AV2 is worth the price. If you really like to have as many equipment options as possible, the AV2 is worth the price. If you really love this sort of book, the AV2 is worth the price. If you are a minimalist and just want to sit down and play, then don’t bother buying it – you can enhance your game enough with your own imagination.
Until my next post, I wish you good gaming.
~DM Samuel