Adventurer's Vault: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement | Logan Bonner, Eytan Bernstein, ...

Adventurer's Vault: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement | Logan Bonner, Eytan Bernstein, ... | More things than you can shake a stick at

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Adventurer's Vault...

	Adventurer's Vault: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement Logan Bonner, Eytan Bernstein, ... Wizards of the Coast, 2008 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hundreds of new weapons, tools, and magic items for your D&D character.

This supplement for the Dungeons & Dragons game presents hundreds of magic items, weapons, tools, and other useful items for your D&D character. Whether you're a player looking for a new piece of equipment or a Dungeon Master stocking a dragon's hoard, this book has exactly what you need.

The book features a mix of classic items updated to the 4th Edition rules and brand-new items never before seen in D&D.

A must have

This is a must have for any 4th ed players out there. For DM's and Players alike this will complete your games. It will give your pages and pages of just the list of one type of magic item. There are 6 pages of just the list of magical armors...thats not even the actual descriptions either. Honestly, if you haven't already clicked add to cart by the time I'm done...well...

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More things than you can shake a stick at

In a first for D&D, the equipment book is actually the first non-setting supplement released; this is unusual, as the Arms & Equipment Guide for 2e and 3e were released in the middle of each edition's product cycle.

In this not-terribly-thick book, you'll find exactly two chapters: Gear, and Magic Items. Production values are pretty high, and the artwork is mostly all-new; I don't recall any recycled art. Some pictures are captioned, others are not, which is irritating.

Gear is non-magic items...new weapons, new armor, mounts, vehicles, alchemical items, etc. The weapons are the most detailed, filling weapon group/type combinations left open from the PHB, along with new properties, like Brutal (reroll any weapon damage dice of n value or lower). The armor isn't too different from that released in PHB, but seems better, I haven't quite figured out if they pay for the improvements some other way. The mounts are kind of a mixed bag, they're nice and fantastic, but their carrying capacity is rather limited. Vehicles I haven't looked at too much, and alchemical items seem useful.

Most of the rest of the book deals with magic items, of all the varying types, from the plussed (weapons, armor, amulets, implements) to the random, including more potions. There are a great many of each type, including a boatload of magic weapons. Many old standbys made it in, from the sunblade to the decanter of endless water to the various bags of tricks.

It's nice to have this out so early, when it's most useful. The one main flaw is also a virtue, in that the magic item properties really aren't excessively useful in most cases; many properties are once/day powers that are nice, but limited in utility. On the other hand, this means there aren't going to be One Best Item of each type for a given level, and even if you get kind of a weird item, at the very least you're getting the base enhancement bonus your rolls or values.

One useful inclusion is a "move the magic" ritual, that allows you to move an enchantment from one weapon to another, so if that +2 Sunblade drops on a scimitar, but you want it on a khopesh, you're good to go. There are suggestions on making unique magic items, but nothing specifically crunchy about that, and, of course, there are no new artifacts.

On the whole, a pretty good book. While not absolutely perfect in every way, it's definitely a worthwhile buy for any 4e player or DM.

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Still the same problems but a helpful book

I'm starting to wonder if WotC even has an editor. It took me only until page 4 to find a glaring typo. And when I mean glaring I mean that it is one you find without having to actually search for it. I found these very same typos in the DMG. Come on Wizards, if you're going to prevent piracy of your books, you're going to actually need to perfect them before you sell them!

Another problem I found with the book is that once again they do not price any of the special armor. There is even a statement that says that the table will list the price in gp, but when you look at said table, every single price just reads "special". And when you try and figure out what special means, it never really says. Why would I ever buy a Scalemail if I can get Wyrmscale armor for the exact same price as you list in your rules?

Anyway, excluding chapter 1 the rest of the book tells me exactly what I expected and wanted it to. It is a large list of magical items to use in my game. I also love the ritual at the end of the book that moves around enchantments. That right there is proof that 4th edition is trying to be more of a "yes you can" version and I think that makes it so much more fun.

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A good resource for players

Overall a very good book. If you like what you've seen in 4E so far, you'll like it. If you hate 4E, this won't change your mind. For those still on the fence, I think it shows the depth of the new system and that flexibility hasn't disappeared in 4E.

This is definitely a player resource and not a DM one. DMs may want to have it for reference, but with the way 4E handles treasure and wish lists and all, any DM expecting to get a ton of use out of this is going to be disappointed. That's not a bad thing in my opinion though as the AV puts items control more into the players hands and at the same time gives the DM a comfort level that they aren't going to have to look over every thing their players are interested in to make sure it's not a broken trick.

Sure, there are some strong combos and possibly some unbalanced ones, but overall items will be there to sweeten and customize what the characters do, not their primary source of power.

The AV adds a new feat and alchemical items. These items are now balanced so that you can make and buy better versions at higher levels - making alchemist's fire useful at all levels, not just the early ones.

The magic item section has tons of new items and options - gone are the days of formulaic rules and al a carte construction. While at first it might seem odd that some weapons can have certain properties and others not, I found in most cases allowing the missing weapon creates a broken combo (so the ommission is intentional). For example, there are several polearm enchantments that affect how far you push or slide someone. It may seem odd that it does not work for spears also until you realize that it intentionally precludes you from using a shield and taking advantage of an at-will like tide of iron.

On one hand, it will feel like a step back in the uniqueness of items since the 3E formula system provided almost infinite combos, but on the other hand, we're not even 6 months into 4E and already we have a wealth of item options - it only feels like your options are limited if you compare it to 3E. Someone who never played 3E would probably never think that weapons and armor can't be unique enough with all of these options.

Overall I wholeheartedly recommend it.

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A Mediocre Tome of Treasures...

...but it depends on what you're looking for. As a DM, i found this book mostly just a huge list of charts for magic items (or pseudo-magic items, the alchemical stuff), most of them recreating the combat conditions we're all familiar with from the PHB: i.e. ongoing fire, acid, thunder, cold damage, Stun, Immobilize, Daze, Save Ends, etc etc.

There is almost no interesting descriptions, unless you consider the above list interesting. Many people do, in fact.

If you loved the magic item listing in the PHB, and the way magic items were handled in general, you will love the Adventurer's Vault. If you thought that 4e magic items were bland, repetitive, and not as good as the fascinating items that permeated 3rd edition (and earlier) then you won't like this book either. For instance, i'm pretty sure there is no Deck of Many Things in the Adventurers Vault; it's way outside of the point of giving you an advantage in a fight, which is almost solely the focus of magic now.

Nor does it even touch on the topic of Cursed Items, but maybe that is something waiting for the DMG 2.

For me, i'm going to take a few ideas from this book and just make my own magic items for the players, ones that have more varied abilities. Such as a Wand of Magic Missiles with charges that DOESN'T miss and inflicts 1d4+1 points of damage per charge expended, as well as adding a permanent +1 bonus to the wizard's normal "roll to hit" magic missile. He misses half the time anyway.

Or a Rod of Atrocity for the warlock.

See, the 4e magic items just add some fancy descriptive name to a magic item, then slaps on acid damage, or fire damage, push one square or daze until the end of the next turn, and pretend that it's something special. It's not. It's just the same old effect that can be accomplished hundreds of other ways from spells, powers, exploits, and other magic items.

This is not a bad book and has its uses, but know what you're buying before you purchase it.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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