This Dungeon Fantasy supplement deals with "special" treasures: not
just the big hauls, but something truly unique.
Disclaimer: I received playtest credit in this book and
therefore did not pay for it.
The point of this volume is that, after a certain point, just getting
more gold is boring (if sometimes an interesting logistical
challenge). These treasures are game-changing: allowing fast
long-distance movement, or removing resource management or other
limits from the game.
The first of four parts is Weapons: a blade with built-in Luck for
the user, a bow that will let the user always strike his target,
undetectable daggers, and so on – as well as rules for solid gold,
platinum, and platinum-coated weapons. (Mostly useful if you're huge
and want a heavier weapon to do more damage with, mind.) Armour is
next, with variations that protect against environmental hazards, turn
the wearer temporarilt into an armoured centaur, burn constantly, and
so on. (The Vinesheld, a suit of woven living vines, is perhaps the
most interesting here.)
Next are Vehicles, which frankly go a bit beyond what I think of as
reasonable dungeon-bashing fare. There's an armoured crab which the
occupants have to pedal: the idea is to make them proof against most
environmental hazards, while not being able to treat it as an armoured
fighting vehicle. There's a burrowing "torpedo", a (mundane, but
impressive) royal carriage, and a phaeton that can travel through the
Nightmare Dimension. (Hey, it's dungeon fantasy, who cares if the
Nightmare Dimension has never been mentioned before – it's cool!)
Finally we have Fabulous Artifacts, a grab-bag of things that didn't
fit the other three categories: mushrooms to turn someone into a
super-berserker, a non-magical flying harness, a boardgame that acts
as an early warning system, and that cartoon classic the removable gap
(don't call it a portable hole).
This is a short supplement that doesn't have room to do much with the
items: it's a great source of ideas for treasures, and tested stats
for them too, but it's really only usable as-is in a fairly
free-wheeling fantasy setting that doesn't worry too much about things
like where magic comes from or what specific other worlds are out
there. Which Dungeon Fantasy is, of course, but if I were to drop
these into another setting I'd need to do a fair bit of work on them.
Dungeon Fantasy Treasures 2: Epic Treasures is available from
Warehouse 23
and the designer's notes are
here.
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