About a month ago I reviewed a PDF product called Facades: Masks of Magic by Heyoka Studios. It was a book about magical masks. A few weeks later, Creation's Edge Games delivers us Buck-A-Batch: Magic Masks I. It's another book about magical masks. It's interesting to see two different design philosophies going into books that are essentially the same concept.
Appearances - Magic Masks I differs in a lot of ways. For one, it lacks the ugly photographs of real world masks that Masks of Magic had. In fact it lacks any pictures altogether aside from a quarter page sized drawing on the cover. Some illustrations would have been nice but the lack doesn't detract too much from the product. The layout is very nice.
Content - At 50% of the price, Magic Masks I delivers 2.5 times the number of magic masks that Masks of Magic contained. Fifty, to be exact. The descriptions of these magical masks are straight forward mechanics. There's no fluff here, leaving the background of these items to the imagination. The masks don't tend to be too terribly powerful, with the highest market values being around the 10,000gp area. There are no earth shattering artifacts here. The masks rarely have more than one or two powers.
In Conclusion - At a buck, this book is a pretty good value. It'll add a little something different to your treasure hordes without much risk of breaking the game. If you want magic items with a little background to them, however, you're going to be disappointed. The magic mask descriptions are as completely dry of flavor as the magic items in the DMG. It's a fairly solid product, but I can't really think of much reason to recommend it over any other collection of magic items other than the price tag. Hence, I give this product a strong three star rating. I'd give it three and a half if I could.
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