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Great for Living Arcanis, gotta love it. Wonderful sourcebook.
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Forged in Magic: Revised and Expanded is a 176 page d20 pdf product for any fantasy campaign setting, although focused around Arcanis, World of Shattered Empires. This product, as the name suggests, is the revised (to 3.5e) and expanded version of the original Forged in Magic product released several years ago. It includes a lot of new material, now detailing more than 500 magical and psionic items. Forged in Magic is a product about magical items, allowing players and DMs alike to wield weapons of wonder and legend in their campaign setting.
This product comes as a zip file containing both a screen and printer-friendly version of Forged in Magic, the latter having the borders removed, but maintaining all the covers and interior art. Artwork is very good, and while there are average items in place, there are a number of exceptional ones as well, and the artists have done a good job of enhancing the product. Writing and editing is generally good as well, although the layout and organisation leaves a little to be desired.
The product isn't very well organised, and some chapter and section designations and a table of contents would've made the pdf a lot easier to use. Bookmarks have been included for navigation, but better section headings or separations would've made the pdf look more polished. Some items appear out of place as well, such as epic items under the weapons of war section, rather than perhaps under the armor or weapons sections. Consistent use of font size for headings is also lacking. As a product about magical items, mechanics generally seems good and pricing for the items fair and appropriate.
The product starts with a brief overview of the expanded edition, which includes many new items and additional material. It then proceeds to provide some brief advice on making legendary weapons, by using, for example, proper histories or descriptions for important items, or having their powers grow with character level. No mechanics is given, but the advice is still useful, albeit somewhat obvious, nonetheless. Following the brief introduction, the product dives into the magical items, essentially one huge chapter detailing all the magical items types of the core rules and more.
The following magical items are listed: armors, shields, armor attachments (tabards, pins, etc.), melee weapons, ranged weapons, fetishes, psicrowns, potions, rings, rods, staffs, universal psionic items, wondrous items, weapons of war (tools of warcraft, creatures of warcraft, epic weapons and armor), epic rings, rods, staffs, potions, and garments; cursed items, special materials, and lastly items for animals (barding and the like). It's a vast and extensive list of items, containing a lot that is interesting and new and an equal amount of average stuff.
In general I was very pleased with this product. There's a lot of material and a lot of interesting magical items. Some were a little mundane, particular in the weapon and armor departments, where weapons, for example, just granted a feat, or armor just gave the use of a spell a certain number of times per day. Hardly exceptional material, but nevertheless still useful. The additional types of magical items, such as armor attachments and barding items go a long way to increase the usefulness of this product and expand the game in different directions. The epic material is also a very welcome addition to the product, including a number of minor and major artifacts.
One cannot really go wrong with the product. It offers excellent value for money in providing a huge number of new gaming material for a very good price. One had to expect a few more mundane items in there, and can't hope that everything will be innovative or creative. An enjoyable product, with plenty of usefulness in any gaming setting, and perhaps for some the opportunity to adopt some of the finer aspects of Arcanis through the use of the magical items. A very good product.<br><br>
<b>LIKED</b>: Forged in Magic provides a huge amount of magical items and treasure for any d20 setting. The material is extremely useful, has some creative and innovative parts, and provides heaps of additional material and new types of magical items. Good value for money, and very useful.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The organisation could've been done a lot better with clearer chapter designations and perhaps by moving some of the material around. One minute your finishing one section and another just starts out of the blue at the bottom of the page.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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Creator Reply: |
Thanks for the review. Glad you liked the book.
The fonts should have been consistant, and there is no excuse really. We were rushed to make Origins, but that was a problem of our own creation.
The organization suffers from something dedicated PDFs have no cause to suffer from: space constraints.
Forged in Magic was designed for print and as a result, page count is a cost factor. Every additonal page would increase the production cost by anywhere from $30-$75 (depending on print run size), which seems pretty small until one considers that an open layout would add about 20 pages.
Those pages would increase the weight and size, which would increase shipping cost and the cost for additonal shipping cartons. Every show such as Origins and GenCon Indy has a charge called draige which is what the venue charges to move your products to your booth, and they charge the same amount to move any of it out. That is anywhere from $60-$90 per 100 pounds or part thereof, so if the increase weight of pages and cartons were to increase weight from, lets say 187# to 204#, then it would cost an additional $120-$180 to move it into and out of the show.
Also, one can't really add 20 pages to a print product without adding 2+ pages worth of art, with additonal costs. |
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Forged in Magic Revised and Expanded is a book of magic (and psionic) items from Paradigm Concepts. The zipped file is just under 9.5 megabytes in size, and contains two PDF files, a main file and a printer-friendly version thereof. Each file is 176 pages in length, and while the book has no table of contents, each file does have full bookmarks.
The main file has full-color front and back covers. All of the interior artwork is done in black-and-white, and has borders across the top and alternate sides of each page. Oddly, the printer-friendly version not only keeps the full-color covers, but it keeps the black-and-white interior artwork as well. Only the gray page borders are removed, meaning that it?s not too printer-friendly.
Forged in Magic Revised and Expanded is the 3.5 incarnation of the original Forged in Magic book. A new introduction explains the genesis of the revision, before giving the original introduction as well. Strictly speaking, the book is intended for the Arcanis campaign setting. The introduction makes no apologies about the fact that some of the material it references comes from the Player?s Guide to Arcanis or Magic of Arcanis (for example, some magic properties can only be added to greater masterwork items). It?s also worth noting that many of the items here have a back story given that ties them in with the Arcanis campaign, though this is usually quite easy to discard if you want to drop them in your own game.
While the book has no table of contents, the bookmarks break down the various sections of items that the book covers: armor and shields, magical weapons, fetishes, potions, psicrowns, rings, rods, staffs, universal psionic items, wondrous items, weapons of war, ancient alchemy, rings and rods of power, staffs and standards of glory, garments of might and other trappings of power, other items of power, cursed items, items for animals, special materials, new spells, and finally a consolidated list of items.
Several of the aforementioned categories merit a longer explanation: fetishes are a new category of minor magic item that, while relatively weak, can be hung on the body to impart minor spells or effects. Weapons of war includes several sub-sections, covering things such as magic ballistae, epic weapons and armor, and even a few constructs that can be crafted for battle purposes. Ancient alchemy consists of only a single new magic item. However, the next two sections (rings and rods of power, and staffs and standards of glory) cover only epic magic items with a few artifacts thrown in. Likewise, the following two (garments of might and other trappings of power, and other items of power) cover only artifacts. Finally, while the magic items for animals does a great job of presenting animal body slots as well as great new items, only three new spells are given.
Altogether, while Forged in Magic R&E is doubtlessly a good book, it just doesn?t feel as cohesive as it should. Items of one stripe seem (such as magic standards) end up appearing in different sections of the book depending on if they?re normal magic items, epic magic items, or artifacts. While there?s something to be said for breaking items down that way, it comes across as slightly jarring. Sections open with just a header in a slightly-larger font, instead of opening with large letters at the top of a page: this makes the reader feel like they?ve never truly come to a new section of the book, and so it reads like a single long section without end. The disparity of the length of various sections doesn?t help. Add in the lack of a clear table of contents, and the not-so-friendly printer-friendly version, and this book quite clearly isn?t all that it could have been.
Even despite the formatting issues though, it still presents hundreds of useful items of every stripe. While you may have to hunt around for them, it?s a virtual certainty that there?s a magic or psionic item for you here. After all, every character uses something that?s been Forged in Magic.
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<b>LIKED</b>: This product had hundreds of new items, including combined magic-psionic items! It also had esoteric things like new constructs, new magic standards, and plenty of new epic items and artifacts.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The lack of clear and bold distinguishing between sections makes the book feel like it runs on endlessly. Items are in different sections based on whether they're sub-epic, epic, or artifacts, instead of categorizing everything along those three lines. Finally, the printer-friendly version kept the interior art, only removing the page borders.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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Creator Reply: |
Thanks for the review, glad you liked it.
My only response as to the organization of the magic items would be to look at the DMG. Staff of the Magi is not in the staff section, Sheild of Prottus is not w/shields, etc. |
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