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Tainted Troves: A Collection of Cursed Items
 
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Tainted Troves: A Collection of Cursed Items
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Tainted Troves: A Collection of Cursed Items
Publisher: Silverthorne Games
by Shane O. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/10/2006 00:00:00

Tainted Troves: A Collection of Cursed Items is a collection of cursed magic items (and related materials) by Silverthorne Games. The zipped file is a smidgen under 1.5 megabytes, containing a single PDF file that is just over 1.8 meg. The PDF itself has bookmarks and a non-hyperlinked table of contents. It?s 43 pages long, with a page for the cover, a page for the credits and legal information, a page for the table of contents, and page for the OGL, and two pages of ads.

The book?s only color artwork is the cover; all of the interior art is black-and-white. While not excessive, there is a fair amount of art in the book. Given that it has grey borders on alternating sides of the pages, and grey headers at the top of each page saying what section of the book you?re in, the lack of a printer-friendly version may be of some concern.

The book opens with an introduction that does an excellent job of placing the rest of the book in context. After talking about cursed items in the campaign, it gives four possible origins for cursed items. It then talks about if a curse is different from broken functionality, and then gives a scale for measuring the power of curses (nuisance, hindering, or lethal). The format of the cursed items is then given. After their name, each cursed item is ranked in terms of the aforementioned scale, a physical description, what non-cursed magic item they detect as, their magic aura (strangely, they use a breakdown of trace/faint/moderate/strong/powerful instead of the more familiar faint/moderate/strong/overwhelming from the DMG), the effects of the curse, and how to nullify the curse. This last section is given a bit more exposition, as items vary in how easily the curse can be removed, if it can be removed while still retaining the beneficial enchantments, etc.

The lion?s share of the book is then covered in the next nine sections, each one paralleling a category of magic items from the DMG (armor and shields, potions, rings, rods, scrolls, staves, wands, weapons, and wondrous items). With the odd exception of the last two sections, each one opens with a brief paragraph recapping the basics of each type of item, such as what kind of action it takes to activate them, as well as their AC, hardness, hp, etc.

Seven appendices then follow (though the seventh one is the OGL, so it won?t be discussed here). The first one takes all of the cursed items from the SRD and organizes them into the format used in this book.

The second appendix presents two cursed minor artifacts, two cursed major artifacts, and three cursed locations. These aren?t presented in any sort of format, and even the minor artifacts lack information on their magic aura or caster level, which they?d normally have in the DMG. That aside, these are still very evocative descriptions.

Appendix three is a selection of cursed qualities. These present curses in the same manner as magic qualities for armor and shields. The difference here being that almost none of these have price listings, apparently signifying that it doesn?t add to a weapon?s cost to add a curse.

Appendix four deals with creating cursed items. It goes over different ways in which items can be cursed, and provides a series of tables which can be used to determine the exact nature of the curse (e.g. drawback, extra requirement, etc.) and what item it?s placed on.

The fifth appendix gives a new prestige class, the Malign Artificer. This character is someone who deliberately makes cursed items, due to having once been victimized by such an item.

Appendix six gives tables for placing cursed items. Unlike the tables in appendix four, these tables are each for different categories of magic items, with possible selections being for finished cursed items found in this book. These are the tables to use when you want to pick out a finished cursed item to place in a treasure hoard.

While this book had a few flaws in how a few parts of it were presented, this product is altogether an extremely solid one. The dozens of new curses, for every type of magic item, make it extremely valuable to a GM who is tired of using the same old cursed items over and over on his players (and of having them just use a remove curse spell). While it may be a book of cursed items, Tainted Troves is itself a real treasure. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Beyond the plethora of new and innovative curses, I enjoyed how it made many of them more difficult to defeat. Likewise, the tables for cursed item creation and placement are a boon to any GM. Also, the Malign Artificer prestige class is a truly insidious touch.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The lack of a printer-friendly version is a problem, albeit a rather small one. It strange why they used a different system for the listed magic auras, or how the minor artifacts didn't have the standard magic item information. However, all of these are very minor problems, and it's easy to overlook them altogether, as they have virtually no impact on the book's usefulness.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Tainted Troves: A Collection of Cursed Items
Publisher: Silverthorne Games
by Gregory H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/06/2005 00:00:00

The content of this is very nice. The cursed items, places, and artifacts are original, and the introduction gives a nice cursory summary of the general nature and origins of cursed items. Overall, I was very pleased with what I got for the price.

But sweet mother of our Loki.... this thing is impossible to print. I don't know what they did to this PDF, because the borders don't look unbearably fancy, it's not saturated in background graphics, and nothing is in color. But in spite of a decent computer and a high-end Dell laser printer, it takes almost 5 minutes to get a single page printed.

Anyway, it's a very nice product that gives you everything it advertizes, and then some. If you don't feel the need to make a hard-copy, I think you'll be pretty pleased with your purchase. <br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Very Good<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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