Beginning with the tagline 'Because every blade should tell a story' this work lays out details of an armoury-full of distintive and interesting weapons, the sort that any hero worth his place in a bard's repertoire should aspire to wield.

There's a table listing the weapons in value order, from a mere snip of just over 4,000gp for a glaive-guisarm called Horse Daughter's Kiss up to a staggering 175,000gp for Ice Queen, a spectacular sword magically-forged from a single piece of steel. Each weapon then gets about a third of a page to itself, with necessary game mechanical details, a paragraph giving its history and another with a vivid description of the item... and a full-colour picture. A reasonably tech-savvy GM could no doubt extract the pictures if he wants to display them to characters picking through treasure hoards or receiving rewards from grateful potentates - despite the 'price list' at the beginning, these are not the sort of thing you pick up at the corner weapons store!

Several of the weapons are truly unique, not just in terms of story or even powers, but having been crafted to original designs. For example, a pair of hand-blades were created at the behest of a halfling monk who worked as a chef - and Slicer and Dicer bear a passing resemblance to something you might chop herbs with in the kitchen! Or if you really want strange, how about an axe which can change from throwing-axe to great axe according to its wielder's whim...

There is plenty of scope here, from something unusual to spice up a treasure hoard - and give the characters something to research - to inspiration for a whole campaign revolving around one of thse unique magical weapons. The stories are self-contained enough that they can be dropped into your existing campaign world with minimal changes if so desired. Even the mages and clerics might be interested, and those characters who use edged weapons will be eager to get their hands on any that they hear about! A fine example of how to devise individual, interesting items.

This full-color pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages ads, 1 page SRD, leaving 11 pages for the 30 magical blades. Enough to make them “unique” as per the premise of the book? We’ll see. The pdf starts with a short table that lists the weapons according to their value, the cheapest being 4,312 GP, the most powerful one scoring at a whopping 175,325 GP. The book features a beautiful, full-color, digital artwork by Sade for each and every weapon in the book, which I definitely liked. The layout is also consistent and very nice to look at. Each of the thirty blades comes not only with a short story that could serve as a hook on how to get the weapon, but also with several abilities that go beyond +2 ice-bursting sword. I.e., each of the blades (There are also spears, btw.) has some distinctive quality besides its primary characteristics.

Editing and formatting very top-notch, I didn’t notice any mistakes.

Conclusion: Magic item books tend to have a hard standing with me. I’m a sucker for elaborate backgrounds, weapons that level up and PCs with a very limited access to magic weapons and gadgets. I’m quite old-school there, every weapon or magic item in my campaign gets its own background story.

There is obviously not too much space for background-texts for the blades in this pdf, although you get more than in almost all item-supplements I’ve read so far, which is great news – while I love the modularity of recent editions when it comes to magic items, it also made many a weapon or armor a common commodity instead of an awe-inspiring item. The production values are top-notch, as often a picture of a blade makes it MUCH MORE memorable than it would be without it.

That being said, all the blades feature the Rite Publishing style, i.e. they have something rather unusual or special about them – for the low price, that is quite is something!

However, if you’re like me, you would probably have preferred less blades and more background on the weapons presented. I can’t find any serious flaw with this product, though. Thus, for me, this is a 4 star product, probably because it didn’t utterly grip me and make me shout “Hell yeah”. If you’re into equipment books, though, this is gold. For you, this may be a 4.5 or even 5 star-file.

This full-color pdf is 16 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages ads, 1 page SRD, leaving 11 pages for the 30 magical blades. Enough to make them “unique” as per the premise of the book? We’ll see. The pdf starts with a short table that lists the weapons according to their value, the cheapest being 4,312 GP, the most powerful one scoring at a whopping 175,325 GP. The book features a beautiful, full-color, digital artwork by Sade for each and every weapon in the book, which I definitely liked. The layout is also consistent and very nice to look at. Each of the thirty blades comes not only with a short story that could serve as a hook on how to get the weapon, but also with several abilities that go beyond +2 ice-bursting sword. I.e., each of the blades (There are also spears, btw.) has some distinctive quality besides its primary characteristics.

Editing and formatting very top-notch, I didn’t notice any mistakes.

Conclusion: Magic item books tend to have a hard standing with me. I’m a sucker for elaborate backgrounds, weapons that level up and PCs with a very limited access to magic weapons and gadgets. I’m quite old-school there, every weapon or magic item in my campaign gets its own background story.

There is obviously not too much space for background-texts for the blades in this pdf, although you get more than in almost all item-supplements I’ve read so far, which is great news – while I love the modularity of recent editions when it comes to magic items, it also made many a weapon or armor a common commodity instead of an awe-inspiring item. The production values are top-notch, as often a picture of a blade makes it MUCH MORE memorable than it would be without it.

That being said, all the blades feature the Rite Publishing style, i.e. they have something rather unusual or special about them – for the low price, that is quite is something!

However, if you’re like me, you would probably have preferred less blades and more background on the weapons presented. I can’t find any serious flaw with this product, though. Thus, for me, this is a 4 star product, probably because it didn’t utterly grip me and make me shout “Hell yeah”. If you’re into equipment books, though, this is gold. For you, this may be a 4.5 or even 5 star-file.

We tend to all too often throw magic weapons at our PCs like darts on a dartboard. Only a few magic items the PC’s receive have a backstory behind them, and even then they the stories are concentrated on the campaign plot or an NPCs history.

Unlike most item books, each item has an image next to it. This is a remarkable addition and really shows how much the writers at Rite Publishing understand roleplaying. An image goes a lot further than a picture. Another unique standout of the book are the mechanics of each weapon. Each has a unique mechanic that creates a good deal of depth to each weapon.

For the Dungeon Master Yes every blade in here is unique, but some are more unique than others. slicer and dicer really stood out. A set of oddly shaped hand weapons, the design screams monk without even needing the description.

The Iron Word