Magic Merchant House of the Transformed Toad
Magic shops are an odd element into the d20 game. Many of the people who have played for years area little reluctant to introduce them while the people newer to the game seem willing to embrace them with no problems. Some people fear that magic shops take the wonder out of magic. That it cheapens the reward for the players making it too easy for them to get such items. The Magical Merchant series seems like it is going to in some ways tackle these issues. It presents a single small magical shop with a gnome owner and a small inventory.
House of the Transformed Toad is a new PDF by a new company, Clockwork Golem Workshop. The author is Peter Ball. The PDF is not that big being only twelve pages in length. There is not a lot of art and the few pieces are pretty simple. The Layout is just fine with no problems for reading it. The book has no book marks though and while for a PDF this size they might not be needed it is still better to see them then not.
This Magical Merchant book is filled with nice detail. It is way more then a simple shop. The author starts with a short few paragraphs explaining how the series is a hope to run the middle ground of having shops but not allowing players to buy anything they want. The shop presented here is has a limited supply of items so it would not be difficult for the players to buy the shop out of cure light wound potions for instance. This will serve as a simple way to supplement the players but not provide an endless supply of items for their use.
The shop for the most part has items for low level parties. One will not find a robe of the arch magi here for instance. There area few new items presented here like Liquid Images. These are small vials that contain a simple illusion inside. There are six stock illusions and special orders can be made. One can find a few wands, scrolls, and other small odds and ends in the store.
The real benefit of the store though it that it can quickly become a reoccurring place with an interesting reoccurring NPC. The store has a good history and the Telgen Mythander is fully fleshed out. There are some nice details like the fact that Telgen just recently learned to craft wands so anyone he sells a wand to with be questions ed on how well it worked.
Over all this is a pretty nice example of a magic shop. It does have some security but it is not completely secure as a building. There is no layout of the store presented but enough detail to figure one out. There are a pair of adventure ideas presented as well, but adventure ideas using a magic shop should be fairly easy for people to come up with on their own.
<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
Rating: [3 of 5 Stars!] |
|
Log In 
