It is fair to say that the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons has had a few problems with magic items. After the excesses of 3E, where a character needed about 10 magic items just to keep up (and for them to be continually increasing in value), the designers pared down that list to just three (armour, amulet and weapon) and then depreciated the effectiveness of other items. Instead, the focus was to be on character abilities, and 4E’s design certainly delivered that.
Unfortunately, magic items have a key place in D&D as one of the main areas where the DM can reward his players according to how he wants the campaign to feel. Experience points are all well and good, but magic items allow the DM to show judgement and personality. When all the magic items are bland and boring, that doesn’t give much room for the DM to reward his players.
3E’s design placed magic items firmly in the hands of the DM, as they were available for purchase (crafting) by most groups. A strong-willed DM could keep them under his control, but most games I saw had the players just treating them as a smorgasbord of new powers.
With the release of D&D Essentials, 4E went down a compromise path: players would be able to craft common items (and thus have access to the basic gear they needed), but uncommon and rare items would be in the hands of the DM. There was also the promise of more interesting items. Sadly, the selection of items in the Essentials line was very poor, and the announced magic item supplement was cancelled.
Until now. Early this year (2011), Wizards announced that Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium (MME) was back on the release list. It would have more flavour text, and the items would fully implement the rarity system. The great thing about the book is this: it delivers, and for me as a DM it makes selecting magic items for my group fun again, as the items in the book give them powers they want to have.
Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium is a relatively slender hardcover book at 160 pages in full colour. Artwork is used fairly sparingly throughout the book, mostly to illustrate the items, but the full-page chapter illustrations provide a little more variety and context. My favourite is Jim Nelson’s dragon hoard picture.
The book consists of six chapters and four appendices.
Chapter 1: Armor
Chapter 2: Weapons
Chapter 3: Implements
Chapter 4: Magical Gear
Chapter 5: Artifacts and Curses
Chapter 6: Adventuring Gear
Appendix 1: Hirelings and Henchmen
Appendix 2: Magic Item Stories
Appendix 3: Item Levels as Treasure
Appendix 4: Item Lists
The lists on the D&D Compendium tell me there are 69 rare, 114 uncommon and 81 common magic items in the book, which is a pretty fair selection. Fewer than 50 are listed as being reprints, and the reprints generally have tweaks to their text, mostly making them more effective. In addition, there are a number of non-magic items or special items, such as the superior implements (reprinted from Player’s Handbook 3).
The items’ mechanics display the increasing familiarity and confidence the R&D team have with the 4E ruleset. Thus, we get items such as the potion of cure critical wounds, which costs a healing surge to heal 3d8+20 hit points, but works even if you have no surges (albeit only if you’re bloodied). It’s that sort of extension to the previous boundaries of the game that make the book – at least mechanically – a joy to peruse.
However, it isn’t just the mechanics that are entertaining. The book is written as if it was a tome compiled by Mordenkainen, the great wizard of Greyhawk, and furtively copied and distributed by Qort, his former apprentice. Throughout the work are various sidebars of text that read if written directly by Mordenkainen, which are often acerbic commentary on the magic items described. The general item descriptions also have tales as to how or why the item was created. All of this makes the book flavourful and enjoyable to read.
“In my experience – for all their long-winded ramblings about lineage and tradition – dwarves are a greedy and devious people. I write this not to insult them in any way. I have found greed to be a useful motivator both for myself and my underlings, and I prize the ingenious trickery that some members of the race demonstrate. Such cleverness can be seen in the creation of mighty dwarven throwers. You might see before you a dwarf holding a two-handed maul of so much heft it seems he could barely swing it, yet he hurls it fifty feet as easily as a child casts a stone. Then, in a blink of an eye, he holds it high once again.” – Mordenkainen’s notes on the Mighty Dwarven Thrower
Of course, the test of a game book really comes in how it plays. I’ve managed to see a number of the items being used in the games I run and play in since the book was released a few months ago, and my impression of the items is favourable. There are a couple of items that, whilst very useful, make we wonder a little at their balance (in particular, the elven chain mail, which can be worn underneath light armour for a +1 to +3 item bonus to AC, and might make a light-armoured thief have a better AC than a plate+shield fighter!)
Otherwise, the items have been interesting enough so that my players perk up when I give them an item. This was particularly noticeable in my Epic level campaign, where pre-MME the players would be greatly bored by the Adventurer’s Vault (1+2) items available. The items in MME aren’t greatly different from those that came before, but they’re more refined and manage to give bonuses the players are excited about. That’s no small feat.
Apart from the regular run of magic (and a few mundane) items, there is also a section on Story Items. In brief, story items have some additional property assigned to them so that they help tell a story. Each Story Item is described by three attributes: Story Obstacle, Property and Form. Some stories require specific items, while others could apply to many items. I find these particularly well thought-out and useful; we’ll see if any can be made use of in my upcoming Viking campaign (in particular, the True Name property…)
The first appendix is a reprint of the Henchmen and Hireling rules by Robert J. Schwalb from Dragon #397. Some might find this annoying; I find it useful to have the rules in a proper book – especially rules that I have been using in my campaigns. The second appendix has twenty sample story hooks and twenty sample item details to make items more unique and interesting. The third appendix (which is only one column in length) discusses giving upgrades on magic item levels rather than regular treasure; thus upgrading the knight’s sword from +2 to +1 instead of a brand new sword. It’s nice to see, but I feel the treatment is inadequate and a bit clunky. That said, I was giving out “crystals of plus sixness” in my epic campaign, so the idea is sound.
The most important appendix is the last: the list of items, sorted by level, rarity and type. When used in conjunction with the random magic generation system of D&D Essentials (which randomly determines the level and rarity), it was extremely easy to just read down the list and select an appropriate item for the party. Given the quality of the items, this worked wonders in my Epic campaign.
Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium is a superior treatment of the subject of magic items in a D&D campaign. The refinements of the D&D system that were apparent during the Essentials overhaul are very well implemented here. These days, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Emporium is the primary source of magic items in my D&D campaigns, which is an attestation to the quality of the items it describes. I’m very happy to have it at my game table.
Greyhawk lore/utility?
Hi Merric—
I’m not playing 4e, so how useful would MME be from a purely Greyhawk-oriented POV? Are the lore snippets and commentary from Mordy and Qort worth the price of the book? Are there new magic items, artifacts and relics, etc., that would be useful to add to my 1e GH campaign? You mentioned that there weren’t a lot of reprinted magic items, but when I was flipping through the book, it looks like mostly reprints to me (from the 1e DMG POV, vs. from other 4e/3e books POV).
Thanks!
Allan.
Re: Greyhawk lore/utility?
G’day, Allan!
I’m sure there’s new, never-been-seen-before-in-D&D content in the book, but I really don’t know how much there is. The reprints comment was referring only to 4e, not previous editions. I need to have the book in hand to see how much actual “Greyhawk” lore is in it, and it’s managing to avoid that of late. 🙂
Cheers,
Merric