Adventurer's Vault: A 4th Edition D&D Supplement

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Hundreds of new weapons, tools, and magic items for your D&D character.

This supplement for the Dungeons & Dragons game presents hundreds of magic items, weapons, tools, and other useful items for your D&D character. Whether you're a player looking for a new piece of equipment or a Dungeon Master stocking a dragon's hoard, this book has exactly what you need.

The book features a mix of classic items updated to the 4th Edition rules and brand-new items never before seen in D&D.

Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

A Mediocre Tome of Treasures... September 24, 2008
21 out of 28 found this review helpful

...but it depends on what you're looking for. As a DM, i found this book mostly just a huge list of charts for magic items (or pseudo-magic items, the alchemical stuff), most of them recreating the combat conditions we're all familiar with from the PHB: i.e. ongoing fire, acid, thunder, cold damage, Stun, Immobilize, Daze, Save Ends, etc etc.

There is almost no interesting descriptions, unless you consider the above list interesting. Many people do, in fact.

If you loved the magic item listing in the PHB, and the way magic items were handled in general, you will love the Adventurer's Vault. If you thought that 4e magic items were bland, repetitive, and not as good as the fascinating items that permeated 3rd edition (and earlier) then you won't like this book either. For instance, i'm pretty sure there is no Deck of Many Things in the Adventurers Vault; it's way outside of the point of giving you an advantage in a fight, which is almost solely the focus of magic now.

Nor does it even touch on the topic of Cursed Items, but maybe that is something waiting for the DMG 2.

For me, i'm going to take a few ideas from this book and just make my own magic items for the players, ones that have more varied abilities. Such as a Wand of Magic Missiles with charges that DOESN'T miss and inflicts 1d4+1 points of damage per charge expended, as well as adding a permanent +1 bonus to the wizard's normal "roll to hit" magic missile. He misses half the time anyway.

Or a Rod of Atrocity for the warlock.

See, the 4e magic items just add some fancy descriptive name to a magic item, then slaps on acid damage, or fire damage, push one square or daze until the end of the next turn, and pretend that it's something special. It's not. It's just the same old effect that can be accomplished hundreds of other ways from spells, powers, exploits, and other magic items.

This is not a bad book and has its uses, but know what you're buying before you purchase it.

4 out of 5 stars

More things than you can shake a stick at September 23, 2008
16 out of 17 found this review helpful

In a first for D&D, the equipment book is actually the first non-setting supplement released; this is unusual, as the Arms & Equipment Guide for 2e and 3e were released in the middle of each edition's product cycle.

In this not-terribly-thick book, you'll find exactly two chapters: Gear, and Magic Items. Production values are pretty high, and the artwork is mostly all-new; I don't recall any recycled art. Some pictures are captioned, others are not, which is irritating.

Gear is non-magic items...new weapons, new armor, mounts, vehicles, alchemical items, etc. The weapons are the most detailed, filling weapon group/type combinations left open from the PHB, along with new properties, like Brutal (reroll any weapon damage dice of n value or lower). The armor isn't too different from that released in PHB, but seems better, I haven't quite figured out if they pay for the improvements some other way. The mounts are kind of a mixed bag, they're nice and fantastic, but their carrying capacity is rather limited. Vehicles I haven't looked at too much, and alchemical items seem useful.

Most of the rest of the book deals with magic items, of all the varying types, from the plussed (weapons, armor, amulets, implements) to the random, including more potions. There are a great many of each type, including a boatload of magic weapons. Many old standbys made it in, from the sunblade to the decanter of endless water to the various bags of tricks.

It's nice to have this out so early, when it's most useful. The one main flaw is also a virtue, in that the magic item properties really aren't excessively useful in most cases; many properties are once/day powers that are nice, but limited in utility. On the other hand, this means there aren't going to be One Best Item of each type for a given level, and even if you get kind of a weird item, at the very least you're getting the base enhancement bonus your rolls or values.

One useful inclusion is a "move the magic" ritual, that allows you to move an enchantment from one weapon to another, so if that +2 Sunblade drops on a scimitar, but you want it on a khopesh, you're good to go. There are suggestions on making unique magic items, but nothing specifically crunchy about that, and, of course, there are no new artifacts.

On the whole, a pretty good book. While not absolutely perfect in every way, it's definitely a worthwhile buy for any 4e player or DM.

5 out of 5 stars

Wonderous Diversity September 18, 2008
11 out of 14 found this review helpful

It's nice now to have a very big list of new options for both mundane and magic items. However, I am even more pleased to see the return of mount-items such as horseshoes of speed. I find the vehicle rules to also be very interesting, and a nice addition. And getting alchemy as an option, potentially instead of ritual casting, is also very nice.

As I expected, the longer 4e is going, the more diverse options they are getting a chance to put in. The corebooks might have seemed a bit limiting at times, but they are the core books only. Can't really compare that to the expanse of info from 3.x or earlier editions. Looking forward to seeing what books like Martial Power bring as well.

1 out of 5 stars

Dictionary yes, guide no September 20, 2008
8 out of 26 found this review helpful

Adventurer's Vault is a major disappointment with almost exclusively table after table of arms, equipments, and their costs and almost no discussion of anything related to arms and equipment.

The section on "Weapons" has three paragraphs and then a gazillion pages of weapons and how much they cost. Looks like one person at Wizards threw this thing together in a couple of weeks.

This is more like a dictionary listing of arms and equipment with one exception -- there's no index !!!

(Sorry Amazon) I recommend that you find this book and flip through it. You will quickly see what I mean. Ready, find "Shield of Blocking"...go...times passes...times passes...you're in a maze of twisty passages...you're in a maze of twisty passages...you're dead.

It's a shame there is so little discussion of arms, armor, and strategy and tactics associated with each. I expect so much more from Wizards.

4 out of 5 stars

Very "slick!" (almost) September 18, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

There are many things I like about this book, and a few things that bug me (hence the 4 stars instead of 5).

What they did right:
They added alchemy, and made it much like rituals. This gives much more diversity to the character builds. I love that. Alchemy is a more 'mundane' way of adding cool elements to the game. Rituals (although can be performed by anyone) makes much more sense in the hands of wizards, clerics, warlocks, and such. And Alchemy makes more sense for rogues, and the martial classes... since it deals with potions and poisons.

They added a ritual that allows the transfer of magic from one item to another. If someone finds really cool large armor, but the little halfling wants to use it, well now she can. This is not a wow, because as a DM I already made something like that up... but still, now its in writing.

There are many very cool magic items, vehicles, weapons, armor... you name it, it's here.

Ok, why the loss of a star? I was looking for level 2 armor (this was my first look into the book) and I found that "SLICK" armor is listed in the list of magic armor as category "chain, scale, plate." So I read the description and find that it gives a bonus to acrobatics checks for escape actions... I'm thinking 'chain, plate, and scale armor for acrobatics checks?' Then I see that it should have REALLY been classified under 'cloth, leather, and hide.' THAT makes more sense. So it was correct in the description, but not in the table. I don't know how many mistakes this book has, but it was the first item I looked for and it had a mistakes.
EDIT: I didn't mention that there are several mistakes like this. I wouldn't downgrade a review for just one.

Anyway, the book is by-and-large awesome...but has a few mistakes.

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