Supplement Review: Adventurer's Vault

I picked up the Adventurer's Vault for 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons the other day and finally got my first good look at it.

I must say I am impressed. It is packed full of goodies, mundane and magical (tho mostly magical) and has a very impressive variety, with something for every class (including a few that haven't been released yet), every level and every style of play.

It kicks off with a selection of new mundane weapons and masterwork armors. Thanks to this book, I now understand what masterwork armor is for; maybe I'm just dense but I did not get the point of masterwork armor as presented in the PHB. Weapons get a couple of new properties: Brutal: a minimum number on the damage dice and Defensive: a +1 to AC as long as you're wielding it and are proficient.

Then comes a selection of mounts and my 2 favorite sections: Vehicles and Alchemy.

Vehicles are handled much better than in 3rd edition, particularly vehicles in combat. It clarifies the fact each vehicle requires a driver/pilot (and in the case of large, complex vehicles, a certain amount of crew) and that character is required to spend actions during combat to maneuver and keep the vehicle under control. It also has info on what happens to vehicles as they take damage, if they loose too many crewmen, or if the driver is unable to control it for some reason.

Alchemy is a feat now (heroic tier) and can be taken in place of Ritual Caster if you get that as a bonus feat from your class. Alchemy works a little like rituals in that you need to acquire the formula (buy or find one) then spend some time and GP for component costs.

Alchemy seems to be a little more utilitarian and flexible than rituals. All the alchemical formulas can be scaled to different levels with bigger attack bonuses and more damage, and unlike most of the rituals, don't have a duration. Alchemy creates permanent, physical items so you can spend a long weekend making Alchemist's Fire in preparation for your showdown with that troll.

Alchemy is much more combat oriented than rituals. I don't think there are any rituals that deal damage, and they're the types of things that you do after an encounter. "OK, that monster is dead, let's camp here, cast Raise Dead on the fighter again, then Observe Creature to see what that evil archmage is up to." Alchemy, on the other hand, mostly creates dangerous little trinkets to throw at your enemies or to booby trap a room, the kinds of things you usually prepare before a battle. A nice touch is that many of the dangerous, thrown trinkets can be converted (for a little extra gold) into dangerous ammunition for a ranged weapon.

Then comes about 160 pages of magic item descriptions, the meat of the book. All the categories from the PHB are here (armor, weapons, etc.) plus a few new ones that I want to point out.

First up are Companion Slot items. According to the sidebar, animal companions and mounts have a single magic item slot that you can equip an item in. It mentions the (as-yet-still-in-development) Beastmaster Ranger build and other new classes and builds will have animal companions.

Next up is Battle Standards, magical banners that, when deployed by planting in your square or an adjacent square, create a magical zone giving your allies a boost. One example is the Battle Standard of Tactics, which gives all the allies in the zone telepathy with each other and they always have line of sight to each other.

Under the broad category of Consumables, we have Whetstones and Reagents. When applied to a weapon, Whetstones give that weapon extra typed damage (fire, poison, etc) until the end of the encounter. Reagents are used in conjunction with powers that have specific keywords that increase the effectiveness of that power. For example, Dark Clover can be used with a power that has the necrotic keyword to give the target vulnerability to necrotic attacks. As their name implies, consumables are gone once their used.

I haven't read all the item descriptions (that's tedious and will take weeks) but have read some here and there and like what I've read. I do wish there was more in the book about creating items. We have the Alchemist feat for alchemy items, the Brew Potion ritual for potions and elixirs and the Enchant Magic item feat for. . . everything else I guess? I can appreciate the simplicity of that over 3rd edition where, to make magic items you had to have one of several feats (one for every category of item), know certain specific spells (the list was specific to each individual item), spend time, gold and xp. But having a single level 4 ritual that's good for everything from a +1 dagger to a mummified hand to an Ioun stone seems kind of weak. And there are some things that it's not quite certain the Enchant Magic Item ritual covers. Whetstones? Sure, probably. Reagents? Not so certain. They're listed in the magic items chapter, but are discussed like they're naturally occurring (tho rare) things: Black Cave Pearl, Creeping Gatevine, Dragon Bile. An Apparatus of Kwalish? Even less certain. It's described as a mixture of magic and engineering, but shows up in the vehicles section of the (mundane) equipment chapter. I also miss the a la carte build your own magic weapon and armor tables from 3e. Tho that did lead to abuses; I once built a bow so expensive, a 30th level character couldn't afford it even if it was the only thing they bought with epic starting gold.

Those quibbles aside, I do think it's a useful supplement, particularly if you're a DM who likes to build his own campaigns. As a final note there is an appendix that talks about how to deal with magic items in a campaign and has useful new ritual: Transfer Enchantment. It allows you to move the entire enchantment from one item to another, provided the target item is valid for the enchantment type (in other words: no vorpal robes)

"Tuhlader"

My 3 year old daughter has a word that uses often in place of "later." She'll say things like, "We're going to Gran-ma Shari's tuhlader" or I don't want to go to sleep now, I want to go tuhlader"

I've been wondering about that and I've come up with 2 explanations.

1. She's blending the phrase "until later." I'll have to listen for it, but I suspect we often tell her that she can't do something "until later" and, if that's true, we almost certainly clip it to "till later."

2. I think this is more likely - She's using prepositional "to" in the same sense as today, tonight, and tomorrow. All of those words usually refer to something happening in the future (like later) and it just makes sense to continue the pattern.