By Thilo Graf
This pdf by Rite Publishing is 25 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisements, leaving 20 pages of content.
The pdf begins with an old-school table of the weapon qualities for use with your trusty d%.
After that, we get the qualities:
- Adaptable: Can be used with weapon-specific feats
- Afflicting: Crit = Bestow Affliction, DC scales
- Ambush: Self-explanatory
- Anchoring: Deny Teleport
- Awoved Death: Vow to slay an enemy
- Bane Burst: Even more damage against banes
- Bane, lesser: Minor bonus against bane
- Blastback: Bullrush hit enemies
- Blood bonded: Bound to a bloodline
- Boomeranging: Hit the enemy from behind with your returning weapon
- Breaker: Item-destroyer
- Burst,Chosen: Works like Burst for chosen enrgy type
- Bushwhacking: Attack from hiding
- Ceremonial: 4 abilities in one, choose at the beginning of an encounter
- Clinging: Magical net enchantment
- Contemplative: Add Wis-mod to attack a number of times per day
- Consecrated: Extra-strong on holy ground
- Counteracting: Better CMD
- Counterstrike: Riposte after a missed attack by an opponent
- Crippling: Crits do Str-damage
- Dark: negative energy damage
- Deflecting: CMD to deflect rays
- Dessicated: Kill Oozes, Water, etc., can destroy liquids
- Dislocating: Teleport attack
- Disorienting: Penalize hit enemies
- Disorienting Burst: Burst of above, more penalties
- Dispelling: Guess what?
- Dispelling Burst: Guess what? in Burst form. Jep, I’m Captain Obvious.
- Equalizing: Negative levels for stronger opponents
- Energy, Chosen: Change energy-type via standard action
- Energy Ray: 1/day blast a foe, scales with your level
- Energy, Seething: Upgraded Version of a normal energy weapon.
- Enhancing: enhances the DC of one of your abilities
- Fast Bracing: Set against charge as immediate action
- Fast Returning: Make full-round attacks with your returning weapon
- Featherlight: Weapon can be used as one category lighter
- Fiendfang: Chose energy and ability damage – this weapon does both, plus bonus to deals with evil outsiders
- Force: Adds [Force]-descriptor to attacks, additional damage, hard to break
- Fortunate: Reroll an attack 3/day (typo here)
- Friend: Weapon is better for a specific race, skill-set etc.
- Foesight: Identify most powerful foe in 60 ft.
- Girded: Hard to break
- Gripping: Better against disarm
- Good Fortune: Use stored luck bonuses. Unfortunately doesn’t mention how to recharge them
- Guided: negate 20% miss chance
- Hardened: Harder weapon.
- Heartseeking: Iconic e.g. vampire-slaying weapon
- Hexing: Penalize hit enemies
- Hexing Burst: More penalties, Hexburst
- Hindering: Potentially cancel out an ability of an enemy
- Homing: Ignore cover less than total concealment
- Ill Fortune: Stores Ill-luck, can dispense it one enemies
- Infectious: Transmit diseases
- Interfering: Hamper spell-casting
- Ioun: Weapons floats around you like an Ioun stone
- Leviathan’s Foe: Extra damage against bigger creatures
- Loyal: Attuned to a specific wielder
- Maiming: Instead of killing your enemy, blind, maim, etc. him/her
- Mage Tuned: Only good for 1/4BAB-chars, for them +4 luck to attacks
- Maneuverable: Second Combat maneuver with half BAB as part of a combat maneuver
- Maneuverable Burst: Bonus to CMB and higher Crit-mod
- Necrofeed: Channel necromancy via weapon
- Paired: Two weapons that help their wielders help their respective comrade
- Parrying: Negate a hit on you or an ally with chance to get hit yourself
- Perilous: Cascading Critical
- Poisonous: Poison spell, scaling DC
- Potent: More damage and higher crit-mods
- Precision: Grants Critical Focus feat
- Preferential: Rangers do more damage against favored enemies
- Preferential Burst: Big brother of the last ability
- Preserving: Do damage to undead or heal allies
- Providence: +1 on saving throws, + 1/day reroll
- Psychic Burst: Dazed on a Crit, scaling DC
- Rapid Reloading: Reload one step faster than normal, Bows and slings get an additional attack at highest BAB 5/day
- Rapid Striking: Additional strike at half BAB
- Retribution: If hit by enemies, the weapon gets better against that foe
- Revitalizing: Use enhancement bonus to heal wounds
- Selective: Choose from two rolls on a critical fumble chart/ card deck if such is used
- Serpent: Transform weapon into snake
- Shatterblast: Ranged sunder with thrown weapon
- Spell Echoing: Duplicate past spells 3/day
- Spellreaving: Unravel spells/spell-like abilities
- Slayer: Attuned to a creature, slays it.
- Smiting: Improves any kind of smite
- Spellbane: Extra damage against spellcasters
- Spellcarrier: Thrown weapon hold touchspell for a time
- Spellstealing: Dispelling weapon that can steal a spell on the enemy.
- Spell Well: Hold touchspell for a time
- Soul Stealing: Can steal the soul of slain enemies, preventing resurrection, clones and the like
- Starshine: Pathfinderized version of one of my favorite weapon qualities. 🙂
- Summoner’s Foe: Dismiss hit summoned creatures
- Sworn: Swear to slay an opponent and gain bonuses
- Tentacle Rope: Use disarm or trip with a net like it was a whip
- Terror: Make enemies shaken, DCs scale
- Toxifying: Improves poisons on the weapon
- Transmutable: Change material of the weapon/damage type
- Twin: When within 10 ft. of another, these weapons improve.
- Voidwrought: Pathfinderized version of another one of my favorite weapon qualities.
- Weaken Resistance: Each successful hit makes SR of the creature deteriorate
- Wrathful: Works when raging, +1d8 damage
- Wrathful Burst: Big brother of the last quality
The pdf closes with 2 new spells, Bestow Affliction(Clr 4) and Teleport Attack (??? 7), the latter of which unfortunately does not say whether it is arcane or divine, though I suspect arcane.
Conclusion:
I am dead tired of the commodity-magic-items and weapons that seem to have taken hold of so many games and this is a step in the right direction – these are qualities your PCs won’t necessarily expect in a weapon and there, at least in my opinion, should be more books like this out there. The abilities never felt overpowered or useless to me. The artworks of the weapons (this is a full-color pdf, btw.!) are beautiful and while I usually don’t like obviously computer-generated art, for this file, they work excellent. However, there are also some downsides to report, namely some editorial glitches, a typo in the “fortunate” weapon description as well as the missing class-descriptor in one of the spells. Additionally, while not required, I would have loved to see some IC-introduction or some more far-out abilities. While some qualities really rocked and I loved seeing an updated version of material from “When the Sky falls”, I nevertheless felt that this book could have been even better. My final verdict, for what the book is and due to the fact that it comes with a 22 pages B/w printer-friendly version, will be a solid 4 stars, a good buy if you want to add some options to your magic weapons.
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