Adventurer’s Vault 2 Preview

10Dec/080

Adventurer’s Vault 2 Preview

Today Wizards of the Coast released a playtest for the next Adventurer's Vault due out late next year and we get a look at two new types of items, Magical Tattoos and Orbs of Sequestered Conflict.

Magical tattoos grant a variety of different bonuses but generally react when you use action points, healing surges or become bloodied. For example, the Backlash Tattoo allows you to make a basic attack the first time you are bloodied as an immediate reaction. The Escape Tattoo allows you to teleport three squares after being damaged by a critical hit. I find these types of items very interesting and can have lots of fun with them as a DM. Imagine instead of opening a chest and finding treasure, a bright light flashes and the PC who opened it is branded with this tattoo. You could even develop some nasty ones that cause negative effects (insert evil DM laugh here) until the tattoo is removed through a disenchant ritual.

The next type of item is called a Orb of Sequestered Conflict and allows the PCs to teleport all nearby creatures into the orb, either to battle or converse in seclusion. This could possibly ruin an encounter that you painstakingly created the environment for, so as a DM you need to be careful about handing these out or place restrictions on their usage. Maybe by having the orb glow softly in a situation it can be used, this would allow you to "turn it off" in special situations. Currently these orbs are detailed in the preview with specific terrain features and they are accompanied by crude drawings of what the terrain should look like. I sure hope these are just temporary and are replaced by real map drawings.

That's about it for this preview/playtest, two new interesting types of items and dozen or so examples. Give them a try and report back to WotC to offer feedback and suggestions. Overall what do you think of these items?