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

huge amount of items without a lot of fluff taking up space; it's a winner.

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

This is by par the best equipment book Wizard of the Coast has released for any version of Dungeons & Dragons. This book gave my gaming group pretty much everything it needed for magical equipment, mounts, new weapons and the ability to make alchemy items. A must have for any 4E D&D game!

Very useful. A much needed expansion on the short list of magic items in the Player's Handbook.

This is a must have for any 4th ed players out there. For DM's and Players alike this will complete your games. It will give your pages and pages of just the list of one type of magic item. There are 6 pages of just the list of magical armors...thats not even the actual descriptions either. Honestly, if you haven't already clicked add to cart by the time I'm done...well...

Overall a very good book. If you like what you've seen in 4E so far, you'll like it. If you hate 4E, this won't change your mind. For those still on the fence, I think it shows the depth of the new system and that flexibility hasn't disappeared in 4E.

This is definitely a player resource and not a DM one. DMs may want to have it for reference, but with the way 4E handles treasure and wish lists and all, any DM expecting to get a ton of use out of this is going to be disappointed. That's not a bad thing in my opinion though as the AV puts items control more into the players hands and at the same time gives the DM a comfort level that they aren't going to have to look over every thing their players are interested in to make sure it's not a broken trick.

Sure, there are some strong combos and possibly some unbalanced ones, but overall items will be there to sweeten and customize what the characters do, not their primary source of power.

The AV adds a new feat and alchemical items. These items are now balanced so that you can make and buy better versions at higher levels - making alchemist's fire useful at all levels, not just the early ones.

The magic item section has tons of new items and options - gone are the days of formulaic rules and al a carte construction. While at first it might seem odd that some weapons can have certain properties and others not, I found in most cases allowing the missing weapon creates a broken combo (so the ommission is intentional). For example, there are several polearm enchantments that affect how far you push or slide someone. It may seem odd that it does not work for spears also until you realize that it intentionally precludes you from using a shield and taking advantage of an at-will like tide of iron.

On one hand, it will feel like a step back in the uniqueness of items since the 3E formula system provided almost infinite combos, but on the other hand, we're not even 6 months into 4E and already we have a wealth of item options - it only feels like your options are limited if you compare it to 3E. Someone who never played 3E would probably never think that weapons and armor can't be unique enough with all of these options.

Overall I wholeheartedly recommend it.