17 Magical Cloaks

[Psion]

You know what would make you look COOL? A nice magical Cloak. Think about it... while your party members are dying left and right, your bright warm magical cloak is there to keep you alive. Don't have one you say? Well fortunately The Le Games is here to help with 17 Magic Cloaks!

Written by The' Le and Sean Holland, we 17 cloaks to make your teammates drool. Each magic cloak comes with creation cost and market value, making this book useful for players and GMs alike.

Here is what you get:
-Cloak of Aqua Men
-Cloak of Colors
-Cloak of Deflection
-Cloak of Dragon Strike
-Cloak of Goo
-Cloak of Healing
-Cloak of Casting
-Cloak of Feasting
-Cloak of Flames
-Cloak of Force
-Cloak of Phasing
-Cloak of Precognition
-Cloak of Razor Flight
-Cloak of Souls
-Cloak of Spikes
-Cloak of Ugliness
-Cloak of Vampirism

This product comes with a landscape PDF for easy onscreen viewing (fully bookmarked), a portrait PDF for easy printing (also fully bookmarked), a Rich-Text-Document version for easy cut / copy / paste (because we KNOW what a pain in the ass it is to copy/paste from a pdf), and a couple files of pure and simple shameless advertisements.

 

[Pinotage]

17 Magic Cloaks

17 Magic Cloaks is a pdf product from The Le Games, one of several products in The Le Games' 17 Series. 17 Magic cloaks features new magical cloaks that can form part of magical treasure or a plot hook, or can be something the characters can craft during time off from adventures. This pdf, written by The Le and Sean Holland, has a page count of 19 pages, 3 of which are devoted to OGL declarations, and 2 which are devoted to introductory material, leaving 14 pages to detail the 17 cloaks in this product. 17 Magic Cloaks normally retails on RPGNow for $2. I received 17 Magic Cloaks for free as a review copy.

Initial Impressions:

This product comes in three different versions - an onscreen version, a print version (the former both fully bookmarked) and a rich-text cut, copy and paste version containing the product text. For those that create their own adventure or campaign notes from published sources, the latter is a useful addition to any pdf product. In addition, there is a larger version of the cover art as a separate file. Cover art and interior art is simple, yet gives the product a more complete feel, although in some cases the art looks irrelevant to the cloaks described on the pages that contain the art.

The cloaks presented range in cost from 4500 gp to 45000 gp, offering a good range of prices for various levels of character. I'd hoped to find more cloaks at cheaper prices, something that would provide an alternative to the Cloak of Resistance at lower levels. The pdf provides a treasure table to randomly select a cloak, although it would've been more useful if the cloaks had been divided into minor, medium or major so that they could be used in conjunction with the tables found in the core rules. There are some really intriguing cloaks in this pdf, such as the Cloak of Souls, fashioned from the souls of dead humanoids, and the Cloak of Vampirism, conferring some of the abilities and weaknesses of vampires to the wearer. A number of cloaks were extensions of existing spell effects, such as the Cloak of Feasting, while others offer unique abilities such as the Cloak of Precognition or the Cloak of Goo. In general there are some clever ideas in here, mixed in with some ordinary ones, but there should be something in there to inspire many DMs or players.

The Details:

The meat of the pdf details the seventeen cloaks listed below:

Cloak of Aqua Men - offering benefits in venturing underwater and dealing with underwater creatures
Cloak of Casting - alleviating some of the arcane spell failure caused by armor
Cloak of Colors - a cloak that changes its ability once per day as it shifts in color
Cloak of Deflection - provides protection against ranged attacks
Cloak of Dragon Strike - allows the wearer to summon a dragon to aid the character
Cloak of Goo - a cloak that dispenses in a unique way with a mouldable goo that can be shaped into walls or bridges
Cloak of Healing - offers a number of immunities and provides healing ability
Cloak of Feasting - creates food and sustains the wearer without food
Cloak of Flames - provides the wearer with a protective sheath of fire
Cloak of Force - grants an armor bonus to AC while allowing the wielder to also harness this force armor as an offensive power
Cloak of Phasing - protects the wielder by phasing in and out of the material plane
Cloak of Precognition - grants to wearer future perception, allowing re-rolls of dice and other abilities
Cloak of Razor Flight - the wearer can fly, and also use the razor sharp wings formed by the cloak as a weapon
Cloak of Souls - a cloak stitched together with the skins of the dead, allowing the wearer to harness the power of their souls
Cloak of Spikes - an excellent defense against grappling
Cloak of Ugliness - proving that ugliness is not always such a bad thing
Cloak of Vampirism - conferring certain vampiric benefits and weaknesses to the wearer

There are a number of neat ideas amongst these cloaks, as the brief descriptions above should attest to, particularly such cloaks as the Cloak of Souls or the Cloak of Goo, the former in particular. While the implementation of the cloaks' abilities is occasionally somewhat clumsy, the ideas behind them reflect some creativity and originality, and inspire further ideas based on them. The cloaks are all presented with suitable flavour and descriptive text, followed by detailed descriptions of their abilities. Whether you need to summon a fire breathing dragon to aid your escape, or hastily construct a bridge over a chasm, or heal a fellow adventurer when your cleric is spent, each of these cloaks provides a handy addition to plot, treasure or craft offering something for those players or DMs looking for alternative or new magical cloaks.

The introductory materials provides guidelines for balancing the cloaks presented, something that would most likely be required for a number of the cloaks presented in this book - either cost or toning down the power of the cloaks themselves. A large part of the balancing issue stems from the fact that many of the cloaks presented use the wearer's character level as a basis for the their power, rather than something like the magical item's caster level. While the idea of items increasing in power with character level is appealing, it does present other problems that would need careful consideration, such as cost and power at higher levels. The Cloak of Force, for example, provides an armor bonus to AC equal to half the wearer's level. At 20th level, this amounts to a +10 armor bonus to AC, an epic item by most standards, and certainly worth more than the listed cost.

There are also a number that offer free action activation of the cloak's abilities. I felt that in some cases the activations should have been standard actions instead. For example, the Cloak of Deflection allows the wearer to generate an aura, as a free action, that deflects ranged attacks, which would've been more suited as a standard action. Some of the cloaks also increase in power and offer additional abilities the longer the cloak is worn, an idea that can affect the items power since such potential restrictions are often not restrictions at all.

Another idea that is touched upon briefly is the idea that any specific cloak could have a 'creation' recipe - something that could be used as a plot hook or the focus of an adventure. A couple such plot hooks are mentioned (one with a particular Star Wars feel!), although no details of any recipes were given.

Conclusions:

17 Magic Cloaks offers new cloaks that can be used in any campaign setting, as cloaks or potentially as other items if the item enhancements are transferred to different items. It provides numerous good ideas behind the cloaks, shows some originality, and present a DM with a few options to expand his campaign or game, or the player to create a different concept based on a novel cloak.

Despite some good content and ideas, the pdf requires some balancing on some of the cloaks and some careful thought on the application of the cloaks' powers. It also unfortunately suffers from numerous editing errors and occasionally clumsy game mechanics and wording (e.g. cloaks have enhancements, not enchantments).

I think this pdf could be a worthwhile addition to any gamer's library, although the ideas inspired me more than the mechanics did. Based on balance between the good and the bad, the product gets a rating of three stars, or average, but was closer to three and a half stars. A link to the product's page is listed below for convenience.

17 Magic Cloaks Product Page

 

[pogre]

17 Magic Cloaks

17 Magic Cloaks
Written by: The Le, Sean Holland
Page Count: 14 pages

Price as of July 27, 2005: $2.50 on sale for $2.00 at RPGNOW

Introduction
This is yet another pogre playtest review. I have gone into some detail, but if you are looking for the short version I have included a capsule review as a conclusion.

Format
The folks at The Le Games are leaders of the pack when it comes to formatting the files for ease of use. Readers receive a pdf formatted for onscreen use, a pdf formatted for printing, and an rtf file for easy paste and cut. I really like this feature and it is a great selling point.

The Material
17 Magic Cloaks is another in the “17” series published by The Le Games. The beginning of the piece warns that power levels vary in different campaigns and DMs will have to tweak the cloaks to match their campaigns. As I soon discovered this is an understatement. There is a neat idea about having PCs quest for the recipe to build certain cloaks instead of just making magic formula available to them. It was the most valuable item in the book.

The cloaks are each given a title, a brief description, and a summary of the necessary creation costs and market price. Many of the cloaks left me scratching my head on the creation costs and not just from my campaign’s power level, but as compared to one another. For example, one cloak allows underwater breathing and limited communication with aquatic animals and costs 18,000. While another cloak allows the wearer once per day to lower some or all of his armor's AC bonus, and for each point of AC that is lowered this way, his max Dex bonus is increased by 1 and his Arcane Spell Failure Chance is reduced by 5%. What’s the cost for your fully plated magic user? 5,000 market price! Admittedly, he can only pull this trick off once per day, but what caster would not use this cloak?

There are cloaks that do random different things every day, cloaks that emulate the paladin’s lay hands ability, cloaks that form walls, cloaks that turn into dragons, and so on. There were not any serious game mechanic flaws I saw in these items, they just were not particularly inspiring. There was one cloak I viewed as far too powerful for the price: The precognition cloak has three charges per day that allows a wearer to do one of the following – re-roll at attack or damage die from an opponent who attacked him, re-roll a hit dice when gaining a level, ask for a hint from the GM once per an encounter, re-roll a skill check, etc. Kind of like the ultimate lucky cloak this fine garment runs a mere 17,700 market price.

Reading through the material I thought it might be useful for someone running a very high magic level campaign with no holds barred. Playtesting in campaign was going to be impossible, as my magic levels are standard D&D.

The Playtesting
I decided to playtest these cloaks in a somewhat unfair way. I’ll let the reader judge if at had merit. I had five friends draw up characters of 5th, 10th, and 15th level. I then set up a gladiatorial contest. Each contestant had a standard amount of money to equip themselves and could use magic items. The caveat, of course, was that each person had to take at least one cloak from 17 magic cloaks.

The playtest was a lot of fun and we discussed at length the merits of the various cloaks. One of the cloaks was voted as inspiring, the Cloak of Vampirism, five of the cloaks were voted as broken, and the rest were pretty much trashed. The players’ reflections very much matched my own.

Capsule Review
The format of 17 Magic Cloaks is excellent and very useable. It includes a pdf for online reading, a pdf for printing, and an rtf for cut and paste. The price is very cheap; unfortunately I do not believe this product is worth it. There are a couple of decent ideas and one inspiring cloak, the Cloak of Vampirism, but the vast majority of DMs can do as well or better on their own. The product might have its uses in a high-magic no-holds barred campaign. I cannot recommend 17 Magic Cloaks for most campaigns.

July 27, 2005
Keith Pogue (AKA pogre)

 

[Tinner]

17 Magic Cloaks
Author: The Le and Sean Holland
Publisher: The Le Games
Format: Color PDF/Color PDF/Two color RTF
Size: 19 pages (onscreen version)/18 pages (printable version)/16 pages (RTF version)
Price: $2.00

Magical cloaks have long been a staple of fantasy literature. From the first time we read of the elven cloaks given to Tolkien’s Fellowship, all the way up to Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak, whenever a fantasy character wraps himself in a magical cloak, you just know something cool is about to happen. Magical Cloaks should be mysterious, enigmatic and most of all – magical! In this respect, The Le Games has definitely delivered with their PDF “17 Magical Cloaks”.

Part of The Le Games’ “17” line of PDF, this product delivers exactly what the cover advertises. 17 Magical cloaks – no more, no less. I was pleasantly surprised to see that unlike many other companies, The Le Games has no problem listing every cloak to be found in the PDF right on their website. All seventeen are listed right in the ad copy. The PDF files are all fully bookmarked, and it seems The Le Games commitment to making user-friendly products doesn’t stop there. While many other PDF publishers include two versions of their files – one for on screen reading, and another formatted for printing – TLG goes one step further and includes an RTF file that can be easily copied from, edited or manipulated in whatever manner the buyer wishes. As a DM who likes having fully prepared and printed notes for my game, this is a big plus.

All told, there are seven files contained in the ZIP for 17 Magical Cloaks. In addition to the three variations mentioned above, there are a JPG of the cover artwork, a JPG advertising another TLG product, and a “Shameless Advertisement: PDF for Tyche Games in Athens, GA. The final item is a “Read Me” text file that explains what each of the other files is. I appreciate the number of files in this bundle. TLG goes a long way to provide maximum value. And I don’t even begrudge the advertising files contained in the package, although if I downloaded this file via Dial Up, I might wish the advertisements had not been included, or at least been smaller, especially if I lived outside of Georgia.

Opening up the on screen PDF we find that the file begins with a brief two page overview of how to use these cloaks in you game. Including this is very handy. The power level of these cloaks varies wildly! A DM who casually introduces an item like the Cloak of Vampirism is in for a decidedly different experience than he’d get by introducing something like the Cloak of Goo. DM’s should look these cloaks over and get to know their abilities before randomly introducing them as treasure. TLG has made accommodations for this, and clearly encourages DM’s to compare the power of these cloaks to the power level of their game. Of course, should you wish to start adding these cloaks in immediately, a random treasure table is included as well. If your PC’s are the types who enjoy making their own magic items, there’s even a bit of advice for introducing the “recipes” for these cloaks into an existing game.

That done, the authors dive right into some cloaks. There are some real gems here. The Cloak of Dragon Strike offers a minor AC bonus and some fire protection, but it also transforms into a Medium dragon to fight for its master. The Cloak of Razor Flight would be perfect for any X-Men readers who are fans of Archangel.

There are a few oddballs here that will have players and DM’s alike scratching their heads wondering “What the heck do I do with this thing?” The Cloak of Ugliness makes the wearer hideous and deformed, but it offsets this by allowing them to drain Charisma and use it for themselves. As the owner increases in level he can learn to drain more points, and even other attributes. Another one that left me wondering was the Cloak of Goo. This bizarre little creation can slough off portions of itself to create architecture. Bridges, walls, etc. can all be shaped from the goo shed by this cloak, which then regenerates its lost mass. Very strange … these items are clearly not for every campaign, but their very quirkiness makes me want to find a way to add them into my game.

Conclusion: The Le Games delivers exactly what it promises in this product, namely 17 Magical Cloaks. The cloaks are extremely varied, and one or more of them should fit into almost any campaign. The files themselves are attractively laid out and easy to use without being overly flashy. The inclusion of an RTF version of the file is a big plus not only for those who want to copy and paste, but also for those who wish to print the data without any images. For two bucks, this product offers a lot of value.

 

[Wystan]

17 Magic Cloaks
The Le Games
Authors: The Le, Sean Holland
Layout: The Le

This is a prize review (I won via the The Le What Do You Know GameShow), non-play test. I have a few of The Le Games books and I am trying to review them. I will grade the product on a few different Criteria and then give a small overview and grade the PDF as a whole.

1. Art: The art in this product fluctuates between line art, detailed drawings, 3D renders (at least that is the feel I get from the Dragon floating in mid-air picture, to a simple illustration. The art does not fully convey the sense that this is a PDF about cloaks, I think a few shots of the cloaks themselves would be better for the presentation. The art is good, but not fully fitting. Score – 2

2. Layout: There are 3 different versions of the PDF; I will be scoring the Print Version. (I did look at the onscreen version and it is very similar and scores the same.) The layout does not feel crowded; the art is spaced well and is open and clean. The tables appear to be well laid out and show no errors that I can discern. I do feel that the names of the cloaks could be better thought out in some areas. (Cloak of the Aqua Men?) The only other quibble that I have is that the OGL takes 2 pages. Score – 4


3. Items: The cloaks vary in power from one that grants water breathing and talking to fish to a cloak that allows a ridiculous amount of different types of re-rolls and hints. The power level varies so greatly that I think it would have been better to codify the cloaks into power levels rather than keep them as cloaks and have a 1d20 roll to select one at random. Some of the cloaks have minor issues, like the cloak of souls not explaining what happens to it when it runs out of souls, or even if it can be recharged some how. Score – 3

4. Ideas: The ideas for giving the cloaks to the players are ok, but they could have been more fully fleshed out and presented. I could see the inclusion of a few more plot hooks and such as strengthening the product. As it is, it seems that the GM needs to mainly place these in the campaign by a random treasure die roll? Score – 3

Overall Rating: This is another of The Le Games supplements and I feel that they do a good job of introducing a new idea, but they vary in the quality of the items presented. There is a large amount of power fluctuation and I can see a lot of the items needed GM adjudication before they can be used. I would use some of these in campaigns that I run, but I would be hard pressed to run them as is. The book is for sale at RPGnow for $2.00.

Score – 3.0 (3)