Friday, April 28, 2023

Artifacts of Antiquity


As my conversion of the 3.5 Spell Compendium into 5e was drawing to a close with the final Spells of Antiquity bundle ready to go up on DMsGuild, I started looking into what project I wanted to do second. Following the common DM trope, I already had a dozen or two partially-finished projects that in various states of completion. What I settled on was a full conversion of the 2e Encyclopedia Magica into 5e. This project won't be finished any time soon. With over 6,000 items in the Encyclopedia, published over a series of volumes where each has around 100 different items, I'll be at this for quite a while. Just as I did with the Spells of Antiquity, each one is being released as PWYW (pay what you want), which makes the series completely available to anyone who wants to spice up their games with some wacky items from back in days of old.

I've taken a slightly different approach this time than I did with the Spell Compendium. While converting spells, I didn't hesitate to hack down spells and discard them entirely if they didn't really fit into the current edition. Largely, this was due to balance concerns- spells have levels and certain amounts of power that can reasonably fit into those levels. Not to mention,  several mechanics from 3.5 either no longer exist or are different enough that they no longer have a strong function (ability damage, alignment-based spells, etc). This isn't as much of an issue when it comes to magic items. 

Magic items in general don't seem to have nearly as much structure in 5e. Sure, there's rarity and a cost range associated with it in the DMG, but other than that the system seems to assume magic items aren't necessary and ignores them for balance purposes. With that being the case, there's a lot more freedom to just go wild and make whatever you want. With that in mind, I did try to keep as many items as possible and avoid cuts where I could. The rare exceptions that have come up so far are when magic items are virtually identical to one another (so think: Amulet of Protection from ESP vs Amulet Against ESP) or items that have multiple entries that are the same item, just with a slightly different word choice.

Current Volumes:


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