Game: Artifacts I: Ducks of Ultimate Doom
Publisher: The Le
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 8th, November 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 5/10 [ Perfectly acceptable ]
Total Score: 6
Average Score: 3.00
The Ducks of Ultimate Doom is a more traditional d20 supplement than you might first imagine. I know it surprised me.
This is a collection of artifacts for a d20 fantasy game. At the minute it costs only $1 but that’s a mark down from the common price of $2. What do you get for this exorbitant fee? You get 21 artifacts. I don’t think that’s bad value at all. This isn’t a Word document simply dumped into a PDF file. We have a landscape version for onscreen reading, a printer friendly PDF and even a rich text file version if we want to copy and paste.
I’m not quite sure what’s open content in the PDF so let me put that to good use, combine that with a reviewer’s right to quote a small percentage of the document and grab from the copy and paste document.
The Ducks of Ultimate Doom might be able to attract Geese.
“Although each goose is small in size, feeding on a goose will automatically fulfill the hunger of any creature of Colossal size (or smaller) for 7 days. Furthermore, feeding on the goose will enchant the eater with a Bless Spell for 24 hours (Caster level 20th).”
And that’s the other surprise, I suppose, even the Ducks of Ultimate Doom aren’t all that silly. They’re just a touch surreal. I think it’s quite clever; these might actually be the sort of item that you could smuggle into a high fantasy game without your players noticing. The ducks might attract the geese, geese which have other advantages (but not game bustlingly so), but the Ducks of Ultimate Doom might also turn into a vampire duck. This is just a challenge rating four duck which will have a go at the party. It’s a CR 4 encounter so I suppose that might be a problem if all four ducks in the set transform. Other than that, it’s quite a likely effect for an artifact, it should help grant life but every now and then it does something different and needs to drink it.
This is a 25-paged PDF. There are 21 artifacts so allow for padding and legal foo and we’re at a page per artifact. Again this is good going.
The other artifacts aren’t as interesting. We’ve more traditional magical armour and weapon sets. Rather than pay money for these we have thousands of DMs trying to sell their ideas or give them away free in exchange for a credit.
The Baubles of Ancient Power sit right of the middle – just a touch more interesting. The Baubles are power enhancements. Find a weapon you like (like an already powerful item), put the Bauble on it, speak the power word and grant the weapon an extra power. As an added perk to an already powerful combination the Bauble’s power only works when whoever installed the Bauble wields the weapon. It’s pretty much every player’s dream.
One of the traits that these artifacts share is that they level up with the characters. I quite like touches like that. It makes it easier to fit the item into the game and keep it relevant throughout the campaign. It’s not just the power level of the artifacts which change as the wielder’s power level increases but their appearances too.
Let’s use the handy dandy rich text document for cut and paste again and look at the Ring of Extraordinary Charging. “This ring is made of a pitch black metal with no other markings. However, when worn the ring will change its color based on the wearer’s character level. At levels 1-5 it will turn gold, at levels 6-10 it will turn green, and at levels 11-15 it will turn red, and at levels 16+ it will turn white.”
It’s nice when artifacts have such decent descriptions. I’ve just quoted a small fraction from the Ring of Extraordinary Charging.
I’m quite pleased with the Ducks of Ultimate Doom. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the Ducks themselves are a laugh and yet usable, but there’s nothing wow factor here. What we do have is an extremely affordable product with entirely playable and usable supplement.
There’s a minimum checkout value at for most electronic RPG stores. If you’re trying to make that value and are a d20 player then you’d do well to make that limit by adding the Ducks of Ultimate Doom. Otherwise; well, you can live without these artifacts.
Do you have any thoughts on this article?
