from the foreword:
Welcome to the Complete Book of Magical Items!
A compiled version including all magical items of AD&D? Is this necessary? There were the“Encyclopedias Magica” books, so where is the trick? This is a good question and here is the answer. Gamemasters in AD&D and other game systems often had the problem, that they either played in an official campaign world or in one of their own making. But DMs also tried often to play according to the rules and to use only “official”-campaign sources (and their own self-created ones, of course). So the situation in AD&D was, that there were dozens of different items out there in as many different rule books with the same amount of errata in complete and optional handbooks. Therefore you often had to go through all the different supplements to check them for errata and new updated informations – the reason for this compiled version, which lists ALL magical items of the core books of AD&D without campaign related items but with errata and all available update informations at one glance...and what more important is: with reworked tables to determine the magic items themselves! Because, why was adventuring so exciting and popular? Because of the hunt for treasury and new experiences. But this meant, that you had to offer some new elements and items and not only those, known from the basic rule book, the Dungeon Masters Guide, 2nd edition.
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In this work magical items from the following books are compiled
- The Players Handbook 2nd Edition
- The Tome of Magic
- The DMs Guide, 2nd Edition
- Monster Manual I
- TcBarbH – The complete Barbarian Handbook
- TcBaH - The complete Bard Handbook
- TcDrH - The complete Druid Handbook
- TcFiH – The complete Fighters Handbook
- TcPaH – The complete Paladins Handbook
- TcPsiH – The complete Psionics Handbook
- TcPrH – The complete Priest Handbook
- TcRaH – The complete Ranger Handbook
- TcThiH – The complete Thieves Handbook
- TcWizH – The complete Wizard Handbook
- DwH – The complete Dwarves Handbook
- EH – The complete Elves Handbook
- Gn&HH – The complete Gnomes and Halflings Handbook
- HH – The complete Humanoids Handbook
- DMOHLC – DMs Option – High Level Campaign
- DMO:C&T – DMs Option – Combat & Tactics
- PlO:S&P – Players Option – Skills & Powers
- PlO:S&M – Players Option – Spells & Magic
The items are listed with their original text and were expanded with all errata and comments. Items and updates from “The Complete Thief’s Handbook” and “The Complete Book of Necromancers” were left aside with purpose, to keep up the mystical aspects of these classes and their powers. Further, some tables for the determination of spell scrolls in treasury have been added in the appendix; originally coming from “The Complete Book of Spells”. Also an index for quick reference was implemented and some new items from private campaigns, all optional and given for inspiration. At last an expanded table from the Monster Manual I which concerned the determination of magical items for NPCs is provided.