The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring by Alex Riggs and Joshua Zaback is a role playing game supplement published by Necromancers of the Northwest for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is part of the Ebon Vault series that concentrates on items; in this case, rings.
This is a 47 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $2.49 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the colour front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page is an ad for other supplements and one page is the Open Game License.
It starts with a three page short story, Girl’s Best Friend, about a thief who chooses to steal an intelligent ring (or is chosen by the ring to be its next owner) – with bantering between the thief and the rather bombastic ring. This may be a ring detailed later.
The Introduction says that most of the rings in the core rulebook are rather expensive, often feeling more expensive than they are actually worth, and quite often end up forgotten and unused, not even ending up in treasure. This supplement aims to help by adding new and interesting rings, ranging from a mere 500 gp up to 300,000 gp.
Ring Descriptions has 20 different, and thorough, descriptions of rings, so that when a ring is found it can be described as something other than “a ring.” Some of the descriptions look as if they will be better suited for certain types of rings, due to wolf decorations, spider shape or being made of wood or leather.
Magic Rings has the descriptions of the actual rings. There are 70 new rings, although some are more powerful versions of others, so the total is a bit less. These range from the 500 gp key ring, which adds up to 5 keys to the ring, to the 300,000 gp (despised by dragons) ring of dragon command which are attuned to specific dragon types, allow the wearer to speak Draconic, grant spell-like abilities like the specific dragon type, allow the wearer to attempt to dominate the dragon and grant immunity to attacks from the dragon type unless the dragon succeeds at a Will save or the wearer attacks first. The final section is on five legendary, unique, rings, four of which are in this section.
This section has a table of rings by price and two sidebars, one on new rules for wearing multiple rings and one on different types of rings, other than those for fingers, and rules on different places to wear them.
Intelligent Rings has six new unique rings with intelligence, one of which was mentioned in the previous section. Each ring is named, has stats, special abilities, an origin story and a personality.
Finally, there is a d100 table of Random Command Words.
The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring in Review
The PDF is well bookmarked, with all the sections, and individual rings, linked. Navigation is very good. The text maintains a two column format with a colour background and no errors were noticed. There are a number of colour stock images of rings, that look to be computer created. Presentation is okay.
There are a lot of different rings, most with interesting powers rather than simply being spells in a can. The addition of unique, intelligent rings with a history and personality is also good. All told, there are a lot of different rings that GMs can drop into treasure, or give to NPCs, with a whole range of powers, from basic utility up to commanding dragons.
At the full price of $2.49, this supplement is excellent value for money. For the fractional amount of that which it actually cost, it was exceptionally good value for money. With a decent table of fluff descriptions, another of command words, lots of rings and even some intelligent ones with distinct personalities, this is truly a great and comprehensive supplement. The Ebon Vault: Power of the Ring can be found by clicking here.
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