A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 6: Cloaks and Daggers

The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 6: Cloaks and Daggers by Owen K.C. Stephens is a role playing game supplement published by Rogue Genius Games (originally as Super Genius Games) 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 one in a series of supplements that contain low cost magic items.

The PDF is available from RPGNow for $3.99 but was purchased at the reduced price of $0.20 as part of a special bundle. Two thirds of a page are the front cover and one page is the Credits and Open Game License.

The supplement starts with a brief overview (a more thorough one can be found in the first in the series, The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 1: Armor and Weapons) of the aim of the supplement. This is to give a variety of low cost, under 2,500 gp permanent magic items, no one shots or charged items. The reason given is to make low level NPC equipment, and therefore treasure, more interesting, make it easier for low level characters to build wealth and give mid-level crafters more items to make.

First up is Cloaks. These are classed as anything that uses the shoulders item slot, which is not limited to items that are strictly speaking cloaks. There are ten cloaks in total, although one comes in two versions.

The first five cloaks are five racial cloaks. As with boots of elvenkind in The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 4: Fantastic Footwear, the cloak of elvenkind has now been joined by cloaks of dwarvish-, gnomish-, halfling-, human- and orcishkind. Each has characteristics that link with portrayals of the race in question. There are further cloaks that act as feather fall, intercept small amounts of damage, allow restful sleep in adverse conditions, improve AC and a final cloak that comes in sets of five with the primary wearer able to grant the others, if within 100′, the ability to cast touch spells.

Next are Daggers, of which there are six. These are all pointy things, but some are not, strictly speaking, intended to be used as weapons. There is an invisible dagger, one that opens letters and similar without damaging the seal or similar, one that does a coup de grace, one that detect a specific type of creature (think Sting from The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings), one that puts a wounded creature at a disadvantage versus spells, spell like and supernatural abilities of the wield and a final one that makes a piece of cloth become a solid surface.

The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 6: Cloaks and Daggers in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite its length, these would have been appreciated given the number of different items. Navigation is quite poor.

The text maintains Super Genius Games’ old, three column landscape format, and a couple of errors were noticed. The most significant was that the letter opener and table knife – neither of which are really weapons – have identical pieces about using them in combat, down to the name, with both sections referring to the table knife. It’s likely that the letter opener does have similar problems. The landscape format is intended to be easier to read on tablets, but this is less true on smaller tablets and is less useful for printing. There are a number of appropriate black and white illustrations, although no specific ones for individual items. Presentation is okay.

As with other supplements in the series, there are Behind the Counter sections which explain how the price of some items was determined. Given the less than brilliant method for determining such in the Core Rulebook, seeing the logic is useful.

The actual items themselves vary quite a bit in utility. Some will be useful for a while at low levels, and can then be sold. Others, such as the letter opener which allows the user to open letters without damaging the seal are less useful. That’s the sort of thing that is likely to be useful once, and then sold. Or perhaps simply sold. Players will probably get a little bored if they repeatedly have adventures where they have to surreptitiously intercept items of mail. The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 6: Cloaks and Daggers is still a useful entry in a series that provides new and more varied loot at low levels and can be found by clicking here.