The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 8: Belt One On 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. The Loot 4 Less supplement series introduces new, low cost permanent magic items.
The PDF is available from RPGNow for $3.99 but was purchased for only $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.
As with all the supplements in the series (bar the first, The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 1: Armor and Weapons, which covers this in more detail) it starts with a brief overview of the concept, which is to make low-level treasure more interesting, to help low-level characters build wealth with permanent magic items, all of which cost under 2,500 gp and give mid-level casters a greater variety of items to create.
Belts explains that the category has been expanded to cover anything that uses up the belt body slot, which includes such as sashes, belt buckles and pretty much anything that goes around the waist.
There are eighteen new belts in total. As always, these cover a range of different uses. The belt of many uses bears more than a little similarity to the rod of many uses from Vol. 3: Hot Rods – both can turn into many different mundane items. None of the belts has particularly major powers, as is the aim of the series, but the coin belt quite frankly seems utterly pointless. It’s highly unlikely that any player is going to want to hold onto a 200 gp item that generates a mere one silver coin per day – and, if you are at all concerned with realism, it seems unlikely that anyone will want to buy an item that takes 2,000 days to pay the cost back. This is really just a piece of odd-shaped loot.
The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 8: Belt One On in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite its length, these would have been appreciated. Navigation is quite poor.
This is in Super Genius Games’ old, unusual, landscape three column format which was intended to be easier to read on screens and tablets (more true of larger devices than smaller ones) but is inconvenient to print out. No errors were noticed in the text. There are a few colour stock images used, not one of which is of a belt or similar item. These are probably the least relevant images in the series to date. Presentation is at best okay.
Bar the previously mentioned coin belt, all the items do have minor levels of utility, which would be more major for low level characters or in a low magic campaign. As always, there are Behind the Counter sidebars that explain how the values for each item were decided – the Core Rulebook being really quite poor when it comes to determining how much a magic item costs. The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 8: Belt One On is a generally decent title in the series and can be downloaded by clicking here.
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