A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 9: Bell, Book, & Candle

The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 9: Bell, Book, & Candle 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 with some parts being considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is the ninth in a series of supplements detailing low-value permanent magic items.

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

This begins with the typical introduction to the reasoning behind the supplement (for the first time since Vol. 1: Armor and Weapons this is covered in detail). This is to make low-level treasure more varied and interesting, give characters a chance to build wealth at low-levels with permanent magic items under 2,500 gp and give mid-level crafters more items to make. This edition covers bells, books and candles and each also has some optional rules.

Bells are in the first section and there are six of them. The optional rules are for item creation. The first is that bards and classes with a performance class ability can create wondrous items that are musical instruments without having the Craft Wondrous Item feat and the second is to use Perform rather than Spellcraft for skill checks for the same.

The optional rules for Books are similar to those for bells, but with Scribe Scroll for creation and Linguistics for use. There are five new books.

For Candles, the optional rules are similar to the previous two, with witches being the favoured class and that and other classes with the ability to hex not requiring the Create Wondrous Item feat and using Craft (candlemaking) or Profession (chandler) instead of Spellcraft. There are six new candles and these might seem an odd item for new permanent items – given that candles burn down – but none of these candles burn down when lit.

The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 9: Bell, Book, & Candle in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and, despite its short length, these would have been appreciated. Navigation is quite poor.

The text maintains Super Genius’ old three-column landscape format, which is intended to be easier to read on screens and tablets, but is less true for small tablets and is inconvenient for printing. Only one error was noticed; the gong of vexing ringing‘s title said “Gog” not “Gong.” There are a number of colour and black and white illustrations, all displaying appropriately themed items, but in vastly different styles. Presentation is okay at best.

As always, there are Behind the Counter sidebars which detail how the prices for the items were calculated. The Core Rulebook is very poor when it comes to determining the prices of new magic items, so these sidebars are useful. Should a GM disagree with the reasoning behind an item, they can always change the price.

Bards and witches perhaps gain the most benefit from this supplement, especially if the optional rules on item creation are used. Witches in particular gain benefits, as there are several candles specifically aimed at the class – both bells and candles are quite thematically appropriate to the two classes, and clerics have some bells as well, also appropriate. The books are more general in use, but really there isn’t much to benefit true combat types here.

Even though the items are more towards certain classes than others, this is probably one of the better supplements in the series. The Genius Guide to Loot 4 Less Vol. 9: Bell, Book, & Candle can be downloaded by clicking here.