The Finieous Treasury, Weight Amplification

Finieous Fingers is the self proclaimed "World's Greatest Thief". The Finieous Treasury was published in 1981 and included all of the strips published in Dragon Magazine through that time. The magazine is 40 pages long and includes the Dragon strips, A who's Who from the strips, a short biography of the writer and artist J.D. Webster and also a new adventure Finieous vs. The Cloud Giants.

The strip details the adventures of  Finieous Fingers, who is actually quite cowardly and often inept, and his henchmen Fred and Charly. Through their adventures they encounter comrades and adversaries all the while making a total mess of things. Finieous is based on a close friend of the author and one of the villains has the name sake of Tim Kask who was the editor of Dragon Magazine at the time. The adventures of Finieous did not end with this book nor did they end in Dragon magazine. He later appeared in Adventure Magazine, Space Gamer, Fantasy Gamer and was last seen in Shadis though drawn by a new artist.

The adventures in the Finieous Treasury are perhaps his best though many of the later ones I have not had a chance to read. I would not have thought this went for what it did in the secondary market but it is still worth grabbing a copy of it. The cast of characters appearing the Finieous Treasury are:

Finieous Finger - "World's Greatest Thief"
Fred and Charly - Men-atArms
Eric the Paladin
Skraig the Merciless - Red Dragon
Grond - Anti-Paladin
Mergatroid - Dragon
Kask - The Evil Wizard
The Hobbit Thieves Guild


Spell:

Weight Amplification (R)

Level: Second
Range: 6"
Duration: 1 Round/Level
Ares Effect: One Item
Components: V,S,M
Casting Time: 4 Segments
Saving Throw: Negates

Weight amplification enables the magic user to make a single item increase in weight by a factor of their level. It must be noted that the spell will only affect non-living objects. The weight of the affected item will increase by a factor of one for every three levels of the caster. Thus a third level caster doubles the weight while a sixth level caster will triple the weight.

Objects in the possession of a living creature are entitled to a saving throw. The items make a save as a fighter of one half the owners level. Items in the possession of willing recipients need not make a saving throw. Intelligent weapons will be entitled to a save if the DM feels the weapon would not be willing to be affected. When saving they save as a magic user equal to their owners level with all appropriate bonus due to pluses. In no case will artifacts or relics be affected by this spell.

The reverse casting of this spell will decrease the weight of an item by a divisor equal to the level of the caster. A third level caster will cause an item to weight one third while a tenth level will cause it to weigh one tenth of its normal weight. The reverse casting of this spell has all the same limitations and restraints as the normal casting.

This spell will have additional effects when used on weapons that are being used in combat. The changes are the damage done by weapons with their weight changed and also affects to durability.

Items with their weight increased will do one extra dice of base damage for every double in weight. The DM will also need to factor in the weight of the item for factors of use, encumbrance and fatigue.

Items with a decrease in weight will have the damage done divided by one half the factor of weight decrease. This means that a weapon that weighs one fourth its normal weight will do half damage. The minimum amount of damage on any successful attack will be one hit point. If an items weight is reduced below one gold piece it must make a save versus crushing blow for each successful hit in combat.

The material component for the normal casting of this spell will be a small lodestone which is destroyed with the casting of the spell. The component of the reverse casting is a small piece of down which is also destroyed in the casting of the spell.

Disclaimer: The spells that you will see, for how ever long the write ups last, were all written up back in the 80's so the terminology may not appropriate for anything other than 1e and depending on how well I did back then it may be slightly off for that as well. If there is any duplication of spells that exist now it is most likely I wrote mine first :) Please feel free to comment on them but try not to be too hard on me. If anyone wishes to use these in anything they print please let me know in advance and all I ask is proper credit.