The material in the books will vary in usefulness to the GM as some of the traps are much better than others. The traps are broken down first by where the trap would be located. The options here are Room Traps, Corridor Traps, Door Traps, Items and Things. Each trap is also given a deadliness rating ranging from one to five skulls with the higher number of skulls being the deadliest. There are few five skull traps but quite a few four skull offerings. The trap descriptions also provide information on who provided the traps in most cases.
For the Room Traps there are twenty-five offerings. In these the majority of them seem to be in the three to four skull offering. The chapter heading suggests this would be the case. With that being said two of my favorites in this section are Roulette and Burial at Sea both of which are not deadly in and of themselves.
The number of traps provided in the Corridor traps is larger than any other. There are thirty-three distinct trap entries provided in this section. One of my favorites in this section was provided by Liz Danforth and is again a non-deadly trap called Moebius Hallway. Most in this section are not as deadly but there are a number of traps in this section provided by Ken St. Andre some of which are quite deadly.
The third section covers Door Traps and sadly this is the shortest of the sections. The book only provides eight options for door traps. I guess you cold off set this by making the picking of a lock trigger one of the traps designed for the corridors. What this section lacks in quantity it makes up for in danger. Most of these traps are four skull offerings. Though I was not a big fan of any of these the Catastrophic Keyhole needs to be seen for the illustration alone.
The section of Item Traps gives the GM fifteen offerings to choose from. The fact that there are not too many is good as the opening section advises against too much use of these. It suggests appropriately that using too many of these will make the players way to paranoid and slow the game to a crawl as they hunt for traps all the time. Most of thee are nuisance traps like Old Smokey which I can see me using sometime but For Someone Special deserves a special nod and it is a five skull offering.
The last section of traps is titles Things. These are things that don't fit into any of the other categories. In some cases this is because they could be used anywhere and other because they are just out there. There are twenty offering here so there should be something the GM can find to use. These range from one to four skulls with a lot being on the lower end. My two favorites here are Blotomoto and Genius Gold. Genius Gold is listed as a single skull but in my world could be the most deadly five skull trap.
Like most any book comprised of submissions from different people you will find varying levels of quality and creativity. Luckily for the GM who can picks this up I think the books succeeds more often than it fails. It should be noted that there is a 102 trap that you have to figure out using some sort of code in the book. Never being good at that I have no idea what it is.
Spell:
Changeling
Level: Sixth
Range: Touch
Duration: 6 Turns + 3 Turns/Level
Ares Effect: Caster
Components: V,S
Casting Time: 3 Segments
Saving Throw: None
By means of this spell the caster is able to become for all intents and purposes the person that they touch when this spell is cast. The magic-user will become an exact duplicate down to clothing and current physical condition of the target.
The caster will not only assume the physical nature of the victim but they will also know what that the victim does. They will also retain their own knowledge as well. The mind of the victim will be known except for things that might be considered buried secrets but all common and history will be known. While in the other form the caster may still cast spells but if the person being copied is a spell caster they will not have those abilities.
The spell will remain in effect until the duration expires unless the caster wills it to end beforehand. The spell will cause the caster to have an aura of magic about them. The spell can be dispelled normally through use of a Dispel Magic spell. It will also be canceled immediately if the caster and the person they are a mimic of come into direct contact for more than one round.
Disclaimer: The spells that you will see, for how ever long the write ups last, were all written up or conceived of 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.
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