Weapons of Lore for 5th Edition is a supplement by Jeff C. Stevens with more than 140 magical weapons, each with special effects and unique lore.

Disclaimer: We were provided with a free digital copy of this product.

Content

The supplement is divided into 5 chapters, 4 of them containing weapons and the fifth some new NPCs. Let’s take a look at each one of them.

Weapons of Lore is the first part and, as the title implies, the centerpiece of the supplement. It contains 42 named weapons, each with their own little piece of lore – and more importantly, mechanics for them to grow and evolve along with the character wielding them. Each weapon has variations from Common all the way to Legendary, gaining new abilities, more charges, and a scaling bonus to attack and damage rolls from +1 (well, +0 really) to +3. As to how a weapon advances to the next tier – most of them are when a character’s proficiency modifier increases, which also serves as a decent guideline for when you can give them to your players and in what state (I mean, if your players are already level 10, you don’t start with the common version!), but there are other conditions too; for some, it’s when you increase a particular ability, or when you gain access to spell slots of a given level, but there are also some cases that require some in-universe “roleplay” actions, such as defeating specific types of enemies or achieving some other goal.

This is a concept that I myself have thought of and tinkered with (and I’m sure others have too), but it’s great to see it implemented in a supplement, and with a lot of thought and care put into it too. As I said, as the weapons progress, they gain new abilities, not just boosts to their numbers – and I really like those abilities as well. One of my favorite weapons is the Devouring Anvil, a maul that can “eat” different materials and gain various properties depending on them – starting with common materials like iron and quartz, with more exotic options available as it progresses, such as obsidian, adamantine, dragonscale, et cetera.

In addition to the mechanics, I mentioned there’s also some lore, but also information on where it could be found and encounter ideas to make its acquisition a bit more exciting.

The second chapter is all about Cursed Weapons. There’s 32 of them, each with their own unique curse (and usually some enticing ability too, to get the unlucky players interested), ranging from funny (like Butterfingers, a sword that can fall out of your hand – oops) to pretty horrifying (like the Staff of Many Voices – they aren’t going to let you sleep…) to something in between (I’d say the Trident of Fish Metamorphosis counts – a funny name, sure, but the reality of the situation isn’t really worthy of a laugh). Similar to the Weapons of Lore, all of them also have a suggestion for how you can encounter the weapon.

The third chapter contains another 32 entries, this time for Rechargeable Weapons. These are relatively standard magical weapons, using charges to fuel their special abilities – however, these charges aren’t restored with a short rest, a long rest, at dawn, or in any kind of periodic event in general – the items are recharged with specific actions. Some are easy, some are quite harder – for example, Hearthkeeper needs to be heated in a forge for 1 hour, while Flail of the Shining Sun needs a gemstone worth at least 1000gp – and some are somewhat in between, for example Harsh Honesty requires you to succeed on a Deception check with a DC of at least 15. The special recharging rules are a very nice idea, though perhaps not for every party or campaign; I’m definitely going to use them in the future though, and I think they also fit nicely with the Weapons of Lore thematically; I think it would be fun to combine the two concepts in a single weapon, it would certainly give players a lot of avenues for roleplaying.

The fourth chapter is called Enterprising Entrepreneurs, and contains 5 NPCs (well, 4 NPCS and a group of another 4, so 8 total) along with some encounter ideas, mainly connected to the general theme of magic items in general – they collect, sell, hunt, or create them. Finally, the fifth chapter is standard magical items – standard in the sense that they don’t have special rules: no curses, no progression, and no alternate recharging. They’re still very nice weapons though, both in theme and mechanics. One of my favorites is Bluering, a dagger with the eponymous (and very, VERY venomous) octopus wrapped around the blade, or the very grim description of the Voltaic Spine: “made from nerve fiber with the sharp vertebrae still attached, created by removing the intact spine of a recently slain blue or bronze dragon”.

Something else that i want to note for all the magic items, is that I love their names. They’re not just “Sword of X” or “Staff of Y”, but they have unique, evocative names – Cindersmash, Chains of the Betrayer, Rainbolts, etc etc. It’s something you’d expect out of some legendary weapon, and it makes each and every one of them that much more impactful.

Art & Layout

The layout is great – each weapon has its standardized format, and the pages look great with a soft background that’s easy on the eyes, and with some nice ornamentation on the corners of the page. The real winner though is the weapon art: Every single Weapon of Lore has its own art, fitting perfectly to its description, and so do at least half of the Cursed Weapons and several of the Rechargeable and Traditional weapons, made from a variety of artists – but all of them still keeping a very similar art style, and of course a very high quality.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this is a personal favorite – I love magic weapons, I love coming up with new and fun mechanics to put on magic weapons, so Weapons of Lore is just right for me – and for you too. And it’s also available in physical form!

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