Purple Duck Storeroom: Magic Pants!

This pdf clocks in at 15 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of SRD, leaving us with 11 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This statement by grandmaster crunch Owen K.C. Stephens could have come from a review of yours truly as well: “Know your item slots. Don’t just invent them. Best to avoid magic pants.”, to briefly paraphrase the comment that spawned this supplement – so yes, here, we tread in the glorious tradition of the Baldur’s Gate-saga’s easter-egg and get magical pants, though admittedly more balanced ones than the ridiculously OP item we got via the pantalon-transmuter.

So, this pdf introduces the leg-slot, where one may wear leggings, kilts, skirts, stockings and the like – a decision I actually like because I NEVER understood the lack of battle-kilts, stockings of seduction and similar items in the presence of belts, amulets etc. That being said, this does not mean that the items themselves universally lack a certain winking, unobtrusive sense of humor: Take the Clam Diggers of Harvest – they allow you to be considered proficient with monk’s shovels (and treat all shovels as such), confer a +2 bonus to atk and damage versus crab and clam-vermin and let you treat shallow water and mud flats as normal terrain instead of as difficult terrain. This is at once hilarious to me and makes sense – in a world where giant crabs and deadly clams exist, why wouldn’t there be specialized magical equipment to deal with them?

On the high-level David Bowie-fanboy side of things, the legendary Codpiece of the Goblin King increases your illusion and enchantment DCs by +2 while also increasing your sorceror level by no less than +5 for the purpose of determining which bloodline powers they possess. Here, I do think the item overshoots its target; unlocking new bloodline powers 5 levels early (in the face of no caveat that abilities are not gained early) seems excessive. That being said, this can be nerfed easily. And it’s the codpiece of the goblin king – dance, baby, dance!

Also pretty interesting – Grown-up Pants – +4 to saves versus fear effects and 1/day swift action enlarge person for 8 minutes. Pretty hilarious! The very costly and powerful Happy Pants increase any beneficial morale bonuses by +1, while also providing immunity to spells of the emotion and mind-affecting descriptors. On the low-level end, 3/day message and +4 to Heal checks as well as no requirement for a healer’s kit are interesting options. It should be noted, that not all of these items imho are well-priced – the Jodhpurs of the Mounted Guard provide no less than +5 to Ride checks AND the Mounted Combat and Spirited Charge-feats AND makes all mounts be treated as combat-trained- for a paltry 7500 GP. There are also some glitches to be found herein – the Kilt of the Tyrant, for example, has only a CL of 5th, which, for an item that costs 59000 GP – while I get this rationale for the spell-like ability it confers and seeing how the headband of alluring charisma has a CL of 8th.

Fans of magical girl anime may enjoy the new magical miniskirt, whereas fans of classic comedy will almost certainly get a chuckle out of parachute pants. Skald’s kilts provide btw. benefits for the ACG-class, so yes, there is some support for that one herein as well – and yes, swashbucklers et al. also get there. I also very much got a smile out of magical traveling pants that lose their enchantment if not passed to new wearers regularly…

More fun still – what about cursed pants that compel you to brag about your own awesomeness? Pants that conjure forth swarms of ants…inside? Pants that set themselves ablaze whenever the wearer utters a lie? Yeah, fun!

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are good, though not perfect – I noticed a couple of minor issues, though nothing too jarring. Layout adheres to a printer-friendly 1-column standard, which means you can print this one out in digest-format. The pdf provides one original piece of full-color artwork. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Mark Gedak, Perry Fehr, Sean O’Connor and Jacob Trier have crafted some pretty awesome and fun material – the pants herein are ridiculous and often, downright fun. And no, I do not expect magical pants, an item-class that adds a new slot (resulting in more stacking options etc.) to be perfectly balanced. Alas, in some cases, there obviously are some issues herein, with CLs not lining 100% perfect up and power-levels of some pants being quite frankly beyond what I’m comfortable with. If you utilize some caution and nerfing, this *WILL* be a very inexpensive, exceedingly fun product, but without it, it does sport some rough patches in balance and minor hiccups in rules-syntax/semantics. Hence, my final verdict will clock in at 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 for the purpose of this platform.

You can get magical pants (come on, that is cool!) here on OBS and here on d20pfsrd.com’s shop!

Endzeitgeist out.

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