Useful Dungeon Equipment

(White Dwarf #12)

Lew explores creative uses for equipment, revisiting ideas he later expanded on in Dragon magazine. Was the original better?

What’s it about?

This article focuses on practical equipment ideas with rules and prices for the items discussed. Lew provides costs for silver plating weapons and explains their use, which is genuinely helpful. He also covers niche topics like bronze weapons for dealing with rust monsters, fire arrows (arrows wrapped in oiled rags), and blessing weapons for encounters with rakshasa. 

There are creative ideas like a hollow wooden tube for breathing underwater. While ideas like the bracketed droppable torch, the odd doorstop design, the clever two dead rats (to befriend or distract monsters), and the fake dust of choking are later reused in his Dragon article.

Lew ends by advising DMs to not let players get away with too much on the item front and warns that abuses of the powerful flaming oil bomb and poison should be responded to in kind by the monsters. Lew knows there are abusable parts of the game and encourages you to de-escalate them with the players before they ruin the fun.

Any new insights?

• The inclusion of costs and gameable rules for items, such as silver-plated weapons, are appreciated.

Should I share this with my players? 

I think so. It’s got some of his ‘best’ equipment ideas and doesn’t push the envelope like his Dragon article. It's a short article that's more hits than misses. Even so, it's not making it to my “best of” list.