Continuation of magic item compendium, on page 4 after discovering that apparently neck took up most of a page by itself.
Amazing Great Reasonable Rubbish
Shoulders
Wrists
Too many items again! Rings are in part 5.
Amazing Great Reasonable Rubbish
Shoulders
- Spoiler:
Catching Cape - Consumable. swift action 20% miss chance vs ranged 1 minute or until misses due to this. Skip.
Cloak of Human Guise - disguise self but only for human-blooded to look fully human, and you're obviously the same person still. There's rather less good cheap stuff in the head slot, so you're probably better going the classic cloak of resistance and a hat of disguise.
Cloak of Resistance - Resistance bonus to all saves. These are so cheap and good at all-round defence it's hard to find any realistic competitor. Buy as soon as possible. Only exception is if you have some other reliable source of the same effect.
Muleback Chords - Increase strength by 8 for carry capacity only. This is primarily only useful for low strength characters who regret their decision when they have to wear armour or if you need to teleport with a huge load of stuff.
Shawl of life-keeping - 1/day store up to 10 hp, command to retrieve it or immediately when knocked out. Lasts 24 hours. Penalties if something gets it while you have stored hp in it. About all the cheese you can manage with this involves using leftover resources at the end of the day and natural healing, so I might recommend this as a passable low-level cleric or paladin item.
Shield Cloak - It's a cloak that can be a mwk light wood shield, and enhanced as such. You'd only take this for subtlety since the weight difference of 4 lbs. is negligible and the actual solution to a weight problem is muleback chords.
Pauldrons of Unflinching Fortitude/Cloak of Quick Reflexes/Cape of Free Will - Cloak of resistance with one save +1 higher than normal for 50% more. Mythic stuff for relevant rerolls. If you're making them, the lower ones are decent stepping stones up, but by +3 you're more or less better off with a strict upgrade.
Quickchange cloak - Store up to 3 mundane disguises for later use. As always, arguably better than hat of disguise because it's much less obvious to magic or incidental seeing through. Also cheaper. And can work as just cosmetics more easily.
Cowardly Crouching Cloak - Cower in fear as move for sanctuary (W11); blind while doing so. Probably a move to fix it, too. This was good until the blind part started. Only thing I can think of to cheese this is a belt of the weasel/monkey style and blindsight, which makes for an expensive gimmick. Save just isn't worth the effort.
Entangling Aiguillette - 1/day immediate entangle something that hits you (R13, increasing each failure), neither of you can move while it's active. Relatively easy to get out of, in the scheme of holding effects. Hilariously, it costs more to make than buy due to an error; it's okay enough to maybe buy it if it's actually 2k to buy, but not worth the effort at 6k. Regardless, it falls off rapidly.
Cloak of the jungle - 1/day Be a large tree or shrub for 1 hour. Fairly circumstantial.
Cloak of Elvenkind - +5 stealth. Boring but functional.
Cloak of the Hedge Wizard - Keyed to a school of magic. At will prestidigitation and relevant school cantrip, 1/day two relevant 1st level spells. Most notable is Divination with detect magic/detect secret doors/true strike for surprisingly large practicality for martials (and just in general, even), with honourable mentions to Conjuration (Acid splash/mage armour/unseen servant) and illusion (Silent image).
Cloak of the Night sky - Constant endure elements, sleep in medium armour, 1/day know direction. worship Desna for 1/day longstrider and flare. It's almost comic how few magic items there are that just fully protect from hot and cold environments, although given the all day nature of the spell you should really just do a potion rather than buy a dedicated item. Worth picking up if you can get the longstrider though!
Rockfall cloak - +2 stealth underground. Consume to make a shield of rock that protects from falling rocks/regular falling. Technically the shield surrounds you, making it not very useful in combat exceot as a temporary measure.
Cloak of Fiery Vanishing - 1/day -If hit by fire effect, can pretend to die and go invisible 5 rounds. Like the flavour, but don't see much use for it. Skip.
Caparison of Resistance - Cloak of resistance for mounts, and applies bonus to one rider, too. for the odd price change of 2.7 times regular cloak. You're better of with a regular cloak for each of you, assuming a horse can wear one.
Cloak of the Crusader - 1/day bless. Worship Iomedae for +1 nat AC and get illusory banner. The banner is always kind of annoying because of needing to carry it normally, but it's frankly not that good. And doesn't stack with heroism. All up skip.
Deathlurker's Cloak - 1/day doom. Worship Groteus for 1/day CL3 False life. Coup de Grace while false life is active for 1 temp hp. The false life is pretty good, but the doom is rubbish.
Cloak of Fangs - +1 cloak, 5/day swift bite attack for one round (or improve existing bite). Anything that gives a natural attack is great for martials, and this is a nice cheap upgrade from the basic cloak.
Great Barghest hero cloak - +2 intimidate, worship goblin gods for 1/day beast shape 2 into goblin dog for 7 minutes. Ironically better for non-goblins. Goblin dogs aren't great in the scheme to things to transform into, but this is pretty cheap for this kind of effect. Fairly decent barbarian item. For 500gp more grab the Bear Pelt of the Bonebreaker.
Grasping Cloak - Swift action retrieve stored item/pick up nearby item. 1/day standard +4 CMD. Sometimes it turns up and it's useful. Mostly for scrolls and potions and things while you want your move action to get away from the thing eating you.
Pauldrons of the Serpent - +2 dodge AC vs AoOs, +2 CMD vs Grapple/trip/movement. This could be interesting with the mobility feat or high AC caster.
Cloak of Blood Alarm - Ratfolk item. 1/day when you (a ratfolk) take damage, alerts nearest ratfolk ally within 10 miles, tells you both approximately where each other are. This might become useful, maybe, if it worked for more than just ratfolk in any way. You don't technically need to wear it though, which gives it some potential.
Bear Pelt of the Bone Breaker - +2 intimdate, 1/day CL7 bless. Worship some giant god for 1/day beast shape 2 into black bear 7 minutes. Although there aren't stats for a black bear, so assume grizzly as lowest CR bear. This is a strong polymorph effect and worth grabbing for a martial... if you can make the UMD check (and this is the only reason it's not great). Even the bless is decent enough caster level to work nicely.
Rimepelt - Single use Beast Shape 4 into winter wolf 2 hours. This is actually incredibly cheap considering the duration is 10x what it ought to be. It's a solid breath weapon and stat boost, and the only actual problem is the vulnerability to fire. And being consumable. It's still an outstanding consumable
Cloak of Woodland Animals - +1 cloak, 3/day summon random harmless woodland animals 10 minutes. They're surprisingly well trained. There's probably some good use for this, but it's more practical to pay an extra 500gp and get a +2 cloak instead.
Stonemist Cloak - +5 stealth in mountains, 1/day obscuring mist. You're after the obscuring mist, because the cloak of elvenkind is better and cheaper for stealth. Unimpressed.
Cloak of Eternal Mist - +4 untyped stealth in fog/mist, count as being in water for water dependency, don't move for concealment (i.e. 20% miss chance). Certain races, such as gillmen, absolutely need this, even if it's just for an occasional thing. Otherwise, it's actually decent as a caster or archer item.
Swordlord's Cloak - For Aldori Swordlords. Cloak of resistance that also gives equivalent insight AC bonus when full attacking for 4x base cloak cost. Not UMDable due to wording. Slot efficient though, if you're going for either the archetype or prestige.
Cloak of the Yeti - Endure elements cold, +2 intimidate, +1 actual nat AC. Real nat AC is pretty rare, although you're probably better off with the +2 resistance for the same price.
Featherscale Cloak - +5 swim, 1/day feather fall, 1/day hide from animals (self only), 1/day beast shape 1 into birds or fish only. What a large variety of stuff. I'm not convinced any of it is worthwhile.
Golden Eagle Epaulets - 1/day CL5 bless/sanctuary, +2 diplomacy and one other skill. Doesn't inspire.
Shroud of Venom - +5 conceal poisons, but only last an hour if you do so. Assassin item if ever there was one. And also of very limited use conventionally.
Skelterhide - +1 cloak with +2 for Will, reroll confusion die and take your pick, can't talk or write (Permanently?), 15 min/day ignore permanent mental effect (such as insanity). This is an odd item. Wild Rager barbarian might like this before you can afford an Azata's Whimsy, but that's a rare exception. Solid skip.
The Red Raven's Cape - 1/day really short distance and dramatic dimension door. Apparently the iconic vigilante has been around for quite some time... It's a half price cape of the Mounteblank, which is a significantly longer range, but this'll do for a city or dungeon if you need to escape.
Iron Guard Pauldrons - Endure Elements cold, +4 resistance vs fire, +2 intimidate. I suppose this is actually a fairly large chunk of reflex saves, so it's not awful.
Cloak of Heavenly Fire - 1/day immediate 1d8+5 fire to thing hitting/touching you in melee, double if evil (R15). 1/day cure moderate. Has benefit of action economy at least.
Cloak of the Scuttling Rat - Beast shape 1 to be dire rat, 5 min/day. First one that neither requires a weird deity choice/UMD nor is consumable. It's the most flexible to use, but it's only really good for sneaky purposes.
Dead Man's Shroud - Constant hide from undead, 1/day invisibility. Save DC on hide from undead is too low to cause any problem to real undead, but invisibility is always useful. It's actually slightly cheaper than guidelines suggest.
Mantle of the Darkest Night - 10/day deeper darkness on self while taking full defence, expend remaining uses for short duration deeper darkness. It's a solid active defence item, but the probability of it being used is minimal.
Seafoam Shawl - Fins to feet 5 hours. Yep, that'll see a lot of use.
Treeform cloak - 1/day be a tree, heal 1d6 each hour of direct sunlight while a tree. The cloak of the jungle is probably sufficient for your... being a tree needs. The healing is hardly relevant while wands are around.
Cloak of the sneaky scoundrel - +5 stealth, easily drawn hidden light blade, spend panache for vanish. There are a couple of effects that work so much better with being able to draw a weapon like that. The vanish would be good if it was UMDable. Mostly though, just stick with the cloak of elvenkind (unless you're a swashbuckler, in which case the vanish makes this alright)
Eagle Cape - Constant feather fall on self, 1/day beast shape 1 into eagle 10 minutes, but better fly speed, +5 perception while eagle. Eagles are one of those creatures that are surprisingly decent in combat, but this is also a fairly solid scout/rogue item as well. And of course, you can just swap it with a cloak once you've used it for the day.
Cloak of the Manta Ray - Drawing attention to this entirely because it is the cheapest and best method of breathing and moving around underwater permanently out of all the many many items that do this.
Turn into a manta ray while underwater, including 60ft. swim speed, and can release your arms for normal use of stuff. So not only is it underwater movement and breathing, you also get buffs. Technically applies only when it's salt water. Also you can't really cast verbal spells, but win some lose some. Buy a silent rod (or two) and it's still cheaper than anything else.
Plagueborn Mantle - +1 cloak. If infected with a disease, 1/day virulent miasma (F14 or -4 vs disease in a fog cloud) and 1/day touch attack to transmit a disease (F15). This will almost never be used by anyone.
Hunter's Cloak - Beast shape 1 in your favoured terrain, for only creatures native to the terrain, 10 min/day in minutes. UMDable. There are so many beast shape cloaks already and somehow they still haven't come right out and become the whole spell.
Aspergillum Cloak - +1 cloak, incredible sponge. 3/day Pour holy water on it for 2d4 damage on unarmed/natural attacks vs undead/evil outsiders 7 minutes. Unholy water same thing but vs good outsiders. Surprisingly decent as a circumstantial damage boost. Plus whatever weird and wonderful uses you can think of for its ridiculous spongy property. Must be a pain to clean.
Cape of Daring Deeds - +2 cloak, +4 if you use charmed life, makes the Derring-do deed better. For those few times per day it's better than its +3 equivalent in price.
Cloak of the troll king - +5 intimidate, 3/day CL5 burning hands. Next.
Phantom Entourage - 1/day mirror image with 50% chance of working, +1 circumstance bluff/diplomacy/sing and -2 stealth per 2 images. Lasts 6 hours. The incredible duration and accessibility of one of the most potent defence spells alone make this a worthwhile alternative to a cloak of resistance, even without the stackable skill boost. You can always swap to a cloak of resistance once this runs out.
Poet's Cloak - Bards and skalds can use each other's performances at level 4. Has one weak rage power that replaces existing ones. Could be useful for gimmicks like Lesser Celestial Totem + Path of glory.
Cloak of the Duskwalker - Low light vision. 1/day darkness + darkvision. The sort of thing that's only useful when you're the only person without darkvision.
Cocoon Cloak - When you fall asleep, +4 nat ac and light fortification. If you're actually paranoid about being attacked in your sleep, a Travelling Master's Turban gives rope trick and you can have 2.5 for the price of this. Light fortification is also unlikely to save you from a coup de grace.
Pauldrons of the Bull - +2 vs bull rushes, roll twice take best when bull rushing. If, for some reason, you specialise in bull rushes, this is exceptional, but it doesn't change that this isn't that useful.
Stone Cloak - As move, pretend to be stone: no dex to AC, DR5/adamantine, +5 circumstance stealth, only free actions. It's quite disappointing you can't take purely mental actions. Does stack with other stealth bonuses as about its only redeemable quality. Greater version increases to DR10/adamantine.
Cape of the Mounteblank - 1/day dramatic dimension door. It's an excellent escape mechanism, particularly for grappled casters who don't want to risk the concentration check. Consider also the Red Raven's cape for half price but much shorter distance.
Pauldrons of the Watchful Lion - 2/day immediate when success on acrobatics to move through square, 2d6 damage. This is in no way worth turning down a +3 cloak for, which is 1.8k cheaper.
Cloak of Flash and Shadow - +2 cha, 3/day CL3 blur, sometimes +2 stealth. It's an unusual spot for a cha bonus, but it's not worthwhile just for that when you could get an extra add-on for your headband. Blur doesn't last long at this CL.
Cloak of the hunt - +5 stealth/track, immune to scent. Hour duration greater invisibility for mythic, what on earth? This is a must buy for mythic, but it's a fairly solid stealth item otherwise.
Lion Cloak - +2 resist vs mind affecting, +2 intimidate, 1/day Beast shape 2 for lion 10 minutes, can expend smite for extra uses (but can't smite while a lion). Finally, a good, reliable beast shape item! How on earth did it take this long? For that matter, why are there so many beast shape cloaks? I assume you can smite beforehand if need be. It's basically a Will save boost. Nifty for classic RagePounce.
Mantle of the Protector - Attune to armour and shield, give to someone else. 1/day they activate it as immediate to get all the benefits of your armour for 10 minutes. You get no benefit from either for 1 minute. You know what they say, the best armour a wizard can have is full plate worn by a fighter. This is hilariously dumb; just activate it before you need to do stuff and have 9 minutes of enhanced Full Plate and tower shield. Don't even need to keep wearing the armour or shield technically. +13ish AC is completely worth trading resistance to saves for.
Cloak of Good Fortune - +1 luck on attack, 1/day single question commune. Commune is a great spell, and a luck bonus to attack will stack with everything (and fate's favoured trait makes this even better). It's a strong contender if you're abandoning saves.
Mantle of Spores - +4 resistance vs disease, 1/day swift make mildly damaging cloud of spores to damage adjacent things. The Periapt of Health does it better, cheaper in the neck slot, but doesn't do the terrible terrible damage thing.
Cloak of the Saga Keeper - Endure cold, cold resist 2, 7 times ever +6 climb/handle animal/ride/survival/swim (but the rest of it remains). Awful.
Cape of Effulgent Escape - constantly bright, 2/day blind nearby things 1d4 rounds and turn invisible 1 minute (20ft., R14). I suppose this works well as a fake escape, because a cape of the mounteblank is a more effective actual escape (and just as dramatic).
Cape of Feinting - 3/day standard make opponent lose dex to AC until end of your next turn. Swashbucklers also daze 1 round (W13). If you're actually feinting, it's better to have something reliable and quick in the form of real feats than a slow gimmick like this. The save's a touch low for a 14k item.
Cloak of Arachnida - Constant spider climb, immune webs, 1/day web, +2 luck vs spider poisons. Consider slippers of spider climbing for 9k less and a less useful slot, although it's entirely possible you actually need constant rather than a few minutes per day. That's the only thing you actually want from this item anyway.
Gunfighter's Poncho - +2 luck touch AC, 1/day auto negate a ranged attack but fall prone. One of few ways to have touch AC higher than regular AC. Usually vs spells a cloak of resistance is better rather than allowing for the rare ray, and the gunslinger will hit you whether you like it or not.
Tentacle Cloak - 1/day 1 minute get 2 tentacle attacks + grab and reach. Excellent, but a shame it's so short and a standard to activate.
Demonspike Pauldrons - +2 armour spikes with +1d2 bleed on hit. Increase damage dice by one step and use best enhancement bonus for actual armour spikes. It's actually semi-efficient if you're using armour spikes, particularly with enhancements, but... they're still armour spikes.
Pelt of the Ulfen Wolf - 5/day immediate when struck a phantom wolf attacks, keep spending uses to keep attacking. Humans gain +1 morale vs emotion and get a save each round to reduce fear effects. Effect 1 is done substantially better by the crown of swords, the save bonus is pitiful compared to the cloak of resistance at this level and the headband of unshakable resolve also does the fear thing (and saves too, really); all three are cheaper than this. In short, rubbish.
Quicksand Cloak - Things that grapple you instead get stuck in the quicksand that makes up this cloak (R15). Put on the ground for a small area of quicksand. This is entertaining, but the size limitation and low DC make it impractical.
Comfort's Cloak - endure elements, +4 competence vs disease/energy drain/tired/poisons, heal hp at double rate naturally. For an extra 400gp it can be +4 vs everything. I don't recall the last time I seriously rested for the purpose of natural healing only, and if you can afford this, you can afford a 50gp potion or five for equally good endure elements.
Pelt of the Beast - Bite attack (or improve crit range of existing bite), 1/day speak with animals (or at will if have it as a spell-like), 3/day beast shape 1 some specific animal, variety of +2 untyped bonuses, usually to CMB checks. Skinwalkers get slightly enhanced benefits. Just when nothing can really stand before the might of the now +4 cloak of resistance, this happens. Constant natural attacks are an excellent martial addition, with the CMB bonus as a useful addition, and while there are cheaper bites, they do share with gores in the head slot. Gnomes particularly might like constant speak with animals.
Hyena Spirit Skin - 1/day aspect of the wolf 10 minutes. This is a personal spell so hard to get access to otherwise, but can serve as a budget +4 str/con belt. You don't need it on to use it, so just swap to your normal cloak when you're done casting. Acknowledge that in all likelihood the bonuses are partially irrelevant.
Shawl of the crone - Turn into an old lady, +4 cha checks to be an old lady or +8 vs children. Count as a hag for joining a coven, but still need a real hag. Weird and creepy, but relatively good for a disguise item (including being better than a greater hat of disguise, oddly).
Prestidigitator's cloak - +8 slight of hand, carry single item of 100lbs or less. Does its job well, and is cheaper than a portable hole for moving large things.
Dreamwing Cape - 1/day cape of wasps (full incorp damage and no poison), 1/day glitterdust. Glitterdust is always useful as an invisibility detector, and cape of wasps, well. It's a reasonable way to stop things trying to hit you with lots of little attacks and fly if necessary. Unimpressed though.
Cloak of Daggers - draw daggers free action or hidden daggers with quickdraw, 1/day 15 ft. dagger cone with scaling DC and damage with rogue level. Very unimpressed for 18k.
Ebony Bolero - 5/day variety of concentration effects (W16): blind/detect thoughts/eliminate memories/calm emotions. Concentration, really? Definite skip.
Stole of Justice - +5 sense motive, 5 mins/day zone of truth in ROUNDS, speeds up detect alignment spells, jurist on weapons. There's a lot of stuff there, which makes it expensive, and bits of it individually are decent. It's just too expensive, when you consider you could have a +4 cloak instead.
Moss Cloak - +10 stealth in forests/jungles, 1/day remove a poison as standard. For this kind of price, it would be nice if the stealth bonus was constant. Standard to remove poison isn't bad though, even if there are more effective items in other slots to fix this cheaper.
Jellyfish Cape - Breath/swim underwater, 20% miss chance, minor damage and sicken to things nearby. The cape of the manta ray is better in most ways, save that this allows you to properly speak. Arguably better defence.
Cloak of the Diplomat - +5 diplomacy/sense motive, 1/day reroll take best future diplo/sense motive, can make people really really friendly if you do well, failure backfires even more. I feel like this is a bit expensive for what it does, but they're both useful skills. On the bright side, you don't need to be wearing your cloak of resistance when you talk to people about 70% of the time.
Key Cloak - +1 Shield AC, move action to make a special tower shield but can only take actions to change the shield direction. 1/day make skeleton key for single untrained lock pick with +15. Not impressed.
Murktouch Cloak - 10 rounds/day weaker than normal fog cloud around you, you get blindsight in cloud, can touch things in cloud without being next to them. I suppose it's a good way around touch attacks vs the touch caster's nightmare of mirror image, but echolocation is around for that sort of thing.
Slashing Cloak - Full round attack everything in 5 ft. for 2d6. Can enhance like a melee weapon. I would hope for this price that things like power attack and strength modifier apply to damage and lunge/size increase impact the reach, but even so it's a gimmick.
Reaper's Wisdom - 1/day make a poison bypass delay poison. Circumstantial, but worth the price if you're using poisons of any significant value, especially if you can afford this.
Erinyes Company Cloak - 3/day fly 10 minutes, +2 resistance, wearing Gray Maiden Plate (which is just full plate) doesn't apply Armour Check Penalty. Here we have the first of several flying cloaks, and this is my favourite of the lot. 30 minutes/day will probably do you, it's not messing with your defence, and it's basically a +5 bonus to fly if you're wearing full plate. You could consider winged boots for better speed and bonus but half duration, but this is very slot efficient.
Groundbreaker Cloak - Burrow 20 ft., but need to be along surface and this sticks out, leaving difficult terrain behind (standard to activate and move to finish). Can't run or charge with it. 1/day charge from deep underground and target is flat footed vs charge. Wording's awkward on the charge. It's not actually very good since it bypasses most of the reason a burrow speed is good. Not being able to actually breathe or sense things while you're under is also annoying.
(Lesser) Wings of Flying - The classic model is 60 ft. with +5 bonus and 54k, the lesser model is 30 ft. with a -4 penalty and 22k. Consider that you need at least a reliable +9 total bonus to properly fly, and ideally +14. With a fairly average +1 dex and class skill bonus, that's level 9 before you can reliably start with the lesser ones, and that's not including ACP or that mostly martials don't get it as a class skill. Regular ones at least become quite usable. Mostly I'd suggest Winged Boots or the Erinyes Company Cloak for more usable alternatives to the lesser wings.
Lycanthrope Skin - Keyed to various animal/lycanthrope heritages. Speak with animals to the relevant species and skinwalkers get constant beast shape 1 if the heritage matches. The "bad" shapes of Rat/Boar/Wolf are 24k, the others are 40k. Happily UMDable, but keep in mind it's a check every hour and you don't get useful things like grab or pounce though. Also since you almost certainly have to UMD this a wand of beast shape 2 is cheaper, easier to use and stronger. It's interesting enough to be okay for skinwalkers
Cloak of Displacement - Constant Blur. Major version exists for 15 rounds/day displacement, dividable but still standard to activate (and about double the cost). The Cloak of Eternal Mist does a pretty good job of constant blur for under 20% of the price so long as you don't move. I'm pretty sure that a +5 resistance bonus to saves (for an extra 1k) is better than constant 20% miss chance, and a phantom entourage is largely a better option than the greater cloak.
Melding Cloak - +2 stealth, 10 min/day (in minutes) meld with walls/floor/&c. for extra +10 stealth and can climb walls and stuff automatically. Perhaps not as functional as a plain cloak of elvenkind or equivalent flat stealth bonus, but a lot cooler.
(Everything from here out is competing with a +5 cloak, for reference)
Cloak of the Bat - +5 stealth, can hang from the ceiling like a bat, fly or turn into a bat in darkness only for 7 minute bursts (and 7 minute breaks between uses). The darkness only makes this frustratingly difficult to use in conventional situations, although makes a nice excuse for the darkness spell. It's not bad as a stealth item, I suppose.
Pelt of Primal Power - +4 armour, 1/day beast shape 2 for grizzly bear 10 mins. Frankly you should consider a lion cloak instead and just buy a wand of mage armour that someone in your party will inevitably be able to use on you.
Arms of the Marilith - 4 extra arms that can only hold things and make an AoO per arm holding a weapon (they're off-hand attacks). Swap which hands (including real ones) are holding what as free action. Surely gloves of storing would work just as well, although it is difficult to get more AoOs.
Cloak of nightmares - Free action summon 8 Nightmare Bats, recall as a move action. They heal to full after an hour, but are gone for good if destroyed. I don't know how long these would last, considering this is a 30k cloak. Or that they'd do much beyond be a nuisance.
Cloak of Winter and Summer - 1/day Move action fire shield, mode depending on ambient temperature (Chill above 19 degrees), triaxians get fire or cold resist. If you actually want quick fire shield, chillfire wraps are way better.
Highwayman's cape - +5 bluff or stealth, immediate action escape artist checks at +10. Nice theme, and interesting balance between utility and defence. Although it's not much more for a ring of freedom of movement.
Cloak of Disarming - swift action disarms that don't provoke or potentially lose the cloak, spend panache for +5 bonus on check. Action efficient, but disarming's always been fairly action efficient. Not impressed for 35k.
Plumed Mantle - 30 minutes of fly/day in minimum 5 minute chunks with +14 bonus, constant feather fall. Unusually flexible usage. Ironically better than wings of flying for bonus, but less consistent usage. Has the definite advantage over other flying items in that it requires nearly no investment in flight.
Juggernaut's Pauldrons - +4 CMD, at will enlarge person on self, 3/day deadly juggernaught immediate 1 minute. Spell's not bad like this, but enlarge person you could really afford to get someone else do for you. The CMD boost is interesting but a +5 resistance bonus is typically better. Most interesting thing is that it technically enlarges non-humanoids.
Charlatan's Cape - 3/day dimension door, 1/day ethereal jaunt. Boring, but they're all decent spells, and there's always a chance you need multiple dimension doors. Cheaper than it really ought to be, but that's probably to help you actually buy and use it.
Mantle of Life - Immune energy drain from undead, can't be turned into undead. This is pretty circumstantial for 48k.
Cloak of Moral Refraction - 3 charges which come back at 1/day. 1 -> dispel alignment spells automatically, 2 -> ready to auto-counter alignment spell (if not used, don't use charges), 3-> immediate auto-counter aligned outsider spell/spell-like and banish it (W20). I like immediate action auto-counters. The other effects are heavily use impaired.
Cloak of Etherealness - Ethereal jaunt 10 min/day in 1 minute chunks. It's quite a long time to be ethereal for, which gives it certain degrees of usefulness.
Phoenix Cloak - 10 rounds/day free get the burn special ability. Then some mythic things. There are better mythic cloaks, and this one is particularly rubbish for non-mythic.
Deadened Shadows Cloak - Move action de/activate all of these. Reduce light to dim, make no noise at all. 1/week shadow walk self only. Once ever Shadow Body 15 minutes. Shadow Body's a new spell for me and I think it's quite good. Shadow Walk is budget teleport. This is still rather expensive at 63k.
Immolation Cloak - Resist fire 20, swift action warm fire shield 10 rounds/day (non consecutive). Mythic stuff. Such a pain it's not the chill version to be really good against fire. It's nice, but mostly the +5 cloak is better.
Wings of the Gargoyle - Swift action 5 min/day in minute chunks 60 ft. fly and DR10/adamantine. I am bewildered why these are so expensive, beyond perhaps being a swift action to activate.
Wyvern Cloak - +4 resistance Will only, constant feather fall, 1/day CL7 fly, sting attack w. poison the spell (F16). The sting attack is particularly rare, and the poison is actually quite good since it's always there. Stuff'll fail its save sooner or later.
Wrists
- Spoiler:
- Sleeves of many garments - Your garments appearance changes into any other non-magical garments. There are two interpretations I can see here: purely cosmetic or an actual physical change. The later interpretation allows things like cold weather outfits and snow-shoes or face masks and so on, which makes it okay.
Armbands of the Brawler - +1 competence to grapple or break a grapple (which, oddly, means it applies to escape artist in this instance). Okay, since it stacks with nearly everything but bardic performance.
Bracers of Armour - Provide armour bonuses or special abilities so long as the armour bonus is at least +1. Stop working if you have any better armour bonus, or your other armour bonus stops working if these beat it. Can't apply flat cost abilities. Primarily you want this if you are normally unarmoured, such as a monk or wizard. However, this does not stack with mage armour (until you get a +4 bonus, anyway). The cheesy thing of course is that you can get real armour (light, ideally) and stack huge quantities of special qualities for the special abilities. That's... about it, actually. Mostly a wand of mage armour or a pearl of power for your wizard is just as good and way cheaper. Or for cheese, a Protector's Mantle.
Quickmetal Bracers - 1/day bypass DR of a fixed flavour 10 rounds with melee weapons only. It's way cheaper and quicker to just have a weapon of the appropriate type. And more flexible. And reliable. Not many things have any of those DRs and DR/magic, so you're mostly missing a small hit bonus.
Burglar's Bracers - Subtle Mwk Thief Tools, 1/day take 10 on disable device even when threatened. It's largely the subtle that makes this useful, and sometimes the take 10 is useful.
Saint's Protection Charm - +1 deflection AC and +1 resistance saves vs extraplanar only. Interesting potential, but alas, too often useless.
Bracers of Steadiness - Take 20 on a primarily arm based skill for +5 bonus. Principally, that's disable device for picking locks, or some escape artist or slight of hand checks. Or linguistics to make a forgery. You're never going to take 20 on craft or profession checks without spending loads, and doing so on disarming traps is suicidal. It's much worse than it sounds, unfortunately.
Manacles of Cooperation - Put on someone else to make them agreeable and won't attempt to escape (W11). Very low save, but at least it's obvious if they fail. And cheap.
Spellsight Bracer - 1/day detect magic, +1 resistance on will. Worship Nethys for 1/day lesser silent rod and spontaneous cast mage hand. I can't make up my mind about this. I think it's the sort of item you get in loot really early on and use once or twice before forgetting about and eventually selling at level 13 when you suddenly realise you've been wearing them for the last 5 years.
Seafaring Stanchions - swift when underwater take off all yourclothesarmour and it floats to the surface. Circumstantial.
Shackles of Compliance - On a prisoner, obviously. Easier to intimidate them and a DC 25 Will save command 3/day. Almost a shame it's not suggestion. Much to my surprise, this is one of the better prisoner items, especially since it's so cheap.
Bracers of Falcon's Aim - 1/day aspect of the falcon 1 minute (That is, 19-20/x3 for cross/bows, +1 compenence attack). This was deservedly weakened from constant, but it's a little weak now. More duration would be nice.
Inquisitor's Bastion Vambraces - Inquisitors using protection judgement get bonus to CMD and cast defensively. But you already get that bonus to CMD, so it's just to cast defensively. For an extra 1,000 you get a more constant concentration buff in this slot with the spellguard bracers.
Bands of unbreakable Camaraderie - -4 on attacks vs allies due to mind control/accidents. Split up the pair for half bonus, but ignore each other for effects that make you attack nearest ally but if you do for some reason attack each other, -4 to your attacks, can't crit and attacks are nonlethal. This is so far the go-to defence item for martial characters, particularly split up. Assuming, you know, you have two front-liners.
Bracers of Archery - Proficiency in all bows, and +1 competence on attack if using a bow you can already use. Greater version exists with +2 attack and +1 damage. Won't stack with bard, but does with everything else. The attack bonus is good for the basic version, although I imagine the bow proficiency might be the target. It's definitely a cheap weapon proficiency item, and a decent one.
Spellguard bracers - +2 cast defensively, 3/day reroll take best on cast defensively. Probably the actual caster item of the wrist slots.
Vanishing Sheath - swift action draw hidden light weapon, +4 slight of hand conceal weapon. Includes wands and stuff. Can wear two at the same time and draw with the same action. They're actually as good, kind of, as gloves of storing.
Bone Beads - Command 8HD Undead Mindless only. Mindless undead are garbage unless they have a bunch of HD, which you can manage one of with this. Wouldn't go out of my way.
Bonebreaker Bracers - 1/day when melee attacking, W14 or -6 Str or Dex or Con. I know it's based off Bestow Curse, but this should really be a fort save. Cheap enough that there might be a brief time where the save's relevant. Action efficient at least.
Vambraces of Defence - +1 deflection, 1/day deflect arrows. Not a bad little item, but consider gloves of arrow snaring. Does stack with them though.
Verdant Vine - 1/day entangle 20ft. (R16) but higher break DC (20) and damage (1d4). Better than normal DC for this effect if you're looking for it. It's pretty good crowd control, really because it's still difficult terrain.
Howling Bracers - 1/day crushing despair (W16), DC up by 1 for every 2 creatures affected by raging song (Max total 21). Even in a standard 4-man party, that's DC 18, which is quite tolerable. In practice Good Hope would be nicer, but you take what you can get.
Armiger's Panoply - 3/day Standard action swap between up to 4 sets of armour/shield. I can't imagine ever using this. Except perhaps for wild shape barding. Which admittedly is quite a good idea, considering how long it takes to put on armour. I think I have a build in mind...
Longarm Bracers - 3/day swift increase reach 5 ft. Melee weapons (not unarmed/natural) take -4. Not sure how useful this really is with the -4, but makes a nice thing sometimes for druids sometimes?
Bracers of the Glib Entertainer - +5 perform, 1/day CL7 Glibness. This lasts ages, and it's basically +20 bluff. It's a very difficult spell to get access to, being its main draw.
Charm Bracelet - Variety of Consumables, standard to activate, each used once. The only one of any interest is the healthy apple, which heals 2d8 and gives a save against each poison/disease and immediate cure it if you succeed (primarily useful if it's something that's normally really hard to cure). It's definitely
Duelist's Vambraces - While using 2 weapons (not natural/unarmed), +1 deflection, 1/round reduce off-hand weapon attack penalties by 2. By a technically-right-but-not-intended reading, it applies to every single penalty to that attack (such as being prone/sickened/shaken). Regardless, it's still really useful for the style.
Merciful Vambraces - Flexible paladin mercy you qualify for 1/day when using LoH. Super useful as you gain levels just for the easy removal of a huge lot of stuff. Nice for your party, too.
Vambraces of the Tactician - Challenge at +2 levels, 1/day swift double tactician range before next turn. The range increase is... not that fabulous. The extra +2 damage, basically extra use and sometimes another effect is rather better.
Harvester's Bindings - +2 circumstance vs poison directly from creatures, fail a save like that and can standard auto-remove and extract the poison. Holds one dose indefinitely; touch a glass vial to fill it with the poison (lasts an hour at this point). Wrist slot buddy of the excellent Choker of the Siphoning Scorpion. More of a pain to use (literally) since you'll take some damage from it, and the standard action is... awkward. And it's only some poisons. Still, this is a huge chunk of poisons, and it makes poison quite accessible.
Bracelets of Defiant Wind - 1/day immediate air bubble and wind wall 10 rounds to protect yourself. Archers hurt. So do cloudkills and stinking clouds. This makes them almost not a problem. I'd suggest this for everyone.
Broken Rune Bracers - 1/day Shoanti get immunity to a possession effect. That's a ethnicity of human, for the unaware. I've seen this even as a possibility once, so it's probably not even worth the UMD check most will need to use.
Seducer's Bane - +5 resistance vs enchantment, +5 sense motive. Pretend effectively to be affected by mind control even when you aren't. That's a lot of will saves, and for reference, 15k cheaper than a +5 cloak. I'm not particularly convinced this is useful a lot of the time, only if you're not doing cloaks.
Bracers of Might - +4 strength ability/skill checks. 3/day swift +4 sacred strength 1 round. Mythic stuff. Okay, it's not always on, but three times per day is pretty decent for a 2H weapon.
Dueling Cuffs - +1 deflection AC or +2 with a finesse weapon, Dueling parries are better and can parry firearm attacks. From recollection the dueling rules are cool, but I've never seen them actually used.
Lidless charm bracelet - 1/day touch creature with gaze attack to become immune to that type of gaze attack. 5 times ever immediate reroll vs gaze attacks if you fail. Rare.
Bracers of the Avenging Knight - +4 levels for Smite damage, 1/day one level 5 smite attack for non-smiters. Either this or the Merciful Vambraces are excellent paladin items.
Arrowmaster's Bracers - DR5/magic vs ranged weapons, +1 deflection vs ranged, 1/day quickened true strike ranged only. First two effects are utterly redundant for this price range, so you're really paying for quickened true strike. Which, frankly, is worth the price. Particularly if you like rays &c.
Vambraces of the Genie - Constant endure elements, selection of 1/day CL5 spells depending on genie flavour. Only the Djinni variant merits consideration beyond circumstantial use with Invisibility and wind wall. All of them are overpriced.
Bracelet of Bargaining - +5 bluff/diplomacy/sense motive, when shake hands with people to seal deal know if there's any deceit (W16). I have an item that makes an interesting companion to this... Flat skill bonuses are always nice.
Bracelet of Mercy - 1 extra lay on hands/day, Diseased Mercy (functions at +4 if you have it already). Personally prefer the Merciful Vambraces.
Ioun Spite Bracers - can steal and capture ioun stones, drain captured stone temporarily for magic missiles. Steal's not a common CM, and ioun stones aren't common enough to merit this just for them. They are a decent way of holding them though.
Style-stealing Vambrace - Keen to all S/P weapons but cuts off your hand if you confirm a crit (F17) and teleports to creator. Hold the severed hand for one of their combat feats, so long as you meet prereqs, for 1 day. Obviously this is cursed, kind of. I'm not sure how useful these combat feats might be for presumably a caster, but you can always pass to a friend. I'm kind of curious how this would go if you specialised in, say, hook hands or piercing kicks. You can't really fake your own feats.
Bracers of the Merciful Knight - +4 levels for Lay on hands, 1/day lay on hands also does lesser restoration. Still more of a fan of merciful vambraces at half the cost, although these are very good.
Bracelet of Second Chances - 7 times ever negate crit/sneak immediately. There are cheaper and less consumable (if less reliable) methods of doing this, primarily fortification. However, it's still okay. Reliability is nice.
Bracelet of good luck charms - Halflings get 7 ever rerolls (no action), can give one use to a friend to use within the day. Another reasonable consumable.
Bracers of Celestial Intervention - Summon Monster for good outsiders by sacrificing smites, quality improving as you spend more. Oath of Vengeance Paladin can do okay with this, although you probably want very high cha. At, say, level 7, spending everything, you could feasibly hit summon monster 8 which is... actually pretty reasonable, for 1d3 movanic devas. That's a definite exception though.
Silver Smite Bracelet - +4 levels for smite. That's an extra use and +4 damage. Suggest Bracers of the avenging knight instead for 4.5k cheaper but no extra uses. Depends how much you run out.
Shackles of Durance Vile - 1/day Constant (or until removed) dominate person (W17) when put on. Not sure who's in charge though. The 1/day is particularly irritating, but constant dominate isn't bad.
Rift-Rending Bracers - Kineticist item. 3 burn for personal plane shift, +1 for extra people. Doesn't do all planes. Nice to have some kineticist items. Bright side is you can UMD this. Plane shift is just one of those high level spells that's a pain to access sometimes.
Bracelet of friends - Pick 4 people; you can summon each one as a standard so long as on same plane. Can change person as standard. I like it, but again, am uncertain of actual utility beyond being able to pull out stealth missions that go badly.
Armband of the golden serpent - Auto cast defensively touch range spells only. Seems decent for a magus or particularly psychic touchers.
Bracers of Sworn Vengeance - 1/day immediate on taking damage: +1 competence attack, +2d6 damage vs thing hitting you until dead. You'd have thought it'd be gloves that were all about challenges, but apparently not. Getting expensive, but it's reliable damage.
Bracelets of Stone - 1/day wall of stone. can make it any orientation, but can't move while it's up. Technically nothing stopping you making a huge bunch of these over multiple days. Which has interesting potential. The not being able to move part is annoying though.
Swallowtail Bracers - +1 luck save/ability checks/skills. Worship desna for 1/day dream and constant spell turning vs nightmare only. There's a cheaper, slotless item called a stone of good luck that does all the luck bit. Dream's not bad as a alternative to sending, and it's relatively cheap considering (and it's definitely UMDable). Still, circumstantial.
Dimensional Shackles - Constant dimensional anchor on shackles. An expensive mage holding device.
Anchoring Bracers - 3/day zoom to/drag target within 190 ft. to be adjacent to you with CMB, dimensional lock both, can only move by winning opposed strength check and move the other regardless. This is a favourite anti-caster item, but works pretty well even against things just being annoying and flying.
Bracers of Primal Master - Good stuff for primal magic optional rules. They are optional though.
High Elven Bracers - Elven weapon familiarity, +1 competence attack and damage if already proficient. Bracers of archery will do this better for bows, And opalescent white pyramid ioun stones do single proficiencies for 20k cheaper. Don't know why you'd ever bother with this (beyond these being core and the ioun stone not)
Thorned Manacles - Constant dimensional anchor, damage when you try to take them off, and very difficult to take off. They're about 8k more expensive than the dimensional shackles for +7 DC to escape artist check, which might be worth it. Better discouragement, anyway.
Bracers of the Shield Mates - Give one to a friend: +2 shield AC when within 100ft. of each other. Some mythic stuff. Primarily you'd use this if you can't use a shield or cast shield with UMD or something.
Too many items again! Rings are in part 5.
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