New Equipment from the Dungeoneer's Survival Guide

I have had this feeling that the Player’s Hand Book (PHB) and Adventurers Vault (AV) for Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition left a lot of great stuff off the equipment list. So I went out into the archives to do some research. The archives is a box in the garage. Here I extracted my original copy of “The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide” by Douglas Niles which was printed in 1986.

(One moment please, while I nostalgia out for a bit.)

OK I’m back.

The DSG had many, many, many great things in it. If you want some good ideas for dungeon delving I recommend finding and getting a used copy if you can. It is a great book full of really cool ideas.

Anyway, on page 56 under the title “New Equipment” is a great list of some cool gear for dungeon delving. Some of the highlights are:

Boat, collapsible: made from skins and a folding set of wooden spars the boat is the size of a small row boat. It folds up small enough to fit into the space available in one backpack.
Drill, Iron: allows the user to slowly bore a whole through wooden or stone barriers.
Oil, waterproofing: coats an item providing a bit of water resistance against rain or even emersion, if only for a limited time.

In the original book there is suggested mechanics and crunch for all the items listed. I think they most likely need an updating even if just the GP cost of the items but those mechanics serve as a good starting place. I know there are some more modern products out there that include equipment lists but so far I haven't found one that put so much useful equipment in such a useful format as the DSG did. I'm going to add it to my list of projects to work on this year.

I'd love to hear of any examples of products with lists of equipment you think are really good.

Oh and I still love the artwork in this book which was done by Jeff Easley, Dough Chaffee, Greg Harper, and Jim Roslof