Balancer’s Amulet
This particular item was first created by the understudy to the assistant to the apprentice of the most powerful magic user in your campaign world’s history. And don’t be surprised by that! As Terry Pratchett once noted, it’s the people in the middle of a magical hierarchy who have it the worst: they need to worry about challengers from above and below. This item gives advantages against both. Balancer’s Amulets have two main powers:
- In worlds where knowledge of a particular spell is a prerequisite for being able to cast a counter-spell designed to negate it, the Amulet gives its bearer that knowledge, solely for the purposes of casting counter-spells. In other worlds, the amulet gives a decent bonus to spell resistance against any spell cast by a wizard that is more powerful than the wearer of the amulet.
- A wearer of the Amulet can determine the name, power level, and basic information about any spell cast on him or her by a wizard that is less powerful than the wearer. This includes variant and ‘secret’ spells.
As you might imagine, wizards who own these artifacts tend not to advertise the fact.