Yesterday I was told that Tome and Blood was in at the local game store, and I made some off-hand comment about “looking through it” for help with a couple of arcane spellcasters, including a fairly neophyte role-player and her sorceress. Well, the next day I ventured forth on my vacation and picked up the book.
Insert Rant Here
I flipped through it there. ‘Not bad’ I thought.
Then I saw the price.
Now, I’ve read all about the business model Wizards is using – cheap initial print runs of the core rules, followed by a price hike and higher cost splatbooks and adventures. I’ve heard all the arguments about this – supply and demand, costs of various print run scales, etc. And really, I’ve reluctantly agreed – like most people I don’t like the price hike but I’ve bought the rhetoric. This changed when I saw this book, next to the latest Dream Pod 9 sourcebook, The Spacers’ Guide, and White Wolf’s Bitter Crusade and Clanbook Ravnos (Revised). Needless to say all three of these books are similar in page count, and with the exception of Crusade, are roughly similar in intent – to flesh out one group or life-setting facet of their respective games (Ravnos, belters and cylinder colonists, and wizards/sorcerors). Without exception these books were at least 5, and often 10 or more, dollars cheaper.
People used to call Dream Pod 9 books expensive, luxury items – no more. Wizards – if anyone is listening – please seriously review your pricing models. If you are getting quotes for your printing costs that are higher than what a small publisher in high-taxes Canada then terminate your printing contract – and I mean now. If with the same level, or better, in word count, paper quality, and artwork these smaller companies can sell product for a significantly lower price then you are doing something seriously wrong.
My rant is over.
Overall look:
The book is split into five chapters with a short introduction, a couple of maps, and sparse illustrations that focus, for the most part, on 3E’s signature arcane characters: Mialee the elven wizard and Hennet, the human dungeon-punk fashion plate/sorceror. Oh, and there’s a sprinkling of pithy quotes from both of these people.
Chapter One: Arcane Lore
The overall tone of the book is a bit further towards “making characters for dummies” than Defenders of the Faith or Sword and Fist - the first part of the book is a collection of opinions (most of which I had disagreements with) which can be defined as “how to make the most of being a D&D adventurer wizard” – delving into dungeons, killing monsters, making items (and repairing same) for your fellow player characters, etc. There is advice on ability score placement, spell selection, useful skills, equipment, choice of familiars, and so on. I phrased it that way because one of the greatest weaknesses D&D has always had was how it dealt with mages. While the game (and indeed this book) pays lip service to the “fundamental” nature of magic-users, it has never really handled them well. Magic-users have always boiled down to “artillery”, “support” or “item-makers” – the magic system still powerfully reflects D&D’s wargaming heritage, non-combat spells are either ignored/overlooked, made hideously high-level (teleport, guards and wards) or made ridiculously low powered (read: cantrip). There isn’t much flavor to the D&D magic system – something the book admits when, in the character creation section it says “some fight it, but eventually, every sorceror and wizard picks magic missile. And why not – it is an offensive 1st level spell […] even a sorceror, with his limited spell selection, would do well with this one”. Where is the task magic? Where is the local mage from fantasy literature who uses magic to make life a bit better for local people – where exactly does mage armor and fireball factor into that? What about magic use in a social context – diplomacy, spying, etc. Please God, could someone at Wizards/Hasbro please realize that there is more to magic use than “new and different ways of killing things”.
A second complaint, one that touches on the price-for-content rant, is the space wasted on animal stats for familiars. Since the book makes use of “see page XX in the PHB/DMG/MM”, I can see why they couldn’t do the same thing here.
There is also little development on the origins of sorcerors – who for the most part have been given the status of “X-Men” in the D&D cast of character classes. Again, no discussion about alternate social settings (how about the obvious one – settings where Sorcerors are held in high-esteem for their innate magic), in fact very little of the whole book ever touches on sorcerors as anything but a “more spells per day, less overall flexibility” me-too version of wizards. Like monks in S&F, and non-combat clerics in DotF they are very much just along for the ride.
Also in chapter one are the maps and descriptions of a few arcane groups – a portion of an arcane university, a secret group/school (?) of isolationist necromancers, arcane warrior-mercenaries and a union of travel mages (again, with little discussion about the impact of these things in a given setting – this is information that new DMs would need). Then there is some discussion (and a couple of maps) about the spell-caster’s home, called an abode.
Chapter Two: Feats
The next chapter is the list of feats. People who bought Forgotten Realms will be upset about the repetition, but for those of us who balk at the price of that book (just to use the feats, prestige classes and divine domains in the book) will be happy. At the beginning is a quick note about using ‘weapon’ feats like Improved Critical and Point-Blank Shot with combat spells – a nice twist on something briefly mentioned in the Player’s Handbook. The rest of the feats are pretty much what you would expect (if you didn’t have too many expectations) – new metamagic feats (like the dreadfully unbalanced ‘need no components’ – the only metamagic feat that doesn’t have any penalty to the spell’s effective level, although it screams for one), a couple of general feats about familiars and sanctums (a cool idea which never gets explored again - like so many others).
What you won’t find in this section, and something I find very disappointing, is a discussion about the theory behind why metamagic feats cost spell levels. I mention this because it is one of the more talked about, and discarded, rules from the new edition. I say this is disappointing because it was one of those things I thought should be in here – at least as optional rules. In an era where games print their own optional things (DP9’s reality distortion levels and White Wolf’s “how to ignore our metaplot” essays) this sort of conversation is almost essential, if only as a side bar.
Chapter Three: Prestige Classes
All told there are 15 prestige classes in this book, and their quality/usefulness varied from non-existent to sort of interesting to questionable/needs a rewrite. Here are a couple of examples to explain my opinions:
Acolyte of the Skin – a mage who makes a pact with an evil outsider and who gets to borrow the thing’s skin (and powers), as this class develops he eventually becomes a demon-thing (in much the same way that Monks transcend mortality). My problem – this makes for an okay prestige class, but as it stands it’s really too limited to be a real prestige class, and too vague to be simply a series of spells and feats. My suggestion for a re-write – a much more general “skin-wearer” that can use a variety of skins/aspects, like the primitive sorcerors using animal skins to martyr-like wizards who make pacts to share their skin with Celestials who are otherwise unable to act directly on earth, there is a lot of room here to work with, use it don't waste it on yet another villain NPC (something this book seems full of).
Alienist – cthullu primordial madness-type summoner. Nice idea, but needlessly adds another template for creatures, and another group of evil things (why can’t they just be living on the plane of Limbo – you know, the already established D&D plane of formless insanity and chaos?). Also, because D&D really doesn’t handle insanity well, the whole “slowly going insane” system is rather vague and seems to involve gaining hit points(?!).
Blood Magus – formerly-dead (now raised or resurrected) arcanes who have gained, through their ordeal, insight into the nature of blood. Cool idea, but really not very well thought out nor taken into some really interesting potential concerning the symbolic/occult aspects of blood (like spells that can affect blood relatives, or divinations into a creatures true nature/thoughts by simply tasting a drop of blood). Like the Fatespinner (fate mage, another prestige class) non-mechanical/non-combat aspects of the class are never explored, wasting such excellent potential.
Dragon Disciple – how to make a half-dragon after your DM told you ‘no’.
Mindbender – how to make a telepath after your DM says ‘no’ to Psionics.
Pale Master – “necromancy is usually a poor choice for arcane spellcasters”, since when? I have yet to see a module or sourcebook where the “Evil necromancer” is anything BUT a wizard of some sort – maybe Skip Williams and Bruce Cordell should take a gander at past D&D modules, or even new ones like the Iron Kingdoms trilogy. Also, one of the powers involves the Master naturally ripping off their own arm to graft a magical undead one to its place – again a rather curious/silly limitation – why not simply add the arm, why not a leg or an eye, wings or tail? And why would my mage want to ‘naturally’ rip it off? These two things really mar an otherwise very interesting necromancer idea.
Bladesinger – they’re back, elves can almost gain this prestige class at level 1, but otherwise it’s really well balanced now. But it probably would have been better as a recipe (remember those original ideas – a list of feats/skills/equipment recommendations which you then apply to any basic class, and not a prestige class itself).
Wayfarer – a nice idea that suffers within limitations of the D&D magic system (mentioned above). First off, it joins the Halfling Outrider as a broken prestige class (this one only has three levels), and the requirements include the ability to cast the ‘teleport’ spell. Could have been much better if it was expanded to include lower-level travel magic, like flight and dimension door. I’d recommend that interested people take a gander at the Navigators from Terry Amthor’s Shadow World as a better example of this sort of “travel mage”, and their association/guild (and how there existance impact the setting).
All in all I’m really starting to wonder if D&D developers really have a clear idea of what prestige classes are supposed to be used for – elite or secret orders of characters or just half-formed class ideas bundled together with a few special abilities. If they brought back the idea of recipes, and rebuilt prestige classes as the elite/special idea then things wouldn’t appear as muddled as they are currently. Second general comment – like Defenders of the Faith they focus entirely on one end of the spectrum of mages, and often going over the same ground with two or more prestige classes (Pale Master and the True Necromancer, also if you group the ‘pact with things’ together you get the Acolyte (demons), Alienist (slimy tentacles), Dragon Disciple (guess), and Elemental Savant – ugh!). So much for a great variety of examples.
On the up side there is little Greyhawk-specific info in this section, while the prestige classes, other problems aside, do have a lot of individual flavor to them (if a good DM does some serious gardening to weed out the mechanical kludge and fills in the bigger gaps in the concepts).
Chapter Four: Tools of the Trade
Nothing terribly special here – a scattering of mundane, special and magical items. Here I’m going to say something positive – I loved the “behind the curtain” features – this sort of thing (how to gauge magic item costs and what goes into this) is great, perfect for beginning item-making players and DMs. The items themselves aren’t anything special, which is a bit of a let down, but having read the other splatbooks I know to expect this. There are also rules for golem creation here.
Chapter Five: Spells
Here would be where I assumed a good chunk of the book would spend some time, but it really flies by with little content to speak of. There is some “Behind the Curtain” info again, which I liked, and some discussion of the range of power in the prestidigitation cantrip, but otherwise it reads like a “how to use spells in combat” – clarification on critical hits with targeted spells, sneak attacks, and information on treating spells like weapons (for those who forgot that much the same was said back in chapter two). The only other text-based (as opposed to the pages of new spells themselves) information was on new spell research which has a few pieces of good advice but really spends a lot of time basically saying “look at the existing spells and guess where to put your new spell on the list”). The new spells themselves are a mixed bag – way too much time spent listing ad nauseum too-similar spells whose only difference is in the type of damage (cold, sonic, etc) they cause on the down side, fleshing out the other attribute enhancing (Int, Wis, Cha) spells (in case you don’t own S&S’s Relics and Rituals and finally some spells for use on constructs and familiars.
Final Thoughts
For the price, for the company, for the developers and authors Tome and Blood is a disappointment. Comparing it even to previous D&D magic sourcebooks (Tome of Magic, Spells and Powers, the Complete Wizards Handbook) it falls short in many places – mostly because it simply doesn’t go far enough in providing options for players and DMs. One last example of this is the complete lack of any discussion of alternative spell systems. There is, in a few prestige classes, some vague attempt at a mana-point system, but even a single page on a complete alternative system would have been more helpful. Coupled with a total lack of any discussion on magic levels, their impact of magic on a campaign world, and even contradictory information (like repeatedly saying magic users are solitary then organizing them into guilds and trade unions, calling necromancers anti-social but then giving an example of a school full of them each teaching the others about the fine art of villain-hood) the book is simply a let down. For all the promising bits left in the book the authors were simply too timid or unwilling to take the material beyond the “point at critter, cast magic missile, repeat” rut that magic-using PCs find themselves in.
If they had cut 2-3 prestige classes, reworked 1-2 others, ditched the pages wasted on repeating critter stats from the Monster Manual and used that liberated page count to talk about the topics I mentioned above then the book would be getting top marks (8s and 9s, out of 10) instead of 3s and 4s.
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