Executive Summary
The Book of Eldritch Might, by Monte Cook, is a
D20 supplement primarily for arcane spell casters.
The product is in electronic format, as a PDF
document downloadable after purchase.
I have come to find that Monte Cook's point of
view on mechanics and balance considerations
seem to be the most consistent and reasonable
ones I've found espoused by any D20 authour.
In other words, I've become a raving fanboy
for Mr. Cook. Yes, that means my opinion
may be biased, and it might show even though
I try not to let it do so.
On the whole, this supplement seems to be well
balanced and well thought out. None of the
options in the book are really more powerful in
a sort of "Boom! You're dead!" sort of way,
but all of them offer something of interest,
ranging from feats such as
Lace Spell: Elemental Energies, which causes
causes an extra 1d6 damage of an elemental
nature to a target of a single target spell,
to spells such as Teleport Redirect, which
effectively make one location become another,
for the purposes of spells with the [Teleport]
descriptor.
The Book of Eldritch Might is of extremely
limited use to non-arcane spell casters.
Purchasing
At US$5 dollars, this book is a steal, even if you have
to convert from a foreign currency (like I did from
Canadian bucks). Ordering the product requires a
valid credit card and a valid email address that is
not a "free" email address (such as yahoo, hotmail,
or hushmail). After filling out your purchase order,
an email is sent to the account you entered, listing
a URL to a zip file. Download this file, then unzip
it, and you will have the PDF document that comprises
this product. The zip file is reported by Windows
98 as being 1,880,064 bytes, and the actual PDF is
reported as being 2,203,648 bytes. In other words,
you won't fit it on a normal high-density floppy
using conventional methods.
There is virtually no security on this file,
meaning that it is trivial to back-up, which
is nice. It is also trivial to pirate. If
you are someone who has done so over a five
dollar product, I hope you become infested
by the fleas of a thousand camels. That
goes double if you are one of those people
who complains that gaming products cost
too much.
Apparently there will be a print version
coming out, care of Sword and Sorcery
studios. I really don't know much more
than that.
Artwork
Each page has an odd, desert like motif for the
header, that would probably look fine if printed
out on a colour printer, but is annoying when
looking through the file with Acrobat, because
it slows the process down.
The art consists of four photographs, radically
modified with some graphics package, one traditional
sketch, and the Egyptian motif title page. It
is somewhat evocative, lends itself to the work,
and does not take up more than 2 pages worth
of space. On the other hand, you wouldn't be
missing much if it was all plain text.
Utility
The Book of Eldritch Might is of the most use
to players of arcane spell casters:
bards, sorcerers, and wizards. Other spell
casters get much more limited benefits from
the options presented by this book.
Of the nine feats introduced, two are item
creation feats, and the remaining seven
belong to the new "Eldritch" class of
feats. Eldritch feats are feats that
offer interesting but not exceptionally
powerful abilities, on the average, but
have pre-requisites that are extreme, to
say the least. DMs using a ramping
point buy system might consider lowering
some of those pre-requisites slightly.
The item creation feats are not
exceptional, but do add variety and
flavour to a setting. Some of the
Eldritch feats (Notably
"Lace Spell: Enemy Bane", and, to a
lesser extent
"Lace Spell: Holy/Unholy" and
"Lace Spell: Lawful/Chaotic" could
become especially powerful in certain
specific campaign settings.
There are three prestige classes: The
Embermage, the Graven One, and the
Mirror Master. Without having play
tested any of them, I would suggest
that the Embermage and Mirror Master
are both reasonable player character
options, the former because it
focuses on damage dealing abilities,
the latter because it provides
impressive added flexibility at the
cost of access to higher level
spells.
The Graven One seems slightly weak
to me, but could prove to be quite
useful.
All could also be
used to provide interesting villains,
as well.
There are fourteen pages of spells
which all, after inspection and
discussion, seem to be reasonably
balanced, and all seem quite useful
for telling a story, rather than
just for flat out combat. Some of
the first level spells are in the
same neighbourhood as magic missile,
but somewhat more interesting, and
this pattern seems to hold
throughout the spell levels.
There are several mirror and
[Teleport] related spells that
add a certain level of
plausibility to fantasy settings.
I can't really point to any
particular spell and say it is
out and out broken, but I can
understand some concern about
Acidic Curse and Conditional Spell,
the former because it could be
better than Magic Missile, and
the latter because it might be
abusable to "munchkin" type
players.
Following this, there are ten pages
of magical items. As with the rest
of this supplement, the magical
items seem to be well balanced and
well though out. In addition,
there is a page of magical vehicles,
two pages of magical poisons, and
one and a half pages of magical
artifacts.
The last mechanical feature in
the Book of Eldritch Might is a
new monster template: Magical
Constructs. It includes two
samples: The stone dire tiger,
and the eleven-headed brass hydra.
They seem interesting, but I do
not yet feel qualified on
commenting on their balance.
Finally, the last page consists of the
Open Gaming License.
All in all, the content is great,
I just wish a spell index was
included, so that you can see
at a glance what new spells you
might have access to.
Support
Malhavoc press has released at least one patch,
modifying original downloads to contain the
erata, as well as a belated title page release
as a seperate PDF download. Those currently
downloading the Book of Edlritch Might will
have both rolled into the product.
Gender Issues
Although I wasn't looking for it, the
Book of Eldritch Might seemed to use the
feminine pronoun roughly as often as the
masculine pronoun. It didn't seem make
a big deal of it, either.
Closing
It's too bad not every gaming product
has this level of thought put into it.
I felt like there was a good deal of
thought put into it, with more focus
on making things more interesting
than on making things just plain dead
quicker. If you're using D20 in a
fantasy setting, this is a steal at
twice the price. If you're using
something else in a fantasy setting,
consider getting this anyways, and
converting some of it to your
setting. If you're not doing fantasy,
or you're against anything that even
smells of D20, well, consider
browsing a friend's copy so that you
can at least try to shoot down a
good D20 supplement, rather than a
bad one.
-MGL
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