The Book of Eldritch Might is an early outing from Monte Cook's fledgling Malhavoc Press. A rules supplement for arcane spellcasters in Third Edition Dungeons and Dragons, this book presents a number of new tools for your spellcaster, from feats to spells to magical items.
Section 1: New Feats
Here Monte introduces a new type of feat, the "Eldritch" feat, which gives your character spell like abilities that mostly resemble metamagic feats. You can "lace" or spells with elemental energy and whatnot, and there's also a nifty little number allowing you to bind a person with a magical item through a tattoo, allowing him to store the item in his own body. A few decent ideas here, including the idea of magical poisons far more deadly than their mundane counterparts. My only concern here is that the Eldritch feats seem a little bit overpowered, but this appears to be balanced by the exhorbitant attribute requirements.
Moving on, we come to Section 2: New Prestige Classes.
This chapter gave me mixed feelings. The first class, the Embermage, reminded me a lot of Ignus from Planescape: Torment. The class is basically someone who is burnt horribly by fire and gets the ability to magically control the fire running through her veins. The special abilites all have a dark air, and many require hit point sacrifices from the character to activate as he has to burn himself or cut himself, ala the Blood Mage from Tome and Blood. Nice class. The next class is the "Graven One," a wizard who covers himself in tattoos to gain special abilities. Think of these abilities as a punk rock loremaster. Get tattoos, put em on, get stuff. Simple enough, this class is decent.
The last class here is the "Mirror Master," a class that uses skills related to, well, mirrors. This class kind of irked me in that it's premise seemed a little cheesy, but I guess some folks could be attracted to this sort of thing. The Mirror Master gains several special abilities related to mirrors, and also gets some exclusive mirror-based spells that are pretty powerful. This, to me, was the downside of this chapter- the classes seemed to degrade, with the embermage being the best, and from then on going downhill.
Section 3: New Spells
The breadbasket of this supplement is the spells section, occupying most of the book. The spells here are somewhat mixed, with a number of them making me say "Wow, cool" and others making me say "What the hell..?" A lot of these spells seem to be repeats of each other with different visuals and semantics. For example, there's a bunch of new attack spells here, all seeming to be variants on one spell- an elemental spell that divides its damage between two elements and...so on. While attack spells are always neat, I would have liked to see some effect spells that weren't also geared toward narrow, specific situations. Many of the spells here have a "spell for everything" feel, and I can't really see them being useful in more than a few scenarios (the sequel to this book suffered from much of the same). Also, I've heard many complaints that the spells here are overpowered, which I can sort of see, but not too severely. It's up to the DM as to how to use them, so I won't mess with it.
Section 4: New Magic Items
Niiiiice. I dig the weapons, I dig the rings, hell, I dig lots of stuff here. I'm definitely going to incorporate some of this into my campaign. Included here are such things as a bastard sword that behaves like a nasty whip, a ring that augments conjured creatures, and a staff that holds spells like a spellbook. The artifacts are also numerous and powerful, packing a healthy dose of flavor. Very well done here.
Section 5: Magical Construct
A new template for monsters. I could see it being used as a nasty enemy. Not bad, but nothing to write home about.
The last thing I have to touch on here is my reason for the subpar mark in Style. The general page layout and graphic is very classy, understated, and professional looking. I like it a lot. But I can't get away from the downright ridiculous art, which amounts to photographs of what looks like real people with a fantasy motif. If you've ever seen the introductory video that came with TSR's "Dragon Quest" game back in the mid-90's, you know what I mean. I can't help but laugh every time I see the middle aged elf with the receding hairline, bad ears, and psychotic look on his face in the Rings section. Cook apparently realized his folly with the second Book of Eldritch Might, as the art there is superb and fits with the rest of the text.
Were it not for the art, this book would have recieved higher style ratings.
Overall, this book isn't for everyone. If you're a spell junkie like myself who jumps at anything magical, then go for it. It provides a number of ideas and tools to include in your campaign. I've already utilized a number of them. But if you're looking for an excellent example of a spells supplement, look at Relics and Rituals or Magic of Faerun as opposed to this. It's a good start, but it needs a little more work yet. I look forward to seeing more from Malhavoc in the future.
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