Thee Compleat Librum Ov Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes
The synergy of electronic publication and the d20 System license has created something of a cottage industry in the realm of electronic game products; the large amount of d20 fans eager for an inexpensive influx of new ideas into their games made electronic publishing of such products in an otherwise underutilized medium somewhat more practical. The dominating force in d20 electronic products has been Malhavoc Press, DMG author Monte Cook's personal imprint.
Recently, however, a pretender to Malhavoc's throne has appeared. A small company called Ambient, Inc., produced a PDF product called Librum Equitis. It was a visually unimpressive product, offering no artwork or graphical flourishes, but it was packed to the gills with new and creative prestige classes for d20 fantasy campaigns. Despite its plain appearance, it was an instant hit, quickly jumping to the top of the ENWorld reviews charts as well as the RPGnow sales chart, and an announcement was made soon thereafter that a print publisher had picked up the rights to create a print version of the book.
So with this impressive inaugural offering, one was given to wonder, "What is their next trick?" Stretching the limit of bizarre product names, Ambient offers Thee Compleat Librum ov Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes. It is (at this time) an electronic download product in PDF format and contains new rules items and campaign ideas springing from the tales of a necromantic priest named Gar'Udok.
A First Look
Thee Compleat Librum ov Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes (hereafter Gar'Udok's Librum) is a PDF download. The PDF has 58 pages, including the mock cover, a product announcement page, and the obligatory Open Game License. It is priced at $6.95 at www.rpgnow.com. This is a bit more than some older PDF books such as Malhavoc's first three products and Ambient's own Librum Equitis, but it is larger than the older releases and comparable to Malhavoc's latest release, the Book of Eldritch Might II: Songs and Souls of Power.
The PDF file is rather large. This is in part due to the extensive use of color graphics. The color artwork, primarily decorative in nature, is very well done and helps bring forth the feel of the book. There are, however, a few amateurish sketches used as white-space filler at the end of sections that I could have done without.
The layout is very handsome. Each page has a background that looks like yellowing vellum, and there are chapter titles in the margin for ease of use when printed out. The extensive use of color may mean that you will want to use the economy setting on the printer, but I noticed that the text still appeared crisp when I used the economy setting on my printer; some PDFs I have printed out had a font that looked fuzzy when using the economy setting.
The PDF file makes good use of the bookmarks tab, providing for convenient browsing of the document if you like to use your downloads electronically.
The layout uses an easily readable two-column format and a dense typeface that delivers a large amount of content per page. There were a few minor irritants in the layout, such as a spell name that got separated from the rest of the spell by a column break, which can make it hard to find the spell if your eyes don't key into the spell name at the bottom of the page.
Overall, I find the value of the product comparable to similar products, and find the graphical presentation to be exceptional.
A Deeper Look
Gar'Udok's Librum is organized into a prologue, 6 chapters, and an epilogue. The prologue introduces the central figure behind the material in the book, Gar'Udok, and gives a timeline of his exploits. The epilogue provides some suggestions for integrating the ideas presented in the book into your own campaign.
The chapters are broken down by the types of mechanical information covered in the section: Spells, Creatures & Races, Classes, Feats, Magic Items, and Deities & Domains. Each item comes with a brief quote or historical snippet from the tale of Gar'Udok, which adds a little color and background to the book.
It is also noteworthy that the book uses a few Open Game Content items that fit into the background presented in the book.
Chapter 1 - The Necromancies of Gar'Udok
The first chapter details a variety of new spells, complete with supplemental spell lists for the core rulebook classes. Most of the additions are to the cleric and sorcerer/wizard lists, but some spells are also added to the assassin, bard, blackguard, druid, and ranger lists.
Most of the spells are of such a nature that you would see them used by foul necromancers or death priests or their minions. Some examples are:
- Skinwalking: Lets you take on the likeness of a slain creature. The skin from the creature's face is used as a component. While I like this eerie concept, the spell grants a 25 bonus to Disguise. That is much larger than shape-altering spells usually grant. Though I can see that some improvement over other spells might be warranted given the component, a smaller bonus (say 15) might have been more appropriate.
- Aura of Death: Causes a fearful aura around you that gives an Intimidate bonus and causes a morale penalty to your foes.
- Ageless: Stops aging for one day, but requires the blood from someone younger than you as a component.
- Exoskeletal Animation: Animates the exoskeleton of a vermin, creating an undead vermin.
- Life's Veil: Endows an undead creature with a semblance of life.
- Shrapnel: Detonates a piece of bone.
- Army of Shrapnel: You enchant skeletons to explode as if affected by a shrapnel spell (see above) when slain.
- Weeping Wounds: The target takes an additional 1d6 points of damage from any non-energy attack.
- Bone Arrow: An arrow made of bone flies out and strikes the target, and then morphs into a skeleton. (This appears to be a different version of Monte Cook's bolt of conjuring from the Book of Eldritch Might; however, much like the bolt of conjuring, I have an issue with an attack spell that doesn't allow a spell resistance roll and automatically hits with no save.)
This is a nice variety of spells for addition to the arsenal of a campaign's morbid villains, and for the most part they are well done. There are a few things I found curious. For example, some spells that have damage expressed in terms of levels had a damage cap that the caster would almost automatically bump up against; most 3e spells with a cap have some room for the caster to develop.
Chapter 2 - Risen Creatures of the North
Chapter Two describes some new creatures. As you might guess, many of them are undead. Some of the ideas are quite creative, though, and this is where the book truly shines.
The chapter leads off with perhaps the most distinctive creature of the bunch, the alabaster maiden. The original alabaster maiden was supposedly a medusa slain by its own stony gaze. They are formed of a pure white stone and reanimated as an undead creature. The creature does not petrify with its gaze, but it can slay living instead. Caramina, an alabaster maiden fighter / blackguard that is part of the Gar'Udok tale, is presented as an example.
The bloody lords are ghoulish undead barbarians. Once kings of their tribes, they can animate corpses as a type of undead called graveborn (essentially zombies without the speed limitation).
Crypt angels are fallen celestials that have been slain and reanimated by divinities of undeath. Crypt angels share some of the beauty of their former selves and can only cross into the material world at sites of great carnage.
Disease golems are essentially patchwork mummies, created by Gar'Udok from a menagerie of other mummies. The chapter also introduces obsidian golems and poison golems.
The restless ghouls are powerful versions of ghouls with one rather telling property: they are difficult to keep down. Unless the ghoul is blessed or disintegrated when slain, it instantly reanimates as soon as three creatures are slain within 60 feet of where it rests.
The visceral construct is the result of a construct of viscera spell introduced earlier in the book, the animated internal organs of a creature.
The cairn wyrm is a sort of dragon that feeds on the dead. Its breath weapon is a regurgitation of corpses and negative energy. A complete sample creature from the background story, Torexis the Catacomb Drake, is included as an example. Torexis has the draconic rogue prestige class defined in AEG's Dragons book.
After the basic creatures, the book offers a variety of templates. The templates include:
- Exoskeleton: A template applied to vermin to make them into undead animated exoskeletons.
- Ghoul: The ghoul from the core rules applied as a template. The rules make use of this template later; the pale rider prestige class gets a ghoulish warhorse as a mount.
- Lekassi: The lekassi is an unusual template, a character for which one parent is an undead transformed to a semblance of life by the life's veil spell. The lekassi actually have a revulsion to undead; they can detect such creatures, and they a smite undead ability. This would make for an interesting "Vampire Hunter D" type of character.
- True Mummy: The true mummy is a template form of a mummy. Much like a lich, it is difficult to slay a true mummy. The example for the true mummy is the book's namesake: Gar'Udok is a 19th-level true mummy cleric.
The final entry in this chapter is a new character race, the black hand kobold. These creatures are thought to be descended from the same dragon that fathered the race of cairn wyrms. They have an ability deriving from this ancestry, allowing them to use spell trigger magic items as if they were sorcerers.
Chapter 3 - The Dark Lords
The third chapter, entitled Dark Lords, introduces new prestige classes. Sample characters are presented for some of the prestige classes.
The first new prestige class is the Anam'Glac, or "blood druid." The Anam'Glac have discovered the cycle of life and death and interfere with it to draw power from it. In essence, Anam'Glac utilize the powers of the souls of others. Their spellcasting advancement is rather slow, but they gain abilities that allow them to tap the powers of a creature from its corpse. The central requirement of this class is that the character be able to cast reincarnation; as the souls clerical domain gives access to this spell, such characters may not be druids at all.
The sample Anam'Glac character is a female cleric / corpulent / anam'glac. Corpulent is a prestige class presented in Ambient's Librum Equitis Volume 1, representing a priest of gods of greed and excess who grows to enormous girth. There is a picture of the sample character, a bloated female being carried on the back of several skeletons. (The author tells me that the original picture of her was fully topless; I can only be thankful that he asked the artist to change it!)
The legion is a prestige class available to intelligent undead, empowered with the ability to act as leaders of other undead. They can bolster troops and command undead, and gain spellcasting ability. The spellcasting advancement seems a bit brisk to me: it advances to casting 5th-level spells in as many levels (and this is in addition to a good base attack bonus progression). Its spellcasting is very limited in focus, though, being limited to effects to bolster undead. As such, this may not be as big a problem as it seems at first.
The lotahm are psionics with an affinity for birds. They require the Animal Handling and Animal Empathy skills, as well as psionic powers. They gain a bird companion and several abilities to enhance and communicate with it. At higher levels, they gain various abilities including discovering new psionic powers, and gain power points as they gain levels.
Pale riders are an order of knights devoted to a group called the eternal order, which serves a demon or a dark god. At 1st level, they gain the service of a ghoulish steed. As they advance, they gain the ability to smite living and eventually become undead themselves.
Priests of bone are, as the name suggests, servants of deities presiding over skeletal undead. They have a somewhat slowed spellcasting advancement, but gain access to extra spells from the bone domain described later in the book. As they advance, their physical form shrivels, and they gain attributes of undead, including damage reduction and a resistance to sharp weapons similar to skeletons.
The prophet is a handpicked servant of a deity, chosen to give his followers direction. The prophet has slower combat advancement, but access to a variety of powers granted by the deity, such as a few spell-like abilities and extra domains. The only thing I found troubling about this was that instead of offering a continuing spellcasting advancement in the character's prior divine class, the class has its own spellcasting advancement that progresses through the casting levels rapidly, much like that of the penumbral lord and beholder mage. This is a rather inelegant holdover from the class' original incarnation as it appears on the 3e Tower website, and could lead to the character getting high-level spells sooner than is normally allowable. It seems to me that considering the class abilities and the prophet's less martial nature, the class could have afforded using continued spellcasting advancement in the prior class, possibly at a slightly reduced rate.
The final class is a reprint from Ambient's Librum Equitis Volume I: the zombie master. It is basically a necromantic spellcaster (arcane or divine) optimized in animating dead. As mentioned in the review of that product, the class has some abilities that are primarily applicable to divine spellcasters, making this prestige class a rather evenly balanced class whether the character's prior class was arcane or divine.
Chapter 4 - Feats
The fourth chapter covers feats, again with a slant toward being useful for baleful necromancer types. The feats include:
- Additional Domain: This feat can only be selected once every five levels, but grants the cleric access to a new domain.
- Augment Animations: This increases the hit points and attack bonus of undead that you animate.
- Dark Summons: This feat allows necromancers to use their summon monster spells to summon undead creatures in addition to the normally available creatures; a complete list is included.
- Latent Powers: This feat grants two 0-level psionic powers with one free use each per day. Any additional uses require 1 power point.
- Maintain Spell: This is a metamagic feat that can be applied to any non-instantaneous spell, and takes up a slot one level higher than normal. The spell has a duration of concentration plus the spell's normal duration.
- Natural Focus: This feat is for psionic characters. The character gains one power point and can select psion or psychic warrior as an additional favored class.
- Necromantic Familiar: The caster's familiar becomes an undead creature, with a touch that can spread disease.
Chapter 5 - Magic Items
The magic items chapter includes statistics for new weapons, rings, staves, and wondrous items, as well as a new type of material. Weapon enchantments include filthy (the weapon spreads disease on a hit) and flaming skull (missile weapon has an illusion of a flaming skull that panics enemies.) Other items include the bone lord's band (increases the number of hit dice of undead that a user may control), dancing bones (a staff with various animation abilities), and the final amulet (if the wearer is slain, his body becomes ash, preventing him from being raised as undead).
The new material is white bone. White bone is specially treated bone that can be crafted into armor and weapons, which is as strong as iron but lighter.
Chapter 6 - Deities and Domains
The final chapter introduces a number of foul deities for use in your game as patrons of evil faiths, and new domains to power their priesthoods.
The deities include Grengal, the Duke of Bones; Bulboros, lord of gluttony and disease; Krondheir, Lord of the Dance (a deity of death with a propensity for celebration); Dowlan Ilmligg (a deity associated with vermin); Giannan, Queen of Lust; and Raltehkos, Devourer of Souls (a mad power of destruction and consumption).
The new domains described in the book are bones, disease, greed, insanity, lust, souls, undead, and vermin. Some of these domains reference other d20 System resources such as Relics & Rituals. While this is playing up the strengths of the d20 System license and Open Game License, you cannot guarantee that a reader will have a given book. At a minimum, it would have been nice if alternative spells were provided.
Conclusion
Thee Compleat Librum ov Gar'Udok's Necromantic Artes is a wonderful resource for a GM planning or running a campaign involving necromancy, the undead, or evil deities. Most of the sections have something to add to such a campaign, though admittedly it does appear that the magic item section has the least to offer.
Two aspects to the book make it stand out in my mind. The first is the usage of flavor text. Most items in the book have a little snippet that helps set a mood for the item and adds an element of depth, without burdening you with reading a lot of history and background that may be out of place in your campaign.
The second is the book's use of Open Game Content material. This saves the book from re-inventing the wheel and forcing the users to "pick a version" of a given idea. Instead, this helps build a synergy between Gar'Udok's Librum and books you may already have.
-Alan D. Kohler
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