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The first chapter (20 p.) offers two new sorcery styles and 30 new spells. The new styles are Cosmic Sorcery, which is used to augment other spells, and Immortality, which can be used to make a sorcerer harder to kill or immortal, including by way of vampirism. The new spells include eight Hypnotism, four Nature Magic, three each for Curses, Prestidigitation, and Summonings, and one each for Counterspell and Divination. Also included is a chart for randomly determining spells that may be included in a spellbook. The Hypnotism spells, in particular, are a welcome addition to what had been an under served style. Unfortunately, the chart for new spells and sorcery styles is one of the few examples of an editing failure in this sourcebook as boldface is used for all of the sorcery styles instead of just the new styles as indicated in the explanatory notes.
The new feats include five General, three Monster, and fifteen Sorcery. Three of the general feats are akin to background templates and must be taken at first level. Consequently, they are of limited use. The Loathsome Weapon feat,though, in the true spirit of Conan, allows for snakes and other venomous creatures to be wielded as weapons without a non-proficiency penalty. The Monster feats reprint standard d20 feats: Awesome Blow, Flyby Attack, Titanic Blow. The real meat of this chapter is with the Sorcery feats. Bleed Dry enhances the Power Points gained from a ritual sacrifice. Debaucher allows a sorcerer to gain Power Points by corrupting companions through drinking or orgies. And, several feats provide for the construction of magic items and creatures.
The chapter on permanent sorcery (11 p.) provides rules for casting permanent spells, crafting magic items, and creating sorcerous aberrations and vat creatures. Magic items in Conan are meant to be rare items that are more often wielded by sorcerers than acquired by PCs as loot or bought in the local market. Sorcerers also have an interest in ensuring that sorcery remains mysterious and somewhat frightening. Should a PC sorcerer consider making items for other characters, a GM is encouraged to enforce the High Living rule, depriving the sorcerer of the funds necessary to create the item. The rules for creating aberrations and vat creatures at first appear promising. However, once created, the creatures must soon begin making weekly Corruption saves at a 30 DC, gaining one point of Corruption with each failure. Once the creature has 10 Corruption, the sorcerer can no longer control the creature. Considering the great cost for creating these creatures, several hundred if not thousand silver pieces and an even great amount of experience points, it is hard to see why or when a sorcerer would create such creatures. Not that the sorcerers in the Conan stories always acted rationally.
The chapter of sorcerous items (22 p.) includes magic items, unusual items, alchemical items, and drugs and herbal preparations that a sorcerer might use. The magic items are all taken from the Conan stories and are presented both for use and as examples for how magic items may be used in the game. The unusual items include things such as the seemingly ubiquitous green fire-stones and a staff that provides a bonus to Perform (ritual) checks. The alchemical items include such things as Hellfire Puffballs and a Rope of Dead Women’s Hair. The costs and game mechanics are provided for manufacturing magic and alchemical items.
The creatures of sorcery (32 p.) includes seemingly all of the creatures from the Conan stories that were not included in the Conan RPG. These include vat grown creatures, the Black Lotus plant, and several demons and demon lords that may be summon or the subject of demonic pact.
The chapter on sorcerous cultures (8 p.) includes prestige classes for four sorcerous societies. These prestige classes provide a few benefits appropriate to the society and, more importantly, allow the sorcerer to treat the prestige class as a favored class, allowing access to bonus feats by characters who come from a race that does not include scholar as a favored class. Rules are provided for arcane religions and cults based on the worship of powerful entities such as Khosatral Khel and Skelos. However, these rules appear to be of limited use.
The chapter on wizards of the Hyborian Age (14 p.) includes both prominent wizards, such as Thoth Amon and the Master of Yimsha, and the frost giants. These are powerful wizards, most 20th Level, the lowest 17th. Unfortunately, some of these write-ups include Corruption scores and some do not. It certainly seems that Thoth Amon and Xaltotun should have such scores. Also, Toth Amon’s write-up appears to have been pulled from the Conan RPG and includes a reference to this supplement.
The last chapter (7 p.) includes advice for gamemasters, providing outlines for the motivations of neophyte, experienced, and master sorcerers, using reputation, dealing with demons, and expansions on the Rules of Sorcery. This chapter was probably the most disappointing as I was hoping for more information on how to build adventures around sorcerous opponents. Bits of such information are scattered throughout the book, but I would have liked to have had a thorough discussion of sorcerers as villains.
One thing that appeared missing from the sourcebook were rules for the mysterious gadgets that often appear in Howard’s stories. Howard’s sorcerers frequently have traps, elaborate periscopes, and other seemingly mechanical devices, keeping the knowledge of the use and manufacture of such devices as mysterious as their sorcery. The Scrolls of Skelos offers no rules for such devices other than to treat them as magic items. This seems to have been a missed opportunity.
The art throughout The Scrolls of Skelos is similar to that of the Conan RPG. The sourcebook uses the same borders as the Conan RPG and includes a few pictures of bare breasted and/or thinly veiled women. Considering some of the material in the sourcebook on ritual sacrifice and debauched orgies, these pictures provide notice of the adult material included in the game. The sourcebook includes numerous references to the Conan RPG with page numbers.
