This is a mixed bag of a book. I’m going to talk about the problems first, of which there are several, but don’t be put off completely; there are some good points too.

Unfortunately there are quite a lot of errors in this book from a d20 System perspective. Many of these can be corrected by an experienced GM, but the purchaser really should not be made to do that. Some of the errors have a more serious effect on play balance, and so cannot so easily be corrected without playtesting. As an example of these, the excellent prismatic spray (which shares the same name as Pelgrane’s magazine for The Dying Earth RPG) is a new spell that requires a ranged touch attack but then allows a Reflex save for half damage. This violates a basic principle of d20 System design, which is that you never use two dice rolls to decide one issue (the only exception being the fairly rare opposed rolls). If you hit with a ranged touch attack spell, you’ve hit; there’s no way for the target to then somehow avoid, or even partially avoid, the effects. None of the ranged touch attack spells in The Player’s Handbook allow the target a save to reduce the damage.

The prestige classes are all flawed to a greater or lesser extent, too. The Sharper is supposed to be a confidence trickster, but he ends up being more like a variant on the Arcane Trickster instead -- poor Base Attack Bonus, d6 HD, a Sneak Attack increase every 2nd level, a bonus feat every 4th level, good Reflex and Will saves, 4 skill points/level, and an array of specialist spells. This is probably reasonably balanced, but it really isn’t all that interesting (it doesn’t get any special abilities other than Sneak Attack and the three bonus feats), and the Requirements to become one are quite ridiculously stringent -- BAB +3, between 4 and 9 ranks in eight (!) different skills, Weapon Finesse, three specific Ability Scores that have to each by 12 or higher, 1st level arcane spellcasting ability, and +2d6 or higher Sneak Attack! What a combination! Gaining all the required skills means being at least a 6th level rogue and 2nd level sorcerer or wizard. This, of course, means that any character who qualifies from a skills perspective will easily meet the BAB requirement, so why bother including the BAB requirement (and indeed the Weapon Finesse requirement) when the class is in theory supposed to be less combat-oriented than the standard rogue (considering that its BAB is lower and it is described as preferring persuasion and spells over combat). The requirement for certain minimum Ability Scores again goes against basic principles of d20 design. Oddly, the sharper class is rounded out with a description of con trick techniques that a typical sharper might use; these would be far better written up as special abilities, if the class were to be truly about confidence tricks rather than just an Arcane Trickster variant with weirdly over-the-top prerequisites.

Two other prestige classes are provided, the Diabolist and the Arch-Magician. The Diabolist is the first fifteen-level prestige class I’ve seen, which is inexplicable given that the requirements mean one will need to be a 7th level wizard or 8th level sorcerer before gaining any levels in this prestige class (the requirement in question being ‘Ability to cast 4th level arcane spells’). Rather than gaining additional arcane spellcasting levels as though she had advanced as a sorcerer or wizard, the Diabolist gets to start all over again with three 1st-level spells per day as a 1st-level Diabolist, eventually working her way back to the heady heights of 4th level spells (which, if you’ll recall, she already had before gaining a single level of Diabolist) as a 6th level Diabolist. Why would any dedicated arcane spellcaster want to give up so much power to basically start at the bottom again? By the time your 7th level wizard/6th level Diabolist has access to 4th level Diabolist spells, her sister who stuck it out as a wizard is 13th level, capable of casting 7th level spells. As a 7th level wizard/13th level diabolist (if you’re insane enough to take 13 levels in this class) you finally gain a 9th level spell, but bear in mind that you’re a 20th level character by this point! I’m not sure this class was written by someone who had even played a game of D&D. . . there is absolutely no way that anyone would want to take this prestige class. Yes, they get a powerful extraplanar companion at 3rd level, but their spell selection is so low-powered and so limited that this is no compensation -- the class is far weaker than a wizard of the same level, and if you want an extraplanar companion the Thaumaturgist prestige class (from the 3.5 edition Dungeon Master’s Guide) is a far superior choice, since it doesn’t impact your spellcasting ability and provides a few other useful abilities. Oh, the Diabolist gets “Magic Resistance” (presumably the same as Spell Resistance), but such a small amount (“Magic Resistance” 1 as a 5th level Diabolist, then +1 per level thereafter, so as a 7th level wizard/13th level Diabolist you have Spell Resistance 9) as to be to all intents and purposes completely useless.

The Arch-Magician has a nicely Dying Earth feel to it, with an interest in controlling extraplanar servitors called Sandestins, and an obsession with collecting Ioun Stones. Unfortunately yet again this is a prestige class for a high-level wizard or sorcerer (requirement: ability to cast 5th level spells) that no-one would take because they’d be freezing their spellcasting ability; yes, the Arch-Magician gains spells, but only 2 new 0-level, 1 new 1st-level and 1 new 2nd-level spells as a 9th level wizard/1st level Arch-Magician. Why bother? Their occasional ability to capture and command Sandestins does not begin to make up for their massive loss of spellcasting ability as compared to single-classed wizards.

What should have been done here, of course, is to recommend getting rid of both wizards and sorcerers from a Primer-influenced campaign, and use core class versions of the Diabolist and Arch-Magician (presumably renamed Magician) instead. Now that could have been an excellent way to emulate the Dying Earth stories with something close to standard D&D rules, but the classes would have needed to be competently written of course.

Fortunately, the prestige classes only take up a dozen pages of a 138 page book. They’re a dozen wasted pages, but much of the rest of the book is considerably better. Again we have balance and rules issues with several of the spells, variant magic rules, and magic items that make up the vast majority of the book (100 pages or so), but there are some real gems of spells and items too. We get 30 or 40 new cantrips, about 15-20 new spells for each level between 1st and 5th, and a scattering of new higher level spells. The cantrips are generally good -- I’m a sucker for new low-magic stuff that can be used by any hedge magician, and this book is full of them. Most of them provide minor benefits like +2 to a specific skill check or ability check, or do traditional hedge-wizard tricks like making beer stronger, souring milk, or creating minor and very specific illusions. A few are a little over-powered, and a one or two seem to more-or-less duplicate standard D&D spells, but for the most part these are cantrips that will add plenty of flavour and fun to low-level arcane spellcasters -- which is just as it should be.

The higher level spells again are a mixed bag. Some are just plain weird -- the first non-cantrip spell in the book, agonizing immolation¸ deals “1d6 damage per two-and-a-half caster levels.” Two-and-a-half levels? When did anyone ever go up half a level? The description then proceeds to demonstrate that most people, including the book’s authors, find the “1d6 per 2.5” arithmetic tricky, by listing the damage at each level: 3d6 at 5th level (surely 2d6?), 4d6 at 7th level (surely still 2d6? You wouldn’t hit 3d6 until, uh, seven-and-a-halfth level, right?), “and a maximum of 5d6 at 9th level or higher” (I make it that 9th level is still only 3d6, but what do I know? Maybe maths is different in the Dying Earth?).

Some are fun and flavourful, like the amatory bounty (summons a sexual playmate for the night), fey pregnancy (creates a magic soup that impregnates a female who drinks it with a weird ‘madling’ so she gives birth to a random creature or creatures, such as piglets, or a centaur) or spell of the macroid toe (makes the target’s big toe swell up to the size of the house. Many, unfortunately, are very similar to standard D&D spells (e.g. Dibarcas’ wondrous reduction is very like reduce; effective vegetal death is very like blight, but more effective and of a lower level, thus being distinctly unbalanced), again suggesting that the authors are not especially familiar with the d20 System. Many also seem to be set at too high or low a spell level, considering their utility.

The variant magic rules work very well with the better of the new spells to give just the right Dying Earth feel to magic. It is now an uncertain enterprise, dependent on Spellcraft checks every time a spell is cast. A particularly low or high roll on the skill check gets you a Dismal Failure or Illustrious Success respectively, with the former being disastrous and often humorous while the latter simply increases the power of the spell cast. These rules are simple and neat in themselves, and are also elegantly integrated with the Spell Failure rules associated with wearing armour.

The new magic items are once more mixed, but the standard is considerably higher than that of the spells. There are some superb items here, including some non-magical items that are rare and unusual but not directly sorcerous. These include practical bits of kit like the Spring-Heel Boots, a mechanical variant on boots of striding and springing; quirky social skill enhancers like the Rug of Superior Merit (enhances Diplomacy checks when entertaining guests, and gives you bonuses to attack them if they spill wine on it); and weirdly useful items like Kohha’s Limericks of Excoriation, which can be used to annoy and enrage the target so long as you can find the specific limerick best-suited to winding up that particular person!

As an example of the brilliant oddness of the specifically magical items, there are a number of objects listed as created by the slave-wizard Selua. We are treated to a lengthy and amusing exposition of Selua’s history, in which his laziness compels him to create more and more labour-saving devices until he renders all the other household servants obsolete with such handy gizmos as Selua’s brush of washing and Selua’s thimble of mending. Then there’s the mutable deck, every card-sharp magician’s favourite gizmo, with each card in the deck capable of changing its value at the whim of the owner.

As before there are a few problems with the d20 System implementation of some of these items, but these are predominantly in the arena of cost, which appears to have been determined at the authors’ whim rather than according to the formulae in the DMG. For example, Piaco’s bone works as animal friendship as cast by a 12th level druid, once per day. Now, leaving aside the fact that animal friendship was replaced by the druid/ranger wild empathy ability in 3.5 edition (and this is supposedly a 3.5 edition book), it was only ever a 1st level spell; so, the cost would be 1 (spell level) x 12 (caster level) x 1800 gp (command word item) /5 (as it’s usable only once per day) = 4320 gp, rather than the 3000 gp cost listed here. One is supposed to alter item costs for game balance reasons, but the items here don’t appear to have been determined with the formulae in mind in the first place (really, animal friendship once a day is probably worth at least as much as the formula suggests, since it lets you have up to 12 or even 24 HD of permanent animal companions). Likewise, Selua’s watering can of plant growth lets you use plant growth once a day; that should be 3 (spell level) x 5 (minimum caster level) x 1800 gp (command word) /5 (once/day) for a total of 5400 gp, rather than the listed 1200 gp; there’s no game balance reason why this should be only slightly more expensive than Selua’s urn of purification (lets you cast purify food and drink once per day), which should cost 0.5 (0-level spell) x 1 (caster level) x 1800 gp (command word) /5 (once/day) or a mere 180 gp rather than the listed 800 gp. One has to assume again that the authors don’t really know d20 very well. That said, in a Dying Earth style game you won’t generally be walking into a magic shop and buying magic items; still, why bother including prices at all if you’re not going to get them right?

The Appendices are good; a guide to adventuring in the Dying Earth setting, and a rather nifty vat creature creation system. I’m impressed with the vat creature stuff; your high-level magician will pay a lot of time and money for the privilege of creating new life from the vats, but the two-page tables for determining how much (depending on the hit dice, movement, attacks, special abilities and other characteristics of the creature) are well-balanced and rather reminiscent of the more detailed points-based d20 character creation system in BESM d20.

The OGL declaration is very clear, if a little meagre; it would have been nice to have access to some of the better new rules for other games, like the spell failure system or the vat creature creation system. That’s a very minor point for most consumers, though.

From a style perspective, this book is good, but not great. The art is of high quality, and though most or all of it has been re-used from other Pelgrane Press books, that’s not going to bother the intended purchaser of this volume (i.e. someone who is curious about The Dying Earth but wants to play it in the d20 System). One neat touch with the art is that as with other Pelgrane Press books every picture has a humorous label or short anecdote, which does at least mean that each picture is useful, informative, and relevant. Layout and proofreading are good. The cover illustration isn’t bad, but again isn’t spectacular -- a kind of decorated demonic hand in red and orange.

All in all, I can’t really recommend this book, and I doubt that I will use most of it, though some of the magic items are a lot of fun. It might be useful for a GM who loves Jack Vance but has players who won’t play anything other than d20, but even then this book would need a fair bit of work before that would be viable. The original Dying Earth RPG is far superior, though. This book tries to do two things, and doesn’t really manage to achieve either adding a Dying Earth feel to a standard D&D campaign, or allowing you to play in a full-blown Dying Earth setting with standard D&D rules. There are bits of it you could pick and choose, but on the whole it isn’t really coherent enough or balanced enough to be used as-is. Far better to just buy The Dying Earth RPG if you want to play in that setting, and maybe wait for a revised and corrected edition of the Primer if you just want to add a Dying Earth vibe to your D&D game.

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In 3 reviews, average style rating is 3.67 and average substance rating is 3.00.