Goto [ Index ]

Complete Arcane is by far the best of the D&D 3.5 crunch hardbacks yet. It’s got pretty much the full works – base classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, magic items, monsters, plus campaign advice. All of that’s good enough in its own right. But what really makes this book shine are the thirteen pages dedicated to what’s probably the most mould-breaking D&D base class yet. What follows is a pretty lengthy review, but you could probably fake your way through the book by reading the last paragraph.

The Classes

Between base classes and prestige classes, there’s 22 new directions to take your character in this book. Well, I say new. If you’ve got a relatively complete D&D collection already, you’ll have access to most of these in one form or another already. The warmage is lifted straight from Miniatures Handbook, and the wu jen from Oriental Adventures. The warmage is a good class (great for those who want to run effective fighter mage characters), the wu jen not so great (element based casters with taboos restricting their behaviour).

The prestige classes mostly come from Tome & Blood, and are pretty much unaltered, so don’t expect anything earth-shattering there. Still, a couple of new classes make an appearance, and the wild mage is a welcome return to 3rd edition (they tend to throw around rod of wonder-style effects. It’s pretty deadly.). For every prestige class there’s an NPC stat block as an example, same as the other Complete books. As far as I’m concerned, these are pretty much filler. They don’t come with backgrounds, so it’s not like these are fully fleshed NPCs you can use immediately. Personally, I’d have much rather seen generic equipment, skills and feats for each level, like in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. That’d make it much easier to quickly create NPCs tailored to the party’s level.

Anyone playing an arcane spellcaster with no access to Tome & Blood will find these prestige classes nigh indispensable. To those with Tome & Blood, they’re really nothing new.

The Warlock is quite undeniably new, and really is a decider when you’re pondering whether to buy this book or not. The basic premise behind the warlock is they’re a very limited arcane caster. Their abilities are very narrowly defined (even at 20th level, they only have 12 ‘invocations’, plus their eldritch blast attack power. What they do, though, they do well. What they do, they can do all day.

If you don’t like the D&D spell system, you owe it to yourself to look at the warlock. They’ve got a focused, dark themed power list, and they pick up a few demonic themed powers that they pick up along the way. The class powers are derived from fiendish pacts and bargains, but it wouldn’t take much to modify the class for good characters and celestial bargains.

RPGnetters I’ve seen discussing the class tend to like it and don’t think it’s game-breaking by any means (eldritch blasts, their attack power, don’t do more damage than a light crossbow at low levels, though they are a ranged touch attack). A level of warlock alongside normal spellcasting levels can cool for making sure you never run out of magic and have to resort to the weaponry.

The Feats

71 pages in, we exit the classes chapters and enter the domain of feats. Before we fire up with the miscellany, we’re presented with a section about what Player’s Handbook feats can be used with what spells. This is good for anyone who’s confused by the myriad of combat feats and which ones can be applied to which spells, and especially good for those who’d never contemplated putting the two together.

The feats are a mixture of reprints and some classy new stuff. Born of the Three Thunders, which allows your electricity spells to mix in thunderclaps for sonic damage and stunning, is a welcome addition, as is Double Wand Wielder, a feat that’s deadly in the hands of a high Use Magic Device rogue. Sorcerers can dabble in their draconic heritage a little (well, okay, a lot). The Explosive Spell metamagic feat is long overdue, knocking victims of your area effect spells backwards if they fail their saves. The Mage Slayer feat from Miniatures Handbook is fixed, but still very effective in the hands of melee characters. Arcane casters, regardless of their class, can now fork out a feat to obtain a familiar.

There’s a lot of cool new stuff in here. This section is one of the highlights of the book.

Spells

As far as I’m concerned, the spells chapter tends to be the dullest section of D&D books. I tend to gloss through them, only really paying attention to the really classy stuff and the stuff that’ll be any use to any NPCs of mine. This book, sadly, really isn’t an exception. There’s a few fun things in there, like decapitating scarf. Defenestrating sphere, sadly, will under no circumstances defenestrate anyone, unless their windows happen to be in the ceiling. It’s a good spell, but it’s horrifically misnamed. Duelward is good, allowing free actions for the use of counterspells. The various orb spells are good if you don’t have access to them from Tome & Blood or Miniatures Handbook (it’s a running theme – a lot has been cribbed from those books). I’m fond of Transmute Rock to Lava, largely because it specifies what happens if you cast it on the ceiling rather than the floor. That’s the best of quite a large crop, though.

Magic Items

Magic items come in all shapes and sizes, apparently. Before the new items themselves, we have a section on alternatives to potions and scrolls, spellbook construction, and crazy enchantments for your spellbook (including one to make ‘em levitate... long live genre clichés!).

The actual magic items are remarkably unmemorable, though. The clouting weapon quality is fun (between that, Awesome Blow and Explosive Spell everyone can hurl their enemies around the room!), but aside from that, I wouldn’t expect these to appear in anyone's game any time soon (perhaps with the exception of belts of many pockets and phoenix helms, the latter of which I’ve seen used, but both are reprints from other books).

Monsters

Again, this section’s vaguely dull (and short). Effigy creatures (construct versions of normal creatures) aren’t bad. Elemental Grues are updated from 2nd edition, but didn’t massively need to be. Elemental Monoliths bridge the gap between Elder elementals and Primal Elementals, but don’t really achieve much that an Elder elemental with extra hit dice doesn’t. Pseudonatural creatures appear yet again (honestly, it’s practically getting to the stage where D&D books without pseudonatural creatures are the exception), and spellstitched undead are an unremarkable reprint.

Arcane Campaigns

The final section of the book illustrates the role of the arcane classes in a typical Greyhawk/Forgotten Realms-style world. It’s vaguely interesting, but rather tends to generalise (not all conjurers are the same, or transmuters, or especially bards). After that, there’s a bit about designing adventures for arcane casters, who’re prone to throw about to game breaking flight and divination spells that can screw your adventures up unless you planned for them in the first place. There’s some good advice here, but naturally, it needs to be tempered according to your group.

The chapter introduces a very unusual notion – the all-arcanist campaign. A campaign where all of the characters are exclusively arcane casters really intrigues me. Much like epic level characters, they’d probably be able to stop all over piffling things like plot and adventure structure, but it sounds like it could be fun anyway. If anyone does get possessed to run this, I’d heartily recommend a character with the Craft Construct feat to add some damage limitation. Anyhow, I digress.

The Arcane Events section is an interesting section about spell duels and arcane tournaments. It’s a different take to how it was done in Magic of Faerûn, but not massively so. It made for interesting reading, and it might inspire you to run an adventure based around those sorts of shenanigans, but it’s by no means essential stuff. Same can be said of the Arcane Organisations, especially if you’re not playing in Greyhawk.

The last main section is on epic characters. It’s really not that important, even if you are running an epic campaign (which I’ve been there and done). There’s a few updated epic feats (Automatic Quicken spell is practically neutered, sadly), but nothing you couldn’t have got off the SRD.

Overview

Art is pretty much what you’d expect from a D&D book. No Wayne Reynolds in sight for this one, though there’s a not inconsiderable amount of Ron Spencer in there. I like the stuff, but I know a lot of people’s mileage may vary when it comes to D&D art.

If you don’t have an extensive D&D collection, then this book is a nigh indispensable purchase. There’s a lot of bang to be had for your buck. If you do have Tome & Blood and Miniatures Handbook, though, the value of Complete Arcane is much more debateable. The new spells and feats are good, but I think the scale-tipper has to be the warlock. If I could only take five D&D books to a desert island, this’d be one of them. Uh, assuming I was taking them there for gaming, and not building a signal beacon to attract passing aircraft or anything.