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It's a sturdy enough book, but the paper is rather thin. Almost like rice paper - you can see through it fairly easily. Still, there are a lot of pages, 240 of them.
It's divided into 10 chapters, each featuring a type of magic,
and has two large appendices.
The book starts off with Alchemy. It's loosely based on real life
alchemy, but right away, it combines medicine with alchemy. This
I have some trouble with. As far I know, most historical
Alchemists weren't doctors or barbers or healers. They're also
closer to historical healers or doctors than they should be. Real
life Medieval doctors were essentially forbidden to do things
like autopsies or clinical trials, so they had to go entirely on
really old books written by people who didn't really have any
idea what they were doing. In most fantasy worlds (and thus d20
games), none of this is applicable.
It introduces the NPC Core Class, the "Arcane Healer"
as well as the prestige class "The Grand Alchemist".
So, anyway, I really didn't like this chapter.
Chapter Two introduces Astrology. There are two
new core classes, the "Computer" and the
"Astrologer". One is an NPC class, the other a PC
class. The Computer is somewhat useless, sort of like a
specialized Expert, only worse in combat (probably why it's an
NPC class).
In theory, the Astrologer casts spells thanks to the powers of
celestial (ie, stars and such) energy. In practice, the
Astrologer is a lot like a Wizard, only with a limited spell
list, and with perhaps a fatal flaw that makes it unplayable.
The Astrologer, instead of memorizing spells, creates spell
formula. This may be done ahead of time and later invoked, or
whenever (though it takes several minutes to create a spell
formula). At first glance, this seems somewhat neat and rather
flexible. Except! There's a big problem. Whenenver an Astrologer
creates a spell formula, he must make a astrology skill roll to
see if they correctly create a spell formula (and I don't believe
take 10 or take 20 would apply here).
Given that the Astrologer can cast a number of spells per day
about on par with a wizard (maybe 1 per day more), this can be a
heck of a lot of dice rolling. 1 roll per spell slot. At high
levels, that can be unmangeable. Unless I'm reading this wrong.
Which I don't think so, but the writing and the layout is a bit
confusing, so I might be.
Still, in practice, you can just roll when you actually cast a
spell. Much more mangeable. But as it is, it's like having a
wizard or cleric rolling a d20 for every spell they memorize.
Arduous, to say the least.
Also, I think perhaps it should be Knowledge (Astrology), instead
of creating a new skill for Astrology. This is a quibble though.
Besides the two core classes, there are a couple prestige
classes. One for the Sun and one for the Moon. The Sun one is
something like a Paladin, only tied into astrology. It's
advancement table is empty for level 10. So playing one could be
a problematic (though it's generally easy to complete the last
line for the mathematical stuff, since the progression should be
obvious).
Chapter Three is on Elementalism. They are
essentially a special form of wizards that specialize in
elemental magic. They have to pick one element to specialize in,
but can cast spells from all types except for the opposite of
their specialty. Again, sort of like how specialist wizards work.
This isn't earth shaking in terms of originality, but I think it
handles elementalists better than the Mongoose book on the same
subject. (The Sovereign Stone campaign setting also adds
elemental magic in a much different system).
Some of the names of the elemental magicians are odd. Aquamancer
and auramancer are okay, but the one for fire is called a
"ignamancer", a bit odd, and the one for earth is
called a "terramancer". The obvious would have been
geomancer, but that's taken by the next chapter. But Ignamancer?
Pyromancer would be better. Though obviously this is pretty
subjective.
There are several new elementalist spells introduced at the back
of the book, though their lists are still fairly sparse.
Apparently since there really isn't all that much new to this
class (like I said, they're pretty much just a wizard with a
different spell list and different special abilities), much of
the chapter was devoted to 4 NPCs. These NPCs make up the
"Elemental Council". Despite that, they're all pretty
much mid level, all around 10th or so in their elemental class. I
think I would have preferred more elemental spells to these NPCs,
especially since most are rather annoying.
Chapter Four is on geomancy. It's quite a short
chapter, only 8 pages. Basically, it goes into how the
land/earth/world is either postively or negatively magical. This
didn't do much for me. Far too simple. The way they handle it, is
zones simply make magic more or less powerful. Whee! Exciting.
Interesting concept (geomancy), just not followed up in all
that interestingly or in depth.
Chapter Five in on Herbalism, and is about 20
pages. This is probably the most useful chapter for the average
D&D campaign. It starts off with an overview stating the
obvious - that plants can affect the body. It then takes an odd
turn and goes into a discussion of food and gives some sample
dishes. At this point, I started wondering "what the
heck?". But it then gets to the interesting (for a D&D
game) bits, medicinal & magical uses of herbs.
It introduces a new skill, "Herbalism", which is using
herbs to their utmost. Many people balk at adding new skills, so
it also says (rightfully, I think) that you can just use it as
the "Profession (Herbalist)" skill instead.
Several bits of Alchemist equipment are introduced, and there are
2 prestige classes. Frankly, I think this chapter probably should
have been merged with the Alchemy chapter, at least the
"Healing" section of it.
The herbs and their properties actually aren't in this chapter,
but in a large appendix in back.
There are two prestige classes, both of which I actually like
(and they make sense mathmatically, in terms of save/BAB
progressions). Grand Herbalist and Wylderwitch.
Chapter Six is called "Magical
Imagination", and is about 10 pages. This is an odd chapter.
It's about a group of bards who have super memories. There's a
prestige class for this order. Unfortunately, they screwed up the
table for it. While it doesn't render it unusuable, it's
annoying.
Chapter 7 is "Oneiromancy". While the
title suggests this chapter is on dream magic, it's really more
on adventures while in dreams. Introduced is the Lucid Dreaming
skill, along with dream points which let you manipulate
the dreams, by spending the points to accomplish various things.
Seems pretty well done and fairly true to life. This is probably
the best chapter in terms of writing and game rules, but it's not
all that useful. This is even mentioned in the chapter - there's
generally so many times you can run a dream adventure. I strongly
disagree with the suggestion that you give PCs experience for
adventures in their dreams. If that were the case, I would be a
20th level character.
There's a prestige class, the "Oneiromancer", oddly
enough. This is essentially a spell casting prestige class (+1
caster level each level), only with abilities tailored for the
dream world.
Chapter 8 is rational magic. Essentially the
CSICOP of wizards. Bah. While belief does play a role in real
world magic, in a fantasy world would it? Almost certainly not.
Chapter 9 is on Spirit Cultivation. This is
weird. It's not like say in the computer game Morrowind, where
you capture creatures' souls for use in making magic items.
Rather, apparently after someone is killed, there is a residue of
a soul in the body. Certain people, "Gleaners", suck up
this residue and use it for their own purposes.
This is well, weird. I've never heard of the soul as leaving
residue before. So I had er, philosophical problems with this.
Chapter 10 is on Sympathetic Magic. Voodoo dolls
are the obvious example of sympathetic magic. Nice idea (it's
basically a spell point system), but the way they handle it is a
bit clumsy and vague. You (or the player) is left to do the work
of coming up with the spells. Only a handful are given.
A core class is introduced, the "Sympathetic Mage",
which is simply a practioner of sympathetic magic. Probably not
real useful as a PC class.
There are two appendices. One for plants, one for new spells.
The first appendix is essentially a companion to
chapter 5 (on Herbalism). It's pretty big, at 45 pages or so.
There are 20 basic plant introduced. Each plant has a few traits,
which the Herbalist can make use of, plus there are some magical
concoctions of each plant.
The entry for each plant is quite thorough. The only real
downside, is you only get 20 plants. And some of the plants are
somewhat , well, odd, and might not be useful for all campaigns.
For instance, the Spriggan Tree. These are gigantic trees which
grow backwards (that is, they shrink). The most unbalancing is
perhaps "Elysium". Essentially, it's a type of grass
that creates an anti-magic field. It's actually more like a weed
in terms of how it growths. It's also supposedly a wonder food.
You can make jerky out of it so powerful, that one strip will
last you a week (in terms of food) and 3 days (in terms of
water). And it's so common that it's used almost exclusively on
ships and such (or so the entry says). Grr. That's a bit too
sweeping a thing to fit into most campaign worlds.
Another plant is really really powerful, but it's presumably
meant to be extremely rare (if not unique). It's almost like the
fabled trees from mythology - if you get to it, you can make a
concoction that will grant you immortality.
Still, other than those, most the plants are fairly useful, and
not too difficult to work into your world. There are a few
real-world plants, too. While this isn't a complaint, exactly, I
think I would have liked to have seen a whole book full of this,
not just a chapter.
The second appendix is on new spells. It's about
20 pages or so. I'm not going to count them, but it says there
are more than 100 of them on the back cover. Most seem to be for
the Elementalist class (described in Chapter 3), but also some
assorted ones from the other chapters. Many of the elemental
class spells can also be cast by wizards/sorcerers or bards. I
haven't used them, but most seem alright. There were some 9th
level elemental spells that make me go hmm. Essentially, these
spells create an 'essence' of that element. This essence can then
be used for various effects, including giving a +5 inherent bonus
to the related stat. That seems a bit too powerful. I know Wish
can do the same, but that seems to have more of an XP cost
related to it.
The layout is generally excellent with regards to designating
what is and what is not open content. This can cause the text to
be overly broken up, though. I mean, you're reading something,
then you run into pages full of boxes for something else.
One really nice thing, is each chapter has several adventure
seeds. Usually tied into the introductory fiction of the chapter.
This is pretty nice, I think. Won't always be useful to spawn an
adventure, but when you're groping for ideas, things like this
can come in handy.
Ultimately though, I was rather disappointed with this book. Some
of the types of magic are rather arcane (no pun intended), and
not really much use in a game (I'm guessing the rational magic
chapter was a joke), and those things that are, are extremely
vague. The Sympathetic Magic & Elemental Magic chapters are
good examples. Both should have been fleshed out more to be truly
useful (especially spells/rituals for sympathetic magic). Even
the best chapter, Herbalism, will require the GM to create a lot
of extra plants to be completely viable in a game.
I'd probably balk at paying full price for it (but admittedly,
I'm cheap), but if you can get it for around what I did (about
$12), it's probably worth it.
C Plus. Covers a lot of ground, but only
superficially in some cases (it's almost like reading an
anthology of magazine articles). Lots of wasted potential, poor
layout when it comes to reading (good when it comes to showing
the difference between open and closed content), some editing
flubs (when it comes to prestige classes, 2 are missing info from
their tables)
