Executive Summary

The Book of Eldritch Might, by Monte Cook, is a D20 supplement primarily for arcane spell casters. The product is in electronic format, as a PDF document downloadable after purchase.

I have come to find that Monte Cook's point of view on mechanics and balance considerations seem to be the most consistent and reasonable ones I've found espoused by any D20 authour. In other words, I've become a raving fanboy for Mr. Cook. Yes, that means my opinion may be biased, and it might show even though I try not to let it do so.

On the whole, this supplement seems to be well balanced and well thought out. None of the options in the book are really more powerful in a sort of "Boom! You're dead!" sort of way, but all of them offer something of interest, ranging from feats such as Lace Spell: Elemental Energies, which causes causes an extra 1d6 damage of an elemental nature to a target of a single target spell, to spells such as Teleport Redirect, which effectively make one location become another, for the purposes of spells with the [Teleport] descriptor.

The Book of Eldritch Might is of extremely limited use to non-arcane spell casters.

Purchasing

At US$5 dollars, this book is a steal, even if you have to convert from a foreign currency (like I did from Canadian bucks). Ordering the product requires a valid credit card and a valid email address that is not a "free" email address (such as yahoo, hotmail, or hushmail). After filling out your purchase order, an email is sent to the account you entered, listing a URL to a zip file. Download this file, then unzip it, and you will have the PDF document that comprises this product. The zip file is reported by Windows 98 as being 1,880,064 bytes, and the actual PDF is reported as being 2,203,648 bytes. In other words, you won't fit it on a normal high-density floppy using conventional methods.

There is virtually no security on this file, meaning that it is trivial to back-up, which is nice. It is also trivial to pirate. If you are someone who has done so over a five dollar product, I hope you become infested by the fleas of a thousand camels. That goes double if you are one of those people who complains that gaming products cost too much.

Apparently there will be a print version coming out, care of Sword and Sorcery studios. I really don't know much more than that.

Artwork

Each page has an odd, desert like motif for the header, that would probably look fine if printed out on a colour printer, but is annoying when looking through the file with Acrobat, because it slows the process down.

The art consists of four photographs, radically modified with some graphics package, one traditional sketch, and the Egyptian motif title page. It is somewhat evocative, lends itself to the work, and does not take up more than 2 pages worth of space. On the other hand, you wouldn't be missing much if it was all plain text.

Utility

The Book of Eldritch Might is of the most use to players of arcane spell casters: bards, sorcerers, and wizards. Other spell casters get much more limited benefits from the options presented by this book.

Of the nine feats introduced, two are item creation feats, and the remaining seven belong to the new "Eldritch" class of feats. Eldritch feats are feats that offer interesting but not exceptionally powerful abilities, on the average, but have pre-requisites that are extreme, to say the least. DMs using a ramping point buy system might consider lowering some of those pre-requisites slightly. The item creation feats are not exceptional, but do add variety and flavour to a setting. Some of the Eldritch feats (Notably "Lace Spell: Enemy Bane", and, to a lesser extent "Lace Spell: Holy/Unholy" and "Lace Spell: Lawful/Chaotic" could become especially powerful in certain specific campaign settings.

There are three prestige classes: The Embermage, the Graven One, and the Mirror Master. Without having play tested any of them, I would suggest that the Embermage and Mirror Master are both reasonable player character options, the former because it focuses on damage dealing abilities, the latter because it provides impressive added flexibility at the cost of access to higher level spells.

The Graven One seems slightly weak to me, but could prove to be quite useful.

All could also be used to provide interesting villains, as well.

There are fourteen pages of spells which all, after inspection and discussion, seem to be reasonably balanced, and all seem quite useful for telling a story, rather than just for flat out combat. Some of the first level spells are in the same neighbourhood as magic missile, but somewhat more interesting, and this pattern seems to hold throughout the spell levels.

There are several mirror and [Teleport] related spells that add a certain level of plausibility to fantasy settings.

I can't really point to any particular spell and say it is out and out broken, but I can understand some concern about Acidic Curse and Conditional Spell, the former because it could be better than Magic Missile, and the latter because it might be abusable to "munchkin" type players.

Following this, there are ten pages of magical items. As with the rest of this supplement, the magical items seem to be well balanced and well though out. In addition, there is a page of magical vehicles, two pages of magical poisons, and one and a half pages of magical artifacts.

The last mechanical feature in the Book of Eldritch Might is a new monster template: Magical Constructs. It includes two samples: The stone dire tiger, and the eleven-headed brass hydra. They seem interesting, but I do not yet feel qualified on commenting on their balance.

Finally, the last page consists of the Open Gaming License.

All in all, the content is great, I just wish a spell index was included, so that you can see at a glance what new spells you might have access to.

Support

Malhavoc press has released at least one patch, modifying original downloads to contain the erata, as well as a belated title page release as a seperate PDF download. Those currently downloading the Book of Edlritch Might will have both rolled into the product.

Gender Issues

Although I wasn't looking for it, the Book of Eldritch Might seemed to use the feminine pronoun roughly as often as the masculine pronoun. It didn't seem make a big deal of it, either.

Closing

It's too bad not every gaming product has this level of thought put into it. I felt like there was a good deal of thought put into it, with more focus on making things more interesting than on making things just plain dead quicker. If you're using D20 in a fantasy setting, this is a steal at twice the price. If you're using something else in a fantasy setting, consider getting this anyways, and converting some of it to your setting. If you're not doing fantasy, or you're against anything that even smells of D20, well, consider browsing a friend's copy so that you can at least try to shoot down a good D20 supplement, rather than a bad one.

-MGL