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Spells and Spellcraft
Length: 176 pages
Price: $24.95
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games www.fantasyflightgames.com
ISBN: 1589940253
What is it about Fantasy Flight Games and high-quality d20 supplements?
In short, if you're interested in all sorts of gripping, new things for a campaign that uses standard D&D magic in some form or another, this is the book for you. Run out and buy it now.
What, are you still here? Okay, well, I guess I need to explain in more detail. Spells and Spellcraft is a wonderful grab-bag of ideas and systems for d20 magic, densely-packed, with little or no fluff. I challenge any GM that runs any d20 game with standard d20 magic in it, from Planescape to Dragonstar, not to find at least one useful thing in the book.
It breaks down like this, after a short (one-page) introduction:
The first chapter is spells. Lots and lots of spells. Arcane spells, divine spells, druid spells, bard spells, you name it. I checked several of these spells against the benchmarks in Tome and Blood and was impressed... They check out. They're balanced. And they're cool. My favorites are the zero-level spell "Summarize", which summarizes the contents of any book, the "Felonius Friend" series of spells (like Monster Summoning, but instead of fighting for you the monster steals for you), and the cool-as-balls fireball replacement "Malediction of Razors" (nothing like firing a rain of razors at your opponent).
This section alone weighs in at a good 45 pages or so, and is more than worth the price of admission. It'll probably see the most use, after all.
Okay, now we get to the really good bits. The next chapter is called The Craft of Magic and is filled with little systems of general use. First is a system for dealing with magical libraries, followed by more detail on magical research, followed by the real gem of this section, a bit on bards and sorcerers called "Taint and Tune". There are rules for using other forms of art than music as a focus for bard spells (I particularlly like the idea of casting spells through juggling, tho the bit on using dancing for a focus is likely to catch more attention) and a two-page essay on the nature of sorcery followed by several new feats aimed at a sorcerer or bard. I particularly like the "Bloodburn" feat (increasing spell power by burning hit points) and the "Song of Power" feat (which allows bards to compose spells that kinda work like scrolls -- they contain a one-shot spell effect when performed).
But that isn't it for this chapter. We have new uses for old skills (particularly in combination with spells -- I especially like the rules for using minor creation to create art forgeries), and an extensive section on divine ceremonies, which left me rather cold, but is solidly written. Overall, the chapter weighs in at about thirty pages.
Chapter Three is called New Types of Magic and is even better than what has gone before. It opens with an excellent, well-balanced treatment of ward magic -- spells bound into a location. It then moves onto rules for "Chaos Magic", which is less "wild magic" and more a system for memorizing spells which have a certain theme (healing, light, damage, whatever) and then casting them to somewhat random effect, which may result in the spell being more or less powerful than would be normally implied by the slot it takes up. The system is quite clever, and very tightly written at about three pages -- blink and you could miss an important detail. I had to read the section twice to understand it fully, but that's less a fault of the writing and more because I'm used to skimming over fluff in game books -- and there is no fluff here, not a single word wasted. Amazing, and worth the trouble to understand. Don't overlook this section just because it's short, it easily ranks as the best thing in the book, especially in combination with the new spells.
After the Chaos Magic system is a short system on co-operative magic (basically a feat and a short system that allows two mages to work together on a spell) and a treatsie on Religion that is undoubtedly superseded by Deities and Demigods, but which includes several variant cleric classes, including the Small God Disciple, a neat take on worshippers of less-than-full-gods that should please Terry Pratchett fans. The chapter rounds out with a solid (if a bit dull) section on magically-powerful places. The whole chapter weighs in at a little over twenty pages, but those pages are dense and tightly-written. I wish more writing like this could be seen in the gaming industry.
Chapter Four is called The Mundane Made Magical, which made me fear at first it was going to be magical versions of modern appliances, a concept that has been done to death. However, my fears were put to rest by the opening section on Alchemy, with more detail on performing alchemical operations and new alchemical items -- combined with the article on alchemy in Dragon magazine, this should keep alchemists bubbling away for quite some time. The Alchemy section is followed by a Construct creation system that I fully expect WoTC to supercede some day. In the meantime, it's a servicible, if not exciting system, though the example, the Rope Golem, is particularly neat. There's a reasonably original section on Magical Materials for those tired of stealing from Tolkein, and most interestingly an expanded section on Familiars that goes in a different direction than the Feat-based method WoTC went for when outlining improved familiars, and in the process offers a variety of exotic familiar types, from the Clockbug (a ticking beetle) to the Grimoire (a living book). In all, Chapter Four is about 45 pages.
Chapter Five, the final chapter, is on magic items. A lot of excellent new magic items are introduced (and, in most cases, the feats to make them) from Glyph Eggs (think magical grenades) to Personal Growth Items (magic items that become more powerful as the character does) to Relics (think divine-oriented artifacts). There is, of course, a grab-bag of "normal" magic items, my favorite being the "Pretty Bauble", which fascinates those who look upon it when a command word is spoken.
So, to return full circle, the book is filled with a grab-bag of systems, spells, and items, and is well worth the time. While the quality is sometimes mediocre, even the mediocre bits are solidly written and useful, just somewhat boring, or of limited use. Plus, overall, there's more good than mediocre, and nothing that I would categorize as "bad". And anything mediocre is more than outshone by Chapter One and Chapter Three -- these two chapters alone, in my opinion, are worth the price of the book for a d20 GM that wants to use the normal magic system, but would like something a little different as well.
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