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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2010967" data-attributes="member: 24255">Abjuration: Shielded By SorceryBy August HahnMongoose Publishing product number MGP 102164 pages, $14.95Abjuration is one of those schools of magic that often gets overlooked.  Author August Hahn was certainly challenged to write a book on abjuration that managed to both make the subject interesting and add significantly to the abjuration "lore."  With Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery, the 21st volume in the "Encyclopaedia Arcane" line, he manages to do both.The cover to Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery was done by Chad Sergesketter, and it shows a wizard wielding a staff and casting what looks to be a shield spell.  The cover is significant for several reasons.  First of all, in a departure from previous books in the "Encyclopaedia Arcane" line, it doesn't seem to be a painting; rather, it's a colored line drawing, along the lines of what you'd find in a comic book.  The coloring job is fairly good, with appropriate shading, but the color choices seem somewhat questionable to me: the wizard's robes and a good chunk of the background are various shades of purple (even the wizard's skin is lavender), the magic effect is yellow, and the lettering of the book's title is orange.  The only other main colors represented are some brown and a bluish-tinted sleeve.  All in all, not the most attractive set of colors to use together.The other significant feature about the cover is that now I can put a name to the artist whose (unsigned) work has appeared so frequently in Mongoose's "Collector Series" (the ones with "Quintessential" in the title), specifically the "Character Concepts" and "Prestige Class" sections.  How can I be sure?  Because the wizard on the cover of Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery has the exact same face as all of Chad's other drawings!  I don't know what it is with the guy, whether he (like Boris Vallejo) insists upon using the same model for every work he does, or if maybe that's Chad himself (that's one way to gain a sort of RPG immortality, I suppose).  In any case, Chad's certainly got some artistic talent; I'd enjoy seeing him expand his repertoire as far as faces go.  (Or maybe I'm just tired of seeing this same face over and over again.)I was pleasantly surprised to see a return to the inside front cover artwork - recent "Encyclopaedia Arcanes" have used both inside covers for ads.  While the standard ad for Dragon and Dungeon magazines appear on the inside back cover of Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery, the inside front cover holds a painting by Anthea Dilly of a white-bearded wizard deflecting a dragon's breath weapon with an abjuration spell.  I actually prefer this work to the front cover piece, but as the detail work is better on Chad's piece I can see why they chose which went where as they did.  The color scheme is much nicer on Anthea's piece, although it's questionable as to whether that's a white dragon shooting frost from its mouth or a blue dragon shooting lighting; I could see it going either way.As for the interior artwork, this time we have 5 artists contributing 25 black-and-white pieces.  There are some really nice wizardly portraits by Marcio Fiorito in the Prestige Class section; I especially like the way he did the texture of the hair and beards on the figures on pages 19 and 23.  There's quite a bit of artwork by Vitor Ishimura, a name I don't recall having seen before, and I really like Vitor's work.  He has nice, clean lines, does excellent "flowing" hair and has a good eye for fantasy figures.  As with the new d20 art standards there is no traditional Mongoose "nipple art," but there's certainly a fair bit of "almost nipple art" - the topless swordswoman on page 42 has her upraised sword strategically placed to keep the WotC standards and practices people happy, and I got a kick out of the topless-but-for-conveniently-placed-flower-petals faeries on page 27.  All in all, I thought the interior artwork in this book was above average for an "Encyclopaedia Arcane, although there were a few places where it stumbled a little.  (Check out the muscular wizard's bare thighs on page 9 and tell me if you think his left leg is about two sizes smaller than his right leg, or if it's just me.  While you're at it - and this isn't a criticism, merely a comment - does he remind anyone else of Colossus from the X-Men?)Anyway, that's probably enough time spent on the artwork.  As far as the content of the book goes, Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery is laid out as follows: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">[*]Introduction: explaining the "Encyclopaedia Arcane" line and what the book sets out to do [*]Abjuration - An Overview: examining the protective aspect of abjuration spells, overcoming enemy spells, and tailoring one's defenses to any given situation [*]Shielded By Sorcery: focusing on who to defend in the party, choosing a mix of non-abjuration spells, using abjuration items to help take the load off of trying to cover all defensive bases, tactical assessment (an expansion on the Gather Information skill), and 4 Prestige Classes (the Prime Mage, focused on expelling outsiders from the Prime Material Plane; the Siegebreaker, a battlefield abjurist; the Spellshield, who concentrates on counterspelling; and the Warden, who crafts wards of all kinds) [*]Abjuration Feats: 12 new feats appropriate to those wielding abjuration spells [*]Abjuration Spells: 33 new abjuration spells [*]Magical Items: 12 new magic items with an abjuration theme, two of which are actually artifacts (one minor, one major) [*]The Art of Oathwarding: long-term protective magic based on an oath (for example, making yourself immune to fireball spells as long as you never cast a fireball yourself) [*]Help for Games Masters: what to do if your players go overboard and "abjure their way to invincibility" [*]Designer's Notes: August's thought on writing this book</li> </ul>Let's get the ubiquitous proofreading comments out of the way: overall, this was an above-average job (this time by proofreader Ted Chang and editor Ian Barstow).  There were only a few instances where a word was mistyped into another word ("what" into "that," "it" into "is," "effecting" into "affecting," etc.) and two adjacent paragraphs were missing the blank line between them, but all in all it was a nice job.  The biggest oversights in this book were many instances where spell names were not italicized, and it seems evident to me that August originally wrote the book using 3.0 rules and then he (or the editor) didn't make a thorough conversion to 3.5.  For example, the description of the shield spell on page 9 indicates that it grants a +7 armor bonus (which it did in 3.0, but it only grants a +4 in 3.5).  Resist energy is referred to repeatedly as resist elements, its 3.0 name.  Stoneskin now grants a damage resistance of 30/adamantine, not 10/+5 as referenced on page 28.  None of this is game-breaking stuff, but it would have been nice had they gotten it right.However, with that nitpicking aside, I think August did a great job expanding the role of abjuration magic - no small feat.  His new spells and feats all seem well done, not only fitting the flavor and context of the abjuration school of magic as it already appears in D&D, but also "filling in some holes" that needed filling.  I was particularly intrigued to see August use three different spell descriptors in his spell section: Prime, for spells that can only be cast on the spellcaster's home plane; Contingent, spells that require the caster to have access to a specific secondary school of magic; and Focused, which can be cast by any spellcaster but have additional powers if cast by a specialist of the spell's school.  August admits he didn't come up with these three descriptors (each has appeared in a previous "Encyclopaedia Arcane" book), but in a way that's even cooler - I'm glad to see somebody building upon other good ideas.  That's what the d20 system is all about.  However, I admit to being a bit confused about the three spells in this book with the Prime descriptor (sovereign self, sovereign shield, and sovereign strike), as neither of them seems particularly tied to the caster's home plane.  The first renders the caster immune to nearly all forms of damage for an hour at the cost of also being immune to all transmutation and healing spells during that time.  The second is an enhanced shield spell that covers all directions.  The third is a form of anti-abjuration that allows the recipient to cut through nearly any defense for one strike.  I don't get why these spells could not be cast on another plane.  (Also, the material component in each case is a scale from a great wyrm dragon or "a tarrasque."  Apparently, there is more than one tarrasque in the Mongoose default campaign.)The four Prestige Classes each take one aspect of abjuration and run with it, ending up with four different and distinct kinds of abjuration specialists.  Even if they don't entice any PCs into trying them out, they should be a godsend to DMs, especially those who get tired of cranking out enemy after enemy only to see them cut down by the PCs in a round or two.  While I certainly wouldn't condone wave after wave of abjuration specialist enemies, throwing one against the party now and again (or better yet, having an abjurer as a sidekick to the "Big Bad Evil Guy") should stir things up a bit.  I did have a question about the second part of the Siegebreaker's "true defender" power (automatically dispelling any spell cast by an enemy force within one mile, as long as the Siegebreaker sees it being cast), though: how often can he use it?  Once a day?  Once a battle?  Only once against that particular army, ever?The magic item section was pretty well done, again keeping everything on topic in the realm of abjuration.  I especially liked the armbands of resilience (I hate Constitution damage, as a player and as a DM, because of all the updated hit point computations that come with it!) and the way the hellcowl and hellmantle work together to augment the power each provides.  I was a little concerned about the fact that the armor bonuses provided by the bracers of true defense go all the way up to +10, though.  I thought anything above +5 was a no-no.  I think I'll be giving them an upper cap of a +5 armor bonus in my campaign.I'm a bit of two minds about the oathwarding section.  On the one hand, it has a very mythical feel to it; in general, there are different levels of protection but they all come down to "protection from one thing, as long as you don't attack/use that one thing," whether the thing protected against is a specific individual, a race, a creature type, a specific spell, a group of spells of the same descriptor, a spell school, a specific weapon, a group of weapons, or a weapon type.  It's incredibly expensive (in both experience points and gold pieces), as you have to pay in each not only to make such an oathward but also to learn it in the first place.  I also like that there are long-lasting consequences to breaking the oath made.  However, I think there's a flaw in some of the oaths themselves and in how they can be broken.  For example, a spellcasting white dragon could be oathwarded against fireball spells (which would be a pretty smart move on its part), with its only obligation being never to cast a fireball spell itself.  Well, that isn't much of a temptation now, is it?  That would be like somebody paying me a thousand dollars on the condition that I never, ever yodel in the bathtub while wearing a necktie.  Gee, thanks - that was easy money!  I also don't like the fact that it would be quite easy to break some of the oaths by accident.  For instance, you can make yourself immune to a class of weapons (let's say longswords, that would be a good one to do), so long as you never break or disenchant a longsword (okay, no problem, I just won't use my Sunder on enemies with longswords), nor may you ever slay a creature with 10 ranks or more in Craft (weaponsmithing).  Say what?  How am I supposed to know if a given enemy's got ranks in Craft (weaponsmithing)?  That just sounds like a mechanism for DM abuse to me:  "Sorry, John, I know you've devoted 1,250 xp and 6,000 gp to be immune to longswords, but that orc you just slew was the tribe's weaponsmith - from now on, every time you're hit with a longsword it threatens a critical."  I suspect that I'll probably be using the oathwarding rules in my campaign only for the very occasional enemy (again, it will be interesting to see the PCs go up against someone completely - and with a good and logical reason - immune to fireballs or whatever).The last thing I want to mention about Abjuration: Shielded By Sorcery is that I really enjoyed the fiction, especially the bits with Arrien, the very much put-upon and under-appreciated abjurer.  All in all, I enjoyed this book, despite its occasional lapse into 3.0 rules.  I was surprised to see a book on abjuration - admittedly one of the "duller" of the schools of magic - this entertaining and useful.  I rate it a high "4 (Good)."</blockquote>

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