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Message: <blockquote data-quote="blackwolf" data-source="post: 2009971" data-attributes="member: 15103">I found this book to be useful to me, a DnD player who usually plays a wizard in 3rd edition.  As is typical of many recent books for fantasy gaming, it has a combination of new spells, NPCs and settings that can be dropped into a campaign.  Some of the material expands the powers of a wizard to be an earth shattering power when the spells are cast in unison with others.  Though I never played Birthright, I suspect that some of the rules might be applicable to that game.The cover is simple and tasteful, rather reminiscent of the covers on the 2nd edition TSR source books (the green covered ones) like A Mighty Fortress.The font is a bit small, but legible.  the sections are clearly laid out and the tables are easy to read.  The new spells are formatted according to the SRD standard.Inside the table of contents is laid out well, and breaks the book into 7 parts:1. Houses of St John's: a guide to the college houses2. A cosmopolitan college: the ethnic diversity of the college3. Alumni: Famous NPCs4. Your Studies: Classes and new spells for your spell book5. The Library: This is where some enormously powerful spell-rituals can be found6. The Faculty: NPCs- these characters are not fully stat blocked, but you have a name, title, ability stats, and class/level info, plus a paragraph describing the person.  This is fine for my needs since I can fill in other details if needed.7. Adventure Ideas: Three straightforward ideas with a couple paragraphs of description to get your brain working on How to Get Your PCs into this magic school mindset.  There are 2 appendices: one with all the spells for an abjurer in the PHB, and also the new spells from this book.and the second has 14 feats from this book.  The feats have a name and type (like metamagic or antimagic), the requirements and then a brief description.  The format does not include a part that is becoming standard with other publishers: the Benefit descriptor that tells how this Feat exceeds the ability of a non-feated character.To expand a bit on the chapters, I should say that the Houses in chapter one have 3 prestige classes that are nicely laid out in standard form, and have a page of descriptive material too.  They are 20 levels each and have spell progression charts for each.  (I guess they are essentially new classes, but I call them prestige classes here.)  They are: The Devout Abjurer (a wizard cleric cross with access to some clerical powers); The Fortamancer (a warrior mage with restricted spells but more spells per day to cast); and The Guild Scholar (a tougher combat oriented mage).The ethnic diversity in chapter 2 covers prestige classes for elves and dwarves and gnomes, oh my!, plus half orcs too.The chapter on courses of study actually explains how to work greater and rather unusual magics, wardings and rituals.  There is a lot to digest in this chapter, and I am not sure how I will take advantage of it yet.The group I DM doesn't spend much time around the magic academy, or finding schools to study in, so I won't use all of the materials on the St John's College here, but I figure about 60 percent will drop straight into my game world.This book is a first rate effort, and I do not hesitate to compare it to the books I've purchased from Malhavoc Press.  This is a very good value at $6.50 USD.</blockquote>

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