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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010180" data-attributes="member: 18387">By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine RackSizing Up the TargetAcademy Handbook I: St John’s College of Abjuration is a 41-page PDF designed by Ben Redmond, Matthew Sims and Nigel McClelland at Malladin’s Gate Press. Both a player’s and GM’s product covering the arcane specialty of abjuration, Academy Handbook I is available as a $6.50 download.First BloodSubtitled St. John’s College of Abjuration and Defence Against the Offensive Arts, Academy Handbook I is the first in a series of releases from Malladin’s Gate Press that simultaneously provide a detailed adventure setting and an embedded set of new rules, classes, and game mechanics for playing specialist wizards. Set against the backdrop of the Academy of Wizardry, Academy Handbook I is a unique product with tremendous magical flavor that details one of the colleges of magic in a great school of wizardry.Unlike many gaming products that open with a discussion of game mechanics, St. John’s College of Abjuration immediately thrusts the reader into the setting of a magical academy where the various schools of magic compete in the training of wizards. This volume is devoted to abjurors, specialists in protective magic, and provides a great variety of new options for abjuration specialists in the form of new classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, and adventuring ideas.The first chapter, “Houses of St John’s”, introduces the three college houses that give rise to three new abjuror variants: the Devout Abjuror, Fortamancer, and Guild Scholar. Each is a fully developed 20-level variant subclass with its own unique flavor that balances well with existing core classes and specialist wizard rules. The Devout Abjuror, for example, is a divine protectionist, a specialist wizard who sacrifices the familiar and bonus feat special abilities of the standard wizard class in return for access to the divine Protection domain and the ability to turn undead.The next two chapters introduce eight prestige classes. “A cosmopolitan college” introduces some variant rules for playing demi-human abjurors, and describes “Life Path” prestige classes that may be taken by elven, dwarven, gnome, and half-orc characters – though oddly, the dwarven Life Path is a 15-level prestige class, while the others are three-level classes. “St. John’s Alumni” provides four additional prestige classes that tie well to the variant subclasses introduced in the first chapter: the Arcane Shieldman, Monk of St. John, Paragon, and Anti-thaumaturgist. Each of these classes has an iconic character and organization associated with it that explains its relationship to the Academy of Wizardry.“Your studies at St. John’s” (chapter 4) is a catalog of the various magical courses of study at the college. Each course of study has specific new spells and feats tied to it, a total of 15 new feats and 29 new abjuration spells in all. Many of these courses provide an interesting take on subjects such as spellcasting in armor, or the use of anti-magic in protection spells.The last three chapters introduce a bit more flavor and some ideas about how to put the Academy of Wizardry to use in the campaign. “The College Library” introduces powerful magical rituals using abjuration – some of which, like Arcane Sundering that robs an entire nation or arcane casters forever, could provide some truly interesting adventure ideas. “The College Faculty” gives some basic statistics and personalities of the various wizards of St. Johns, which would be useful in running adventures there, and ties in with the last chapter, which provides the GM with a number of ideas about how to run adventures in the college.As a bonus, the appendices to Academy Handbook I provide complete summaries of the spells and feats introduced in the product. There is also a complete character sheet designed specifically for abjuror characters.Critical HitsThe great success of Academy Handbook I is its ability to completely immerse the game mechanics in the setting. The background and history of the college of abjuration are tightly interwoven with the great variety of abjuration material – it becomes quite easy to imagine running a number of exciting adventures that never leave the Academy of Wizardry itself. While the setting might be overly-reminiscent of “Harry Potter” to some – student houses, house points, a college cup, unique courses and faculty – I found it made the entire product much more enjoyable than just reading a stale listing of game mechanics. It’s one thing to create a new class or list of new feats, it’s quite another to make it part of a coherent whole. I find myself quite looking forward to the next release in the Academy Handbook series.Critical MissesLike any product that has a high percentage of new game mechanics, there are some that tip the balance scales. Luckily, in this product they are in the relative minority. The variant classes balance quite well, though the Monk of St. John’s prestige class is an absolute no-brainer for a character of the Devout Abjuror class. A couple of feats raise the eyebrows – notably the ones that allow spellcasting in an anti-magic field – and a few of the spells are probably better suited to higher levels (like Absorb Blow, a 1st level spell that provides an albeit temporary damage reduction of 10/+5).The product could also stand for another trip past the editor. There are enough typographical errors to be mildly distracting. Of greater concern is the fact that two of the four iconic prestige class characters don’t qualify for the appropriate prestige class! Hopefully this is just a typographical problem rather than a misunderstanding of skill ranks versus skill modifiers on the part of the authors. The example Paragon couldn’t have taken the class, since as a 5th level Wizard the character would have a maximum of 8 skill ranks in Concentration when the prestige class requires 10; the example Anti-thaumaturgist has all of 7 ranks in Spellcraft when the prestige class requires 12 for entry.Coup de GraceMalladin’s Gate Press has quite generously labeled the entire Academy Handbook I as Open Game content, which is a tremendous boon for anyone who wants a fresh new take on specialist wizards, or who is interested in running an adventure or campaign set around a school of magic. Though the product suffers slightly for a few poorly balanced game mechanics and some improperly statted NPCs, both players and GMs should find enough to their liking to get quite a bit of value out of this supplement. The great integration of roleplaying flavor with appropriate game mechanics is this product’s strength – keep an eye out for future releases in this line!To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at <a href="http://www.d20zines.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=index&catid=&topic=4" target="_blank">www.d20zines.com.</a></blockquote>

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