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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2011045" data-attributes="member: 18387">Mystic Eye Games - Blight MagicAlthough I never bought this when it was in stores, I saw it on RPGnow and decided to take a chance on it. Now I'm kicking myself for not buying the print edition.Blight Magic, at it's heart, takes the concept of defiler magic from Dark Sun and applies it to the d20 system. Instead of spontaneously defiling the environment when casting defiler magic, a blight caster defiles the environment in a lengthy ritual earlier, granting the caster a 'pool' of blight points that can be spent to prepare additional spells, or to apply metamagic effects to spells. To use this ritual, the caster needs the Blight Magic feat. The additional power of blight magic is countered with an interesting set of mechanical side-effects getting their own chapter - "the corruption". The mechanics involved are a mix of role-playing and mechanical, and result in blight casters getting more and more foul and twisted, suffering stat penalties (especially to Charisma) as they use the blight. The Blight Magic mechanics take up the first 21 pages of the volume. The prestige classes presented are fairly typical and what one would expect from a supplement of this type, a master of blight magic (the Dirge Lord), a druid class designed to destroy blight, a huntsman who seeks out and slays blight casters, corrupt and diseased clerics, and so on. I was actually surprised there weren't more classes in this section taking advantage of the blight mechanics to use blight points for other purposes than spellcasting.But the feats give hints to these other powers, in addition to feats that modify spells and control the blight itself, a  feat uses blight points for stat boosting in combat. If this mechanic had been explored further, this book could have been a lot meatier and interesting even to non-spellcasters. A small selection of new spells are predictable, but well written, creating blighted zombies and skeletons, balls of pure blight, quickening poisons, and the ability to teleport into blighted areas.The monsters are a blighted treant, skeletons, zombies and a druidic sentinel that watches for blight magic.Finally, the book closes with a single page of charts and a simplified blight ritual synopsis for ease of use.Overall the system is very nicely presented, the graphics are atmospheric (whether or not you like Andy Hopp's style, it is quite appropriate to the text at hand), and the blanace works because it makes blight magic very hazardous for long-term play, but powerful for short-term use (thus beneficial to NPCs but harmful for PCs). However, an NPC spellcaster could be tweked so much using blight magic that his CR may have to be arbitrarily increased to account for the additional power, far beyond that normally afforded by a single feat.A good product overall, definitely worth the price in PDF format from RPGnow.</blockquote>

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