College of Magics PDF

[Crothian]

NOTE: This is the B&W PDF version of the #3003 College of Magics printed book.

The College of Mages is now accepting qualified students interested in learning the art and craft of Magic. If you have demonstrated an aptitude for Magic, then we urge you to enroll today. Novices are welcome.

The College of Magics expands the depth and breadth of HARP magic. Among the topics that the book covers are: What is magic, & how does it work? This product introduces new types of magic, including natural magic, alchemy, and enchantment. The College of Magics also includes rules for creating and designing new spells; new HARP spells, and a primer on temporary & permanent magic item design. And of course new professions: The Magician, The Elementalist, the Vivimancer, the Thaumaturge and the Necromancer.

This product is a 3.3MB PDF. You will need a PDF reader utility to open and read it.

 

[Greatwyrm]

Upfront

I received College of Magics for free as part of the pdf review program. This is not a playtest review.

Magical Theory and Practice

After the introduction, College of Magics begins with an explanation of how magic works in HARP. What is magic? Where does the energy to power it come from? Just how does spellcasting work? All are covered here.

This section is more explanation than rules. However, one thing I like the most is at the very beginning, it says that this is the “official explanation”, but not the only one. If the GM wants to change any or all of it, feel free.

Types of Magic

Chapter three really begins the huge expansion of the HARP magic system that is the purpose of this book. In just two pages, we’re introduced to a number of new types of magic and an expanded treatment of the circles or schools of magic most common to wizards. Again, mostly descriptive, but well done.

The Practitioners of Magic

Chapter four is where we really start to get the nuts-and-bolts added in. There are five new magic professions: Elementalist (the four elements), Magician (a generalist), Necromancer (death magic), Thaumaturge (mostly transmutation and item creation), and the Vivimancer (life magic). All of them seem well balanced with the existing HARP magicians and would be easy to incorporate into most games.

There are several new training packages, as well. There are basics such as the Apprentice Mage and Journeyman Mage and sub-specialties like the Enchanter and Runemaster. As with the new classes, they’re well done and easy to introduce.

Chapter four keeps going with descriptions and rules on how casters get their mana and how they focus their spells. Do they gain power from within or from the ambient mana in the area? Do they need to chant, go into a trance, use gestures, and so on. Again, well done and it’s easy to combine different aspects to create a magical tradition that fits with your setting.

The Study of Magic

Ah, if you could only be a wizard without all that pesky studying and stuff. Sadly, no, but chapter five lays it all out for you. There are quick charts for generating guilds, the number of masters and apprentices, and their levels.

Then you get to the part of this book that is just too good to pass up. Full instructions and examples on researching new spells and assigning the power point costs to them. If only there were such a thing for D&D. The book does caution GMs that these will get you close, but may need some playtesting to determine a fair cost for the spell. Even with that, the wide range of base abilities and scaling options may almost be worth the price of this by themselves.

New Skills & Talents

A few new skills and a number of new talents appear here. Pretty much all of them are for spellcasters, but other professions might get some use from a few of them as well. Blood Magic is also detailed here, covering innate powers a character may have gained through fantastic parentage (e.g. Grandpa was a dragon). Another solid chapter.

Natural Magic

Chapter seven covers a number of topics. Alchemy (potion making) and Charmcraft (protective talismans) are detailed. There are also rules for drawing power points from crystals and spare parts from fallen monsters. The rules, again, are pretty well done and easy to incorporate with other material here.

Rituals & Runes

Chapter eight covers ritual magic, which is both very powerful and very dangerous. Rune magic includes spell runes, magical traps, protective circles, and battle runes. I know I’m starting to sound repetitive, but this is all good stuff, too.

Spell Magic

What’s a magic book without spells? Chapter nine introduces many new spells and details the spell lists for the new professions from chapter four. All the spells are reasonable for their specialists and nothing jumps out as particularly game-breaking.

Magical Enchantment

Chapter ten covers creating expendable and permanent magic items. Some of the processes are particularly involved, but this is offset by a nice summary of the steps and a couple of start-to-finish examples. Again, good stuff.

Magic in the Setting

Chapter eleven finishes the book with a few pages on how magic affects the setting. There’s a lot of good advice here on how societies may view magic, how powerful to make magic in your setting, magical organizations, and ideas for magician-centered campaigns. Sometimes I’m not all that interested in advice chapters, but this is very good reading for GMs that like to build their own settings.

Bottom Line

College of Magics is a must-buy for HARP fans. It’s just plain good. If I had to pick one thing to complain about, it’s that it’s mainly focused on “arcane” magic. There are several points that reference a coming supplement on “divine” magic. If the upcoming book is as good as College of Magics, I won’t have any complaint at all.

 

[Crothian]

HARP College of Magics

[imager]http://store.ironcrown.com/servlet/ItemImageRetrieve?image=24532[/imager]


This is a book I got through the ENnies. It is also one of the books that I bought. HARP is the High Adventure Role Playing game and this is the book of magic for the game. It is also the closest to a must have book in the system. HARP core book does a really good job of presenting everything that a person needs to run the game. With everything nicely contained in one book it makes the follow up books, while good, not must haves. However, College of Magics does such a great job of building off what it is in the core book and presenting so many cool and interesting options that it practically becomes a must have. All this boils down to it is a very good book and one that will be used along side the core book in any HARP game I run.

HARP is a non d20 game built off of Role Master I believe. It is a nice system that seems very flexible. It is not rules light but I do not classify it as rules heavy either. It is published by the guys at Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) who oddly enough also make the Role Master game. The game is fantasy assumed and designed to allow for high adventure. The book is soft bound and one hundred and twenty eight pages long. It also comes a PDF for people that prefer that format or to get in addition to the print book. Sometimes having a book in both format is really advantageous as it can be here. It would be really easy to print out certain pages that players need instead of having them either not have the book or having to look everything up in the book. The front cover is a good picture of a dragon sitting on a large pile of books as if they were treasure. The interior art is black and white and also well done.

The book starts with two small chapters filled with great and potentially important details. Or they are filled with useless fluff people will skip over. These sections cover what is magic and how it works. There is little actual rule info here but it answers a lot of questions that can come up in a game. Or as I would use them have them presented as mysteries and things for the players to figure out. It covers a lot of information and some of it or all of it some people will not care about. But I care. I think the info would be great for any magic using character to allow the player to understand how the character works magic and to understand some of the basic philosophies behind magic. It makes a nice easy read that answers many questions some people will not think to ask.

The book then gets into the types and practitioners of magic. This section really defines what magic can do and how it is divided up. I like the specifics offered here. I like knowing what makes Rune Magic different from Middle Magic. I could guess by what I know of the two different areas but it is much better to have them easily defined. The Practitioners of Magic section gets into the mechanics. It has a good number of new magic oriented professions like the Elementist, Magician, and Thaumaturge. It also presents training packages to help represent the different routes of learning the magical arts. What I like about these is they are very character defining. It is a great way to meld the character background and how he learned things with the way the character gets made. Anything that has good background payoff during character creation is a good thing.

The Study of Magic Chapter is possible the best chapter in this great book. I am going to focus on the creating a new spell rules which I feel every game needs and few games have. D&D needs rules like these badly. The book takes a step by step approach to creating new spells. It starts with envisioning what the spell will do. This is not the mechanics of the spell but a simple sentence on what the spell will do. Once that is done the aspects of the spell are defined. There us a list of dozens of action aspects and object aspects each fully defined and with a cost to determine how much the spell will require to be cast. Once that is done then the game mechanic parts are really defined. This is where range of the spell, its duration, casting time, and area of effect are all determined. Each also has a cost associated with. Next the cost of the base spell is determined. That is really easy to do. Then the cool part of the scaling costs. All the spells here can be scaled or altered so the caster can have some versatility and options within a spell. This is a great thing. Most spells don’t need a lot of options for scaling but there are plenty of them her e so that any spell can be equipped with scaling options. Then there are the finishing touches. But it does not en there. There is a nice two pages of talking about designing new spells and basic guidelines for the GM. It will not cover everything and a DM needs to be watchful of new spells being designed but the section is one of the best I have read for any system on creating new spells. It is simple to follow, well explained, and while these things never cover everything this one covers everything I can think of at the moment.

The book then really goes into a lot of the new types of magic. It starts with new character options in skills and talents. It then goes into the natural magic of alchemy and charms. It covers rituals and runes and a nice big section on spell magic with plenty of new spells. These areas will be useful for the characters that want to do something a little different and a bit unexpected. They make great options for the players and GM alike. Nothing here really stood out as surpassingly excellent, just a lot of really good options and writing. The ritual magic research is also a really good section.. It can provide so many neat little adventure ideas as the players go seeking things for the ritual magics. It is a good way to get them to be proactive.

Over all this is a really good book. It brings lot of great magical options for the game alive. It explains things very well leaving few unanswered questions and does not seem to be a book that will cause problems with balance or cause a GM to have troubles. If HARP is the first buy for the game then College of Magics really needs to be the second one. Magic players will really find it to be an invaluable source for their characters. .