Complete Arcane

[IronWolf]

Complete Arcane provides you with an in-depth look at how to access traditional arcane magic and use that power to your advantage. It explains how magic affects life and gameplay in the D&D world, adding dimension to one of the most unique and popular aspects of roleplaying. Complete Arcane also contains a wealth of material for traditionally non-magical characters, so the tips and data provided will assist all class types.

In addition to new feats, spells, prestige classes, and magic items, this title adds new and revised core classes. There are also new arcane-related monsters and information on how to fight, join, or summon each one.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Complete Arcane is the third book in the series. It proclaims itself to be “A Player’s Guide to Arcane Magic for All Classes”. Written by Richard Baker, it takes a lot of 3.0 and 3.5 materials and updates it even as it expands on other fields by adding new core classes and other player oriented goods.

Weighing in at 192 full color pages for $29.95, the book is priced to own. WoTC uses its size as the dominant player to get a book out that most publisher would’ve had to charge $34.95 for and would probably be in black and white.

I don’t like the cover. It’s like a mage yanked Santa’s hat and made some funky adjustments to it while getting a buck toothed cat to sit on his shoulder. Interior art ranges from bad to fantastic. Some of my favorite artists like Ron Spencer and William O’Connon add their touch to the book while other picture, perhaps inspired by the earlier Tome and Blood, fail to capture the look, which is hard as Wayne Reynolds did all of the art in Tome and Blood. Layout is standard two-columns with important information isolated from the other parts of the text.

To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect from this book. Many PrCs have already been updated in books ranging from the DMG (Arcane Trickster, Dragon disciple),Complete Warrior (bladesinger, rage mage, spellsword, stonelord) and Liber Mortis (pale master and true necromancer). Spells have received coverage in the Miniatures Handbook and other mage bits have been sprinkled liberally throughout most of the new releases.

I grit my teeth a little when I read about the new core class the War Mage. It’s not because it’s not a viable idea. An arcane spellcaster who studies a limited selection of spells, mostly damage inflicting, and has slightly better hit dice and armor ability than a standard mage. It’s that this class was done in the Miniatures Handbook, which doesn’t leave too much left of that book as its own. At least we get Tarth Moorda, an “old fortress” for training them. It has an overview map including different areas like the Chapel and student’s quarters as well as the main gate and towers.

I enjoyed the updated Wu Jen, a spellcaster who might be a little too close to the mage for most, but has a unique spell list. The bad news for some is that their spell list is pretty extensive. The good news is that they haven’t undergone a lot of changes like the Samurai did in the Complete Warrior and that those still using Oriental Adventures may find the updated Wu Jen spells useful for other classes in OA.

The real ‘new’ class of the bunch is the Warlock. They gain spell like abilities but no actual spells. This makes them a more native magic user in some ways than the Sorcerer, but also limits their abilities, as there is only so much they can do with those abilities. Most I imagine will focus on augmenting Eldritch Blast, an ability to hurl magical power that inflicts the old 1d6 per level and whose level equals the warlock’s level divided by two, with a maximum of 9th level.

In terms of PrCs, a lot of old favorites have been updated and some new ones brought into the fray. Despite that, I think this book has the fewest number of PrCs in the series thus far. I’m not the PrC specialist others are, but I recognize many of them from the original Tome and Blood like the Acolyte of the Skin, Alienist, Blood Magus and Mage of the Arcane Order. Some of them don’t look like they’ve received extensive updates but more along the lines of tweaking.

The Acolyte for example, gains a poison ability even as his flame and cold resistance drops to 10, his high-level damage reduction drops to 10/good, and he loses his ‘Fiendish Knowledge’ (bonus feats). Still gains the greatly reduced spellcasting ability though, one every other level. A casual look at the tables wouldn’t reveal the changes as many of the abilities are named the same, but the game mechanics have indeed changed. Same with the Alienist as most of the abilities are similar to the old ones but a few, like when the Alienist and his familiar transform, have either moved levels (the latter) or changed due to the edition changes to damage reduction.

In terms of new PrCs, one of my favorites is the Suel Arcanamach. This is a fighting man who knows some spells, similar in some ways to an arcane paladin, and can wear heavier armor as he goes up in level with less and less spell failure chance. He also has good saves against a mage’s favorite type of spells with good ref and will saves. There were a few others that were interesting, but to be honest, I felt that the sorcerer didn’t get a lot of options designed purely for them. I am the only one who remembers the Eldritch Master from Dragon 280?

Marked down in the “Why wasn’t that included” are the Bonded Summoner and Havoc Mage from the Miniatures Handbook. Both fill niches that aren’t really covered here and fit in well with the other material copied over.

In feats, we see a lot of the mage based ones from the Miniatures Handbook updated. These are mostly the ‘Sudden’ feats that allow you to apply a metamagic feat to a spell without preparation once a day. Strangely, while some of the useful spells in a mage style campaign are included from the MH like Mage Slayer, a feat that prevents mages from casting defensively if you threaten them, others, like Mounted Casting, where you gain a bonus to concentration checks while casting while mounting, are not.

Others are updated from Tome & Blood. These range from Arcane Defense where you gain a bonus to save against spells from one school of magic to Energy Admixture and Energy Substitution where you modify the energy type of your spell. Some great classics that’s nice to have updated to 3.5 standard.

In terms of brand new material, I couldn’t tell you for certain what’s 100% new. Some like the Draconic Feats are meant for a Sorcerer to showcase his spellcasting heritage. This chain of feats ranges from converting spells into a breath weapon attack to gaining a natural armor bonus.

For flavor, I hate to see evil get it’s way but feats like the Black Lore of Moil and Lord of the Uttercold, are cool concepts with game mechanics that either deal extra negative energy or deal partial negative energy. While the concepts are cool, I would’ve loved to have seen an overall feat that allowed the caster to add a different type of energy per feat, like weapon specialization. Why not White Light of the Heaven dealing positive damage?

Regardless, any way you look at it, there are more feats here than in Tome and Blood and the Miniatures Handbook and GM’s and players should play test them to insure they fit the GM’s style of campaign.

Now this being a book about Arcane users, you know that there are going to be a lot of new spells. Spell lists are broken up by class, level, and for mages, school. Thankfully they note spells appropriate for the Hexblade from the Complete Warrior, something that doesn’t happen enough as the company gives you one set of spells and never gives you any more. Upon a brief look, it doesn’t look like War Mages gain a lot, if any new spells though

Spells from Tome and Blood are updated like the lesser and standard orbs, which change school from Evocation to Conjuration. I can understand them wanting to expand the utility of all schools but having so many fresh damaging conjuration spells, and changing the spell resistance from yes in T&B to no in this book, does not look like a 100% good thing. I’m sure those playing conjurors will disagree with me though. Spells from the Miniatures Handbook also make it like Blades of Fire where your blade is surrounded by fire and inflicts extra damage to various repair spells from 0 to 4th level to fix constructs. Perfect for Eberron campaigns. This isn’t to say that all spells from the MB are updated though. Some like Curse of Impending Blades, Legion’s, among others, are missing.

One thing some might not like is the attention given to the Wu Jen. Unlike the War Mage whose spells are readily identifiable as belonging to the standard wizard class, most of the Wu Jen’s spells are unique to her list. Communing with Spirits? Creating Cloud Chariots? Using various elemental based spells like Earth Bolt and Elemental Ward? Creating swords of lightning? All Wu Jen only. I can fully understand the need to keep those spells with an appropriate flavor to the correct caster but Lightning Blade inappropriate while Blades of Fire isn’t?

In looking at magic items, the book surprises me. It talks about items being something other than what they may have started off as in the game. Take potions for example. If you’ve got the standard creation feat and Craft Wondrous Item, you can make all sorts of things that function like potions, but look different. These include ‘fruit’ and tiles that you crack, to skull talismans you step on. Now this is useful. This is showing you how to use the standard rules in a way that makes your campaign unique instead of adding minor creation feats that no one is going to take. This advice is expanded for scrolls and Spellbooks are well, allowing the GM to add a lot of diversity to his world.

After that, we get into the more standard things. You know, the Crimson Coat of Ilpharzz and swords of magebane. Some of these build up on the new concepts introduced like the Warlock’s Scepter while others are good for most arcane spellcasters like the ring of Arcane Might or the blinding Powder of the Black Veil. Sadly, no unique new magic weapons were included, which is a shame since we have PrCs and new core classes that could certainly benefit from them, not to mention the whole cover thing noting that this book is for all classes.

One section that seems out of place in the whole Complete series is Arcane Monsters. We get a new template, the effigy, a construct made by effigy masters, as well as some elemental forces ranging from the Grues to the Monolith’s, but sadly, no Princes.

GMs will find Chapter Seven, Arcane Campaigns, useful. It goes over the core classes, including bards and the new ones, wu jen and war mages, and notes how the different specialist mages may act and behave. Advice on spells that can have far reaching impact like flying, invisibility, and teleportation is covered, as well as different campaign models that the GM may wish to use. These range from mages as rulers to mages as hunted criminals.

It even provides advice on running a mage duel. Now this isn’t something like we’ve seen in the past, but rather, role-playing ideas on how the duel would commence, and the rules of etiquette so to speak in mage dueling, useful for campaign building.

One of my favorite older products is College of Wizardry. Bruce Cordell crafted the Arcane Order who ruled their fortress, the Mathghamhna, and founded special abilities that would in 3rd edition, become metamagic feats. The book provides some options as to what schooling in such an arcane institution might be like and includes a pair of feats to showcase exceptional students. Collegiate Wizard grants you more starting spells plus more spells gained per level while Precocious allows you to cast a second level spell if you make a DC 8 caster level check. It changes when you can cast a 2nd level spell, but the idea of someone with great potential is still there and can help represent certain characters of fantasy fiction more easy than just school specialization.

The book ends with information for running an Epic Campaign. Not a huge section and certainly no rules for crafting epic spells or any example epic spells but it does cover advancement for the warlorcks, warmages and wu jen as well as an example epic class progression for a PrC (Mage of the Arcane Order) and some epic feats. Overall it’s useful, but certainly of limited use.

On one hand, I hate the inclusion of the material from the Miniatures Handbook. On the other, I hate that they included only ‘some’ material. It’s great to see a lot of the Tome and Blood PrCs updated but it’s odd to see what didn’t get updated, like the maps and organizations and heck, the fantastic art of Wayne Reynolds.

I’ve already started using the book in my campaign. Last time I GMed, the players came across the Faceless Legion while traveling the planes and I used that as an excuse to give them access to some of the spells from this book. I have several NPCs that belong to the Arcane Order and a few villains that use other PrCs (Alienists and Blood Magus anyone) included here. There is no doubt I’m getting my use out of the book. On the other hand, you still need the older books because they’re not completely obsolete yet.

If you’re looking to own the latest incarnation of your spells, feats, magic items, and PrCs, the Complete Arcane is perfect for you.

 

[brehobit]

A review of “Complete Arcane”

Discussions about the Warlock from the “Complete Arcane” prompted decision to by the book. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth about how overpowered the new base class was. So I went out and got my fourth 3.5 “splat” book. (The others being the Book of Exalted Deeds, Races of Stone, and Miniatures handbook.)

Overall, the book is basically an expanded and updated version of “Tome and Blood” the 3.0 arcane splat book. The major expanded portions are:

• Addition of three base classes: Warmage (from Miniatures Handbook), Wu Jen (from Oriental Adventures), and Warlock (new to this book).
• The prestige classes not found in “Blood and Tome” are the:
  • Argent savant (force spell focus)
  • Effigy master (newish type of construct specialist)
  • Enlightened fist (magical monk)
  • Geometer (glyphs and sigils)
  • Green Star adept (outsider progression)
  • Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil (abjurations and prismatic spells)
  • Master transmogrifist (Better at fighting polymorphed)
  • Seeker of the song (powerful song abilities, no new spells)
  • Sublime chord (lesser bardic songs, more spells)
  • Suel arcanamach (Sorcerer multi-class for non-casters?)
  • Wild Mage (uses wild magic)
• Lots of feats from all sorts of different sources. Many from Tome and Blood, but a fair number were also seen in the Miniatures Handbook, and Book of Exalted Deeds and I’m sure most have come from someplace else. Most notable are the Draconic feats for sorcerers (some of which are very powerful) and a few powerful if very limited meta-magic feats.
• A number of new spells, mostly from Tome and Blood and (I assume) Oriental Adventures).
• A few new magic items and creatures.

Base classes
There were a number of comments about how over-powering a Warlock is. After looking over the class, I really don’t see it. The basic theme of the class is that he has a number of use-at-will abilities, including a blast attack (Eldritch Blast) that is a ranged touch attack that does (level/2)d6 damage with a 60’ range, the ability to detect magic at will, fairly minor damage reduction (maxing out at 5/cold iron at 19th level), a few other minor abilities, and the ability to choose from a set of invocations. The invocations are ranked as “Least, Lesser, Greater and Dark”. They either allow casting of a spell at will (such as invisibility on self only), or modify his Eldritch Blast ability.

What you end up with in the Warlock is a pretty good blaster who has a number of fairly specialized abilities. The biggest thing is that none of the Warlock’s abilities are limited in use in any real way at all. If he can fly, he can always fly. If he can cast foresight, he can cast foresight every round of the whole day. While all of this may sound overpowering, let’s look at a sample character, say a 7th level Warlock. This can toss a 4d6 blast every round, detect magic at will, has 2/cold iron damage reduction and has a BAB of +5. He knows 3 “least” invocations and 1 “lesser” invocation. I’d probably take Eldritch Spear (range of Eldritch blast goes to 250’), Beshadowed Blast (Eldritch Blast makes target shaken for 1 round if fails Will save), See the Unseen (see invisibility as the spell and dark vision, always on) and Fell Flight (as fly spell). While this is pretty good, and could be very powerful (say flying above opponents at 250’ and dropping Eldritch blasts until forever), you lack flexibility and the ability to drop a lot of pain in a short period of time.

Warlocks will be hugely powerful in a game where the party is constantly running out of spells. If you have more than the standard number of encounters per day, this class will shine. If you have fewer, or if you typically have time to prepare for an encounter you will suffer. On the whole, I think I’d prefer a well designed sorcerer, wizard, or druid to the Warlock in a party. He really can’t do enough of the standard arcane caster stuff to fill the arcane caster slot in the party. If the party was of size 6 or 7, the Warlock could be a very useful addition to the party as he has different strengths than other party members. I think the Warlock would make a great henchman. The constant blasts (which usually hit) could be a very effective “extra” for a party.

The Warmage is a sorcerer with an (almost) fixed spells known list, all of which are focused on blowing things up. While he does have access to some non-blasting magic (true strike, fire trap, continual flame, fire shield, gust of wind, wall of fire, fire shield (mass) blade barrier, Tenser’s transformation and Earthquake are the only spells that aren’t blasting spells) and can add a handful of evocation spells to his spell list (total of 4 at 16th level), the Warmage pretty much is another blaster. His spells per-day looks like the sorcerer’s. He also has a d6 HD, a mage’s BAB and saves, and can cast spells in light armor (medium as of level 8). Finally, he picks up some special 1/day on-the-fly meta-magic abilities as well as getting to add his intelligence bonus to the damage of most of his spells. For my money, the Warmage is a better blaster than the Warlock, but also suffers from overspecialization.

The Wu Jen is basically a variant Wizard. The character is much less of a direct-damage character, and instead generally has abilities and spells that are much more subtle. Some of the spells seem utterly useless. For example, Iron Scarf is a 1st level spell that does d8 damage +1 per caster level (max 5) and requires a touch attack. After 3rd level a magic missile (also on the Wu Jen spell list) will do nearly as much damage without the attack roll. None-the-less, the Wu Jen seems to be fairly balanced and certainly seems to have a lot more role-playing related goodness (taboos and wacky spells plus the spell secrets). I do wish they had done something more interesting with the spell books though (same a wizard).

Prestige Classes
Rather than going through each of the classes, let me instead touch on a few highlights. First of all, most, if not all, of the prestige classes really aren’t very useful to a Warlock, with is pretty disappointing. Because he uses spell-like abilities rather than spells, many of the prestige classes are either out of his reach or fairly useless. Further, as his invocations are a smaller portion of his power than a wizard’s sorcerer’s spells, the prestige classes are usually a net loss for a Warlock. I’m sure new supplements will add things, but you’d think there would be at least one pure-Warlock prestige class. The book lists a few possibilities for Warlocks to take:

• Blood magus. Depending on how you treat the interaction of “Scarification” and “Blood Draught” from the Blood magus with “Imbue Item” from the Warlock, this might be a huge class for the Warlock. With a lot of preparation, a 12 Warlock/4 Blood mage might be able to literally cast any spell in the game. Not bad for a non-caster! (though he could do this with the scribe scroll feat also) But if the Warlock isn’t at least 12th level, Blood magus is almost useless for the Warlock as written. Blood component, Scarification, Blood Draught and Blood Seeking Spell are all useless. Awaken Blood is probably less useful than Eldritch blast.
• Enlightened Fist. Arcane fist, arcane rejuvenation, and Hold Ray are all useless. Hold ray probably should be useable as a replacement for a lesser invocation (Hideous blow), but as written the Warlock just gets no use from it.
• A Green Star Adept, Acolyte of the skin, and Mindbender are all reasonable prestige classes for the Warlock. But because his Invocations are a smaller portion of his power than spells are for most arcane casters, a warlock gets less out of this than a sorcerer, wizard or warmage.

Okay, off the Warlock kick. In general, I think the prestige classes are much more balanced than they were in Tome and Blood. Many may even be too weak. The new Fatespinner is fairly useless (though the old was horribly overpowered!), and the only really interesting ability of the Geometer is cheaper spell books. Of course the wizard who has changed to Geometer has really only given up one feat (Wizard bonus feat) and a much of skill points in things he might not have taken otherwise (Decipher script, disable device and search.) Still, not very prestige-ish. Some other “nerfing” examples (picking on the first two in alphabetic order):

• Acolyte of the Skin improves to a medium BAB, fire and cold resistance drop to 10, the fiend that can be summoned is different and the damage reduction is changed to 10/good. Also the “Fiendish Knowledge” is removed entirely.
• The Alienist “summon alien” ability has been significantly changed. Mainly the pseudo-natural template can only be applied in place of a celestial or fiendish template. You can’t summon anything that didn’t start with the celestial or fiendish template. Mad Certainty and Insane Certainty have less interesting disadvantages, but other than that the class is unchanged.

I don’t think either of these is unreasonable, but it does reflect the general weakening of the prestige classes.

On the high-power side, my feeling is that the Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil is quite powerful. Full casting and the ability to throw up parts of a prismatic wall are granted. At the last level (7th) the Kaleidoscopic Doom ability is even nastier than its name might imply.

Feats and items
Some of the new “feats” are very important indeed. Practiced Spellcaster (+4 to caster level, max of actual hit dice), makes multi-class spell casters, and casters with a level adjustment, somewhat viable. In combinations with prestige classes like Arcane trickster, certain multi-class combinations become even more viable. Other feats, like Draconic Claw (get free “claw” attack when casting a spell) seem too powerful and too weird to be a feat. Finally, the “mage slayer” feats are overpowering. For 3 feats you get:

• +1 on Will saves
• Spell casters may not cast defensively when you threaten them
• You ignore miss chances that come from spells and spell-like abilities including mirror image.
• You can take a standard action and make a melee attack that ignores AC bonuses from spells, wands, scrolls and potions. If you hit you automatically dispel all spells and spell effects that grant a bonus to AC.
• You are at –12 caster level for all your spells and spell-like abilities.
  Every pure barbarian and fighter should take these. Just the dispel thing is huge.

On the whole the feats are reasonable and well balanced. Some of them are quite interesting and really will make different spell casters, well, different.

On the magic items side, I always feel these books are messed up. Three way-too-powerful items:

• A ring of “Spell-Battle” lets its wearer change the target of any spell within 60’ once a day. No save, no roll (other than a Spellcraft roll to identify the spell at DC 15+spell level). I mean you could redirect a heal spell or a timestop or whatever. It is almost 68,000 GP, but still, I can’t see any 20th level caster not having one of these.
• The magebane weapon bonus is basically like a bane weapon but it works against any “creature with arcane spells currently prepared or spell slots available to cast arcane spells without preparation, or against creatures with the ability to use arcane spell-like abilities”. As far as I can tell, that is just about everything a high-ish level character is likely to fight. A poster on EN world suggested that the quote be changed to end in “… which are gained from class levels”. A fine suggestion.
• The greater Chasuble of Fell Power grants a Warlock +2d6 on all eldritch blasts for 18,000 GP. I can’t imagine how every Warlock in the world wouldn’t want one at that price. I’m willing to be wrong about this one, but I think it would be better priced at around 45,000.

Finally...
Although I spent most of this review complaining about things, I really do like the book. The three new standard classes are very interesting. Most of the prestige classes are well balanced and many of them create a very different experience than a standard spell caster. Most of the feats are very reasonable, a DM just has to be careful with what he or she allows. It is the best 3.5 splat book I’ve read so far.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

The first magebane feat - "Mageslayer" isn't bad. It just means the mage will have to 5' step to zap you. Since he's aware that he can't cast defensively, you won't be able to "surprise" him. Not really all that powerful a feat.

However, the other similar feats are just broken. There's no way I'd let that auto-dispelling one into my game.

Good review.

Overall I'm very happy with Complete Arcane and I'm looking forward to Complete Adventurer. Hopefully it will be an improvement on the dreck that was Song and Silence.

 

[Wyvern]

"Mainly the pseudo-natural template can only be applied in place of a celestial or fiendish template. You can’t summon anything that didn’t start with the celestial or fiendish template."

I don't understand what you mean here. *No* creature *starts* with a celestial or fiendish template; you add it onto a creature. The pseudo-natural template was always applied "in place of" another template in the sense that instead of adding the celestial or fiendish template, you add the pseudo-natural template. But that could be said of *any* template. The only way I can make sense of your description is if you mean that an alienist summons a celestial or fiendish creature and then turns it *into* a pseudo-natural creature, but even if that's the case, I don't see how it's a reduction in power from previously.

Wyvern


"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
- William Shaekspeare, "Hamlet"