John Cooper
Explorer
Complete Mage
By Skip Williams, Penny Williams, Ari Marmell, and Kolja Raven Liquette
Wizards of the Coast product number 953847200
160-page hardcover, $29.95
Complete Mage is the latest in the "Complete" series of hardcover books by Wizards of the Coast, each examining a handful of related character classes. In fact, the original announcement of its upcoming publication was somewhat controversial in some corners, as Wizards of the Coast had already covered all of the character classes in their previous books, and some people were concerned that Complete Mage was just a second dip into the same well that produced Complete Arcane. Well, this being only the second book in the "Complete" line that I've seen for myself (the only other one being Complete Psionic), I can't honestly comment on that, but Complete Mage is an interesting book nonetheless. I was a slight bit disappointed at first that Complete Mage mentions you need to have Complete Arcane - which I obviously don't have - in order to use all of the material in this book, but for the most part that seems to be specifically tailored to the warlock character class (which appears in Complete Arcane). On the one hand, that's a bit irritating, and steps away from the one-time stated goal that Wizards of the Coast wouldn't ever require you to own any books beyond the 3 core books in order to use another book, but on the other hand, if they didn't do something like this you'd never get any "follow on" material for warlocks, so I can see why the decision was made the way it does. (I've heard from many different people that the warlock character class was their all-time favorite thing about Complete Arcane.)
The cover of Complete Mage is pretty lame, though. It's in the standard "mock magical tome" style so prevalent with so many of Wizards of the Coast's books - and all of the "Complete" series, I believe - but the 4"-by-5" painting in the middle is simply...bad. Matt Cavotta - whose work I generally like, by the way - went a bit too far down the "weird" lane and ended up with just about the goofiest mage I've ever seen. It's a human woman with blond hair, very long and flowing in the back but pulled into two pigtails at the top of her head, which hang forward in her face (one's been tucked over her right ear). Her face is so pasty-white that I originally thought Matt had wandered over into mime country, but I suppose the pink-red eyes are supposed to indicate that she's an albino. Okay, fine, I suppose, but what to make of the three vertical tattoos from chin to lower lip? The first thing that says to me is "weird goatee" - in fact, I had originally assumed the mage was male for that very reason, until I noticed the curve of a breast. Her eyebrows are so light as to be nonexistent. Throw in a couple of white rats on her shoulders, each wearing a pierced earring through an ear, through which a chain is apparently connected to the mage's pierced earrings, and we get...what? Complete Goofball? Complete Escapee from the Nearby Asylum? Complete Nutjob? Whether she's a wizard, a sorcerer, or something exotic like a wu jen or a warlock, I'm sure she has to make Concentration checks every single time she tries casting a spell while she has two rats dangling from her earlobes. Not really your best work, Matt.
The interior artwork is pretty good, with 61 full-color and 6 monochrome illustrations by 14 different artists. As always, some are better than others; my favorites include Ron Spencer's generalist mage on page 19 (this is one well-prepared female elf - she's loaded down with straps and buckles keeping all sorts of goodies tucked away all over her leather armor, and yet everything looks like it's well balanced and wouldn't impede movement too badly, and if you look, even her staff has a built-in 50-foot length of rope with a hook at the end!); Eric Deschamps' no-nonsense eldritch theurge Oslavan Kaligos on page 59 (nice outfit, and I really love his "mess with me and I will kill you" expression and body posture); Kieran Yanner's lyric thaumaturge Lalage Amatifa on page 69 (she's a really sweet-looking young half-elf, and I love the way she's just singing her little heart out); Eva Widermann's ultimate magus Kalind Leschay on page 79 (she looks haughty and regal, as you imagine anyone considering themselves an "ultimate magus" would, and I love the peacock-feather cape she's wearing - very appropriate!); and finally, while Mialee the elf has proven rather difficult to make look fierce in the past, Ron Spencer pulls it off admirably on page 114 with his depiction of her wielding a prismatic bow spell. Some of the artwork just didn't do it for me, though. Anne Stokes' illustration of the flaying tendrils spell on page 105 just looks somehow "off," like the wizard had put on the lower half of an illithid mask or something. (Of course, she makes up for it with her excellent full-fledged illithid on page 153.) Jim Nelson's depiction of the Otto's imperative ambulation spell on page 112 not only uses one of the most unhobgoblin-looking hobgoblins I've ever seen, but he somehow managed to make Devis the bard look like American politician John Kerry in a wig. And one final observation about the artwork: on page 87, Eva Widermann's illustration of Jerarra of the Hunted Steppes, a female half-elf wild soul, bears a remarkable resemblance to Kes, the waiflike Ocampan from Star Trek: Voyager, so much so that I wonder if it wasn't intentional. (Jerarra also shows up on page 33, in another piece by Eva, and even though the outfit's the same and the pose is very similar, the resemblance isn't as sharp in that piece.)
Besides the artwork, cartographer Mike Schley also provides 8 full-color maps in the last chapter, each one easy to read and well-rendered.
Complete Mage is laid out as follows:
The first couple of chapters in Complete Mage were a bit on the basic side for me, what with all the discussions on what magic is and how it works in the D&D universe, but the material will no doubt be of use to some beginner DMs. Also, while the explanations of the various roles that PC spellcasters can take were similarly a bit on the dull side for me, I did enjoy the details on what spells and feats were best avoided - many of these were eye-openers for me, and I'm willing to bet that I wasn't the only one who has been playing D&D for a similar amount of time without realizing things like how few necromantic spells there are that allow saves (which thus makes Spell Focus (necromancy) a bit of a waste).
I did really like some of the prestige classes, though. I think my favorite was the master specialist, taking the concept of school specialization and "cranking it up a notch." I also liked the fact that - as is pointed out on page 72 - master specialists are so similar to "normal" specialists just by casual observation that it's a simple matter to retroactively apply the prestige class to NPC specialist wizards in your campaign. That's always nice: a prestige class that doesn't require massive work on the DM's part to fit into a given campaign. Also, while it's of less personal benefit to me (at least until I pick up Complete Arcane, which I'm halfway considering), it was nice to see that so many of the prestige classes were geared toward warlocks - there's the eldritch disciple (warlock/divine spellcaster), eldritch theurge (warlock/arcane spellcaster), and enlightened spirit (warlock that becomes good and becomes more like a celestial). Throw in the 22 new invocations, and Complete Mage is pretty much a must-buy for warlock fans!
Of course, the prestige class chapter was where all of the stat blocks were, and thus where the majority of the errors were made. (For the record, besides the stat block errors, the proofreading/editing job was phenomenal on Complete Mage, with the only errors I noted being one word being split into two ("distin guish"), one typo ("half-elf" became "hLf-elf"), one blank line missing to separate the first paragraph of a spell description from the italicized paragraph describing what the caster does to cast the spell, two page references that were each off by one page, a "B" here and there after a feat that should have been superscripted but wasn't, the letter "a" in the word "and" being in a different font style once (that was weird!), and one out-of-date reference to wizards "memorizing" spells - excellent job there, editing manager Kim Mohan and editors Michele Carter and M. Alexander Jurkat!) Here's my "unofficial errata" on the stat blocks of Complete Mage, though:
Let's move on to spells (and invocations, although I don't have much to say about the latter, not being up on my warlock rules). Some of these were rather clever, but I am a bit concerned about the Polymorph subschool. I understand why the polymorph spell was reworked as it was (to make it easier to use during conventions, where apparently a lot of people running spellcasters were eating up a lot of time - a valuable commodity in a convention game - flipping through their Monster Manuals deciding what they wanted to turn themselves into). However, my big concern about breaking it up the way they did is that now we're going to get a whole slew of spells in upcoming products like these spells from Complete Mage: aspect of the icy hunter (turn yourself into a winter wolf), dreaded form of the eye tyrant (turn yourself into a beholder), form of the threefold beast (turn yourself into a chimera), shape of the hellspawned stalker (turn yourself into a hell hound), and unyielding form of inevitable death (turn yourself into a marut). I can just imagine a few of the new spells that we'll be reading about in future releases: multiheaded shape of reptilian death (turn yourself into a hydra), blobby form of the blobby blob (turn yourself into a black pudding), and alluring aspect of the deadly hot naked chick (turn yourself into a nymph). Sadly, I'm only half-joking about these; there will be more - many more! - of these types of spells to come, mark my words.
Fortunately, many of the other spells are much more imaginative than the "turn-yourself-into-one-specific-monster-from-the-Monster-Manual" spells listed above. I personally rather liked deathsight, a 4th-level assassin spell allowing him to go straight for the death attack without spending the normal three rounds of observation (that seems like something an enterprising assassin would have created); incendiary slime, which has all of the fun of the grease spell mixed in with high flammability; rebirth of iron (finally, a "rust monster attack" rewind button!); and true casting, the arcane spell equivalent to a warrior's true strike benefit. I also rather liked the way several of the spells built upon each other, so if you cast one while another was still in effect (or sometimes, like with the incendiary surge spell, if you cast two of the same spell in successive rounds), you got a kind of "synergy bonus." While on the subject of the new spells, I think the existence of the adamantine wings spell - in which metal wings sprout from your back, allowing you to fly, make wing-slap attacks, or fling sharp, metallic "feathers" at your enemies - is ample proof that at least one of the four authors is a big fan of Archangel from the comic book X-Men. There was one spell that was a bit problematic, though: the reaving aura spell states that it "deals 1 point of damage to every creature in the area that has 0 or fewer hit points" - yet also states that the spell "has no effect on creatures that have 0 or more hit points." So, if you have 0 hit points, are you affected by the spell or not? I'm guessing not, that the spell was intended as a "kill off the dying" spell that only affects those with negative hit points, but there's no way of telling for sure.
The new magic items were merely okay, mostly just being exactly the types of items you'd expect to be made with the new spells in the book. Nothing too exciting there, I thought, although I did like the alternate spell components, especially as they were all pretty much "generic" - you can use "angel down" for any abjuration spell, for example, not just one specific one, and get the equivalent of an Extended Spell out of the deal. It's a nice way to get metamagic feats into the game now and again without actually having to have your spellcasting PC take that metamagic feat. (Unless you're a fighter, feats don't exactly grow on trees!)
The final chapter was also rather ho-hum, being a series of magical locations that the DM can use as an alternate to treasure, allowing his PCs to travel there, and in most cases, sit around for 8 hours soaking up the ambiance and then get a once-a-day "cool thing to do" that can be used for a whole year before fading out. Most of these didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, though - why can they (in most cases) only provide one such benefit to one individual per year, and never to the same individual more than once? I understand the "game mechanics" reason, but there didn't seem to be too much in the way of "in-game" justification. Also, I fear most of the arcane locations were much too similar to each other for my tastes: here's a magical waterfall that allows you to extend the duration of transmutation spells; here's a boneyard that allows you to apply one of three metamagic feats to necromancy spells; here's a cavern that bumps the caster level of all abjuration spells by 1 for a year after visiting it; here's a magic pool that allows you to recast the same enchantment spell immediately after having cast it, once per day for a year, as long as the target is the same. They all just kind of blend together and seem almost interchangeable.
Taken as a whole, Complete Mage has its good bits and its not-so-good bits, but the good outweighs the bad. I'd put it somewhere on the edge of a high 3 and a low 4, and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and bump it into low "4 (Good)" territory if only because it's nice seeing a concept from a previous book (specifically, the warlock from Complete Arcane) being given some follow-up attention. (Okay, and because I was impressed with the overall level of proofreading - what can I say? My "hot buttons" are different than those of most people.)
By Skip Williams, Penny Williams, Ari Marmell, and Kolja Raven Liquette
Wizards of the Coast product number 953847200
160-page hardcover, $29.95
Complete Mage is the latest in the "Complete" series of hardcover books by Wizards of the Coast, each examining a handful of related character classes. In fact, the original announcement of its upcoming publication was somewhat controversial in some corners, as Wizards of the Coast had already covered all of the character classes in their previous books, and some people were concerned that Complete Mage was just a second dip into the same well that produced Complete Arcane. Well, this being only the second book in the "Complete" line that I've seen for myself (the only other one being Complete Psionic), I can't honestly comment on that, but Complete Mage is an interesting book nonetheless. I was a slight bit disappointed at first that Complete Mage mentions you need to have Complete Arcane - which I obviously don't have - in order to use all of the material in this book, but for the most part that seems to be specifically tailored to the warlock character class (which appears in Complete Arcane). On the one hand, that's a bit irritating, and steps away from the one-time stated goal that Wizards of the Coast wouldn't ever require you to own any books beyond the 3 core books in order to use another book, but on the other hand, if they didn't do something like this you'd never get any "follow on" material for warlocks, so I can see why the decision was made the way it does. (I've heard from many different people that the warlock character class was their all-time favorite thing about Complete Arcane.)
The cover of Complete Mage is pretty lame, though. It's in the standard "mock magical tome" style so prevalent with so many of Wizards of the Coast's books - and all of the "Complete" series, I believe - but the 4"-by-5" painting in the middle is simply...bad. Matt Cavotta - whose work I generally like, by the way - went a bit too far down the "weird" lane and ended up with just about the goofiest mage I've ever seen. It's a human woman with blond hair, very long and flowing in the back but pulled into two pigtails at the top of her head, which hang forward in her face (one's been tucked over her right ear). Her face is so pasty-white that I originally thought Matt had wandered over into mime country, but I suppose the pink-red eyes are supposed to indicate that she's an albino. Okay, fine, I suppose, but what to make of the three vertical tattoos from chin to lower lip? The first thing that says to me is "weird goatee" - in fact, I had originally assumed the mage was male for that very reason, until I noticed the curve of a breast. Her eyebrows are so light as to be nonexistent. Throw in a couple of white rats on her shoulders, each wearing a pierced earring through an ear, through which a chain is apparently connected to the mage's pierced earrings, and we get...what? Complete Goofball? Complete Escapee from the Nearby Asylum? Complete Nutjob? Whether she's a wizard, a sorcerer, or something exotic like a wu jen or a warlock, I'm sure she has to make Concentration checks every single time she tries casting a spell while she has two rats dangling from her earlobes. Not really your best work, Matt.
The interior artwork is pretty good, with 61 full-color and 6 monochrome illustrations by 14 different artists. As always, some are better than others; my favorites include Ron Spencer's generalist mage on page 19 (this is one well-prepared female elf - she's loaded down with straps and buckles keeping all sorts of goodies tucked away all over her leather armor, and yet everything looks like it's well balanced and wouldn't impede movement too badly, and if you look, even her staff has a built-in 50-foot length of rope with a hook at the end!); Eric Deschamps' no-nonsense eldritch theurge Oslavan Kaligos on page 59 (nice outfit, and I really love his "mess with me and I will kill you" expression and body posture); Kieran Yanner's lyric thaumaturge Lalage Amatifa on page 69 (she's a really sweet-looking young half-elf, and I love the way she's just singing her little heart out); Eva Widermann's ultimate magus Kalind Leschay on page 79 (she looks haughty and regal, as you imagine anyone considering themselves an "ultimate magus" would, and I love the peacock-feather cape she's wearing - very appropriate!); and finally, while Mialee the elf has proven rather difficult to make look fierce in the past, Ron Spencer pulls it off admirably on page 114 with his depiction of her wielding a prismatic bow spell. Some of the artwork just didn't do it for me, though. Anne Stokes' illustration of the flaying tendrils spell on page 105 just looks somehow "off," like the wizard had put on the lower half of an illithid mask or something. (Of course, she makes up for it with her excellent full-fledged illithid on page 153.) Jim Nelson's depiction of the Otto's imperative ambulation spell on page 112 not only uses one of the most unhobgoblin-looking hobgoblins I've ever seen, but he somehow managed to make Devis the bard look like American politician John Kerry in a wig. And one final observation about the artwork: on page 87, Eva Widermann's illustration of Jerarra of the Hunted Steppes, a female half-elf wild soul, bears a remarkable resemblance to Kes, the waiflike Ocampan from Star Trek: Voyager, so much so that I wonder if it wasn't intentional. (Jerarra also shows up on page 33, in another piece by Eva, and even though the outfit's the same and the pose is very similar, the resemblance isn't as sharp in that piece.)
Besides the artwork, cartographer Mike Schley also provides 8 full-color maps in the last chapter, each one easy to read and well-rendered.
Complete Mage is laid out as follows:
- Introduction: One page describing what you'll find in each chapter to follow, and the seemingly-obligatory "Swift and Immediate Actions" sidebar
- Chapter 1 - Fundamentals: Sections on the nature of magic, the various spell schools, and 10 arcane archetypes (the blaster, the booster, the controller, the generalist, the necromaster, the sniper, the spy, the strategist, the summoner, and the warrior), each with suggestions on how to run a PC of that type and which spells/feats/prestige classes to avoid and which to shoot for
- Chapter 2 - Character Options: 13 alternative class features for various core classes (and some exotic ones), followed by 65 new feats (24 general, 10 heritage, 1 metamagic, 25 reserve, and 5 tactical)
- Chapter 3 - Prestige Classes: 11 new prestige classes (abjurant champion, eldritch disciple, eldritch theurge, enlightened spirit, holy scourge, lyric thaumaturge, master specialist, nightmare spinner, ultimate magus, unseen seer, and wild soul)
- Chapter 4 - Spells and Invocations: 131 new spells and 22 new warlock invocations, with a reprint of the information about the new "Polymorph" subschool in a half-page sidebar
- Chapter 5 - Arcane Items: 6 rings, 8 rods, 7 staffs, 10 wondrous items, 5 alchemical items, and 10 optional spell components (each of which improves a spell in the manner of a "free" metamagic feat when used as part of the material components during spellcasting)
- Chapter 6 - Arcane Adventures: A table with 100 adventure seeds, followed by 13 magical locations
The first couple of chapters in Complete Mage were a bit on the basic side for me, what with all the discussions on what magic is and how it works in the D&D universe, but the material will no doubt be of use to some beginner DMs. Also, while the explanations of the various roles that PC spellcasters can take were similarly a bit on the dull side for me, I did enjoy the details on what spells and feats were best avoided - many of these were eye-openers for me, and I'm willing to bet that I wasn't the only one who has been playing D&D for a similar amount of time without realizing things like how few necromantic spells there are that allow saves (which thus makes Spell Focus (necromancy) a bit of a waste).
I did really like some of the prestige classes, though. I think my favorite was the master specialist, taking the concept of school specialization and "cranking it up a notch." I also liked the fact that - as is pointed out on page 72 - master specialists are so similar to "normal" specialists just by casual observation that it's a simple matter to retroactively apply the prestige class to NPC specialist wizards in your campaign. That's always nice: a prestige class that doesn't require massive work on the DM's part to fit into a given campaign. Also, while it's of less personal benefit to me (at least until I pick up Complete Arcane, which I'm halfway considering), it was nice to see that so many of the prestige classes were geared toward warlocks - there's the eldritch disciple (warlock/divine spellcaster), eldritch theurge (warlock/arcane spellcaster), and enlightened spirit (warlock that becomes good and becomes more like a celestial). Throw in the 22 new invocations, and Complete Mage is pretty much a must-buy for warlock fans!
Of course, the prestige class chapter was where all of the stat blocks were, and thus where the majority of the errors were made. (For the record, besides the stat block errors, the proofreading/editing job was phenomenal on Complete Mage, with the only errors I noted being one word being split into two ("distin guish"), one typo ("half-elf" became "hLf-elf"), one blank line missing to separate the first paragraph of a spell description from the italicized paragraph describing what the caster does to cast the spell, two page references that were each off by one page, a "B" here and there after a feat that should have been superscripted but wasn't, the letter "a" in the word "and" being in a different font style once (that was weird!), and one out-of-date reference to wizards "memorizing" spells - excellent job there, editing manager Kim Mohan and editors Michele Carter and M. Alexander Jurkat!) Here's my "unofficial errata" on the stat blocks of Complete Mage, though:
- p. 53, Caspian LaMont, male half-elf fighter 4/sorcerer 2/abjurant champion 5: 0-level spells/day should be 6, not 4 (he gets 6 as a Sor7, which is what he ends up being the equivalent to after adding his Sor2 and his AbC5 levels together). His lightning bolt save should be DC 15, not DC 16 (10 + spell level + Cha bonus = 10 + 3 + 2 = 15).
- pp. 56-57, Leruun Anstrun, female human cleric 3/warlock 3/eldritch disciple 4: Psst, Leruun! You don't have any ranks in Knowledge (religion), not to mention the 8 ranks required to become an eldritch disciple in the first place! Better start cannibalizing skill ranks from elsewhere, before the DM finds out!
- p. 60, Oslavan Kaligos, male elf warlock 3/wizard 3/eldritch theurge 10: Grapple should be at +9, not +10 (+10 BAB, -1 Str). The melee touch attack for his touch of idiocy spell should be at +9 melee touch, not +10 (+10 BAB, -1 Str).
- pp. 63-64, Torgar Coalhair, male dwarf warlock 5/enlightened spirit 5: Flat-footed AC should be 18, not 19 (+4 armor, +1 deflection, +2 natural, +1 sacred).
- p. 70, Lalage Amatifa, female half-elf bard 6/lyric thaumaturge 2: Flat-footed AC should be 15, not 14 (+4 armor, +1 deflection). Skills should include Disguise +3 (+5 acting) [0 ranks, +3 Cha, +2 synergy from Bluff].
- p. 73, Caphodel Berrandar, female gnome enchanter 8/master specialist 5: Masterwork light crossbow attacks should be at +8 ranged, not +7 (+6 BAB, +1 size, +0 Dex, +1 masterwork). She has three prohibited schools listed, but she should only have two. (Perhaps an original requirement for the prestige class added a third prohibited school of magic, but the rule was later deleted?) Skills aren't alphabetized. The Special Quality "focused specialist" is not explained, either in the stat block or in the prestige class write-up; perhaps this was renamed? Likewise, there's a "+1 to DC of enchantment spells" in the SQ section that isn't explained - if it's referring to the Spell Focus (enchantment) feat, it should be +2, not +1, as she also has Greater Spell Focus (enchantment); if not, the prestige class doesn't throw an additional +1 bonus anywhere, so the "+1" sitting there is liable to be misleading. (I vote it be deleted, as it doesn't seem to be serving a purpose.) Skills should include Gather Information +2 [0 ranks, +0 Cha, +2 synergy bonus from Knowledge (local)]. Survival should not include "underground" in the list of synergy bonus conditions, as she doesn't have 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (dungeoneering). Finally, under the Spellcraft skill, it should be "(+22 learning new enchantment spells)" instead of "(+22 learning new illusion spells)" - she's an enchanter, not an illusionist. (I guess that old gnome stereotype kicked in when the developers were writing up her stats....)
- p. 77, Lukaas Duskwhisper, male human bard 2/illusionist 7/nightmare spinner 5: This is 3.5; his Weapon Finesse feat doesn't need that "(rapier)" qualifier any more. Spells/day should be 6/7/7/7/5/4/3, not 5/6/7/6/4/3/2 (4/4/4/4/3/2/1 as a Wiz11 (7 as Wiz7 and +4 as NSp5), +1/1/1/1/1/1/1 as an illusionist specialist wizard, +1/1/1/1/1/1/1 as a nightmare spinner, and +0/1/1/1/0/0/0 for having Int 16). Skills should include Disguise +3 (+5 acting) [0 ranks, +3 Cha, +2 synergy bonus from Bluff] and Use Rope +2 (+4 bindings) [0 ranks, +2 Dex, +2 synergy bonus from Escape Artist].
- pp. 80-81, Kalind Leschay, female human wizard 4/sorcerer 1/ultimate magus 4: Touch AC should be 11, not 15 (+1 Dex). Masterwork dart attacks should be at +6 ranged, not +5 (+4 BAB, +1 Dex, +1 masterwork). The spell lesser orb of sound should have an attack at +5 ranged touch, not +4 (+4 BAB, +1 Dex), while scorching ray and disrupt undead should have attacks at +6 ranged touch, not +4 (+4 BAB, +1 Dex, +1 Weapon Focus (ray)). [Incidentally, not having Complete Arcane, I can't read up on the lesser orb of sound spell, but I'm assuming it's not a ray; if it is, that spell would have a +6 ranged touch as well.]
- p. 84, Kory Stargazer, female human rogue 4/diviner 1/unseen seer 5: Flat-footed AC should be 18, not 17, due to her uncanny dodge. Her "Disguise +6" skill listing should include "(+8 acting)" due to her +2 synergy bonus from Bluff.
- p. 88, Jerarra of the Hunted Steppes, female half-elf wu jen 5/wild soul 6: AC should be 17, not 16 (+2 Dex, +3 armor, +1 deflection, +1 natural). Flat-footed AC should be 15, not 14. And somebody's going to have to help me here with these saves (again, I don't have Complete Arcane, in which the wu jen is detailed): first of all, her Ref is listed as +4, but she has a +2 Dex modifier and gets +2 from her 6 wild soul levels, which leaves +0 as a wu jen, but you'd think a wu jen 5 would either have a +1 to Ref (if it's a poor save, which seems likely) or a +4 to Ref (if it's a good save); therefore, she should either have Ref +5 (my guess) or Ref +8. Likewise, I'd think a wu jen 5 would grant a +1 to Will (if it's a poor save) or a +4 to Will (if it's a good save, which seems likely), so let's look at her Will save: it's listed at +11 (+15 against enchantments), but we can strip off 1 point for her Wis 13 and 5 points for her 6 ranks as a wild soul, leaving 11 - 6 = 5 points for her 5 levels as a wu jen. Unless wu jens get an additional saving bonus in there somewhere as a class feature (kind of like how paladins do), I'm willing to guess that's a mistake. I'm going to guess her Will should be +10 (+14 against enchantments) - can anybody confirm?
Let's move on to spells (and invocations, although I don't have much to say about the latter, not being up on my warlock rules). Some of these were rather clever, but I am a bit concerned about the Polymorph subschool. I understand why the polymorph spell was reworked as it was (to make it easier to use during conventions, where apparently a lot of people running spellcasters were eating up a lot of time - a valuable commodity in a convention game - flipping through their Monster Manuals deciding what they wanted to turn themselves into). However, my big concern about breaking it up the way they did is that now we're going to get a whole slew of spells in upcoming products like these spells from Complete Mage: aspect of the icy hunter (turn yourself into a winter wolf), dreaded form of the eye tyrant (turn yourself into a beholder), form of the threefold beast (turn yourself into a chimera), shape of the hellspawned stalker (turn yourself into a hell hound), and unyielding form of inevitable death (turn yourself into a marut). I can just imagine a few of the new spells that we'll be reading about in future releases: multiheaded shape of reptilian death (turn yourself into a hydra), blobby form of the blobby blob (turn yourself into a black pudding), and alluring aspect of the deadly hot naked chick (turn yourself into a nymph). Sadly, I'm only half-joking about these; there will be more - many more! - of these types of spells to come, mark my words.
Fortunately, many of the other spells are much more imaginative than the "turn-yourself-into-one-specific-monster-from-the-Monster-Manual" spells listed above. I personally rather liked deathsight, a 4th-level assassin spell allowing him to go straight for the death attack without spending the normal three rounds of observation (that seems like something an enterprising assassin would have created); incendiary slime, which has all of the fun of the grease spell mixed in with high flammability; rebirth of iron (finally, a "rust monster attack" rewind button!); and true casting, the arcane spell equivalent to a warrior's true strike benefit. I also rather liked the way several of the spells built upon each other, so if you cast one while another was still in effect (or sometimes, like with the incendiary surge spell, if you cast two of the same spell in successive rounds), you got a kind of "synergy bonus." While on the subject of the new spells, I think the existence of the adamantine wings spell - in which metal wings sprout from your back, allowing you to fly, make wing-slap attacks, or fling sharp, metallic "feathers" at your enemies - is ample proof that at least one of the four authors is a big fan of Archangel from the comic book X-Men. There was one spell that was a bit problematic, though: the reaving aura spell states that it "deals 1 point of damage to every creature in the area that has 0 or fewer hit points" - yet also states that the spell "has no effect on creatures that have 0 or more hit points." So, if you have 0 hit points, are you affected by the spell or not? I'm guessing not, that the spell was intended as a "kill off the dying" spell that only affects those with negative hit points, but there's no way of telling for sure.
The new magic items were merely okay, mostly just being exactly the types of items you'd expect to be made with the new spells in the book. Nothing too exciting there, I thought, although I did like the alternate spell components, especially as they were all pretty much "generic" - you can use "angel down" for any abjuration spell, for example, not just one specific one, and get the equivalent of an Extended Spell out of the deal. It's a nice way to get metamagic feats into the game now and again without actually having to have your spellcasting PC take that metamagic feat. (Unless you're a fighter, feats don't exactly grow on trees!)
The final chapter was also rather ho-hum, being a series of magical locations that the DM can use as an alternate to treasure, allowing his PCs to travel there, and in most cases, sit around for 8 hours soaking up the ambiance and then get a once-a-day "cool thing to do" that can be used for a whole year before fading out. Most of these didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense, though - why can they (in most cases) only provide one such benefit to one individual per year, and never to the same individual more than once? I understand the "game mechanics" reason, but there didn't seem to be too much in the way of "in-game" justification. Also, I fear most of the arcane locations were much too similar to each other for my tastes: here's a magical waterfall that allows you to extend the duration of transmutation spells; here's a boneyard that allows you to apply one of three metamagic feats to necromancy spells; here's a cavern that bumps the caster level of all abjuration spells by 1 for a year after visiting it; here's a magic pool that allows you to recast the same enchantment spell immediately after having cast it, once per day for a year, as long as the target is the same. They all just kind of blend together and seem almost interchangeable.
Taken as a whole, Complete Mage has its good bits and its not-so-good bits, but the good outweighs the bad. I'd put it somewhere on the edge of a high 3 and a low 4, and I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and bump it into low "4 (Good)" territory if only because it's nice seeing a concept from a previous book (specifically, the warlock from Complete Arcane) being given some follow-up attention. (Okay, and because I was impressed with the overall level of proofreading - what can I say? My "hot buttons" are different than those of most people.)
