Psion
Adventurer
The Complete Monstrous Wizards Compendium
The Complete Monstrous Wizards Compendium is a sourcebook providing new character options for the d20 System. The book's options are written with the Green Races setting in mind, featuring races considered "monstrous" under the normal D&D paradigm as central character. The book is published by Fast Forward Entertainment, with writing by Herbert A. Beas, Timothy Brown, Johnothan Cassie, Jarad Fennell, B.D. Flory, Chris Hartford, Kurt Hausheer, M.K. McArtor, Gary McBride, and W. Jason Peck.
The book seems to be written with a mix of revised and pre-revised standards, for example, referring to skills that were removed in the revision like intuit direction as well as referring to the revised damage reduction system.
A First Look
Format: 128 page perfect bound softcover; $24.99
Art: Cover art is by William W. Conners, depicting a simple meshed-box diagram with a bloodshot red eye in the middle. The interior is black-and-white, illustrated by Steve Bryant. The interior art forgoes the public domain clipart that Fast Forward has used in many of its prior books, and overall the art is decent ink-art.
Layout: Standard two column format, with a modest body text font and close line and paragraph spacing. The tables are unsightly, using periods to provide spacing.
A Deeper Look
As with the Complete Monstrous Fighters Compendium by Fast Forward, The Complete Monstrous Wizards Compendium is a catalog of options for monstrous PCs, with options set against the Green Races setting, though some attention is paid to the possibility that it will be used in other setting. In this case, the options are oriented towards arcane spellcasting types for monstrous characters.
For those unfamiliar with the Green Races setting, an overview is provided of that setting, consuming 7 pages, including a two-page map.
A selection of new races are provided with the setting, namely the Centaur, Janni, Minotaur, Rakshasa, Satyr, and Troglodyte. Unlike prior books supporting Green Races, there are ECLs provides for the races here, which is a good thing. The races do deviate far more from their monster manual entries, however. With the exception of the Minotaur, none of these races have any racial HD. Though inconsistent with familiar D&D creatures, this could be a benefit in creating playable characters of these races, as you aren't required to spend as many levels to merely get the race.
Some of the racial abilities do seem a little strong for the ECLs assigned them, though perhaps not exceptionally so. The minotaur is odd in that it is the only race presented here with racial HD, but those HD are handled in an unusual manner. First, it does not provide any of the standard benefits for racial HD, such as saves, BAB, or skills. Second, it only has one racial HD, which under the standard rules is supplanted by the HD of the character's class.
Beyond the basic mechanics, full details are provided for each race, with physical characteristics, and the typical notes on their physical characteristics, society, religion, and how they become adventures.
The classes chapter includes the standard bevy of new core and prestige classes, the most eyebrow raising of which is the life mage, but I'll get to that in a second. There are five new base spellcasting classes and 12 prestige classes. The base classes are as follows:
-Combat mage: The combat mage casts arcane spells from the same list as wizards and sorcerers, but has better (cleric-style) attack bonuses, an improved (nonstandard "intermediate) fortitude save, and improved (d6) HD. They also gain a number of "arcane symbiosis" feats as they advance that reduce arcane failure percentages from armor, and also gain bonus feats every 5th level like a wizard (though the text does not state where the bonus feat is selected from). The combat mage gains access to new spell levels as fast as a wizard; the only real drawback is they don't gain additional spells of each level as quickly. All told, I think that this is a bit generous compared to the wizard.
-Master of Ceremonies: This class has slow spellcasting advancement, not receiving 1st level arcane spells until 2nd or 3rd level, and never receiving levels above 6th. At first level, they get a ritual magic ability that improves the range and duration of spells at the cost of increasing casting time significantly. As they only have a small selection of cantrips at first level, this is not a great boon and they are almost unplayable at that level. At later levels, they get the ability to perform rituals that can entrap various extraplanar creatures and command elementals, but none of these abilities ever compensate for the weak spell ability. Overall, the class is really only suitable as an NPC class like the adept.
-Swamp Witch: Much like the master of ceremonies, the swamp witch has slow spell progression, only reaching 6th level spells. Also much like that class, the swamp witch starts with a class ability that aids their spells (in this case, the ability to substitute material components), but only having cantrips at first level, it is almost unplayable then. The later abilities are somewhat better, allowing the swamp with to create "nostrums", which are essentially potions that don't require xp expenditure, but have potentially negative side effects. The mechanics are flavorful, but again the class is weak enough I see few players taking it.
-Tribal Shaman: Yet another class with slow spell progression, this one is even slower, only gaining 5th level spells by 20th level. The class also has no special abilities other than summon familiar. The main difference from the wizard is that they don't use spellbook, instead permanently learning spells they can prepare; they know 3 times the number of spells they can prepare for each level. A mechanical foible is that there are several levels in which the tribal shaman has zero spells of a given level, thus only gaining one if they get a bonus spell for intelligence, but the rules for spells they know states that you do not count bonus spells, thus the character can prepare a spell of a given level but do not know anything. Finally, this underpowered wizard doesn't seem to me to match the concept of a shaman. The class is weak, dull, and mechanically flawed.
-Life Mage: I have saved the life mage for last because I consider it by far to be the most problematic. The life mage is an oddity. Like combt mages, they also select spells from the wizard/sorcerer list, but they have a limited number of spells known. They don't gain slots to cast spells, instead gaining a number of "magic points" as they advance to cast spell with, somewhat like the psion's power points.
However, the magic point method is nowhere near as well conceived. It is a bit simpler, with the cost in magic points being equal to the level of the spell. That led me to think initially that this might limit lower level spells better than psion powers. However, such is not the case: magic points are doled out much in the same manner that skill points are, except they are only tripled at first level instead of quadrupled, and they are based on constitution instead of intelligence. This design decision baffles me: why would you want to front load magic points? A reasonable first level character could have a 16 in a statistic (more if you consider the fact that many of the "green races" have constitution bonuses, but we'll ignore that for now), so a first level character able to cast 15 1st level spells a day is not outlandish.
So, how does this work out as the life mage advances? Well, by 9th level, the same character could have 55 MP, allowing it to cast up to 55 magic missiles per day. And unlike psionics, those magic missiles are not capped at one dice worth of damage; they scale. Each spell can dole out 10-25 points of damage at 9th level.
But if you are a 9th level life mage, that may be of little consequence to you, as life mages don't learn new spells of the same level very fast, they get a new spell level at every class level, which means that yes, by 9th level you could be casting 9th level spells, assuming your con modifier is high enough. So if you have a 19 Con at 9th level, you would have 66 magic points, allowing you to churn out 7 meteor swarms per day if you felt the need, 9 levels before you would be expected to have the spell. If that wasn't enough, along the way, the life mage gets the ability to swap MP for hp (eventually both ways), and the only thing they have to compensate for all this power is a "wanderlust" requirement.
In short, the life mage is the most overpowered class in the book, perhaps the most overpowered d20 class I have ever seen in print.
There are 12 prestige classes, including: the academic (sort of a weak loremaster clone that doesn't start out as a spellcaster but becomes one), arcane craftsman, arcane professoors, arcane scholars, court wisemen, life drinker (no inherent spellcasting abilities, but can drain hp, spells, and eventually other abilities from others), master of the elements (no spellcasting abilities, but a number of class abilities influencing the elements), the reanimator (a specialized necromancer type with its own spellcasting progression and class abilities dealing with creating undead), showman, touched (a wild mage type with its own spellcasting progression) and vodoo master (a specialist in curses.)
There is some usable material here, mostly in the form of interesting takes on some class abilities (like the reference to myth in the reanimator's "dragon teeth" ability), but there are some problems with these classes. First off, ad hoc attack and save bonus progressions are used in several places. The authors seem too eager to make assign new spell advancement charts to existing spellcasters, which ultimately weakens the character; this approach should really only be taken if the character isn't already primarily a spellcaster. There are a number of mechanical oddities, such as the fact that the arcane craftsman receives craft wondrous items as a bonus feat when it already has it as a requirement. Many classes seem redundant (how many different takes on the arcane scholar archetype did we need?) Some classes have a mismatch between flavor text and abilities, such as the arcane professor which implies that some non-spellcasters take the class when spellcasting is a requirement. Finally, not many of these classes seem very unique to the theme of the book; most of the classes seems conceptually consistent with humans, and many of them do not seem to appropriate for many monstrous races.
The book introduces a number of new skills. On the bright side, most of the skills are added under knowledge, craft, and profession heading. Further, the book provides a matrix describing which skills are added to which existing classes. However, this matrix neglects their own new base classes introduced in the book, and it lists intelligence as the default bonus ability score for a profession skill.
The singular skill that falls outside of the existing categories is chicanery. This skill allows the user to sell a relatively worthless item as if it were valuable. Skill under the D&D system are fairly broad and this skill seems way too specific to be justifiable as a separate skill. This should be a use of bluff instead of a separate skill.
There are a number of new feats as well. The most usable of the feats are the totem feats. These are fairly simple in concept - they require spellcaster levels and grant a spell like ability, but the character must make sacrifice to maintain the power.
There are a number of new item creation feats, though some of them don't call themselves that. Many of them are labeled as metamagic feats, but do not operate at all by the metamagic feat rules, but are more properly craft feats, like tattoo magic. Tattoo magic in particular struck me as rather uncomfortably balanced in that it requires a new spell for each new spell the character wanted to be able to scribe in this form, but the cost (500 xp for caster and recipient) is not dependant upon spell level and it allows you to use the spell once per day. This is very cheap for an ability that could let you use many high level spells per day.
Unsurprisingly for a arcane-themed book, there are a number of new spells. Many spells are simply new combat damage spells like acid rain. Most other spells are primarily combat related, but many have interesting effects. Most of the spells seem usable; the most notable problem is that some of the spells are perhaps a bit low level of their effects, such as some cantrips that can affect a large burst area. Some of the spells deviate from using the standard range categories.
The first real sign that this is a book of monstrous spellcasters, a section on racial magic provides a selection of spells that can only be cast by members of certain races; in some cases, a specific gender is required too. These spells are "racial magic", and cannot be used against a target that fits the described race either.
The equipment section is really more properly named the magic item section. A number of specific weapons and armors are included (which surprised me considering, again, the arcane spellcaster theme) as well as rings, rods, staves, and wondrous items. Overall the items seemed decent and usable, though some of the items looks a bit cheap and arbitrary in value (like a ring that could do a 20th level blade barrier 4 times/day at a cost that is about 1/3 of the calculated value in the book.)
The final section of the book has some notes on roleplaying monstrous spellcasters, including an overview of what it is like to be an apprentice of one of the classes listed herein, and 50 interesting ideas for adventures for monstrous spellcasters.
Conclusion
There is some usable material herein. However, the best of it only seems mildly interesting to me, and the worst of it seems unplayable due to balance or mechanics issues, ranging from mild (breaks with convention) to severe (spellcasters that don't know any spells of a level they can cast). Further, it seems that the book only weakly adheres to the monstrous theme, and came across as a bit of a grab-bag Overall, I would only recommend this book if you are a real fan of the Green Races setting or if you are willing to do a little salvage work.
Overall Grade: D
-Alan D. Kohler
The Complete Monstrous Wizards Compendium is a sourcebook providing new character options for the d20 System. The book's options are written with the Green Races setting in mind, featuring races considered "monstrous" under the normal D&D paradigm as central character. The book is published by Fast Forward Entertainment, with writing by Herbert A. Beas, Timothy Brown, Johnothan Cassie, Jarad Fennell, B.D. Flory, Chris Hartford, Kurt Hausheer, M.K. McArtor, Gary McBride, and W. Jason Peck.
The book seems to be written with a mix of revised and pre-revised standards, for example, referring to skills that were removed in the revision like intuit direction as well as referring to the revised damage reduction system.
A First Look
Format: 128 page perfect bound softcover; $24.99
Art: Cover art is by William W. Conners, depicting a simple meshed-box diagram with a bloodshot red eye in the middle. The interior is black-and-white, illustrated by Steve Bryant. The interior art forgoes the public domain clipart that Fast Forward has used in many of its prior books, and overall the art is decent ink-art.
Layout: Standard two column format, with a modest body text font and close line and paragraph spacing. The tables are unsightly, using periods to provide spacing.
A Deeper Look
As with the Complete Monstrous Fighters Compendium by Fast Forward, The Complete Monstrous Wizards Compendium is a catalog of options for monstrous PCs, with options set against the Green Races setting, though some attention is paid to the possibility that it will be used in other setting. In this case, the options are oriented towards arcane spellcasting types for monstrous characters.
For those unfamiliar with the Green Races setting, an overview is provided of that setting, consuming 7 pages, including a two-page map.
A selection of new races are provided with the setting, namely the Centaur, Janni, Minotaur, Rakshasa, Satyr, and Troglodyte. Unlike prior books supporting Green Races, there are ECLs provides for the races here, which is a good thing. The races do deviate far more from their monster manual entries, however. With the exception of the Minotaur, none of these races have any racial HD. Though inconsistent with familiar D&D creatures, this could be a benefit in creating playable characters of these races, as you aren't required to spend as many levels to merely get the race.
Some of the racial abilities do seem a little strong for the ECLs assigned them, though perhaps not exceptionally so. The minotaur is odd in that it is the only race presented here with racial HD, but those HD are handled in an unusual manner. First, it does not provide any of the standard benefits for racial HD, such as saves, BAB, or skills. Second, it only has one racial HD, which under the standard rules is supplanted by the HD of the character's class.
Beyond the basic mechanics, full details are provided for each race, with physical characteristics, and the typical notes on their physical characteristics, society, religion, and how they become adventures.
The classes chapter includes the standard bevy of new core and prestige classes, the most eyebrow raising of which is the life mage, but I'll get to that in a second. There are five new base spellcasting classes and 12 prestige classes. The base classes are as follows:
-Combat mage: The combat mage casts arcane spells from the same list as wizards and sorcerers, but has better (cleric-style) attack bonuses, an improved (nonstandard "intermediate) fortitude save, and improved (d6) HD. They also gain a number of "arcane symbiosis" feats as they advance that reduce arcane failure percentages from armor, and also gain bonus feats every 5th level like a wizard (though the text does not state where the bonus feat is selected from). The combat mage gains access to new spell levels as fast as a wizard; the only real drawback is they don't gain additional spells of each level as quickly. All told, I think that this is a bit generous compared to the wizard.
-Master of Ceremonies: This class has slow spellcasting advancement, not receiving 1st level arcane spells until 2nd or 3rd level, and never receiving levels above 6th. At first level, they get a ritual magic ability that improves the range and duration of spells at the cost of increasing casting time significantly. As they only have a small selection of cantrips at first level, this is not a great boon and they are almost unplayable at that level. At later levels, they get the ability to perform rituals that can entrap various extraplanar creatures and command elementals, but none of these abilities ever compensate for the weak spell ability. Overall, the class is really only suitable as an NPC class like the adept.
-Swamp Witch: Much like the master of ceremonies, the swamp witch has slow spell progression, only reaching 6th level spells. Also much like that class, the swamp witch starts with a class ability that aids their spells (in this case, the ability to substitute material components), but only having cantrips at first level, it is almost unplayable then. The later abilities are somewhat better, allowing the swamp with to create "nostrums", which are essentially potions that don't require xp expenditure, but have potentially negative side effects. The mechanics are flavorful, but again the class is weak enough I see few players taking it.
-Tribal Shaman: Yet another class with slow spell progression, this one is even slower, only gaining 5th level spells by 20th level. The class also has no special abilities other than summon familiar. The main difference from the wizard is that they don't use spellbook, instead permanently learning spells they can prepare; they know 3 times the number of spells they can prepare for each level. A mechanical foible is that there are several levels in which the tribal shaman has zero spells of a given level, thus only gaining one if they get a bonus spell for intelligence, but the rules for spells they know states that you do not count bonus spells, thus the character can prepare a spell of a given level but do not know anything. Finally, this underpowered wizard doesn't seem to me to match the concept of a shaman. The class is weak, dull, and mechanically flawed.
-Life Mage: I have saved the life mage for last because I consider it by far to be the most problematic. The life mage is an oddity. Like combt mages, they also select spells from the wizard/sorcerer list, but they have a limited number of spells known. They don't gain slots to cast spells, instead gaining a number of "magic points" as they advance to cast spell with, somewhat like the psion's power points.
However, the magic point method is nowhere near as well conceived. It is a bit simpler, with the cost in magic points being equal to the level of the spell. That led me to think initially that this might limit lower level spells better than psion powers. However, such is not the case: magic points are doled out much in the same manner that skill points are, except they are only tripled at first level instead of quadrupled, and they are based on constitution instead of intelligence. This design decision baffles me: why would you want to front load magic points? A reasonable first level character could have a 16 in a statistic (more if you consider the fact that many of the "green races" have constitution bonuses, but we'll ignore that for now), so a first level character able to cast 15 1st level spells a day is not outlandish.
So, how does this work out as the life mage advances? Well, by 9th level, the same character could have 55 MP, allowing it to cast up to 55 magic missiles per day. And unlike psionics, those magic missiles are not capped at one dice worth of damage; they scale. Each spell can dole out 10-25 points of damage at 9th level.
But if you are a 9th level life mage, that may be of little consequence to you, as life mages don't learn new spells of the same level very fast, they get a new spell level at every class level, which means that yes, by 9th level you could be casting 9th level spells, assuming your con modifier is high enough. So if you have a 19 Con at 9th level, you would have 66 magic points, allowing you to churn out 7 meteor swarms per day if you felt the need, 9 levels before you would be expected to have the spell. If that wasn't enough, along the way, the life mage gets the ability to swap MP for hp (eventually both ways), and the only thing they have to compensate for all this power is a "wanderlust" requirement.
In short, the life mage is the most overpowered class in the book, perhaps the most overpowered d20 class I have ever seen in print.
There are 12 prestige classes, including: the academic (sort of a weak loremaster clone that doesn't start out as a spellcaster but becomes one), arcane craftsman, arcane professoors, arcane scholars, court wisemen, life drinker (no inherent spellcasting abilities, but can drain hp, spells, and eventually other abilities from others), master of the elements (no spellcasting abilities, but a number of class abilities influencing the elements), the reanimator (a specialized necromancer type with its own spellcasting progression and class abilities dealing with creating undead), showman, touched (a wild mage type with its own spellcasting progression) and vodoo master (a specialist in curses.)
There is some usable material here, mostly in the form of interesting takes on some class abilities (like the reference to myth in the reanimator's "dragon teeth" ability), but there are some problems with these classes. First off, ad hoc attack and save bonus progressions are used in several places. The authors seem too eager to make assign new spell advancement charts to existing spellcasters, which ultimately weakens the character; this approach should really only be taken if the character isn't already primarily a spellcaster. There are a number of mechanical oddities, such as the fact that the arcane craftsman receives craft wondrous items as a bonus feat when it already has it as a requirement. Many classes seem redundant (how many different takes on the arcane scholar archetype did we need?) Some classes have a mismatch between flavor text and abilities, such as the arcane professor which implies that some non-spellcasters take the class when spellcasting is a requirement. Finally, not many of these classes seem very unique to the theme of the book; most of the classes seems conceptually consistent with humans, and many of them do not seem to appropriate for many monstrous races.
The book introduces a number of new skills. On the bright side, most of the skills are added under knowledge, craft, and profession heading. Further, the book provides a matrix describing which skills are added to which existing classes. However, this matrix neglects their own new base classes introduced in the book, and it lists intelligence as the default bonus ability score for a profession skill.
The singular skill that falls outside of the existing categories is chicanery. This skill allows the user to sell a relatively worthless item as if it were valuable. Skill under the D&D system are fairly broad and this skill seems way too specific to be justifiable as a separate skill. This should be a use of bluff instead of a separate skill.
There are a number of new feats as well. The most usable of the feats are the totem feats. These are fairly simple in concept - they require spellcaster levels and grant a spell like ability, but the character must make sacrifice to maintain the power.
There are a number of new item creation feats, though some of them don't call themselves that. Many of them are labeled as metamagic feats, but do not operate at all by the metamagic feat rules, but are more properly craft feats, like tattoo magic. Tattoo magic in particular struck me as rather uncomfortably balanced in that it requires a new spell for each new spell the character wanted to be able to scribe in this form, but the cost (500 xp for caster and recipient) is not dependant upon spell level and it allows you to use the spell once per day. This is very cheap for an ability that could let you use many high level spells per day.
Unsurprisingly for a arcane-themed book, there are a number of new spells. Many spells are simply new combat damage spells like acid rain. Most other spells are primarily combat related, but many have interesting effects. Most of the spells seem usable; the most notable problem is that some of the spells are perhaps a bit low level of their effects, such as some cantrips that can affect a large burst area. Some of the spells deviate from using the standard range categories.
The first real sign that this is a book of monstrous spellcasters, a section on racial magic provides a selection of spells that can only be cast by members of certain races; in some cases, a specific gender is required too. These spells are "racial magic", and cannot be used against a target that fits the described race either.
The equipment section is really more properly named the magic item section. A number of specific weapons and armors are included (which surprised me considering, again, the arcane spellcaster theme) as well as rings, rods, staves, and wondrous items. Overall the items seemed decent and usable, though some of the items looks a bit cheap and arbitrary in value (like a ring that could do a 20th level blade barrier 4 times/day at a cost that is about 1/3 of the calculated value in the book.)
The final section of the book has some notes on roleplaying monstrous spellcasters, including an overview of what it is like to be an apprentice of one of the classes listed herein, and 50 interesting ideas for adventures for monstrous spellcasters.
Conclusion
There is some usable material herein. However, the best of it only seems mildly interesting to me, and the worst of it seems unplayable due to balance or mechanics issues, ranging from mild (breaks with convention) to severe (spellcasters that don't know any spells of a level they can cast). Further, it seems that the book only weakly adheres to the monstrous theme, and came across as a bit of a grab-bag Overall, I would only recommend this book if you are a real fan of the Green Races setting or if you are willing to do a little salvage work.
Overall Grade: D
-Alan D. Kohler
