Returning what was lost and introducing some new
Review of Forbidden Arcana
by Michael Hammes and Philip Reed
Vignettes by James Kosub
Cover by Christopher Shy
Illustrated by Sam Araya, Leanne Buckley, T. Wing, and Christopher Shy
Cartography courtesy of Ed Bourelle at SkeletonKey Games (
www.skeletonkeygames.com)
Production by Philip Reed and Gina Fischer
Proofreading by Leslie Hammes
Forbidden Arcana is 172 page (including covers, adventure tile, one page add for the DM’s Dictionary of Demiplanes and OGL) it retails for $15.95 in pdf and $29.95 in print and pdf at Rpgnow where I picked up my copy. Wait, that’s not right I was given a copy of this collection because I had purchased the individual components before Ronin Arts released this compilation.
An Overview:
The book is arranged into 15 sections that break down mostly along the lines of the original Forbidden Arcana series by Ronin Arts although there was some new material introduced as well. The chapters break down as follows.
Chapter 1 – Magical Diseases (12 pages) $1.95 seperately
New mechanics are introduced to provide a consistent framework to represent magical diseases, including information on what is commonly and uncommonly known about the disease, how infection occurs, the save DC, incubation, and damage caused by the disease. One interesting note is the designers have included aspect that do more than 1d4 Con / 1d6 Str, many of the diseases have secondary effects including scarring, hearing voices, and itchy skin. There are 21 diseases detailed in this section. There is a field of study (Disease) for Knowledge and with the common and uncommon information provided in each disease it easy to determine what should be revealed to PCs. Also included is Disease Mage PRC that is able to lace the spells he casts with random diseases. The DC of the disease is based on the 15 + caster’s level (which seems a little high to me). Wrapping up this section are 9 spells and a random disease table to make using the PRC easier
Chapter 2 – Burning Spellbooks (12 pages) $1.95
This section introduces the side-effects of torching a wizards spellbook. There are tables for each of the schools and three levels of power, based upon the general theme of the book burned. Each section has a sampling of 6 possible effects that can be rolled randomly if an arcane effect is triggered (10%-20% depending on circumstance; although in my campaign we are using a number closer to 80%). Some of the effects are triggered spells and some are less mechanic driven and have a flavour of fantasy literature like erasing nearby spellbooks, all animals within three miles are doubled in size, or even all corpse within 200 ft are animated as zombies. Mmmm zombies. We’ve used this section a lot in my campaign as my players tend to be quite antispellcaster and my complaint is that I’m running out of effects to use. (9 schools x 3 levels x 6 effect = 162 options but I want more)
Chapter 3 – Potion Mixology (12 pages) $1.95
I remember a time long ago when magic items were unpredictable and dangerous. I remember a version of the game that had warnings about mixing potions. The danger of mixing potions has been brought back to the game table with this section of Forbidden Arcana. In this section there is a discussion of potions as throwaway items, suggestions on making potions more valuable, a revised feat to make brew potion more useful, new feats to expand the existing rules, some roleplaying reasons why someone may mix potions, rules on throwing potions, and a slough of magical side effects from drinking multiple potions. One of the neat things is that potion mixing affects not only the imbiber but also those around him.
Chapter 4 – Performance Magic (13 pages) $2.15
This section focuses on magic that is used to entertain and not to destroy like the all to typical lava burst or negative energy tendrils spells. A large chunk of this section is actually a discussion of what performance magic is, who use it, how it can be included in your game, and the role of a performance mage in a party. This focuses on bards, sorcerers and wizards. I think it would have been great to include cleric as their dealings with parishioners is a combination of divine faith and stunning showmanship, but alas they never made it into the book. Finally the section includes several spells and variations on existing spells to liven them up. Surprisingly most of the new spells are conjurations and not illusions or enchantments as I predicted they would be when I first bought the product. There are also a couple of new magic items, my favourite being the ventriliquator, that my halfling bard Farnir uses to distract monsters with the sound of approaching dragons (he’s fluent in High Draconic, the true language of dragons – but that’s for another review).
Chapter 5 – Necromantic Feats (10 pages) (Free, but no longer available singly)
There is no vignette for this section. Like the title says this section focuses on necromantic feats. This material is an expansion and adaptation of material in Mongoose Publishing’s Encyclopedia Arcane: Necromancy. All necromantic feats require a Negative Energy check to avoid negative side effects including light sensitivity, disfigurement or even becoming one of the undead. The feats are powerful, but they often have high prerequisites and have a nasty toll on the wielder. No sane player would walk down this path. The feats if used judiciously can make for an awesome necromancer villain. Personal favourites include Animation by Touch, Challenge Life (may drop opponent into a coma), Magnify damage, and Skeletal limb (very cinematic).
Chapter 6 – Magical Food (13 pages) $1.95
Immediately when I saw this product become available I was quite excited. Like many I assumed that the food presented may be something like the magic of Circe or like a banquet in Castle Amber. Unfortunately I didn’t quite get what I was looking for. Magical food is essentially a chapter that allows you to produce food that stores a magical spell much like a potion. The costs both in Gold and Xp are the same, the benefit is that you can’t cast shatter to wreck my spinach of power, though it can spoil. There are some magical foods listed that deviate slightly for the strictly potion type in there description but I believe this is more to interject flavour into the magical of food so they do not become stale its like potions. Some examples include the aforementioned spinach of power and the mighty darkvision carrot. I think this is to encourage the dm to vary the food so PC don’t approach the doughnut counter at the local bakery to order a chocolate glazed resist energy donut or an augury cruller. There is also magical cooking gear and magical Kool-Aid, and a handful of spells that fit the theme.
Chapter 7 – Eater of the Arcane (6 pages) (Free, but no longer available singly)
I think this section was originally a free pdf that Philip gave out to draw people to the line. The Eater of the Arcane is a difficult PRC to enter that allows the character to drain magic items of their powers to sustain their own spellcasting. By absorbing magic items it can trigger their effects as a supernatural ability, increase its spellcaster’s level, or trigger an arcane blast. It can later absorb spells directed at it to trigger other effect. On top of all this the Eater of the Arcane suffers and addition from his consumption of magic and can even lose XP from his feasting. This is a dead six pages for me; I’m sure I would never take it as a PC or build an Npc using it.
Chapter 8 – Wizard’s Spellbooks (12 pages) $1.95
There is no vignette to introduce this section. This section expands on the material presented in the PHB to try to make sure that a spellbook is a unique personal document. This is accomplished through providing us with a brief background on the spellbook, details on the personality of the spellcaster, aspects of the owner’s statistics, appearance of the book, protections on the book, the contents and value of each book. The level of detail in each present book is incredible given then a rich existence; unfortunately only four books are detailed. Ronin Arts also has a 3rd edition product called 101 Spellbooks which is an excellent resource for premade spellbooks that have their history and appearance, but being an earlier release than this book it doesn’t have the detail on the previous/current owner’s personality and basic statistics. I think this section need more spellbooks, maybe A Dozen...
Chapter 9 – Thaumamortis (2 pages) (New, not available singly)
The material included in this chapter was first published in this compilation and cannot be purchased separately. Basically in two short pages the author’s provide a simply random table (2d4) to determine what happens when a spellcaster dies. This would be used, I think, at a climatic ending of a campaign arc with the villainous spellcaster defeated he releases a burst of arcane energy that has 1 of 7 effects.
Chapter 10 – Locations (5 pages) (New, not available singly)
There is no vignette in this section. This section introduces a number of places of power. This stands as Philip’s first foray into planar resources. Included are an infernal gate, the impact crater of a fallen god, an area of negative karma, and a region plagued by the despairing essence of a dead spellcaster with all have 3-4 game effects. I find it difficult to compare these sites to anything else I’ve read in d20 some are locations (that could be mapped out) while others are more conceptual areas. Basically, they are a unique concept.
Chapter 11 – Spelltouched Feats (9 pages) $2.75
There is no vignette in this section. This section looks at the concept of spelltouched feats. I believe they were introduced in another OGL product and then adapted and expanded into some more feats in this section. The idea seems to revolve around the concept that magic spells may have a lasting impact on your character in ways that exceed the spell description. It suggested that DM’s may want to limit PCs to a single spelltouched feat. The author goes to length to describe how he balances the work as well as his design philosophy, before even setting a feat on paper. There are 25 feats in this section, many have both positive and negative aspects. Several of the feats have been popular in my home campaigns, particularly Capricious Fortune (which may be good or bad 1/day), Fast Healer (heal 2 hp/level/day), Shift ability (shift 4 points from 1 ability to another for 1 minute/day), and Stranger in Your own Home (lose your starting languages but can permanent tongues for all others)
Chapter 12 – Librum Antiquus Diablerie (2 pages) (Free, but no longer available singly)
There is no vignette in this section. This section focuses on the concept that the world’s magic has been decreasing at the world has moved forward. There is a new descriptor of Archaic, which identifies a spell as being one from a time long ago. These spells are greater in magical power than their level would typically allow but they are extremely rare, hard to learn and difficult to cast. Unfortunately, because the section is so small there are only 4 spells detailed.
Chapter 13 – Kelust’s Tower (24 pages) $4.50
There is no vignette in this section. This section fully details a wizard’s tower. The cartography is by Ed Bourelle of SkeletonKey Game and with the proper adventure tiles you can layout this whole tower, there is even an additional tile included. Similar to Wizard’s Spellbook section the main people Kelust and Parvis are described by the author but not fully stated to allow for DM customization. The tower is designed to house a Wizard Scholar who may be able to assist the PCs with information. There are 31 detailed locations in the tower and 4 new books, 3 new magic items, 9 mundane items (but they are Ronin Arts mundane items so often they have hidden adventure hooks or interesting histories.), 4 new spells and a PRC designed for the resident Scholar mage. I did not care for this section, which is too bad because there is really nothing wrong with it. My dislike stems from my personal concepts of what a Wizard’s Tower should be. When my brain thinks of a “Wizard’s Tower” it automatically thinks of things like Guards and Ward or Pocket Planes so that the interior of the Tower is larger than the exterior, so I see this as more of a Tower that a wizard lives in.
Chapter 14 – Lost Spells (16 pages) $3.50
So I’m in the dungeon and I’m casting chain lightning when wham 3 arrows strike me and I fail a concentration check losing the spell. Crap. But wait what if the magic was released in some form anyway, that’s exactly what this section of the book provides. The resultant effects are broken down as a pure spell energy table and by major spellcasting class; each has a number of options. The effects are quite different from one another but do for the most part still follow traditional spell-like behaviour. Some included effects are dazzling lights (general), subsonic booms (bard), deity’s fury (cleric), biting insects (druid), divine image (paladin), swirling leaves (ranger), and choking cloud (wizard/sorcerer). There is overlap between cleric/paladin and druid/ranger and ultimately there are twice as many possibilities for wizards that any other individual class. We haven’t used this yet because my party is light on spellcasters when I Dm, not now that one of my players is using a Warlock, I think its time to go through this section again.
Chapter 15 – Magical Pipes and Tobacco (13 pages) $1.95
This section treats tobacco as a potion equivalent much like magical food. It is the perfect item creation for any hard-relaxing halfling. Tobacco cannot be destoryed by a shatter spell and it doesn’t spoil but it takes longer to smoke and thus longer to activate. All halflings in my campaign prefer carrying pipeweed (magical or mundane) to almost anything else. One drawback in this section is that it describes that the feats could be adapted to greater versions of Brew Potion but in the Potion Mixology section this was already done so this is a little redundant here. There is information on mundane tobaccos, magical tobaccos, and magical pipes.
Appendix – (3 pages)
Simple effective list of all the crunchy bits. Man I’d love an appendix for all the items in 101 mundane, more mundane, and the dozen’s line.
Am I saving anything buy buying this over the individual products?
Individually the product costs $24.60 so if bought in this collection I would get everything available individual for 2/3rds the cost of them separately.
What new things have been added?
Added to most sections of Forbidden Arcana are vignettes James Kosub that help puts the material that was designed by Michael Hammes or Philip Reed into focus as the ideas are presented in the context of fantasy world. Chapter 9 and 10 are total new material for this release.
How’s the editing?
I saw only minor editing issues; I think I could count the errors on one hand. Its clear that the proofreading that was done was well worth it.
What version is the book written for?
Well the text on the back says, “This product utilizes updated material from the v 3.5 revision.” however if you scan the book you will notice the odd thing that didn’t make the conversion. Many of the original Forbidden Arcana were written for the 3rd edition game. From what I’ve noticed it is little things like (Alchemy vs Craft (alchemy); Pick Pocket vs Sleight of Hand; temporary damage/permanent ability damage verses ability damage/drain). Overall gameplay is not dramatically affected by the errors.
What about Open Game Content?
As many Ronin Arts products all the text in this product is open for publisher to use as long as they follow the open game license.
So where do I stand?
I really liked this product. In my campaign we have regularly accessed 12/15 sections for my home campaign. If I had the Round Tower and Wizard Tower for SkeletonKey Games then I probably would have used Kelust’s Tower as well. I like the inclusion of new material that wasn’t in previous releases and the inclusion of material that Philip used to have available for free download. The material in Forbidden Arcana has gone a long way to return some of the unpredictability, randomness, and wonder to a magic system that has been quantified to death. I would rate this product an 8/10.
