I'll add my two coppers to Asathas' review. I have not had time to fullly read, absorb, reread, and analyze the work to do a full review. I have all of the Natural 20 stuff anyway, so a freebie is not that much incentive.
About the cleric (and to a lesser extent other classes). I agree the cleric as it is defined in the core books gets shafted with the addition of EoM, but that does not bother me that much. I am now working on a new 'cleric' class to replace the old one that is better integrated with this material. My main problem with the old cleric is that there was no distinction between the church cleric, with his religious power and influence, and the adventurer of faith. I think Elements of Magic gives me a foundation to change all that. Now, I can have an expert class holy man, a powerful religious person with non-secular power, turning ability, some healing etc, and an adventuring holy man. I guess what I am saying is that Elements of Magic will enable me to pull apart the powers of the old cleric class and reassemble them as skills, feats, and basic class powers. I had even thought of just getting rid of the cleric, adding a bonus for spell lists based on diety domains, and using the extra turning feat as the only way turning can be gained.
I can definitely see RangerWickett's point above about this being a slimmed-down version of what they REALLY wanted to put into it. It is obvious that there is so much more that can be done to fully flesh this out. I am waiting to see what other people come up with to expand this one.
As far as the spell lists go... WOW! I am not at all turned off by the generic names. I actuallly like them. I always found it funny that spellcasters all used the same name for spells, even those that had names of people that never existed on their own world. This naming makes it easy for a spell user to name a spell. Nobody wants to say 'I cast Evoke Fire 3'. My players will start naming their spells now. This is only a good thing. I really like the flexibility that the lists now give and I think that fleshing out the other spell using classes will be much easier with the lists.
In summary, I don't expect to drop this down into my campaign and have no ill affects on other aspects. If I ever found that kind of supplement, I might faint. The thing about Elements of Magic is that the changes I see making to the rest of my campaign in order to use it strengthen the entire campaign. I can use this as a springboard to develop better alternatives classes, powers, etc.
And my friends... That's what it is all about!
Mike
