Joe's Book of Enchantment

[Messageboard Golem]

When people think of magic they think of the flashy conjurers and evokers, the versatile transformers and dark necromancers. Few think about the enchanters. To be effective with Enchantment requires great wit and guile. Few adventurers would take an enchanter with them into dark dungeons: there are too many limits on the school. Until now.

This 66 page PDF contains the usual array of prestige classes, feats, uses for skills, spells, cleric domains and magic items for an unusual topic. Each prestige class has a fully developed NPC sample to provide players with an example of the class in action and DMs with characters the players can meet.

 

[Krug]

When a self-depreciating post promoting Joe's Book of Enchantment popped up on the d20 publishers' forum, nobody knew what to make of it. What was this product about? It didn't sound too enticing, and the rather unexciting title gave the impression that it was some product thrown together by a redneck with spare time on his hands and a PDF distiller.

Well rest your fears, because JBOE is a solid product that succeeds in fleshing out the enchanter. It's all text, discounting an illustration of two bottles, spans 66 pages and costs $5.

Chapter 1 gives a rundown on playing enchanters. There are suggestions on the campaigns that'll bring out the skills of the enchanter (those high in political intrigue), suggestions for choosing the opposed school and a quick study of enchantment spells. It’s well worth perusing, as JBOE expands the ideas of what constitutes Enchantment and how it should be handled.

Chapter 2: Skills, gives a rundown on how to use existing Skills for different purposes. Joe has refused the easy path of creating a bevy of new skills and throwing them into the supplement. Also introduced are Social Composite Skills, which rely on a base skill. It’s a questionable mechanic, but interesting nonetheless.

Chapter 3: Feats presents several new feats, such as Hypnotism and Permanent Charm. Also introduced are Feat Templates, which are basically a structure for creating new and balanced feats. Useful reference for would be new feat writers.

Chapter 4: Prestige Classes introduces 8 Prestige Classes. Animal Tamer, Charlatan, Disenchanter, Fear Eater, Fey Disciple, Hand of Jherana (a monk class that uses enchantment), Reveler and the True Enchanter. They’re well thought out and as an added bonus, there’s a minimum path guide to show how a character would make their way to the PrC. The Fear Eater (humanoids that feed on fear) and the Reveler (a bard based class that even attracts groupies), are especially intriguing.

Chapter 5: Spells presents more than 60 new spells. The Enchantment school has the fewest spells in the PHB, and JBOE has come up with many new spells to expand the selection. Some interesting ones include Anathema (one act becomes repulsive to the affected), Mundane (the subject can no longer use spell-like abilities) and that’s just a start. I would say this is the best section of the books; they definitely add a lot to the Enchanter.

Chapter 6: Magic Items presents items such as charm tokens and a plethora of magic items that employ enchantment effects.

Chapter 7: Monsters introduces new monsters, including nymphs and a Half-Fey template.

Chapter 8: NPCs and Organizations introduces sample enchanters and examples of those using the Prestige Classes in Chapter 4. There's even an animal trainer with a purple worm 'Pet', nicknamed Wubbly. There are two Organizations featured; The Church of Jherana and The Circus of the Crescent Moon. The latter is particularly interesting, and both come with stats of notable figures in the organization.

Chapter 9: Odds and Ends features aromatics, which grant potion-like effects, new 'Conditions' or mental states bought about by Enchantment effects and new spell descriptors.

For me, an exceptional product makes me want to use the material contained therein, and this book definitely has succeeded. It’s very well-thought out, the writer is very familiar with game rules and the material strives to be balanced. I would have preferred more illustrations, but that’s a minor point.

Given the title, I wasn't expecting a supplement this good. I'd give it a 4.5 since there are minor typos and the lack of illustrations, but I'd bump it to a 5 considering the price. The most important thing about this supplement is the wealth of ideas and a fresh approach to a much-ignored magical school. Hopefully it won’t take another year for Throwing Dice Games to produce their next work.

 

[Voadam]

Joe's Book of Enchantment is a $5.00 66 page electronic pdf sourcebook on enchantment magic. The book mainly focuses on providing a lot of new rules material. New uses for old skills, optional new skills and types of skills, new feats, bardic music, alcohol poisoning rules, prestige classes, spells, magic items, alchemical items, monsters, sample NPCs and organizations, and some general discussion of enchantment magic.

The type is small and tight and care has been made so that sidebar and table shading does not overlap if two sided printing is used. There is a single small black and white graphic of two potion bottles and there is no border or cover image. Overall it is well laid out in standard two column format with clear headings and subheadings breaking up the text. It lacks any electronic bookmarks common to pdfs but has a thorough table of contents on the front page.

The book starts off discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the enchantment school of magic, the various opposition school options for the enchanter specialist wizard and enchantment spells. Included here is an analysis of standard spells the author feels have been misclassified based on their saving throw or type of effect.

Most of the new skills chapter deals with new uses for charisma based skills and skills that can become part of a performance. A new rules set for composite skills is introduced here, suggesting that for certain activities where multiple skills could apply, the character be allowed their choice of skills to apply. As an optional rule it is suggested that characters be able to take ranks in composite skills so that there can be expert hagglers or seducers who are not also masters at the base skills. Composite skills seemed to be a mechanical award for specializing in individual skills over splitting your ranks in multiple applicable ones, and given the limited number of skill points for characters I am a little torn on whether that is a good or bad mechanism to implement. Finally, issue command is an optional class skill for spell casters to replace the straight Charisma roll in establishing dominant conflicting enchantment orders. Later in the feats section, another new optional skill hypnotize is presented as a variant instead of bluff for the new Hypnosis feat.

I like the feats section a lot. Permanent Charm, for example, fills a literature and RPG role well. There are 24 new feats and a suggested revision for skill focus. Some of these may be on the high end of power, however, and I would suggest DM care in deciding which ones to allow. For instance, Augmented Spellcasting provides two extra levels for all caster checks and stacks with itself and Spell Penetration. This is better in every way than Spell Penetration since it works against dispels as well and stacks. A few make specific skills class skills in addition to providing another bonus. Eleven of these feats are general magical ones that are not specific to enchantment or persuasion and 13 which are only applicable to enchantment magic and persuasion abilities.

Feat templates are an excellent idea providing guidelines for creating balanced feats applicable to most game features. Three templates are provided, Extra Uses (how many extra uses per time period a class/feat/innate ability a feat can increase based on how often the base power can normally be used), Increased Bonus (bumping feats that grant a single +2 bonus to +4), and Paired Skills for all those +2 to this and +2 to that skills.

68 enchantment spells are presented ranging from cantrips to 9th level. Mostly these are for wizard/sorcerers but there are also a number for bards, clerics, druids, rangers, paladins, adepts and assassins. In addition there are three new domains: charm, domination, and hatred. None of the spells are capped by number of hit dice affected and most are of the save or be crippled in some way type, although there are a number of morale based buffing spells. Again, some seem on the high end of power levels, such as the fourth level stupidity, a feeblemind that only lasts hours, or cripple, a second level permanent duration spell that makes the opponent think he is paralyzed from the waist down. I found the instantaneous exhaustion spells that mentally make the target fatigued or exhausted to be an ill fit to enchantment magic, but the enchantment fear spells seemed a good development showing that some effects can be produced differently by multiple schools of spells.

The new magic items chapter introduces a new type of item, charm tokens. A charm token is a figurine with a single enchantment spell which is unleashed upon the first person besides its creator who touches it. Sort of a spell trap potion which is unlimited in level. Also introduced are magic item abilities that can be added to any item for a percentage increase to the base cost. The five abilities are guarded, hardened, plain, resistant, and self readying with percentage increases ranging from 20 to 60 percent.

Of the 37 new items or magic item abilities, my favorite is the clay figurine on which a spellcaster stores enchantment counterspells causing a limb of the figurine to swell for each spell. When a spell is counterspelled, the limb goes back to normal but has a chance to shatter. It is a cool sympathetic magic item that evoked neat images for me. At the end of the book aromatics are introduced, perfumes made with alchemy that affect all but the wearer in a short radius for a number of hours. Of the 15 presented, only insect repellant seemed like it would not affect the wearer, so these seemed more appropriate to me as new potion or wondrous item types of magical creations.

There are eight new prestige classes presented, most with 10 levels:

Animal Trainers: Have their own minor spell lists and are focused on magical abilities dealing with raising animals. Seemed very appropriate for fey or nature focused spellcasters but mundane people qualify easily.

Charlatan: Magical con artists with their own spells and supernatural abilities, again, seemed great for fey trickster archetypes but mundane rogues qualify easiest.

Disenchanter: High level court security mage. Five levels and gains four out of five spellcasting advancement. They gain detection, protection, and dispel abilities for enchantments and illusions. This fills a campaign niche for why it can be tough to get at a ruler who has high level magical henchmen.

Fear Eater: A humanoid shaman type powered by fear and negative energy. They have neat rituals that require the subjects to participate for hours and make saves to get buffed. I like the class, but the requirements are oriented to pure warriors who happen to have very high wisdom.

Fey Disciple: People chosen by fey who gain abilities based upon terrain type and choices from a list of fey abilities. I like the class flavor, abilities, and choices this prc offers.

Hand of Jherana: Cleric/monks with mind-affecting martial art strikes. A very cool class that due to the religion it is from is not that appropriate for PCs.

Reveler: Party bards with carousing style abilities and 2/3 bard spell casting. Introduces three new types of bard music, including a very powerful 20 rank prerequisite inspire legend ability.

True Enchanter: High level dedicated enchanter specialist. Five levels with full spellcasting and abilities at every level for an extra opposition school cost. The prerequisite of never having used a 4th or higher level spell of that school seemed a poor balance mechanic to my tastes.

Sample NPCs for each of the classes and some organizations and plot hooks flesh out the classes. Jherana is a goddess who takes an active role in the lives of her followers and demands absolute unquestioning obedience to her will and to superiors in the church hierarchy. To join, petitioners must do increasingly personally repugnant acts ordered by the church or the goddess to demonstrate their unquestioning obedience. She offers the domination domain and seems like a good villain organization, but I do not forsee many players wanting to join her faith. There is a neat little plot presented with a humanoid tribe and political/religious schisms.

Many of the others did not really grab me, such as the traveling reveler circus and the NPC histories for the sample charlatan and animal trainer, although I found Wubbly the awakened baby purple worm amusing.

For the nine new monsters there are five fey, with most being new kinds of Greek style (as opposed to D&D standard) nymphs rounded out with a bigger than colossal peaceful glade where a fey has merged with the land (including rules for colossal + N creatures). There is a brain digger which brought back 1e death vermin memories, and two outsiders, one a minor mischief demon, the other, task hound, is a servant of Jherana in the form of a lawful giant golden retriever. Finally there is a half fey template which shrinks a creature one size category (usually), changes its HD to d6s, and gives them charming, traveling, and defensive abilities. The monsters are interesting but I was left wanting more of a description/background for them, particularly the nymphs.

There is a lot of good material in this book. I would modify a bunch of it before implementing in my own campaign, but there are plenty of good ideas and material to work with even for most things I do not like the exact execution presented. I particularly liked the feat templates and Jherana has grown on me as a villain I would like to see thrown down. The book of enchantment is a solid supplement for both those looking to add more options for enchantment magic as well as for general magical and campaign material.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Good review. I have a few responses to questions raised by it though:

Cripple: As I mentioned in the rpg.net review, Cripple is no worse than Blindness/Deafness. Both Blindness/Deafness and Cripple are Clr 3, Sor/Wiz 2 spells.

Stupidity: This spell is basically feeblemind with a 1 round/level duration. It is one level lower than feeblemind which is permanent until healed. I would have liked if you had mentioned that I admitted in the Introduction that some of the material was high-powered. It's designed to take a spellcaster out of the battle. Think of it as a Tashaa's Hideous Laughter with a longer duration and less laughing.

Hypnosis: Just to clarify what voadam said, Hypnosis by default uses Bluff. As an option, you can use Hypnotize, a feat exclusive skill.

True Enchantere: I consider the addition of a second prohibited school a tough requirement for a wizard. The 4th level requirement is a kindness designed to allow an Enchanter to get to 6th level before he must decide to join a prestige class than he cannot enter until 13th level. If you don't think planning for a PrC 7 levels ahead of time is a balancing factor, I don't know how to react to that.

 

[Voadam]

To clarify my high power comment, I believe most fall into the high end but still within balanced limits. Sort of like magic missile and shocking grasp are both within the power range of first level spells but one has more punch than the other in most situations.

Blindness is a valid equal level comparison for cripple but you can also compare it to the only core 2nd level enchantment - Tasha's which lasts only 1d3 rounds (but completely prevents action for that time).

Stupidity is powerful but I thought it a reasonable spell variation and would allow it in my campaign, and I was glad you had some guidelines for the effects of going to a 1 int/wis/cha.

For the True Enchanter I agree it is a tough requirement. But it is too much of a pendulum mechanic for my tastes, reducing a character's power for 7 levels to gain benefits later. Prc feat requirements incur an opportunity cost but you at least get the benefit of the feat or skill at those lower levels. In practice I would think it is not that big a deal, and I can not think of an alternative optimal way to do extra barred schools after 1st level, but it still did not sit quite right with me as a good mechanic.

A minor style issue I didn't raise in the body of the review, I really liked the prc layout format you did. The grouping of class skills by stat seemed much easier to read and grasp and moving the Hit Dice with the other level based stat info made for a cleaner presentation. I would like to see it adopted by other publishers.

 

[GameWyrd]

Joe’s Book of Enchantment is a surprise packet. The title alone is rather unassuming and the cover is entirely without art. As the old adage goes you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. That adage needs to be updated for the 21st century so it can include something appropriate about not judging a book because it’s a $5 PDF download either. There’s more than just new enchantment spells in Joe’s Book; there’s intelligent observations on the spells already available in the Player’s Handbook and this includes the author pointing out spells he thinks have gone wrong, there are new feats, a feat template, new prestige classes, new magical items, NPC groups, new uses for skills, new cleric domains, an odds and ends section and, yes, new spells too.

That’s a long list of things you’ll find in Joe’s Book of Enchantment. The list of things you might expect to find but wont is a bit shorter. There are no illustrations anywhere in the supplement. Truthfully there’s a small black and white picture of a pair of bottles and that’s it. This one picture is nestled in between two columns of text and makes that single page of text much more easy to read. PDFs without illustrations to break up the flow of text often become a sea of text that’s especially hard to read on the screen – even if they’re easier to print off. Joe’s Book isn’t quite the sea of text since there natural breaks but it would be easier to read and kinder on the eye as a whole if they were there. The other missing item from Joe’s Book will impact on users who read straight from the screen as well. There are no bookmarks. There should be. It’s as simple as that.

On the plus side, Joe’s Book of Enchantments is rather good.

Chapter one looks at the Enchantment school. In order to be playing a specialist enchanter you’ll need to sacrifice another school of magic and Joe runs through those possible sacrifices and discusses the pros and cons of each; whether to keep it or pick it as your sacrifice. Normally such discussions stray quickly into the sorts of game mechanics debates that’ll put me to sleep; this doesn’t happen here. The points made are quick, clear and fair. More importantly, the debate here represents an in-game choice in a whereas making sure you have Dexterity 14 so you can buy Feat X when you advance to Prestige Class Y after reaching Character Level Z is entirely a meta-game choice. You don’t need to know how well the schools of magic size up but the chances are that your level Z wizard would and should know. With about a page of text Joe’s summed this all up so you can make the sensible choice for your character. The rest of chapter one will leave you gaping at the apparently huge coding flaws in the d20 core rules.

Chapter two is an example of the dreaded "new uses for skills". I do dread such chapters and that’s probably because I’ve read so many of them and have yet to be impressed by one – but at least Joe points out why he feels its better to present these new uses rather than new skills. As with the other game mechanic and rule modifications Joe suggests this point is rooted in good logic. The new uses for skills are all solidly done but are of perhaps more use to new GMs and this is in a book that will probably to more experienced GMs. There are some examples of composite skills. Composite skills are really skills that can be resolved by the application of one or more "character sheet skills." For example, there’s the "Haggle" that’s described as the art of negotiating the price of goods or services, which base skills like Bluff, Diplomacy or Sense Motive could be used to resolve the skill check and which then offers up tips on when a skill check would be appropriate. There’s a handy table of skill synergy bonuses at the end.

There’s a whole bunch of new feats. The idea of a Feat Template is also introduced. The feat template is such a simple little thing and yet so effective it’s amazing you don’t see it more often. A feat template is a rule that can be applied to range of attributes, spells, weapons or whatever. It avoids having 3 pages in a book dedicated to describing "Axe SuperDude" which gives you an additional +1 to your attack while using axes, "Sword SuperDude" which gives you an additional +1 to your attack while using swords, "Spear SuperDude" which gives you an additional +1 to your attack while… yes, you get the point. The "SuperDude feat template" would have been a better idea. Joe’s feat templates are better than my example and include the likes of "Paired Skill Bonus" where the character is particularly good at using two complementary skills together and receive a bonus on them. Hypnosis is introduced as a feat. I rather like that, it makes more sense in a fantasy setting and the way most people will want it to work in a roleplaying game to have it as a feat rather than a skill.

There’s an index table at the start of chapter four, the prestige classes, and so you can type in the exact page number for the new class and jump straight to there – but bookmarks would have been better. There are eight prestige classes, "Animal Tamer", "Charlatan", "Disenchanter", "Fear Eater", "Fey Discipline", "Hand of Jherana", "Reveler" and "True Enchanter". The church of Jherana is detailed later on in the supplement. The lack of illustrations is particularly apparent here and I think it would have been better to take a separate page for every prestige class. The text for the prestige classes and the table of level advancement is a little awkward and I found myself having to scroll back up once or twice just to double check that I was reading the right paragraph for the right prestige class. Most of the skill classes are detailed throughout 10 levels but not all of them. Each of the prestige classes predicts the most direct routes through the core classes to them. For example, the Disenchanter is one of the two prestige classes which are only detailed through five levels and not ten but we can see from the minimum paths to the Disenchanter that you’ll need to be at least 12th level to pass the prerequisites. A 10th level Disenchanter is likely to be epic level.

The new spells are presented well. There are three new clerical domains: Charm, Domination and Hatred. You’ll find next long lists of spell by level, then spells by class and then spell summaries – just as it is in the Player’s Handbook. There are a whole lot of these new spells and they measure up to Joe’s tough but fair standards. Some of the spells in this section aren’t exactly new though; they’re straight from the core rules. These are the spells Joe suggests GMs might want to change, he doesn’t reprint the entire spell simply those bits that might be changed.

There are nearly as many magical items as there are new spells. Magic items include armour, rings, wands and charm tokens too. Charm tokens are small figurines that have an Enchantment spell stored so that it’s cast on the next person to touch it. There’s also a few random item lists but the intelligent magical items variant particularly caught my attention as a good set of rules.

There’s more. There’s even a list of new monsters and monster templates. We’re still trying to keep an "Enchantment" theme here and I suppose it does. Most of the new monsters are Fey and that’s because they’re the obvious choice for Enchantment monsters. The Peaceful Glade is of particular note here; it’s a strange idea for a monster and because it’s larger than Colossal in size. Tucked away as a side note to the Peaceful Glade is a simple rule mechanic for extending monster sizes far beyond Colossal. The Glade’s Colossal+1 but you might squish things with the foot of a Colossal+5 creature if you want.

Finished? No! There’s a chapter for interesting NPCs and organisations that’ll be particularly useful for GMs wanting to keep Enchantment in their game. The organisation section here is particularly good since it ties back in with previously described prestige classes.

Finished yet? No! The plus side of having no illustrations is that there’s a heck of a lot packed into this 66-paged PDF. Chapter nine is a collection of interesting odds and ends. They are fairly odd – like aromatics, but interesting too – such as the effects inhaling the aromatic might have. You’ll also find a quick summary of the new spell descriptors that you’ll have first noticed back in the first half of the book.

The appendix finishes the book. This appendix isn’t a collection of game mechanics which didn’t fit anywhere else in the book but is actually a run down of why Joe made the choices he did – why, for example, the Animal Tamer prestige class doesn’t actually need to have Animal Empathy. You’ll discover that attention was paid to the layout of the PDF and this really did help appease my concerns about lack of illustrations and the slight clutter of text and tables I detected in the prestige class chapter. The layout was designed so shaded areas wouldn’t overlap when you print the document off double-sided.

I hadn’t heard of Throwing Dice Games before Joe’s Book but I expect this offering really will push the small company out and into wider attention. The website describes the company as a "Vanity Imprint for a Few Veteran Players" and this product really does ooze ‘veteran player’.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Joe’s Book of Enchantment
Written by Joe Mucchiello
Published by Throwing Dice Games
66 b & w pages

Joe has bravely chosen to work with one of the least favored schools of magic, Enchantment. It’s not as flashy as Evocation, nor as cool as Nercomancy. It’s the orphan of utility and the favored school of those who role-play over roll play. But does Joe accomplish what he sets out to do?

Yes.

Chapter one and two are all about reworking spells and skills. Chapter 1 reworks several spells and helps expand upon their initial use. Chapter 2, new uses for skills, provides some ideas ranging from making perfume with alchemy to skills relating to charisma like bluff, perform and variants like haggle and seduction. The ideas are useful and can be thrown into play right away. Some gamers will even use the issue command skill meant for high enchantment games. This skill allow you to override a subject’s free will, for example, if he’s under two charms, each caster has to make an issue command check.

Chapter Three introduces new feats. Joe starts off with a listing and then goes right into the detail. One of the things I’ll thank him for right now if the Template Feat. You know, things like pick any two skills, +2 bonus to each skill. Of course the two have to be related mind you. It’s one of the better ways of handling the same skill syndrome we’ve seen hit so many d20 products. Other feats include Charm Lace, where you add a charm spell to the initial spell. Another feat, Beast Master, negates the –4 Penalty to Animal Empathy checks with beasts and magical beasts. Useful because there are notes on Chapter 2 for training beast. I found most of the feats balanced and useful, hitting areas that haven’t been constantly smashed into before. Some of them I’d be a little leery of though like Capture spell. Here, when you counter, you take control of the spell as if you were the caster. Of course you have to successfully counter so I’ll have to playtest this one some more but it seems a tad powerful. Not everything is for enchantment either though as stubborn provides a bonus to the subject when given commands he’d normally be opposed too and a variant for skill focus where the skill becomes a class skill for all classes the character has. An interesting solution but perhaps overpowered in it’s own way instead of simply going the +3 bonus route.

Chapter Four brings in new prestige classes. Like the listing in Tome and Blood, it starts off with a table with the classes and a summary. The following are taken right from the book:

Animal Tamer Charmer of animals
Charlatan Spell using con artist
Disenchanter Spellcaster who ensures clear headedness
Fear Eater Fear channeling humanoid
Fey Disciple Friend of the Fey
Hand of Jherana Monk disciple of domination
Reveler A ‘life of the party’ bard
True Enchanter Ultimate wielder of Enchantment

I’m pleased to see that not everything here focused on Enchantment and it branched out quite a bit from what I thought would be in the book. I thought the Disenchanter, a class that specializes in countering mind effecting magics, a class that every high level politician would have at his side. It’s a hard class to qualify for though as you’ve got to have 15 ranks in Scry and spellcraft so you’ll be a minimum of 12th level. Good thing it’s only a 5 level PrC.

Another twist was the Hand of Jherana. They get spellcasting ability every other level with some monk abilities like Improved Grapple, Slippery Mind and Paralyzing Strike. Lastly, the Reveler, a bard who, to quote the singer Pink, “Gets the Party Started”, is another different PrC. One of the coolest things about this PrC was the new bardic music abilities like Bliss, Dream and Inspire Legends where depending on the number of ranks in perform you have, you achieve new abilities.

One of my favorite things about all the PrCs though, was the Minimum Paths. This provided sound advice for what classes to take up to what levels to get to the PrC in the shortest amount of time. This is something I’d love to see other companies start using as I’ve seen some very strange requisites for PrCs and I think that if the creators actually did something like this, they’d realize that what they originally though would be something you could get into at 5th level, requirs heavy multi-classing or it wouldn’t be open to 9th level.

Chapter five brings us the new spells. It starts off with some new cleric domains like Charm, Domination, and Hatred. Then it does what I always like to see in a big gathering of new spells; A break down of the new spells by class, and level. It makes things much easier when you want to look up a spell of a certain level for a certain class to have this breakdown before delving into the spell listings. The thing I’m impressed with though is that there are spells for assassins, adepts, druids, paladins, and rangers, in addition to the big boys of cleric and wizard.

Now I’m not the type of guy to go through every spell in an effort to maintain balance. I usually let my players look over the spells and see if they want any of them, and check the game balance at that point. Even so, I look forward to the paladin in my campaign getting Faith of Arms, a spell that provides a +2 morale bonus to damage to 1 creature/level for 1 minute/level when using melee or ranged weapons within 30 feet. It’s a little powerful, I can see that right off the bat, but I like the whole Paladin feel of it, the inspiring abilities associated with the righteous warrior put to good use. Another spell I know I’ll be throwing into my game right away is Emotion Spray, a 4th level wizard spell that’s like Prismatic Spray, but uses Emotion for the rays.

Chapter six brings out the new magic items. Like previous chapters, it starts with a table that breaks down what the items are. In this case, armor and weapon special abilities have their weapon bonus equal and specific items have a market price. One thing I’d love to see all publishers do is put the caster cost and xp cost next to market cost to make it easier on the poor spellcasters of the world. Heck, throw in the minimal level too to make it a fully functional table.

In terms of utility, I can already see players wanting a Fearsome Presence weapon. This blade makes any who come within melee reach of the weapon make a Will Saving throw or fear the opponent so much they take an extra 1d6 points of damage. Worse, if any ally of the blade wielder attacks, the victim must make another will save or believe that this ally is almost as potent and take 1d4 extra points of damage. Good thing it’s a +4 weapon bonus equivalent eh?

Chapter Seven brings out the monsters. It starts with a table that lists the monsters alphabetically with a breakdown of type and CR. This makes it easy to find them, and because there aren’t a ton of new monsters, I can see why the author would go alphabetically instead of a break down by CR. I wasn’t as impressed with the variety here because a lot of it involves nymphs. We got mountain, river and swamp nymphs. Useful and appropriate for a book on enchantment, especially with some fey tie ins, but not my preference. The Task Hounds, servants of Jherana though, help flesh out that deity and make incorporating the religion easier.

Chapter Eight, NPCs and Organizations, gets back to providing tools to the GM. It starts with NPCs. Each character starts with name, role playing information, stat block, tactics, advancement, original ability scores and plot hooks. I thought this an excellent idea as the GM can more quickly tailor said characters to his campaign by advancing the NPC levels and using the suggested advancement ideas to save time. Want Dagomar, the hobgoblin ranger, cleric, Fear-Eater to be a little tougher? The information is there.

Speaking of Jherana, the church is given lots of details. The deity write up block looks like the ones found in the PHB, but is missing the actual symbol itself. The Dogma, and information on the Hands is useful and the NPC helps flesh out the church even more by providing it with personality. Syrene Rhedaur for example, is a newcomer to the ways of the Hand of Jherana and seeks to bring the church more into the true followings of Jherana.

Chapter 9 is well named, Odds & Ends. Rules for aromatics are provided, you know, allergens, amore, and even fatigue along with a ton of others. There are also some new spell descriptors thrown in like astral, dispel, ethereal, hold, scry and sleep.

The Appendix A, helps the GM adapt the ideas here for other schools of magic chapter by chapter.

Lay out is great. The person responsible for this has made a really great looking document that’s easy on the eyes. The only sore spot, it isn’t a lot of white space, it isn’t a disorganized look, is lack of graphics. Virtually no graphics appear in the book, making it a bit bland looking, something that is overcome a bit by the use of two colors but not fully. Even simple things like borders or design elements at the end of the chapter are missing.

That is about the only serious complaint I have. If I enjoyed the school, this would be a 5 star rating. As it is, I think that Joe has done a great job of expanding the whole school and provides the reader with many, many, solid options in a manner that doesn’t put a lot of fluff into the game while at the same time, doesn’t come off as stuffy or boring to read. Now when Joe gets around to Divination (monks who see their enemy’s weakness), and Conjuration, I’m hoping he’s got some artists to assist him in visualizing his material so I can hand out the 5s.

In the end, Joe’s Book of Enchantment does what it sets out to do, expands the whole idea of Enchantment for clerics and wizards, and provides a lot of utility to the GMs shelf while doing so.

 

[Turjan]

If my English weren't that shabby I'd do a review of my own, but I can only join in on that recommendation. There is a lot of handy advice in this pdf, it's easy to read and the prestige classes are rather diverse in their approach, but always appealing. I'd like to have a print version of this one - with a little bit of illustration though .

As I enjoy the school of enchantment, this has to be a 5 star rating for me .

Turjan

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Turjan, give it a try. I'd appreciate the 5. Your English cannot be too shabby if you use words and phrases like shabby and "handy advice".

BTW, Joe (Mr. Kushner), that next to last paragraph is confusing. What is your only serious complaint? The lack of graphics or that you wish you enjoyed "enchantment" more?

Joe (the author)

 

[JoeGKushner]

I wish I enjoyed 'enchantment' more. A very solid product. (Now get onto divination already eh?)