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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009638" data-attributes="member: 1129">Joe’s Book of EnchantmentWritten by Joe MucchielloPublished by Throwing Dice Games66 b & w pagesJoe 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 animalsCharlatan        Spell using con artistDisenchanter        Spellcaster who ensures clear headednessFear Eater        Fear channeling humanoidFey Disciple        Friend of the FeyHand of Jherana    Monk disciple of dominationReveler        A ‘life of the party’ bardTrue Enchanter    Ultimate wielder of EnchantmentI’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.</blockquote>

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