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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5170857" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 181: May 1992part 2/8Pages from the mages finally gives up trying to keep track of how many articles they've had. We have too many wizards! And they're all researching spells! Any time now we'll have another magical apocalypse that'll take a few centuries to rebuild from. Still, we have a definite formula by now. 4 spellbooks, each with 4 new spells in, for a total of 16 new spells. The only question is how cool and groundbreaking they are. Galadasters Orizon is just a small part of the unique knowledge of a particularly ruthless and obnoxious lich who is still at large in Faerun and needs a good arsekicking. Now there's an easy adventure hook for you. The spells are similarly direct combat ones. Firestaff lets a wizard kick substantially more ass in hand to hand combat. Slumberward makes you immune to magical sleep, although the duration is probably a bit too short for it to make it a really good utility buff. Geirdon's grappling grasp lets you counteract the various bigby's hand spells, and engage in generalised grappling, of course. Morganava's sting is the only real clunker, as it's actually quite a bit weaker than vampiric touch overall, yet higher level. Someone didn't roll too well on their research attempts. The Arcanabula of Jume is one of those spellbooks that teleports away randomly on a semiregular basis, ensuring that it's information doesn't stay with any one person, but is instead spread across the whole Realms. It's spells are similarly playful. Dark mirror lets you send magical darkness back against it's originator. Now there's a spell that's only going to be of limited use unless you know your enemy has a fetish for that kind of magic. Shadow hand is another rather underpowered device, that seems to be an attempt to compensate for illusionist's lack of evocations by making a semireal manipulator. Prismatic eye is a wizard's eye that can shoot color sprays. It too is mainly hampered by a too short range and duration for really effective spying, but is pretty decent as an additional attention drawer in combat. Shadow gauntlet is yet another failed attempt to make an all purpose manipulator, that looks pathetic next to the likes of disintegrate and flesh to stone. Ed seems to be seriously off his game at power level gauging today. Laeral's Libram is a little spellbook lost by our friendly planehopping sorceress. I'm sure she'd be quite happy to have it returned to her. It only has a few spells, but the standard 4 of them are new ones. Forcewave is another one that seems weak initially. A second level spell that's less damaging and reliable than magic missile? Well, the prospect of pushing an enemy off a ledge does have the potential to do a LOT more damage, so I'll forgive that this time. Laeral's aqueous column lets you create cylinders of water through air, making diplomacy with aquatic creatures a lot easier, and having a whole bunch of creative uses. Jhanifer's deliquescence lets you melt things, even those that aren't intended to be melted. The details are deliberately left vague so he can exploit them later. Blackstaff is Khelben Arunsun's signature spell, so well known he doesn't even have to remind everyone by putting his name in front. It can drain your HP permanently, mind<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> you, disrupts both magic and psionics, and is near impossible to affect. Now that's one that does justify it's high level with both power and versatility. Tasso's Arcanabula is the product of an illusionist and thief, playing around with the limits of their specialist restrictions. Tasso's shriek lets you prerecord your audible illusions and set them running surreptitiously, which is pretty handy for a low level trickster who doesn't want people realising they're a spellcaster. Shadow bolt is a semireal attack that works like an upgraded magic missile, and still does half damage if you disbelieve it. Shadow Skeletons are another semireal one that let you imitate a necromancer quite nicely, albeit not as effectively as the real thing. And Chromatic Blade lets you deal with prismatic barriers without memorising half a dozen very specific spells, and is a pretty badass weapon in it's own right. So lots of neat spells here, but also more than a few noob traps that you should steer well clear of. The writing does also feel increasingly formulaic, making this rather less thrilling reading than the previous instalments. That's certainly un-familiar: Upgrading your familiar. Yeah, that's a much needed capability, and it's no surprise at all that a certain degree of autoprogression was built into 3e familiars. So here we see a moderately influential, but very useful article indeed. Familiar enhancer I-VIII are level 2-9 spells, which means every time you get access to a new spell level, you can cast the next one to make your familiar smarter, more powerful, and more closely bonded with you. There is a lot of randomness involved in determining exactly what powers you get, which may or may not be pleasing to you, but most of the powers are pretty useful, and some of the high level ones are very cool. I can see this becoming a staple of quite a few people's character building. And isn't this exactly what the magazine should be producing. There are a few wanky bits, (I'm throwing out the once in a lifetime bit straight away, if your familiar dies, you should be able to upgrade the next one too) but I like this a lot and intend to make it available as an option to my players.</blockquote>

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