Lost Books 1: The Tome of Black Ice

[arwink]

Written By: Peter M. Ball
Page Count: 7 pages of content + OGL

Created by the arcane knight Vadrahk Darkblade, the Tome of Black Ice is the work of a necromancer who scorns the study of undead and uses his talents for battle and glory. Take down opponents with the skeletal claw graft, steal their life-force with the deadly black narcolepsy, or simply slice them apart with the flesh-eating cankerous blade. With a dozen new spells and details about the spellbooks history, appearance and value, the Tome of Black Ice is a complete spellbook ready to be dropped into your campaign.

 

[Crothian]

Lost Book Tome of Black Ice

Lost Book Tome of Black Ice

Every now and again it is nice to see a small self contained product that has everything one needs to make maximum use out of it. Most books are really on partially useful since there is lot of material inside and one can not use it all. Or they have feats and prestige classes that are great but a character only gets so many chances to take a prestige class and only gains so many feats. Lost Book Tome of Black Ice is a spell book filled with some new spells and an easy to use ready made plot behind it.

Lost Books Tome of Black Ice is a new PDF by Clockwork Golem. They are a new company with a few other small PDFs. The writer is Peter Ball. The PDF is only nine pages long with very little art only a few small pieces. The layout is okay but there are no book marks. It is a small book, but I prefer to see book marks on everything.

The product tells of a power ful necromancer warrior who retreated to the artic regions. He was not the usual Necromancer who raised armies of undead, instead he used the life draining art to enhance his own fighting abilities. I really like this take on a necromancer it fits their powers and is against form at the same time. It is a nice balance of showing what the school of magic can do with out diving into the typical necromantic clichés. A group af adventures found this book with a warning that he will come back and the world should be ready for him. The PDF describes the journey of the book and how it has gotten itself lost. There is no adventure for finding the book but it should be simple to create one or modify an existing one to fit the book and its history in there.

The book has a history and it lists the DC for a Bard to make bardic lore checks and what the bard happens to know about the book. It is great detail that needs to be placed in more books with magical items. The book is a collection of spells from levels one through nine and all are arcane in nature. There are about thirty spells in the book of which twelve are new. All of the new ones are of the necromancer school. There are some really fun visually ones like Fleshbound that stretches a persons flesh around them trapping them. The spells are pretty creative and offer some interesting new possibilities for the school of necromancy.

Tome of Black Ice is a nice small book. It is easy to use all of it at once and has the ability to help a wizard at any levels since it has spells of first to ninth level inside it. The plot the book has around it is not overbearing and seems to be ideal for a side quest or just something else the players worry about while they work on the more important plots in the campaign.

 

[Anio]

Lost Books 1: The Tome of Black Ice : review by Jason Lund (Anio)

Lost Books 1: The Tome of Black Ice (LB:TToBI) is a 9 page PDF (including 1 page for OGL) written by Peter Ball for Clockwork Golem Workshop. It is the first in a series of narrowly focused PDFs that describe a range of spell books. Each PDF concerns itself with one spell book and includes several new spells aimed at a particular flavour and spell casting class.

LB:TToBI includes a back-story for the spell book that is specific enough to be flavourful but broad enough to be easily adaptable. The creator of this black, ironbound book was a dark knight who fed upon the lives of his foes and drew upon the power of necromancy to strengthen himself ; certainly a favourite of fantasy literature but rarely found in a DnD game. But this was a necromancer with a further twist : he felt that relying upon the undead was a weakness and used his powers to fight champions of both light and dark. Playing to the familiar without following convention is a strength of this PDF.

The history of the book and its dark knight writer provide story and adventure hooks for a DM to insert into their game and DCs for Bardic Lore and Knowledge(arcana) checks are included. I generally believe that GM-friendliness is an important factor in any RPG product in order that the material can be easily adapted to a pre-existing campaign. The inclusion of DCs for bardic lore and knowledge skill checks in LB:TToBI is a simple but good way to improve the usability of this unique magic item in a campaign and not used often enough by authors of RPG products.

This PDF supplies 12 new spells of the school of Necromancy for sorcerers and wizards. These spells are a good mix of spell levels, most ranging from 1st to 5th level with one 9th level spell. Overall, they seem slightly above the average power curve but should not be unbalancing. This range of interesting spells generally remains true to the feel of necromancy without being either repetitious or routine. Some deal in darkness, some deal in cold but all deal in being nasty to your opponent. The writing of the spells is succinct without lacking flavour and I can see using several of these for dark, spell casting characters. Cankerous Blade creates a grimy blade composed of filth and disease that bestows a flesh-eating curse upon its targets. Vadrahk's Ebon Gaze nauseates a target by forcing them to see a vision of themselves rotting. Vadrahk's Vicious Disarming renders a foe's arm useless in a bone-shattering burst of necromantic energies while Vadrahk's Black Narcolepsy knocks a target into a catatonic slumber before sucking the life from them and giving that life to the caster.

This product includes one PDF that is screen friendly, is free of ink-sucking borders and only has four pieces of non-intrusive clipart. The layout is clean and simple while making reasonable use of white space to maximise legibility. The editing is good and it's a real pleasure to not see spelling errors. PDFs have several distinct advantages over print products for both the publisher and the customer, including price, ease of updating, the ability to do word searches and the ability to only print relevant sections rather than lugging around a 200+ page book to every game. The other main advantage is bookmarking that, unfortunately, this PDF lacks. Unless a PDF is only a couple of pages long, PDFs from the RPG industry should have concise and user friendly bookmarks to reduce the annoyance of constant page flipping, especially when many "digital DMs" will have several PDFs open at the same time.

Summary

At 9 pages and priced at $1.20, it is hard to fault this tightly written and stylish PDF. I am a "digital DM" and would certainly have preferred that Clockwork Golem Workshop had made the extra effort to include bookmarks, effort that was shown in several other areas of the product such as the provision of DCs for Bardic Lore and an interesting, hook filled background. This is not a showstopper though and the content is the real prize here. Flavourful spell descriptions and a broad range of spell levels makes the product a good buy for any player or DM with a taste for something different for their necromancers.


Review by Jason Lund (Anio)

 

[prodigyxss]

The Tome of Black Ice

Page Count: 8+OGL
Publisher: Clockwork Golem Workshop
Writer: Peter Ball

This review is possible because of the review project!

When I recieved this pdf, I had a feeling from the title it was going to be way different than it actually was. I never thought it would be detailing a book, even though it had tome in the title, because I have never really seen a company publish something like this. I really think you can get maximum use out of a small pdf like this and I believe more companies should be producing some small stuff like this in the future.

The Tome of Black Ice is an 8 page pdf with another OGL page by Clockwork Golem Workshop and written by Peter Ball. It has pretty standard art which you can see anywhere, including a skull and some a couple pieces that help visualize some the new spells detailed in the pdf. I don't expect alot of quality art from a pdf though. The pdf is black/white/blue, and has a pretty decent layout, but it could have been alot better if there were some bookmarks.

The pdf starts out by detailing and telling the story of a powerful out of the ordinary necromancer. He is a unique necromancer, because he sees his ability to raise undead as a weakness and instead uses his draining powers and combat skills instead. I like this, because it shows that a necromancer can be used for something else. A long time after he disappeared into the artic, a group of adventurers find his fortress and his book at the center of it containing some new spells detailed later in the pdf and a warning that he will return. The book then is lost. Overall the book is complete with a history and story, but no adventure to find it. Though it would be easy for you to create one for it. Another nice addition is listing the DC for bardic lore checks and what a bard can know about the book dependent on what he rolls.

After that, comes the spells that can be found in the tome ranging from 1st level to 9th level so every adventurer has a use for it. There are some old spells from the PHB found in there, but there are around 12 new spells detailed in the pdf as well. Since the writter of the book was a necromancer, all the new spells are part of the necromancer school of magic. One example of a new spell would be Ear Bleed, which causes blood to ooze from the target's ears disrupting their balance and making them partially deafened. Another sample spell from the pdf would be Pool of Darkness, which creates a dark muddy pool of water that absorbs creatures and drowns them in its depths. Most of the spells are creative and fit the owner of the book quite well and the necromancer school of magic in general.

Overall, Lost Books 1: The Tome of Black Ice is a good read and nice small pdf to have. The tome itself has a decent story and history that can be made into an adventure or sidequest if you wish. This was my first Clockwork Golem Workshop product, and this pdf has encouraged me to buy some of their products in the future. If you have a extra buck or two lieing around, then this is a good cheap buy by a new and growing company.