Lost Books 6 – Raison d’Etra
By David Sanders
Published by Clockwork Golem Workshop
Pages: 7 + OGL
Fully bookmarked
Disclaimer: This is not a playtest review. I did not buy Lost Books 6 – Raison d’Etra, it was sent to me for review as part of
Crothian’s Review Project.
Judging by its name, Lost Books 6 – Raison d’Etra is the sixth book in the Lost Books line of PDFs by Clockwork Golem Workshop, detailing a number of unique spells found in an even more unique spellbook. I have not personally read any of the other Lost Books, and as such cannot compare Raison d’Etra to any of the others. If you’re unfamiliar with the format, each Lost Book details the history and contents of a magic item, specifically a wizard’s spellbook, which invariably contains around a dozen or so new spells. The idea is very simple, and very creative.
What you get is a short little PDF, seven pages plus the OGL, in two-column landscape format. The first page contains a thick, dark blue patterned title bar at the top, and a smaller, similarly patterned border along the bottom. It looks nice on screen, but isn’t terribly printer-friendly. Subsequent pages feature a much slimmer border demarking the header and footer, containing the title and page number, respectively. There isn’t much in the way of artwork, aside from the publisher’s and d20 logos, there are two tiny images whose purpose may solely be to fill in a little white space. The product contains about a page of history detailing the spellbook’s original owner and how it came about that the book was “lost”, which is followed in short order by a small bardic lore table, a physical description of the book, and a listing of its contents. The remain five pages contain twelve new spells, most of them ray spells in one fashion or another, with the one exception being a defense against rays. The PDF is reasonably well edited, I noticed only a couple of minor editing errors. In one case an “an” should have read “and”, and in another an inattentive comma had separated from the word to which it was originally attached and decided to wander off.
The meat of the product is provided by the dozen new spells:
Acid Ray: Essentially a higher level, and much stronger version of
Melf’s acid arrow in the PHB, but with a shorter range.
Electric Arc: Imagine
Shocking Grasp as a short-ranged ray spell, but also arcing to a secondary, and possibly tertiary target. The spell description lists a possible saving throw, which is rare for a ray spell, and directs you to the body of the spell text for clarification. But the spell text itself makes no mention of a saving throw.
Jellybrain: This is basically
Touch of Idiocy as a ray spell, and one level higher.
Raison’s Harvesting Ray: This spell is similar to
Mage Hand, but is a little stronger as it allows its caster to attempt to wrest away an object from another using the mechanics of a disarm attempt. There is no cap on its duration of “Concentration”, however, so arguably a caster could spend an entire encounter with this one 1st-level spell attempting to disarm opponents.
Raison’s Prismatic Shield: This is the only non-ray spell of the bunch. One part
Shield spell, but with the added bonus of being able to potentially reflect ray attacks back at their caster as well as blind low HD creatures.
Raison’s Rotting Ray: This necromantic ray spell inflicts its target with a slightly weakened version of mummy rot.
Ray of Dispersion: This conjuration deals a blast of positive energy damage to undead, with multiple rays gained at progressively higher levels.
Ray of Fatigue: Similar to
Touch of Fatigue in the PHB, but as a short-range ray spell and one level higher.
Ray of Noise: Basically a double strength
Shout spell as a medium ranged ray, but without the extra damage to brittle or crystalline objects.
Ray of Respite: This spell is similar to
Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere in the PHB, but as a ray spell which also gives a Fortitude save, requires a costly material component, and is one level higher. The only difference I see is that with this spell, the target remains in stasis, whereas with
Otiluke’s Resilient Sphere, time flows normally.
Ray of Undeath: This ray inflicts damage to a target which the caster gains as temporary hit points, with the added benefit that if the target dies as a result of the ray, it becomes a zombie under the control of the caster for an hour. The temporary hit points also last an hour, and if the caster dies before the spell wears off, the zombie returns to life! Sort of. The spell claims that in this case the ambient life force used to fuel the zombie is returned to the body, returning it to life, but at –10 hit points. Which technically is still dead.
I’m not sure the author fully thought this one through. If the animated zombie is subsequently destroyed before the caster buys the farm, is the corpse still returned to life? What happens if the ray is targeted at an incorporeal undead? The damage is untyped, so does the spell still work? Does it still potentially result in an zombie under the caster’s control? Still, its an interesting idea for a spell, and worth toying with to get the language to work.
Vines of Blight: A mass of writing vines leaps from the caster’s fingers to engulf a nearby plant or plant creature, attempting to strangle it. Regular plants zapped are automatically killed by this ray, but plant creatures take 1d6/damage per level (max 15d6).
Where a new spell mimics a spell from the PHB, the ray version is one level higher, which I think is a reasonable compromise as most of the originals tend to be touch spells and the like. About two-thirds of the schools of magic are represented by these new spells: one is an enchantment, another one is an abjuration, four are necromancy spells, three are evocations, two are transmutations, and the last is a conjuration. All of them are Sorcerer/Wizard spells, except for the last, which is also on the Druid spell list. I think it’s a little odd that Ray of Noise doesn’t make it onto the Bard spell list, or that some of the necromancies don’t find their way onto a Cleric’s spell list here or there. Ray of Dispersion at the very least should also be a Cleric spell, in my opinion.
After all is said and done, while I like the fundamental idea behind the series, Lost Books 6 – Raison d’Etra strikes me as somewhat lackluster in its execution. I found the history of the book to be somewhat boring and mundane, it didn’t really grip me, and while some of the spells are novel and appealing, about half of them are ranged-touch versions of spells I already have in the D&D Player’s Handbook. On the other hand, a couple of the spells do seem to me to be reasonably fresh and interesting, and none of them struck me as obviously overpowered for their spell level. If you’re looking for some new, decently balanced spells to insert into your game, and ray spells in particular, Lost Books 6 – Raison d’Etra is worth looking into.
Reviewed by Scott Benoit
