Garden Mage
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One of the strengths of the PDF industry is the ability to put out a little quirky product that does not really fit anywhere and just see how it does. PDFs can be of short lengths so devoting a dozen or less pages to a single well defined class or a small collection of magical items or even a few templated creatures and just see what happens. I mention the see what happens since it is hard to predict the popularity of some of these less main streamed products. Modern Advances: Garden Mage is one such book. It is a fully defined class with a few other things thrown in that fit the theme.
Garden Mage is a PDF by Interactive Design Adventures and is written by Steve Miller. The twelve page PDF has a simple layout with a few pictures and a very plain look to it. There is some color to the book so printing it out can be a problem but for the most part there is little that will consume lots of ink. The book does have book marks but only to the different sections and not very complete like book marking each important item in the book.
The Garden Mage is an Advanced Class for d20 Modern. As one may guess from the name of the class, this is a person who uses magic for plants and that nature. They are a little druidic in nature but the abilities they get are not just copied from that class. Although there does seem to be some need for a bit more creativity in the abilities gained. The class gets spell ability with it, the ability to do more damage to plant creatures, bonuses for skills when focusing them on plants, and some bonus feats.
The book also presents six new spells, four new magical items, and one Garden Mage NPC. All of these are perfectly in theme with the garden mage. My favorite spell here is called Perfect Lawn. This zero level spell protects the lawn and allows it to flourish and is the perfect example of magic in the modern age. It is a simple and very useful spell that people would want to be able to have use of. With the hours I know some people spend on their lawn, I can see this type of spell alone be a money maker for the class.
I really like the quirkiness of the class. It even says how other mages look down on the Garden Mage for their craft is not exactly what a true Wizard would pursue. It makes a better NPC class then a player class I imagine. While the class in itself is nice and unique the abilities they gain are not all that exciting and might have a player lose interest in it. I would have liked to have seen a bit more creativity with the class. The bonus feats and extra damage verse plant creatures just seems more like filler in the class.
Garden Mage does a good job of filling a niche that most people probably did not realize was there. I like that the company took a bit of a chance with putting something out that is a bit away from the usual inn terms of what it covers. The class is creative in concept and offers new perspectives on allies and potential enemies a DM can use.
