JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Mike Mearls first Arcana Unearthed product, Mystic Secrets, brings “The Lore of Word and Rune” to the Diamond Throne. Coming in at 72 black and white pages, Mystic Secrets runs for $15.99.
When first looking over the book, I had a problem. It’s something personal and most people probably won’t notice it or care. See, the artist is listed as James Ryman. That’s cool, but almost every illustration on the cover is repeated on the inside of the book. Guy holding the sword? Check. Woman with hammer? Check. Two spellcasters on back of page? Check. Heck, cover of Complete Book of Eldritch Might by Sam Wood? Check. So we’ve got at least three artists not credited in the book.
Another part of the problem is I like art, but I don’t like seeing the same illustration in the same book. Heck, I don’t like it when Wizards of the Coast uses Wayne Reynold’s little clip art bits like the burning boots in different books. Why do we need to see the spirit Litorian on page 21 also on page 55? Why do we need to see the mummy jackal on page 6 again on page 65? Other illustrations pop up again and since the cover itself is reproduced on the inside front page, those illustrations are used at least three times.
This book is padded. See, the white space in most of Malhavoc’s books is usually pretty good. Almost every chapter here except chapter three, has a fair amount of white space. Add in the two pages for the table of contents, the page for the credits, the two pages of advertising and the whole art reuse factor, and this book could’ve dropped eight pages easily and sold for $13.99 for 64 pages, like Book of Iron Might.
Having said that, this is a fine book. Note, that this is an Arcana Unearthed product. It’s not a 3.5 product; it’s not even really a d20 product. A lot of the material here ties directly into Arcana Unearthed and if you don’t have that book, some of the material here is not useable as is without some type of conversion work on your part.
If you’re like me and mine Arcana Unearthed for ideas, it’s a good thing to keep in mind, as you might want to note areas in which to make changes. For me, I generally leave AU material as is but only allow characters using AU rules to access material for AU rules. Sure, it leaves them a little as a disadvantage when considering the wide bulk of pure d20 material, but I feel that for example, the extra starting feat, talents, and spellcasting system, more than make up for those limits.
So what does the book offer? It starts off with power ceremonies and rituals. These are broken up into general ceremonies and then by race. This gives us ceremonies like Clear the Mind’s Eye, a general ceremony that allows you to heal certain types of stat damage faster, to Meditation of the Splintered Mind, a Verrik ceremony that gives the user a +1 bonus to checks with a single skill for three days.
The ceremonies have components, actions, and effects. The components are often inexpensive, such as a small ball of wax or rare spices worth 75 gold pieces and the bonuses aren’t that powerful. It does reflect the feel of the setting and provides the GM with many opportunities to enforce the setting’s ambience into the game.
For Bonds, where the Rituals come in, we have two types. Bonds of Friendship and Item Bonds. These rely on having a basic Bond in Place and then can be augmented from there. For example, the Brothers in Arms ritual requires each person to offer up goods of 1,000 gold piece worth and practice fighting alongside one another for six hours and at that point, you gain a +1 morale bonus to attack rolls if your allies is adjacent to you while fighting.
I like the Item Bonds. It’s another way for your weapon to gain some personality and unique abilities. It’s similar to other effects I’ve seen of trying to make weapons level up with the user, such as Monte’s work in BoEM III: The Nexus or Unearthed Arcana’s Item Familiar feat. In this case, you can take rituals like Awaken the Slumbering Spirit, where by paying the standard cost of enchantment, you can add magical traits to an item or Eternal Ally, where you can make a weapon almost indestructible as it never has to make a saving throw against damage from attacks or spells.
Because these are rituals and not feats, they allow a character to invest into his weapon without making him totally dependent upon his weapon. In some ways, it’s similar to the Scion class from Artifacts of the Ages, where you focus your abilities into a weapon with some slight reduction in your base class abilities.
Those looking for new runes, have lesser, advanced, greater and power runes to select from. Alternative runechild powers are listed such as Child of Magic and Child of War. Using these with the new runechild feats, you can customize your character greatly. Now to stand against these new abilities and feats, the author introduces Heralds of Annihilation, masters of destruction. This is a new template that can only be applied to creatures or characters with at least six hit dice and counts as a +1 ECL adjustment. Unlike a runechild, they have a standard set of abilities but do have their own feats including Lord of the Dead, a leadership style feat to master undead.
In looking at Mystic Sites, Mike provides us with the Bone Cathedral, made up of old dragon bones where magic works well for those who’ve master it and poorly for low level users, to the Roof of the World. Normally I love Ed Bourelle’s cartography but in this case, his talent is wasted, as the maps are so much an overview, that anyone could’ve done them. The information on how to make your own magical locale traits makes this section one worth visiting many times as it allows you to think of different bonuses and penalties, as well as how it ties into the setting.
The new spells in chapter four, include simple complex and exotic types, but not for each level. For example, for 6th level spells, we have Thunder Clap, a complext spell that can knock opponents over and deafen them in addition to the damage.
For new weapons, we start with Rune Weapons. These are a little different than standard weapons as they have a general ability, and some have augmented abilities in the hands of one of the rune masters. For example, a weapon of darkness does an extra +4d6 points of damage in the hands of a herald of annihilation while a flame weapon inflicts an extra 2d6 points of damage against undead and those who’ve murdered innocents.
Another nice touch is the rune templates. These are things like fire, where the item with the template doesn’t take damage from nonmagical fire and provides fire resistance 10 to the user. Against creatures with the fire subtype, the user gains a bonus to attack. Now I don’t know what the difference between a template and an ability is, as it just seems that the template provides more abilities than more effects, but overall ability boosting seems similar.
Despite the wasted space and repeated art, Mystic Secrets provides a lot of meat for any Arcana Unearthed campaign. In some of the blank space, it would’ve been nice to see little sidebars about using this material in a standard campaign or some page references to Arcana Unearthed to clarify some issues.
The book has a good focus allowing it to be useful for both players and GMs. Players can benefit from the new spells, rituals, and runechild abilities, while GMs now have a new faction and locations to send the players.
When first looking over the book, I had a problem. It’s something personal and most people probably won’t notice it or care. See, the artist is listed as James Ryman. That’s cool, but almost every illustration on the cover is repeated on the inside of the book. Guy holding the sword? Check. Woman with hammer? Check. Two spellcasters on back of page? Check. Heck, cover of Complete Book of Eldritch Might by Sam Wood? Check. So we’ve got at least three artists not credited in the book.
Another part of the problem is I like art, but I don’t like seeing the same illustration in the same book. Heck, I don’t like it when Wizards of the Coast uses Wayne Reynold’s little clip art bits like the burning boots in different books. Why do we need to see the spirit Litorian on page 21 also on page 55? Why do we need to see the mummy jackal on page 6 again on page 65? Other illustrations pop up again and since the cover itself is reproduced on the inside front page, those illustrations are used at least three times.
This book is padded. See, the white space in most of Malhavoc’s books is usually pretty good. Almost every chapter here except chapter three, has a fair amount of white space. Add in the two pages for the table of contents, the page for the credits, the two pages of advertising and the whole art reuse factor, and this book could’ve dropped eight pages easily and sold for $13.99 for 64 pages, like Book of Iron Might.
Having said that, this is a fine book. Note, that this is an Arcana Unearthed product. It’s not a 3.5 product; it’s not even really a d20 product. A lot of the material here ties directly into Arcana Unearthed and if you don’t have that book, some of the material here is not useable as is without some type of conversion work on your part.
If you’re like me and mine Arcana Unearthed for ideas, it’s a good thing to keep in mind, as you might want to note areas in which to make changes. For me, I generally leave AU material as is but only allow characters using AU rules to access material for AU rules. Sure, it leaves them a little as a disadvantage when considering the wide bulk of pure d20 material, but I feel that for example, the extra starting feat, talents, and spellcasting system, more than make up for those limits.
So what does the book offer? It starts off with power ceremonies and rituals. These are broken up into general ceremonies and then by race. This gives us ceremonies like Clear the Mind’s Eye, a general ceremony that allows you to heal certain types of stat damage faster, to Meditation of the Splintered Mind, a Verrik ceremony that gives the user a +1 bonus to checks with a single skill for three days.
The ceremonies have components, actions, and effects. The components are often inexpensive, such as a small ball of wax or rare spices worth 75 gold pieces and the bonuses aren’t that powerful. It does reflect the feel of the setting and provides the GM with many opportunities to enforce the setting’s ambience into the game.
For Bonds, where the Rituals come in, we have two types. Bonds of Friendship and Item Bonds. These rely on having a basic Bond in Place and then can be augmented from there. For example, the Brothers in Arms ritual requires each person to offer up goods of 1,000 gold piece worth and practice fighting alongside one another for six hours and at that point, you gain a +1 morale bonus to attack rolls if your allies is adjacent to you while fighting.
I like the Item Bonds. It’s another way for your weapon to gain some personality and unique abilities. It’s similar to other effects I’ve seen of trying to make weapons level up with the user, such as Monte’s work in BoEM III: The Nexus or Unearthed Arcana’s Item Familiar feat. In this case, you can take rituals like Awaken the Slumbering Spirit, where by paying the standard cost of enchantment, you can add magical traits to an item or Eternal Ally, where you can make a weapon almost indestructible as it never has to make a saving throw against damage from attacks or spells.
Because these are rituals and not feats, they allow a character to invest into his weapon without making him totally dependent upon his weapon. In some ways, it’s similar to the Scion class from Artifacts of the Ages, where you focus your abilities into a weapon with some slight reduction in your base class abilities.
Those looking for new runes, have lesser, advanced, greater and power runes to select from. Alternative runechild powers are listed such as Child of Magic and Child of War. Using these with the new runechild feats, you can customize your character greatly. Now to stand against these new abilities and feats, the author introduces Heralds of Annihilation, masters of destruction. This is a new template that can only be applied to creatures or characters with at least six hit dice and counts as a +1 ECL adjustment. Unlike a runechild, they have a standard set of abilities but do have their own feats including Lord of the Dead, a leadership style feat to master undead.
In looking at Mystic Sites, Mike provides us with the Bone Cathedral, made up of old dragon bones where magic works well for those who’ve master it and poorly for low level users, to the Roof of the World. Normally I love Ed Bourelle’s cartography but in this case, his talent is wasted, as the maps are so much an overview, that anyone could’ve done them. The information on how to make your own magical locale traits makes this section one worth visiting many times as it allows you to think of different bonuses and penalties, as well as how it ties into the setting.
The new spells in chapter four, include simple complex and exotic types, but not for each level. For example, for 6th level spells, we have Thunder Clap, a complext spell that can knock opponents over and deafen them in addition to the damage.
For new weapons, we start with Rune Weapons. These are a little different than standard weapons as they have a general ability, and some have augmented abilities in the hands of one of the rune masters. For example, a weapon of darkness does an extra +4d6 points of damage in the hands of a herald of annihilation while a flame weapon inflicts an extra 2d6 points of damage against undead and those who’ve murdered innocents.
Another nice touch is the rune templates. These are things like fire, where the item with the template doesn’t take damage from nonmagical fire and provides fire resistance 10 to the user. Against creatures with the fire subtype, the user gains a bonus to attack. Now I don’t know what the difference between a template and an ability is, as it just seems that the template provides more abilities than more effects, but overall ability boosting seems similar.
Despite the wasted space and repeated art, Mystic Secrets provides a lot of meat for any Arcana Unearthed campaign. In some of the blank space, it would’ve been nice to see little sidebars about using this material in a standard campaign or some page references to Arcana Unearthed to clarify some issues.
The book has a good focus allowing it to be useful for both players and GMs. Players can benefit from the new spells, rituals, and runechild abilities, while GMs now have a new faction and locations to send the players.
