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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 2010064" data-attributes="member: 924">Occult Lore is a magical sourcebook from Atlas Games. It introduces several new types or styles of magic to the d20 system.It's a sturdy enough book, but the paper is rather thin. Almost like rice paper - you can see through it. Still, there are a lot of pages, 240 of them. The book starts off with Alchemy. It's loosely based on real life alchemy, but right away, it combines medicine with alchemy. This I have some trouble with. As far I know, most historical Alchemists weren't doctors or barbers or healers. They're also closer to historical healers or doctors than they should be. Real life Medieval doctors were essentially forbidden to do things like autopsies or clinical trials, so they had to go entirely on really old books written by people who didn't really have any idea what they were doing. In most fantasy worlds (and thus d20 games), none of this is applicable.It introduces the NPC Core Class, the "Arcane Healer" as well as the prestige class "The Grand Alchemist".So, anyway, I really didn't like this chapter. Chapter Two introduces Astrology.  There are two new core classes, the "Computer" and the "Astrologer". One is an NPC class, the other a PC class. The Computer is somewhat useless, sort of like a specialized Expert, only worse in combat. In theory, the Astrologer casts spells thanks to the powers of celestial (ie, stars and such) energy. In practice, the Astrologer is a lot like a Wizard, only with a limited spell list, and with perhaps a fatal flaw that makes it unplayable.The Astrologer, instead of memorizing spells, creates spell formula. This may be done ahead of time and later invoked, or whenever (though it takes several minutes to create a spell formula). At first glance, this seems somewhat neat and rather flexible. Except! There's a big problem. Whenenver an Astrologer creates a spell formula, he must make a astrology skill roll to see if they correctly create a spell formula (and I don't believe take 10 or take 20 would apply here).Given that the Astrologer can cast a number of spells per day about on par with a wizard (maybe 1 per day more), this can be a heck of a lot of dice rolling. 1 roll per spell slot. At high levels, that can be unmangeable. Unless I'm reading this wrong. Which I don't think so, but the writing and the layout is a bit confusing, so I might be. Still, in practice, you can just roll when you actually cast a spell. Much more mangeable. But as it is, it's like having a wizard or cleric rolling a d20 for every spell they memorize. Arduous, to say the least.Also, I think perhaps it should be Knowledge (Astrology), instead of creating a new skill for Astrology. This is a quibble though.Besides the two core classes, there are a couple prestige classes. One for the Sun and one for the Moon. The Sun one is something like a Paladin, only tied into astrology. It's advancement table is empty for level 10. So playing one could be a problematic (though it's generally easy to Chapter Three is on Elementalism.  They are essentially a special form of wizards that specialize in elemental magic. They have to pick one element to specialize in, but can cast spells from all types except for the opposite of their specialty. Again, sort of like how specialist wizards work. This isn't earth shaking in terms of originality, but I think it handles elementalists better than the Mongoose book on the same subject. (The Sovereign Stone campaign setting also adds elemental magic in a much different system).Some of the names of the elemental magicians are odd.  Aquamancer and auramancer are okay, but the one for fire is called a "ignamancer", a bit odd, and the one for earth is called a "terramancer". The obvious would have been geomancer, but that's taken by the next chapter. But Ignamancer? Pyromancer would be better. Though obviously this is pretty subjective.There are several new elementalist spells introduced at the back of the book, though their lists are still fairly sparse. Apparently since there really isn't all that much new to this class (like I said, they're pretty much just a wizard with a different spell list and different special abilities), much of the chapter was devoted to 4 NPCs. These NPCs make up the "Elemental Council". Despite that, they're all pretty much mid level, all around 10th or so in their elemental class. I think I would have preferred more elemental spells to these NPCs, especially since most are rather annoying.Chapter Four is on geomancy. It's quite a short chapter, only 8 pages. Basically, it goes into how the land/earth/world is either postively or negatively magical. This didn't do much for me. Far too simple. The way they handle it, is zones simply make magic more or less powerful. Whee! Interesting concept, just not followed up in depth.Chapter Five in on Herbalism, and is about 20 pages. This is probably the most useful chapter for the average D&D campaign.  It starts off with an overview stating the obvious - that plants can affect the body. It then takes an odd turn and goes into a discussion of food and gives some sample dishes. At this point, I started wondering "what the heck?".  But it then gets to the interesting (for a D&D game) bits, medicinal & magical uses of herbs.It introduces a new skill, "Herbalism", which is using herbs to their utmost. Many people balk at adding new skills, so it also says (rightfully, I think) that you can just use it as the "Profession (Herbalist)" skill instead. Several bits of Alchemist equipment are introduced, and there are 2 prestige classes. Frankly, I think this chapter probably should have been merged with the Alchemy chapter, at least the "Healing" section of it.The herbs and their properties actually aren't in this chapter, but in a large appendix in back. There are two prestige classes, both of which I actually like (and they make sense mathmatically, in terms of save/BAB progressions). Grand Herbalist and Wylderwitch. Chapter Six is called "Magical Imagination", and is about 10 pages. This is an odd chapter. It's about a group of bards who have super memories. There's a prestige class for this order. Unfortunately, they screwed up the table for it. While it doesn't render it unusuable, it's annoying.Chapter Seven is "Oneiromancy". While the title suggests this chapter is on dream magic, it's really more on adventures while in dreams. Introduced is the Lucid Dreaming skill, along with dream points which let you manipulate the dreams. Seems pretty well done and fairly true to life. This is probably the best chapter in terms of writing and game rules, but it's not all that useful. This is even mentioned in the chapter - there's generally so many times you can run a dream adventure.Chapter Eight is rational magic. Essentially the CSICOP of wizards. Bah. While belief does play a role in real world magic, in a fantasy world would it? Almost certainly not.Chapter Nine is on Spirit Cultivation.  This is weird. It's not like say in the computer game Morrowind, where you capture creatures' souls for use in making magic items.  Rather, apparently after someone is killed, there is a residue of a soul in the body. Certain people, "Gleaners", suck up this residue and use it for their own purposes.This is well, weird. I've never heard of the soul as leaving residue before. So I had er, philosophical problems with this.Chapter Ten is on Sympathetic Magic. Voodoo dolls are the obvious example of sympathetic magic. Nice idea, but the way they handle it is a bit clumsy and vague. You (or the player) is left to do the work of coming up with the spells. Only a handful are given.There are two appendices.  One for plants, one for new spells.The first appdendix is essentially a companion to chapter 5 (on Herbalism). It's pretty big, at 45 pages or so. There are 20 basic plant introduced. Each plant has a few traits, which the Herbalist can make use of, plus there are some magical concoctions of each plant.The entry for each plant is quite thorough. The only real downside, is you only get 20 plants. And some of the plants are somewhat , well, odd, and might not be useful for all campaigns. For instance, the Spriggan Tree. These are gigantic trees which grow backwards (that is, they shrink).  The most unbalancing is perhaps "Elysium". Essentially, it's a type of grass that creates an anti-magic field. It's actually more like a weed in terms of how it growths. It's also supposedly a wonder food. You can make jerky out of it so powerful, that one strip will last you a week (in terms of food) and 3 days (in terms of water). And it's so common that it's used almost exclusively on ships and such (or so the entry says). Grr. That's a bit too sweeping a thing to fit into most campaign worlds. Another plant is really really powerful, but it's meant to be extremely rare (if not unique). It's almost like the fabled trees from mythology - if you get to it, you can make a concoction that will grant you immortality.Still, other than those, most the plants are fairly useful, and not too difficult to work into your world. There are a few real-world plants, too. While this isn't a complaint, exactly, I think I would have liked to have seen a whole book full of this, not just a chapter.  The second appendix is on new spells. It's about 20 pages or so. I'm not going to count them, but it says there are more than 100 of them on the back cover. Most seem to be for the Elementalist class (described in Chapter 3), but also some assorted ones from the other chapters. Many of the elemental class spells can also be cast by wizards/sorcerers or bards. I haven't used them, but most seem alright. There were some 9th level elemental spells that make me go hmm. Essentially, these spells create an 'essence' of that element. This essence can then be used for various effects, including giving a +5 inherent bonus to the related stat. That seems a bit too powerful. I know Wish can do the same, but that seems to have more of an XP cost related to it.The layout is generally excellent with regards to designating what is and what is not open content. This can cause the text to be overly broken up, though. I mean, you're reading something, then you run into pages full of boxes for something else.  One really nice thing, is each chapter has several adventure seeds. Usually tied into the introductory fiction of the chapter. This is pretty nice, I think. Won't always be useful to spawn an adventure, but when you're groping for ideas, things like this can come in handy.Ultimately though, I was rather disappointed with this book. Some of the types of magic are rather arcane (no pun intended), and not really much use in a game (I'm guessing the rational magic chapter was a joke), and those things that are, are extremely vague. The Sympathetic Magic & Elemental Magic chapters are good examples. Both should have been fleshed out more to be truly useful (especially sympathetic magic). Even the best chapter, Herbalism, will require the GM to create a lot of extra plants to be completely viable in a game. C. Lots of wasted potential, poor layout when it comes to reading (good when it comes to showing the difference between open and closed content).I'd probably balk at paying full price for it, but if you can get it for around what I did (about $12), it's probably worth it. Also, if you like the sort of magic that I didn't like (Rational magic, Spirit Cultivation), you should like it more. And if you are going to run a dream campaign, that section is certainly quite handy.</blockquote>

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