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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2010676" data-attributes="member: 18387">Review of Path of Magic by Fantasy Flight Games    Path of Magic is the second in the Path of series by Fantasy Flight Games.  Each book tackles certain classes and this book is all about the Arcane Casters: Bards, Sorcerers, and Wizards.      Chapter one is called the Spellcasting Classes.  It starts with prestige classes, then has Legendary Classes, and then has some class variants.  There are also some great organizations for each prestige class.  Like Path of the Sword, the organizations are well done and easy to use.  Each organization is given a purpose, a leader (no stat block, just a name and class and levels), their current activities, and campaign integration.  The campaign integration is the best part as it gives one great ways for using the organization in a campaign along with saying that not all campaigns will fit the organization.  It does talk about what kinds of campaigns will make the organizations hard to use.  I really like many of the prestige classes.  I think they have some very good bard oriented ones, the best I’ve seen in any d20 product.  All the prestige classes get full spellcasting ability, so bards, sorcerers, and wizards really are not giving up much at all to take these classes.      Arcane Negotiator: This is an interesting take on the usually summoner.  They gain the ability to summon outsiders of varies power and can have them accomplish more then just fight.  They have a good range of abilities and there is a lot of style to this class.    Chanter: This is a dwarven bard prestige class.  They get some very neat abilities dealing with rhythm and chanting.  It is similar and might have been inspired from the dwarven chanter kit from the second edition Bard Handbook.    Force Weaver: This is one of the few classes I don’t think is balanced.  Force abilities are very strong, and this class is devoted to them.  They gain the ability to substitute force for other energy type spells and gain higher DCs and bonus damage to all force spells.      Grand Diva: This is an exceptionally well-done prestige class.  It gives great singing abilities like the ability to shatter items and even cause death.  However, it does not ignore the social aspect of such a character and really brings that to play with bonuses to certain social skills.    Jester: Simply, the best prestige class in the book.  It gets comedic Dialogue abilities.  They work like the bardic musical abilities, except are very Jester oriented (Comedic Performance, Insult, and confusing Pattern).  However, the best thing is the organization that they give for them.  It is based off of a chaotic good god of trickery.  The god teaches that a good laugh and or trick can be truly beneficial.  They make fun of society and traditions to promote change and innovations.  Excellent material for a jester character be it a player or non-player character.    Ring Sage: The Ring Sage is an interesting idea that sort of works for me.  They do learn to make magical rings and gain the ability to wear more then one on each hand.  However, it seems very focused for a character.  They do admit it is better for an NPC and the limits of the class can be tough for a PC.     Swamp Witch: A very interesting class made for NPCs.  It is the classic witch in the swamp.  She knows you are coming to visit her or even if your within a mile of her.  She has great divination and scrying abilities.  She can even communicate with the animals and summon some of them to help her defend her swamp.  It is very well done and gives good character to this classic witch.    Next we have the legendary classes.  Legendary Classes are powerful prestige classes that one needs to be at least 12th level to qualify.  With the power does come some restrictions.  One needs to announce his intentions a few levels before taking the class.  Along with the normal requirements of feats, skills, etc., one also needs to complete two specific quests.  Also, once one starts to take the class he has to take all five levels (all of them are five level classes) before taking a level of any other class.  Each level one picks one of the selected abilities.  The abilities picked at the higher levels are more powerful versions.  I like the concept of legendary classes, and they do give some amazing abilities.  However, most of these give no spellcasting levels.  I think adding 5 levels without improving one’s spellcasting ability is a huge cost to pay especially for wizards and sorcerers.      Elemental Lord: This is a very interesting Legendary Class.  You can gain immunities to up to all five energy types.  You can swap out the different types of energy.  Gain bonus spells to cast as long as they have energy descriptor.  This is one of the few Legendary Classes that actually might be worth missing those higher-level spells for.          Infiltrator: This is a very interesting legendary class for a bard.  It’s very skill oriented requiring a total of 53 ranks in 7 skills.  The class does gain 8 skill points per level and does have a good list of class skills.  The abilities that can be gained are also very good.  They can include a bonus to Intelligence and/or Charisma; a nice bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Disguise, and Gather Information; and the ability to locate secret compartments and hidden areas very fast.   Those are just a few of the intriguing options for this class.     Lastly in this chapter we come to the Variant classes.  I found many of these on the strong side, although they are all interesting.  The Arcane Engineer is a variant Wizard.  It gets d6 HD, additional magetech abilities, and all it loses from a basic wizard is the scribe scroll feat.  It’s a cool idea; I just found it on the powerful side.  The Mindweaver is the same way.  It’s a variant Sorcerer with a d6 HD, better class skills, and additional abilities.  It does have an altered spell list though.  The Sun Mage is the best Variant Class in the book.  It has great abilities, might be a little strong as a variant sorcerer, but it does have an altered spell list and has a lot of flair.    Chapter two is entitled New Feats.  There are 36 feats here.  Most of them are pretty good and none are unbalanced.  Arcane Expertise is a very cool feat for a Bard.  It requires one to be Bard Level three and allows one to spend spell slots to become momentarily proficient in any weapon.  Eldritch Defense is another interesting feat.  It allows you to expand a spell to keep yourself from going to negative hit points.  Rapid Scribing is another good feat.  This one allows a spellcaster to scribe more scrolls per day, but at a greater experience cost.       Chapter Three is called Bards: Performances of Power.  This chapter is all about the Bard and it is very well done.  It recognizes the support ability of the Bard and greatly increases them in this function.  The first set of new options allows the Bard to aid a spellcaster by increasing the power of the spellcaster’s spells.  There are ten different ways a Bard can help enhance a spellcaster’s spells.  Each has an affinity to a type of mystical performance explained latter in this chapter.  All of them require the Bard to expand a spell slot and to make a perform check of a varying DC.  If the perform check is missed the Bard will actually hinder the spell being cast.  The different types of effects are increasing the DC, increasing the range, increasing the effect, increasing dice to be rolled, and increasing the range and a few others.  The Bard can also use his mystical performances to impair an enemy spellcaster.  These are similar to the ones he uses to help out friendly caster, except they decrease different areas of the spells.  Also, the DCs have the potential for being much more difficult.  If this was all that was in this chapter, it would still be a great addition to the Bard.  However, they go even farther with new Bardic abilities.  They have expanded upon the Bardic Music abilities.  These are divided into four feats: Bardic Chanting, Bardic Dancing, Bardic Instrumentals, and Bardic Singing.  The bard musical abilities in the PHB are defined as the Bardic Singing and all Bards are assumed to start with it.  However, to create a Bard of a different sort one can exchange that for one of the other three and each can be picked up as a feat.  Each ability works just like the Bardic Singing.  They are a list of different abilities that require a certain amount of ranks in perform to use.  All of these are very well done and allow for Bards to offer a variety of abilities.    Bardic Chanting: This is the classical dwarven music of choice.  Chants are famous throughout the world and the magical abilities they offer is impressive.  One of the low level ability is Discordant Chant.  It hinders spellcasters and causes them to receive a negative on all concentration checks.  The cooperation Chant is another low-level ability.  It allows your allies to work better together and makes aid another more effective.  The intimidating chant is a mid level ability that hinders the enemy in skills and attacks.  Chant of the Diving is a higher-level ability and it allows divine spellcasters to become a little more effective in their spellcasting.  The final ability is the Chant of Confinement.  It has the potential to Hold the target of an Intimidating Chant.    Bardic Instrumentals: Bards are perhaps best known for their variety of musical instruments.  These abilities can be used with any instruments.  It would have been nice to see different abilities based on the instruments, but still what is in the book is fantastic.  The Stoking Song is a low level ability that allows Barbarians to rage longer then normal.  The Centering Song is another low-level ability that helps allies perform certain skills by relaxing them and helping their concentration.  The Jarring Chords is a low level ability that causes pain for all creatures around the bard.  Resonating Revelation is a very interesting mid level ability.  It allows the Bard to detect secret doors, pit traps, and other structural oddities.  The Rejuvenating Melodies is a higher-level ability that allows the Bard to help in the healing of many people.  The final ability is Song of Uncompromising Resolve.  This helps your allies by giving them a good bonus on all will saves and some temporary hit points.      Bardic Dancing: This is perhaps the most interesting of the new Bardic abilities.  Unlike the other ones, a Bard can cast spells while performing these, however the Bard cannot attack or move while doing them.  The first ability is the Unsettling Dance.  This allows a Bard to target one enemy and that enemy will be consider flanked as it worries about the Bard and his odd dancing maneuvers.  The Shield Dance has the bard protecting his allies with this dance.  The Juggling Dance uses the juggling of knives or other small objects and allows them to be thrown very fast in succession.  The Dance of the Naked Hand is a rather limited ability as it can only be used to increase a Monk’s fighting ability.  The Dance of the Eased Mind is a mid level ability that allows the Bard to dance for hours and have his motions ease the mind of certain patrons who becomes more receptive to certain skills.  The final ability is the Rejuvenating Dance.  It helps in the healing of companions.      Next in the chapter, it has Bardic Troupes.  It has some very interesting rules on bards working together and being able to perform some amazing acts of magic.  There are two different abilities that a troupe can do.  Each is highly versatile and can be used for different things.  The first is Enhanced Mystical Performances.  This allows for a normal Bardic musical ability to be used, but with a very large bonus from all the other bards helping in this one performance. The other ability a troupe can do is a form a spell pool.  The spell pool can be used to cast spells be either the leader of the troupe or another spellcaster that is an ally of them.      The fourth chapter is called the Spellcaster’s World.  It covers three areas that will expand upon the ability and character of any arcane caster.  The first area is Magical Conditions.   This section is similar to the fighting schools of other books, but it deals with abilities and talents that a magic using person would have need of and want.  Each tradition is taught by a school and each has it’s own philosophy and way about them and they all have ten separate lessons a student can learn.  All the traditions will cost the character XP, time, and to a lesser degree money.  Each describes a place where one can go to get taught and it describes a traveling teacher that can teach select students anywhere.  I like this as it makes it much easier to use any of these traditions in the game.  It also offers some rather interesting ideas for unique NPCs that the players can deal with.  The first tradition is the Stormweavers, a group dedicated to learning about weather and influencing it with magic.  The early lessons including accurate predicting the weather and the later lessons include casting all wind and air spells at a higher level and the ability to summon a Tempest, a type of storm elemental.  The next tradition is the Arcane Marauders.  This group is different from what one might expect as they are trained in countering other arcane users as well as trained for operating from a large ship.  Their early lessons include learning to cast easier in the rough waters of the ocean and distracting another wizard by making him to angry to cast spells.  The later lessons include the ability to enchant arrows with the bane ability that will work against any wizard and the ability to cause intelligence damage to other spellcasters.  There are five other traditions written up in this book and they are all very well done and extremely interesting.      The next part of this chapter deals with the one thing most Wizards all eventually strive for: the Magical Tower.  It goes into great detail from where the place is built and how close it is to other areas of civilization, to the individual cost of the separate rooms and using magic to aid in the building and protecting of the Tower.  Lastly, the chapter talks about different organizations.  These are alternate ways to give the caster a little level of power by requiring him to join one of these and each has it’s own requirements.  Each organization has five different ranks and each rank gives a certain minor ability be it a bonus to a skill or reaction check to learning an additional low-level spell.      The fifth chapter is entitled Items of Power.  It includes a few unique options to aid the arcane spellcaster.  The first of these is the expendable focus.  These are items that store a certain amount of charges and these charges can only be used in the casting of meta magic spells.  Basically, instead of increasing the spell level or even having prepared the spell ahead of time as a meta magic spell, one can expend certain amount of charges to spontaneously make a spell function under a meta magic feat.  Using these items is not without risk.  It does require a standard action to draw the energy out and then a Spellcraft check to make use of the energy.  If one fails the Spellcraft check, he takes damage as well as is stunned for a few rounds.  There are three different kinds and each requires a different craft feat to create.  The most versatile is the Expendable Ring Focus.  It requires the Craft Ring feat to create.  Another kind is the Expendable Talisman.  It is less versatile then the Ring, and requires the Craft Wondrous Item feat to create.  The last and most simple is the Expendable Potion Focus.  It requires the Brew Potion feat and also does more damage to the user if the caster fails the Spellcraft check.      Next the Chapter goes into the interesting idea of Fonts of Power.  These are places were certain types of magic (elemental, necromantic, or clan related) are increased in power.  There are three different power level of fonts.  Each has an increased effect on certain types of spells.  However, the stronger fonts also will cause subdual damage to arcane casters who use them and stay around in that are for too long.  Lastly the chapter talks about the Eldritch Staff.  This is a very versatile item that has the potential to be very powerful.  However, it is a feat to get and costs a permanent point of constitution.  The abilities and uses are impressive and varied allowing for almost any kind of Wizard and power levels a game might use.      The strength of this book is in the second half, chapters two through five.  I really enjoyed the new rules and options that are presented there and I think that many games will be expanded upon and greatly enjoyed by many players and dungeon masters alike.</blockquote>

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