John Cooper
Explorer
Power Classes XI - Cabalist
By August Hahn
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 1111
16 half-sized pages, $2.95
The 11th in Mongoose's "Power Classes" series, Cabalist provides players and DMs alike with a new PC/NPC option: a spellcaster neither arcane nor divine, but rather a bit of both, who draws his power from symbols, sigils, and outerplanar beings. It's an interesting concept, perfect for the shadowy cult figures so prevalent in fantasy.
The cover, once again by Nathan Webb and Scott Clark, depicts a robed figure with ancient Egyptian-looking headgear and lines of tattoos across his arms and down his face, with arms raised in supplication to some higher power. Nathan does a nice draping effect on the robes, but the cabalist's feet seem kind of wide and his fingers are awfully skinny.
Nathan also provides the 3 pieces of black-and-white interior artwork, although two of them (the Asian-looking man with rather fat thighs and a strangely small left arm performing hara-kiri on page 4 and the emaciated monk/mystic in a cloth diaper on page 16) don't seem to belong in a "cabalist" book. (The other picture, on page 11, is more appropriate, with a cabal of shadowy, cowled individuals arranged around a campfire, although the shape of the flames is more than a bit reminiscent of a Christmas tree light bulb.)
August does a better job in this book than he has in some of his earlier entries in the "Power Classes" series. I admit to rather liking the cabalist, although I suspect he'll see more use in my campaign as an evil adversary than as a PC. August does a nice job in capturing the feel of the cabalist, giving him a poor weapon selection (quarterstaff, dagger, and club only) and a completely different method of spellcasting relying upon rituals and rites. Rituals are rather like clerical domains, with one spell of levels 0 - 9 loosely tied around a theme. One way of thinking about it is to imagine the cabalist gaining access to additional domains as he progresses through the levels of his class, although I should specify that these are not the clerical domains he's gaining access to. Rituals take much longer to cast than standard spells, so fortunately there are rites, which can be cast much quicker. Still and all, a cabalist is not a speedy spellcaster, although he can create power stones - new magic items described in the book - that are jut as fast as wands to use. Overall, I feel the differences between standard spellcasting and the rituals and rites of the cabalist help stand him apart from the normal wizard, sorcerer, or cleric.
Of course, there are some problems with the class as well. Hold monster is listed as both a 15th and 18th level "word of power" option. Forbidden knowledge isn't worth a whole lot: if you fail the required check, you die; if you pass the check, a whole bunch of crappy stuff happens to you (along the lines of losing 2 permanent points of Constitution, plus either a point of Wisdom or Intelligence, or Charisma and 5,000 xp, or a complete change to alignment) besides the limited benefits of a +2 to future Ritual Spellcraft checks and an additional daily use of Words of Power. Not even close to being worth it. In addition, the whole "test of allegiance" is poorly defined: at some point, the outer plane entity powering the cabalist's magic test him in some way (the DM's on his own for the specifics, unfortunately; not much help from the book here). There's also a reference to "exalted keys" - another new type of magic item - that doesn't appear anywhere in this book.
Proofreading and editing is only average; fortunately, most of the mistakes are along the lines of forgetting to put headers in bold font, so it's not that distracting.
Cabalist is an interesting take on a new character class with a completely different way of going about with spellcasting. Despite some minor problems, I still think a cabalist - or better yet, a whole cabal - could give a group of PCs a run for their money; and speaking of money, at only $2.95 the book's certainly worth checking out. I give this one a fairly high "3 (Average)."
By August Hahn
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP 1111
16 half-sized pages, $2.95
The 11th in Mongoose's "Power Classes" series, Cabalist provides players and DMs alike with a new PC/NPC option: a spellcaster neither arcane nor divine, but rather a bit of both, who draws his power from symbols, sigils, and outerplanar beings. It's an interesting concept, perfect for the shadowy cult figures so prevalent in fantasy.
The cover, once again by Nathan Webb and Scott Clark, depicts a robed figure with ancient Egyptian-looking headgear and lines of tattoos across his arms and down his face, with arms raised in supplication to some higher power. Nathan does a nice draping effect on the robes, but the cabalist's feet seem kind of wide and his fingers are awfully skinny.
Nathan also provides the 3 pieces of black-and-white interior artwork, although two of them (the Asian-looking man with rather fat thighs and a strangely small left arm performing hara-kiri on page 4 and the emaciated monk/mystic in a cloth diaper on page 16) don't seem to belong in a "cabalist" book. (The other picture, on page 11, is more appropriate, with a cabal of shadowy, cowled individuals arranged around a campfire, although the shape of the flames is more than a bit reminiscent of a Christmas tree light bulb.)
August does a better job in this book than he has in some of his earlier entries in the "Power Classes" series. I admit to rather liking the cabalist, although I suspect he'll see more use in my campaign as an evil adversary than as a PC. August does a nice job in capturing the feel of the cabalist, giving him a poor weapon selection (quarterstaff, dagger, and club only) and a completely different method of spellcasting relying upon rituals and rites. Rituals are rather like clerical domains, with one spell of levels 0 - 9 loosely tied around a theme. One way of thinking about it is to imagine the cabalist gaining access to additional domains as he progresses through the levels of his class, although I should specify that these are not the clerical domains he's gaining access to. Rituals take much longer to cast than standard spells, so fortunately there are rites, which can be cast much quicker. Still and all, a cabalist is not a speedy spellcaster, although he can create power stones - new magic items described in the book - that are jut as fast as wands to use. Overall, I feel the differences between standard spellcasting and the rituals and rites of the cabalist help stand him apart from the normal wizard, sorcerer, or cleric.
Of course, there are some problems with the class as well. Hold monster is listed as both a 15th and 18th level "word of power" option. Forbidden knowledge isn't worth a whole lot: if you fail the required check, you die; if you pass the check, a whole bunch of crappy stuff happens to you (along the lines of losing 2 permanent points of Constitution, plus either a point of Wisdom or Intelligence, or Charisma and 5,000 xp, or a complete change to alignment) besides the limited benefits of a +2 to future Ritual Spellcraft checks and an additional daily use of Words of Power. Not even close to being worth it. In addition, the whole "test of allegiance" is poorly defined: at some point, the outer plane entity powering the cabalist's magic test him in some way (the DM's on his own for the specifics, unfortunately; not much help from the book here). There's also a reference to "exalted keys" - another new type of magic item - that doesn't appear anywhere in this book.
Proofreading and editing is only average; fortunately, most of the mistakes are along the lines of forgetting to put headers in bold font, so it's not that distracting.
Cabalist is an interesting take on a new character class with a completely different way of going about with spellcasting. Despite some minor problems, I still think a cabalist - or better yet, a whole cabal - could give a group of PCs a run for their money; and speaking of money, at only $2.95 the book's certainly worth checking out. I give this one a fairly high "3 (Average)."
