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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009495" data-attributes="member: 172">Relics & Rituals 2: Lost LoreSword & Sorcery Studio's second hardbound was Relics & Rituals, a book providing new spells, magic-using prestige classes, and magic items, as well as an innovative ritual system that made metamagic more attractive and filled a niche by providing mechanics for rituals that were formerly left as GM fiat. Relics & Rituals was intended as a supplement for Sword & Sorcery Studio's Scarred Lands setting, but was also written to allow other d20 fantasy campaigns to make use of the book. Despite a few missing details (such as prices for magic items), Relics & Rituals won acclaim as a generally useful and imaginative magic supplement for the d20 system.It is in these footsteps that Relics & Rituals II: Lost Lore must tread. Like its predecessor, R&RII is a magic sourcebook written with the Scarred Lands setting in mind.A First LookRelics & Rituals II is a 240-page hardbound book priced at $25.95. This is about normal for a Sword & Sorcery Studios title, but very competitive for a d20 system book of this size and format.The book has a maroon colored cover with the title in stylized lettering on the front.The interior of the book is black and white. The interior art is generally good, but the sketchy style of Melissa Uran continues to strike me as the low point of Sword & Sorcery art.The interior text is dense, with a compact body text font, conservative header fonts, and close paragraph and column spacing.A Deeper LookRelics & Rituals 2 is organized into seven chapters.The first chapter introduces new magical rules. This include rules on cabalism, astrology, alchemy, and new feats.Those familiar with Scarred Lands will be familiar with invocation benefits, short term benefits that can be gained by invoking the names of the deities of the Scarred Lands. Cabalists are arcane spellcasters that take advantage of special invocation benefits that enhance the effectiveness of certain spells, according to the deity invoked. This requires a feat described later in the chapter.Houses of the Gods describes the zodiac of the Scarred Lands. Each of the 16 houses/constellations has a symbol and description of the traits and types of magic associated with the house.The alchemy section is brief, and describes five new alchemical items. As examples, argent essence when applied to a weapon allows it to penetrate "silver" damage reduction, and flakeiron causes a weapon to grow barbs that break off in a target and cause additional damage.The new feats include general feats and three new categories of feats. The new general feats include cabalist (gives the character access to a number of invocation benefits that enhance spells), specialist dispelling (allows a specialist wizard to counterspell any spell by using a spell of a different school) and zodiac focus (increases the DC of spells of a school or type corresponding to the current zodiac sign.)The three new categories of feats are miracle feats, scion feats, and virtue feats. Miracle feats require cleric class levels and are similar in nature to the divine feats in Defenders of the Faith. Scion feats require sorcerer class levels, and imply a certain bloodline; a character that takes the given scion feat must take a given sequence of spells and gains a bonus when using those spells. Virtue feats require paladin class levels.The second chapter covers prestige classes. After a brief overview of how the prestige classes from the DMG fit into the Scarred Lands, six new prestige classes are introduced. Overall, the prestige classes are more mechanically solid and balanced than the ones that appeared in Relics & Rituals. The new prestige classes are:-Helliann: The Helliann is a member of a sisterhood of albadian witches with a penchant for tatoo magic. While well written in most aspects, the flavor text does not seem to agree with the prerequisites. The flavor text states that druids, sorceresses, and clerics may become Hellianns, but never wizards. However, the prerequisite includes a feat that requires that the character be an arcane spellcaster.-High Astrologer: Further exploiting the details regarding the Scarred Lands zodiac set forth earlier. The high astrologer gains abilities and bonuses that vary from month to month, as well as divination abilities based on the zodiac.-Jordeh: The Jordeh are forest guardians, scholars, and diplomats of the wood elf people, usually drawn from the ranks of rangers or druids. Jordeh's spells are more powerful when cast within their home forest, and the Jordeh gains other abilities related to their closeness with the forest.-Lady of Serpents: Ladies of Serpents are female cultists in service to the titan Mormo. Ladies of Serpents gain a number of poison related class abilities. They also have their own spell list.-Sage of the Phylacteric Vault: The sages of the Phylacteric Vault specialize in one of four esoteric areas: chronomancy, onieromancy, planar geography, and pure alchemy. Each area has an associated skill and spell list and the sage receives a bonus when using these.-Son of Mirth: Sons of mirth are followers of the Krewe of bones, and specialize in necromancy and in the Scarred Lands are associated with the Blood Bayou. Outside of the Scarred Lands, sons of mirth might be used to model a sort of necromantic witch-doctor.-Spirit Walker: A spirit walker is a spellcaster that can obtain special powers by bonding with spirits. While possessed by spirits, the spirit-walker takes on a template associated with the specific spirit.The third and largest chapter contains new spells, complete with compiled spell lists for all the major classes with spells from the PHB, this book, and other Scarred Lands resources. Some of the spells are a bit powerful, perhaps needing to be assigned a higher level or shorter duration. As with the original Relics & Rituals, the spells descriptions are split into campaign specific description text and more general spell effects.The spell lists include clerical domains from the PHB as well as the new domains introduced in the Scarred Lands. As with the original Relics & Rituals, some domains have more than one spell per level, and there is no indication on how to handle this.Some of the more notable spells are:-Bane of the Forge: This druid / ranger spell allows a non-metal weapon to ignore AC bonuses from metal armor.-Blade Meld: This sorcerer/wizard spell gives the caster the special ability of a blade beast; when the caster is struck by a weapon, the wielder must make a reflex save or the weapon is wrenched from the her grasp and absorbed in the caster's body.-Enchant Spirit Doll: This spell creates a doll similar in concept to the classical "vodoo doll", creating the link between the doll and a living being, requiring a personal item of the target as part of the doll. The doll can then be used to make saves more difficult for spells cast using the doll, and may be used as the focus for a number of other potent spells introduced in the book using the doll as a focus.-Force of Will: This cleric or paladin spell allows the caster to replace on ability score with his wisdom score.-Lesser and Greater Timeheal: Possibly the most dubious of the included spells since it muddies the line between arcane and divine spellcaster, the timeheal spell allows an arcane spellcaster the ability to heal or even resurrect a target by manipulating time.-Shadow Chains: This unusual spell binds the shadows of targets together, preventing them from moving away from each other.-Sigil of Fire, Ice, and Ooze: These spells grant an undead creature an elemental essence. The most dastardly of these is perhaps the sigil of ooze, which can destroy weapons used to harm the undead creature.-Summon (specific creature): This is a series of spells that summons a specific type of creature for 1 hour a level, but is otherwise similar to the summon monster and summon nature's ally spells. The level of these spells is one half of the CR. This makes the spell very dubious, as it is much more powerful than the equivalent summon monster or summon nature's ally spell.The fourth chapter introduces new true rituals. The true ritual rules from Relics & Rituals are repeated, but not any of the other ritual rules. The new true rituals allow such powerful feats as blocking all magical abilities for many years, summoning legions of outsiders, or negating the effects of other true rituals.The fifth chapter introduces new magic items. This time around, the authors have learned their lesson and have included complete market price details for magic items. Similar to the spells, the magic item descriptions are split into campaign specific descriptions and game effects.Some of the more notable items include:-Arcane puissance: This special quality grants the character a competence bonus to attacks depending on their arcane spellcaster levels.-Oath rings: A series of linked rings, the oath rings allow any of the wearers to detect the status of other wearers, as well as detecting lies told by the other wearers and send messages to other wearers. Finally, once a week a ring wearer may use a word of recall teleporting them to the nearest wearer.-Wood Elf Fetishes: A series of items made of natural materials carved into animal shapes. The fetishes grant a +5 bonus to a particular skill or skills, or provide other bonuses.The magic item chapter also contains new magic tattoos, and the tattoo magic rules are replicated from Relics & Rituals.The sixth chapter is entitled The Slarecian Legacy and describes the powers of the slarecians. As you might have concluded if you read earlier Scarred Lands books, the powers of the slarecians were psionics. The chapter spends a few pages discussing the history of the slarecian before getting into the use of psionics in the Scarred Lands.In the Scarred Lands, the psionics are different rules are used with additional guidance as described in this chapter. The spell resistance of slarecian creatures is treated as power resistance; for all other purposes, psionics and magic are considered separate and distinct. Further, the Scarred Lands utilizes the secondary disciplines and powers discovered rules from Malhavoc Press's If Thoughts Could Kill. The book introduces new variant rules for psionics. Under the mental fatigue rules, the character becomes fatigued or exhaused (per the d20 system rules) when too many power points are expended. The coordinate concentration rule allows the psionic character to concentrate on more than one effect at a time with a successful concentration check.The slarecian chapter introduce three psionics-related prestige classes:-Order of Obsidian: These are members of an order infused with psionic power and dedicated to preventing the return of the slarecians. They have an impugned manifester level advancement, and gain feats that protect them again slarecian powers.-Cultist of the Shade: These are remnants of ancient cults that supported the slarecians and handed down lore stolen from the goddess of shadows. Cultists of the shade have impugned manifester advancement as well as sneak attack ability and a variety of shadow related powers.-Warped Ones: Occasionally, the slarecian language virus will affect a character with psionic potential and create a warped one. The warped one is effectivel insane and has full manifester advancement. The warped one can spread insanity as well as the effects of the slarecian language virus.Finally, the chapter introduces 4 new psionic powers: crystal curse, imbue servitor, obsidian blade, and psychic disruption.The final chapter details a number of ancient texts and tomes of magical knowledge that exist in the Scarred Lands. Many act as spellbooks and have a number of spells defined for them. Some provide special benefits described in the text.ConclusionIn some ways Relics & Rituals II improves on the original. The prestige classes are generally more interesting and more balanced, and the magic items have all the statistics needed for their creation. The insight into the slarecians was interesting, and I was enthused to see the use of open game content in a way that promises to strengthen the open game concept.However, the original is still the book to beat in many areas. There is little in R&RII that is as groundbreaking as the rituals system, and I found the inspiration of the spells and magic items a bit better in the original. Further, the book is a little more Scarred Lands specific and has less to offer gamers looking to add material to other campaign worlds.Overall, this is a strong addition to the Scarred Lands setting and still has a lot to offer the general d20 system fantasy gamer, if not as much as the original Relics & Rituals.-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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