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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2479468" data-attributes="member: 24255">SPELLBOUND - THE ENCHANTER'S HANDBOOKBy Owen K.C. StephensID Adventures product number IDA 5000914-page PDF, $3.50Spellbound - The Enchanter's Handbook is apparently the first in a new series of PDFs that will examine the various schools of arcane magic.The cover, as I've learned is common with PDFs (especially those without art budgets), consists of nothing but a swirl of colors, in this case, predominantly blues, magenta, and a blob of yellowish-tan in the center.  I really don't know what more I can say about it, other than it's replicated as the back cover as well (although there the central part is lightened so you can read the back-cover text better).There is no interior artwork, unless you count the two little swirly shapes that flank the page numbers.  (Personally, I don't.)  Still, you'll no doubt be purchasing a 14-page PDF expecting decent text, not artwork, so I'm not going to ding them for the lack of artwork, not in a PDF of this size.However, I am going to ding them - hard - for the overall shoddiness of the presentation of the written material.  I'm a fan of Owen K. C. Stephens' work - he used to contribute some really cool articles to Dragon in the past, and I know he wrote at least one standalone gaming print product (Bastards and Bloodlines, which I admit to not having read) - but this is not his strongest work, and the sloppy presentation does little to improve it.  Before I go into my specific complaints, let me first describe the actual content of the PDF.Page 1 is actually the cover, which I've already described.  Page 2 is a combination credits page and table of contents.  Pages 3-5 contain the brief introduction, sections on the basics of enchantment spells and suggested tactics for enchanters, a suggestion to allow spontaneous casters (bards and sorcerers) to specialize in enchantment magic like specialist wizards can, and 5 "enchanting edges" - special abilities that an enchantment-specialized arcane spellcaster can gain if he gives up his ability to summon a familiar or one of his bardic abilities.  The rest of page 5 is dedicated to 6 new feats for enchanters.  Page 6 and a bit of page 7 are the spell lists, and then pages 7-12 contain 28 new spells (all but one of them of the enchantment school of magic; the oddball is a divination spell that enchanters find useful to test whether a command will be useful or not on a given subject).  Page 13 is the OGL stuff, and page 14 is the back cover.A lot of the new material is pretty interesting.  The "basics" and "tactics" sections are all fairly basic, but might be of some use to somebody who's never given a whole lot of thought as to how to run an enchantment-focused character before.  Owen's scheme for allowing bards and sorcerers to "specialize" in enchantments seems like a pretty decent mechanic, and doesn't raise any alarm bells as far as game balance goes.  The feats are okay; I liked the new metamagic feats the best of the bunch, with "Renew Spell" leading the pack.  (This feat allows you to "tack on" the duration of a spell's effect by casting it again before the original spell runs out, without allowing the victim a new saving throw; fortunately, there's an upper limit as to how long you can do this so it doesn't get too far out of hand.)The spells, though - the bulk of the PDF - were a bit of a disappointment.  A full 9 of the 28 are new power word spells, and for the most part it seems like Owen went through the "Condition Summary" section on pages 300-301 of the DMG to see what hadn't already been covered.  Nothing very interesting or innovative in that batch.  Then, he devised a slight variant to the power word spells (which only require a verbal component) and came up with the power sign spells, which only require a somatic component.  Okay, so far so good; these spells eat up another 7 spells.  However, while I like the concept of a somatic-equivalent version of the power word spells, I really dislike the mechanic Owen came up with to use with them.  Correctly noting that power word spells are targeted against the potential victim's current hit point total (power word kill, for example, only works against a victim with up to 100 hit points at the time of casting), Owen decided that power sign spells would be targeted against a potential victim's Will save modifier.  So we end up with spells such as power sign, dead, which automatically kills one targeted creature with a Will save of +6 or less.  (The victim gets no saving throw.)  If he had a Will save of +7 or +8, he drops immediately to -1 hp (again, with no save allowed); a Will save of +9 to +12 means he drops to 0 hp and is disabled.Now think about that for a moment.  Granted, power sign, dead is a 9th-level spell, but then so is power word kill, and at least it has a hit point cap to keep things in line.  With power sign, dead, as written, if you're a 20th-level fighter with a Wisdom score of 10 or less, you're instantly dead if an enemy casts this spell on you.  It doesn't matter how many hit points you have or how high your Constitution is; you're dead, no save, end of story.  Now, I'm not up on my Epic Level Rules, but assuming the Will save progression continues on at a normal pace, you could be an epic level fighter (with a below-average Wisdom score) and be wiped out by this spell without any chance of surviving.  Maybe it's just me, but that seems messed up.  I think Owen could have spent a little more time thinking this concept through a bit more.Anyway, of the remaining 12 spells (we've already accounted for 9 power words and 7 power signs), several more are just variants of existing enchantment spells - charm humanoid, mass geas/quest, eclipse (a dominate person spell with an on/off switch), plague charm (a communicable charm person) - which leaves only a handful of the 28 spells to break any new ground.So, what was all that about the shoddiness of the presentation, you ask?  Here's a brief list of the worst offenses: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There are only three chapters in this PDF.  Of those three, only two appear correctly in the Table of Contents.  You'd think that with only three chapters they'd be able to get them right.... </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Several of the spells are given incorrect names in the spell lists.  (Is it charm humanoids, as per the spell list, or charm humanoid, as per the spell description?  Is it power sign, stillness, as per the spell list, or power sign, still, as per the spell description?) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Worse yet, the actual spell levels of several of the spells are up in question.  The change alignment spell is listed under the 3rd-level bard spells, but the spell's description lists is as "Brd 4."  Which is it?  Is power sign, stillness (or is it power sign, still?) a 2nd-level sorcerer/wizard spell, as it's listed in the spell lists, or is it a 1st-level sorcerer/wizard spell, as the spell description states? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The spell lists are incomplete.  According to the spell descriptions, power word, paralyze is a 5th-level sorcerer/wizard spell, but it doesn't show up in the 5th-level sorcerer/wizard spell list.  Likewise, mass geas/quest is both a 9th-level cleric spell and a 9th-level sorcerer/wizard spell, but there is no cleric spell list provided at all.  Somebody needed to scrub those spell lists a bit harder! </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">According to the spell list, greater charm person is a 3rd-level bard spell.  Sadly, the spell does not appear anywhere in the PDF! </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A couple of the spells weren't even alphabetized correctly.  Again, there are only 28 spells, how much time would it have taken to make sure they were placed in the correct order? </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There seems to be complete confusion between the proper usage of "its" and "it's" and between "effect" and "affect" on the part of the author and/or the editor. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Perhaps the most amusing one: on the credits page, the person listed as the one responsible for editing and layout is one "Lj Stephens."  Now, unless this is some affectation (like "e. e. cummings" who refused to be capitalized), I'm pretty sure that should be either "L. J. Stephens" or maybe even "LJ Stephens."  It's pretty telling when the editor doesn't even catch an error in his/her own name!</li> </ul>I think I'm coming down harder on this product because it was only 14 pages long than I would have had it been a meatier work.  With only 14 pages (and really, only about 11 pages of actual written content), this vast number of errors should not have made it to the "finished product."I had really hoped to like Spellbound - The Enchanter's Handbook, based on the strength of Owen K.C. Stephens' name and reputation.  Sadly, I really can't recommend this PDF for those who are interested in expanding the possibilities of enchantment magic.  (And while I seldom recommend other books in a review, I will point out that Mongoose's Enchantment: Fire in the Mind, while a much more expensive product than this one - but then it's a 64-page print product, compared to a 14-page PDF - does a much better job of handling the subject.)  I really have to give this PDF a rating of "2 (Poor)," and hope that future handbooks in the series will have a bit more thought (and a lot more polishing) put into them.</blockquote>

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