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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2799764" data-attributes="member: 1129">SpellboundThe Enchanter’s Handbook14 pages18 pages RTFPDFOwen K.C. Stephens tries to update the enchanter. Not as popular as the necromancer or as powerful as the evoker, the enchanter is a wizard specialty that the author feels needs some love. He’s not alone as Mongoose already tried to give the enchanter’s a boost with one of their Encylopedia Arcana books and others have done similar material.The PDF is black and white with no art. The outer borders are large and the two-column format is crushed together making it readable, but not easy on the eyes. The cover and rear cover are some art design that looks painful. Thankfully it has a printer friendly version without the off purple color. Page numbers are on the inner border in the middle of the page. For those who care about open content, I couldn’t find a declaration of such, probably my old eyes. The back notes that it has an RTF file for copying any of the completely open game content, which makes me wonder if the whole product is open.While the book has an introduction and some feats, the majority of the book is devoted to new spells. Some of these options in the introduction are quite interesting though and deserve a second or even third look. For example, a bard or sorcerer can gain a +3 effective caster level with enchantment spells and a –2 effective caster level with spells from other schools.  Owen also allows a caster to exchange his familiar for an “edge”. A good thing as the familiar is not everyone’s cup of tea.These edges range from dashing and magnetic, to silver tongued. Each one offers slightly different benefits. For example, the silver tongued individuals gain their class levels to any bluff, diplomacy or sleight of hand checks when attempting to bend the truth. Those with the retinue edge gain leadership at first level. The new spells are broken up by class, and level. For wizards, they also provide a breakdown of school.  Not hard to do when the spells are all about the enchantments. Spells range from 1st level, missing out on the good old zero level spells, to 9th level. Spells range in utility from the ultimate power of mass quest, to intriguing spells like plague charm, where the person suffering the charm effect causes those touched to possibly be charmed.The spells provide a good mix of material and allow an enchanter to take on more of his traditional role and in general, be more useful. Some of the spells are even effective on the field of combat like the 6rth level power word deafen or the 4th level spell confidence that provides a bonus to skill checks and armor class.A couple of things prevent the book from receiving a higher rating. The first is no art. I can understand that it’s a PDF and all for a low price, but as prices continue to go up and page counts continue to increase, to effectively retain attention, the books need to compete with print products on more levels. The second is the layout. While effective, the columns are forced too close together and there’s plenty of space on the outer edge. The third is the bookmarks. They are generic and don’t breakup anything by say, spell level or provide any utility outside of going to one of three areas. The printer friendly version is also a little odd since it’s in essence the regular version, just with out the color cover. Hardly a reason to have a printer friendly version.For those who have access to Pyramid, an online magazine, some of the material is noted as coming from different issues of d20 Weekly, the short lived Steve Jackson Games d20 webzine. You might want to take a crack at those archives of  Owen’s to get an idea of his writing styles if you’re not familiar with him.</blockquote>

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