Spells & SPELLCRAFT, Spells & MAGIC

[Glacialis]

I've read the review of S&S (FFG), and I want it. Bastion Press' Spells & Magic...ARGH! I knew this would happen! So many good d20 products, but there's only so many generic names to go around .

Could someone compare and contrast these two products, besides poitning out the semantical differences?

 

[Voadam]

From Jim Butler's press release

What's in Spells & Magic? Well, here's a rough breakdown:

20 New Feats; 10 New Prestige Classes [Blood Mage, Dragon Mage (of which there are three types), Faerier, Reflecting Master, Jewel Mage, Soul Gem Guardian, Rune Mage, Shadetouched, Spellsinger, Totem Mage]; 124 New Spells (and they're not all just for wizards and sorcerers; a number of cool bard, paladin, druid, and ranger spells await other casters); Strange Brews (10 brews that show the effects of placing 4th-level and higher effects into potions, along with rules to make more brews); 40 New Magic Items, weapon qualities, armor qualities, and other cool tidbits.


I believe S&M is 96 pages and full color while S&S is over a hundred but black and white, includes rules for golem creation, rituals, chaos magic, research and libraries, a few spells, and bard, sorcerer, and cleric variants.

I don't have either, yet.

 

[Glacialis]

Sorry

I should have clarified. Someone that has seen both books . I'll get S&S very shortly...

 

[Morrus]

I'll move this to Gen Discussion because a) it'll get more traffic there and b) this isn't really directed at d20 publishers.

 

[Eridanis]

I looked through Spells & Magic this past Friday, and while I didn't pick it up, I'm much more likely to pick it up than Spells & Spellcraft. The stumbling block on both is that very little space is devoted to actual spells; both book take most of the pages up with alternate spellcasting systems, prestige classes, and various related things. I guess I'm in the minority, but all I want are a few new toys (spells) for characters to play with; alternate magic systems jsut leave me cold for my particular game world, and my weekly group really doesn't have a place for such things (which is fine by me).

From just a cursory glance, 'Magic' gets points for the full-color presentation, and while I couldn't spend time reading each and every spell, I liked the quality of their MINIONS and ARMS AND ARMOR books, so I'm willing to give benefit of doubt. 'Spellcraft' gets minuses for that HUGE font they use, and I've spent enough time poring over those spells to determine that there are perhaps a half-dozen I'd like to play with or let into a campaign. Not worth $30 of my money.

Maybe I just need to crack open the 2E Wizard's Spell Copendiums, and start doing a "Tome of Horrors" deal and convert them wholesale to get the spells I want. Unless some website somewhere has done that work already...

 

[d20Dwarf]

Just to clarify, Spells & Spellcraft does not contain any Prestige Classes. Path of Magic will be covering that territory just fine.

Oops, sorry, must have had that Spells & Spellcraft font on accidentally.

 

[Eridanis]

My apologies. Thanks for the correction.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Don't knock Spells & Spellcraft!

I hardly found any useful information at all in Spells & Magic (certainly not enough to justify paying $25), but Spells & Spellcraft was loaded with crunchy bits and was hardcover for the SAME price! Spells & Spellcraft really broadens the horizon for all kinds of magic (including clerics and deities) and familiars. I would say Spells & Spellcraft is one of the few third party rulebooks to actually DESERVE to be labeled as a "core rulebook." It's simply *fantastic* in its creativity. I wish all third party (and WoTC) products could be as useful and inventive as Spells & Spellcraft. But Spells & Spellcraft isn't so much about adding new spells or classes as it is about reinventing the way we look at and (in game, LOL) practice magic, so YMMV.

IMO, Bastion's products are overpriced, overproduced and have terrible art from Todd Morasch that looks all cartoony, garish and amateurish, enough so to actually *ruin* the flavor of the books (I've had fellow gamers pick up Arms & Armor and start making fun of its artwork--I had to point out some specific cool crunchy bits to justify my purchase to them, LOL). Though certainly all of Bastion's rulebooks have some good crunchy bits here and there, as a whole, IMO, their releases do not deliver enough quality content for the price charged. The only Bastion product I have bought is Arms & Armor, and while I won't rule out buying future products from them, I don't have the same level of anticipation for them as I originally had. Minions and Villains were both awful, IMO, and Alchemy & Herbalists just seemed too complicated and boring to implement. I did enjoy the free online DL of Scribes and Scrolls (or whatever it was called), but I would never have paid money for it--I doubt it will ever see much use IMC.

I think Bastion should replace Todd Morasch as Art Director and primary artist and consider reducing the cover price (and removing the glossy paper and full color interior art). IMO, most gamers don't care about these extra fancy features and would prefer a cheaper format with B&W interiors on standard paper (unless we're talking about a major hardcover core rulebook type release, which Bastion's products aren't---they're optional splatbooks). Just my two cents.

 

[Eridanis]

Re: Don't knock Spells & Spellcraft!

IMO, Bastion's products ... have terrible art from Todd Morasch that looks all cartoony, garish and amateurish, enough so to actually *ruin* the flavor of the books

On this point, we are in complete agreement. I refused to buy MINIONS on the basis of artrwork alone, until I paged through someone else's copy and found that the creatures were, to me, for the most part useful.

Which begs the question that is being touched tangentally on the "What should WotC do next" thread: what kind of products do we as players want? Probably not even worth a new thread on, though; certainly, people vote with their wallet, and in just a year or two I'm sure the d20 industry will shake out to the point that the publishers with the best/most popular products remain. Count me in on the side of free market forces, I guess.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Hmm. I sat down and read Minions cover to cover and found only a handful of monsters to be useful or creative. The rest were all too weird, too stupid, too similar to other monsters, badly illustrated, or had ridiculously uncreative names that made me grimace and turn the page. Quickly.