Tauralathan's Grimoire, Volume I
There have been more then a few books that cover spells, feats, prestige classes, and other themes. Some of these books are compilations of the best others have put out. Others are filled with original content. Most of these books though suffer from the same problem: they are boring to read. Even though many of them like AEG’s Feats and Green Ronin’s Pocket books are really well done they are just reference material. There is nothing tying the content together other then they share a common theme. Its not just these books that suffer from this, many rule playing books read like text books instead of novels. I find it is best to have a mix of rules and story elements and that brings us to the current review. Tauralathan's Grimoire is a book of spells, but the spells are tied together with a very interesting series of informative text.
Tauralathan's Grimoire is the first volume in what I gather will be a series of books by Myrik Games. They are a new publisher and this is their first release. This PDF is thirty two pages in length. The PDF itself is only a little over three megs in size. The layout is nicely done but it is a full color book with border, back ground and color art. There is one are that is an empty column that really should have been filled with art but other then that the pages flow well. Printing the PDF will require a bit of ink and might be best on a stronger paper then normal because of the full color backgrounds. There are no book marks in the book. Normally for a book of this size it might not be a problem, but with the spells and story text intermixed like it is here it can be hard to flip from spell to spell.
This book is a mix of twenty six new spells and excerpts of Tauralathan's life. It also serves as an interesting view into the world of Myrik. There is not a lot of this world shown just glimpses most of it through who seems to be the main nemesis of the world Tauralathan. The spells are ones that he has either created or stolen from others. The stories are about him or about who he got the spells from. The writing is good and very interesting. It gives the spells a bit of history and makes them a little more interesting then the standard ones from the PHB because they have depth and context to them.
The spells are highly creative and useful. They are all arcane spells though some are also one divine lists. There are spells from first to ninth level. One goal was to make the lower level spells useful even at high level and to make the high level spells truly awesome. They succeeded in doing just that as I will show by describing a few of my favorites.
Shocking Shield: This first levels spells creates a shield around the caster. Its design is to make it tougher for someone to disrupt the casters next spells by damaging them as they target the caster and providing the caster with a concentration bonus.
Chilling Drain: This second level spells does cold damage to a single target and uses the energy drained to allow the caster a greater move.
Fire Shroud: This second level heats up an item in an opponent’s hand doing damaging to them and causing them to drop it.
Lesser Infernal Spell Expulsion: This well described spell is fourth level and is a damaging dispel magic.
Arcane Lust: This fifth level spell is cast a sa free action and it increases the power of a first through third level spell that is cast in the same round.
Stoneskin Burst: It protects the caster or it can be discharged to do damage to the people around the caster. Using the discharge does cause the caster constitution damage.
Nemesis Blast: This fifth level spell first analyzes the opponents defense and then strikes with the energy type that they are weakest against.
Boil Bone Marrow: Truthfully, it’s the name of this sixth level spell that I really like. It does a lot of damage to a single target.
You Missed Your Chance: This devastating eight level spells acts like a greater dispel magic, does damage to everyone, and knocks them all prone.
Nine Lives: This is one of the best ninth level spells I have seen. It basically allows the caster to reroll dice or make opponents to reroll dice. The caster of the spell then gets to choose which result happens.
This is a great collection of spells and it has a great deal of interesting writing that links the spells all together. It does seem like a shorter book then it is as there just are not that many spells here and I really would like to have seen more. But the spells here will surprise a group of player characters as their usefulness and creativity are impressive.
