The Bonds of Magic, Vol. I, Cabal

[Messageboard Golem]

Chaz Zemir, dark elf master of interrogation and enslavement… Handrath Blood-Eye, the half-fiend who summons his own brothers to die for him…. Though they may come from different realms, these characters share one thing in common: supreme devotion to The Bonds of Magic.

25 New Arcane Spellcasters!
Each one of these intriguing new characters comes complete with illustration, description, and background. In addition, they all have a unique spell, magic item, or feat plus rock-solid statistics you can really rely on.

These personalities of all levels are ready to get in the game as enemies, allies, cohorts, or even player characters. And whats more, all these characters are Open Game Content!

With this title, Malhavoc Press is proud to welcome veteran Wizards of the Coast game designer Sean K Reynolds to our ranks.

 

[Krug]

I don't know why character books are so rare, particularly when compared to Monster books. Possibly because they're harder to do, and to do well. With a monster you can slap a couple limbs and abilities together and voila; new monster! It's just cannon fodder anyway, so why bother with motivations, personality and background?

Malhavoc Press has taken up the challenge of the character book with Skreyn's Register, the first of two works featuring spellcasters. Cabal focuses on Arcane Spellcasters, while the The Faithful, the next book in the series, will cover divine spellcasters.

Cabal is a 36 page PDF and is available at $5 from RPGnow.com. Each of the 25 spellcasters gets a page, and there's 5 pages worth of new feats, spells and magic items. Besides the stat block, each character gets an illustration, a brief history writeup, a personality description, how to use the spellcaster in your campaign and tactics. There's just enough information to work on, without going into too much detail. The higher level the character, the bigger the stat block, and consequently the lesser the other information. For example, in the case of Zursha, a Fleshbound Vampire Conjuror 10, the non-stat stuff has shrunk considerably, and her tactics are limited to just one sentence.

There's quite a few standout characters, which range from CR3 to 13, particularly amongst the monstrous humanoid races. Kevis the Kobold Sorcerer is in exile and looking for a tribe to adopt her. Gaush the Bugbear is an 'accidental transmuter', stumbling upon his magic skills after picking up a wizard's spellbook, who has to teach his fellow bugbears to wait until he's done casting the fireball before charging into combat. When Xaven the Transmuter casts a fly spell, "intangible moth's wings sprout from her back." Ironically, because of the smaller stat blocks for lower-powered characters, they get more attention and are thus better-developed.

The 'crunchy' stuff, featuring a plethora of new magic items and spells, is good and well-thought out. I can see many mages clamoring after Lesser Invisibility, a first level version of Invisibility.

The Register has raised the bar for character books. There's a diverse range of characters in here just waiting to be used in your campaign. The writing is top-notch, the illustrations are well-done and the whole design and layout is up to Malhavoc's usual high standards. However, I hope that there's more flexibility to the one-page limit on characters that Malhavoc has self-imposed. It seems to penalize higher level and templated casters, since they would have obviously bigger stat blocks and leave less space for the 'cream'. I would have also liked to see more multiclassed spellcasters, as well as spellcasters utilising Prestige Classes from Malhavoc's own books, such as the Diplomancer from BoEMII.

I'll definitely purchase the next book in the series, and hoping that Registers featuring characters from non-spellcasting backgrounds willl be published.

 

[Psion]

The Bonds of Magic - Vol I: The Cabal

The Bonds of Magic - Vol I: The Cabal is the first of two PDF releases by Sean K. Reynolds that detail a number of pre-generated spellcasting NPCs. This volume features arcane spellcasters and the second one will feature divine spellcasters. The PDFs will later be released as a single print product. The book is published by Malhavoc Press.

A First Look

The Bonds of Magic - Vol I: The Cabal is a 36 page PDF document, including a color first and last page that act as covers. The book is priced at $5.00 US, and is available at www.rpgnow.com.

The interior layout is the norm for recent Malhavoc products. The chapter headers (as they are, there is only a main section and an appendix) has an illustration in the top right cornet, and the border has a graphic that looks like a scan of an astrological chart or some other time-related circular chart.

This PDF lacks a bookmark section, which is unfortunate. Bookmarks allow laptop-happy GMs quickly navigate a product.

The "cover" features a picture by Lars Grant-West depicting a man with energy surging from his hands, floating above some ruins.

The interior art is by Malhavoc and Green Ronin veteran artist Toren "MacBin" Atkinson, most of which appear to be pencil sketches. There is one sketch for each character. Many of the pictures look rather demented (which may or may not be appropriate for a given character.)

A Deeper Look

The Bonds of Magic - Vol I: The Cabal details 25 arcane spellcasting NPCs. Each character takes up one page. Each character has a statistic block complete with known spells or prepared spells and a spellbook, along with sections describing the background, personality, campaign use ideas, and tactics for the character. The statistics block equivalent levels and listing of additional PC Gear, allowing the characters to be used as quick PCs if necessary.

Each character also has a new spell, feat, or magic item, all of which are collected in the index, giving the book some extended use as a sourcebook. Some of the new spells, items, and feats aren't all that great for integrating into a game. For example, the spell I Summon My Brother is merely a summon monster spell that summons one of two specific half-fiend fighters related to the caster.

The characters run the gamut of the core character races. There are also characters of monstrous races such as kobolds and orcs, as well as a few new races, such as the half-medusa and fleshbound vampire (defined on the Malhavoc website.)

The backgrounds of the various characters suggest some possible plot hooks and adventure ideas. Most of them are interlaced, providing connections to other character in the book.

As might be expected from a former longtime WotC staffer, most of the stat blocks are solid and well considered, taking into account various subtle points of character creation.

Conclusion

NPC books are normally a hard sell for me. It seems that either the NPCs are too bizarre to allow them to fit easily into your campaign, or too basic, not giving you much more than a random character generator could.

The PDF is a nice compromise, however. Sold at the lowest price you can realistically sell a PDF at, the NPCs come at a mere 20 cents a piece. Further, the format is a good one for this sort of book. The NPCs are sorted so they are one per page (and that page is well used), so you can print out just the ones you find interesting or useful for your game.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[JoeGKushner]

Skreyn’s Register
The Bonds of Magic
Volume I: Cabal
Written by Sean K Renyolds
Published by Malhavok Press
36 b & w pages
$5.00

So what is Skreyn’s Register? The first book in the series covers arcane spell users by providing a collection of NPCs with a unique twist to them. Sometimes it’s a magic item or spell, othertimes it’s a special race or feat.

Right off the bat there’s a lot I like about The Bonds of Magic. Sean provides the reader with the methodology used to create the characters ability scores and possessions. These details are important because it tells the DM how much work he’s got ahead of himself to customize the book for proper play. For example, I use a high fantasy point buy system (32 points per the DMG) so these characters might have to be beefed up a bit as they use the default array of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 for ability scores. In addition, knowing how the equipment was determined helps me decide how much more or less gear to modify the characters by.

The characters are arranged in alphabetical order, which would be fine if this was a monster book, but since it’s a character book, perhaps a breakdown by different classes, or levels would’ve been more appropriate. Each character starts off with name, stats, background, personality, uses and tactics. Each character also takes up one page so the details aren’t very specific. For those who have detailed worlds, this is great as it enables you to pop the caster into just about any campaign in many capacities. For those looking for numerous details and exhaustive role-playing notes, you’re not going to find them here.

I don’t know if it was a deliberate ploy or not but many of the characters within this book aren’t your standard spellcasters. We have orc sorcerers like Brul the Tongue lined up alongside the likes of Sel Kryee, a half medusa sorcerer. In many cases, this pushes the challenge rating up a notch or two as these are races with level equivalents. This isn’t to say however that there aren’t ‘standard’ characters within.

For example, if you need an elf, the sorceress Relosa, can provide some backup power to parties in need of an arcane spellcaster and if you need a gnome with an interesting story to tell, Urn of the one hand has a dozy for you.

One of the strengths of the product comes in the ties that many of the characters have with one another. Need to build up your humanoid forces? Vok Burnscar, a half orc, knows Brul the Tongue and Kevish, a kobold sorcerer. These three could easily lead a humanoid tribe to new found strengths. What about the undead? There are a couple different factions within waiting to draw the players into their plots.

The new spell, magic items, and feats are collected at the back of the book and provide the GM with some other reasons to include the characters as mentors or sellers of unique and special fares. Among the new items we have such delights as the Dreaming Skull, an device used to detect thoughts on sleeping creatures and the Tular of Nev, a silver orb set in a silver ring that not only provides acid resistance, but allows the user to cast Mel’s Acid Arrow. In terms of new spells, we have Gaush’s Mighty Scout, a spell that not only augments a target’s dexterity, but grants him a bonus to his hide and move silently checks in addition to faster movement. The new goodies alone almost make the book worth buying to look over for inclusion in the standard campaign.

The book looks like a printed copy in terms of layout design and art placement. Art isn’t quite up to Toren’s regular quality, as many of the character’s facial expressions seem deformed or stretched out. This could be an issue with the manner in which the images were originally imported to the file itself though. Many of the images are still top notch as the creepy illustration of Jaurdaan, an undead spellcaster, and the bugbear Leg Breaker Gaush proof.

One of the puzzling things about the PDF file though is that there are no bookmarks. It’s pretty much just a book in electronic format that doesn’t take advantage of the medium, which is a shame since very few publishers do. Where are the options to turn off the illustrations? Where are the text pop up boxes?

The page number itself is a little misleading as the 36 page count includes not only the cover, but also a full page ad for The Book of Eldrich Might III: The Nexus, and the rear cover. Take out the first title page and another page with the open game license and you’re down to a 31 page sourcebook. Another problem is that there’s no quick reference for GMs who need an NPC of a certain level. You can’t flip to a table of contents or an appendix and say I need a CR 5 character and find it. You’ll have to take your own notes on this.

The book needs to get rid of the ad and add an appendix that lists the characters by challenge rating but the different connections that the NPCs share, as well as the web support already in place, make this a strong buy for any time pressed GM.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Skreyn's Register: The Bonds of Magic Vol 1, Cabal details 25 ready-to-run characters who use arcane magic and is released by Malhavoc Press.

Bonds of Magic Vol 1 is a 3.48 MB .pdf file for $5. The file is pretty easy on your printer with little in the way of graphics in the margin. The file does not make use of bookmarks, pop-up text or the ability to turn off illustrations available with the .pdf format. The characters are one-to-a-page and in alphabetical order but have no table listing them by CR, class and race - which would have been helpful if not essential. The 'internal' mono artwork is average to good, but not up to the usual high standards of Toren Atkinson - several of the characters look somewhat twisted (both in the 'psycho' sense or in the 'squeezed to meet the available space' sense). Writing style is straight to the point and earthy, without being inspirational. Editing seems good.

The twenty five characters are presented in enough detail to use them as PCs if required as well as NPCs. Each character has full stats including aspects such as base DCs for spells and explanations of special attacks or qualities where relevant, and ECLs for running them as PCs. As well as an introductory paragraph, each character has notes on personality, uses (adventure/campaign integration ideas and advice for running as a PC) and tactics (when in combat).

The characters range from CR 3 to CR 14, covering the gamut of standard PC races as well as a number of monstrous races such as drow, half-fiends, and liches. There are also characters that use the fleshbound vampire template, which can be found on Malhavoc's web site (though all the relevant information is contained within the character information). There are twelve wizards, twelve sorcerers, and one bard. There are no multi-class characters.

An appendix contains any new feats, spells and magic items included in the characters' descriptions. This contains 11 new spells, 17 magic items, and 1 feat (that allows a spellcaster to burn Constitution to force higher level spells into lower-level spell slots).

Conclusion:
If you're looking for an arcane villain, NPC mentor or ready-to-run PC, there is a good selection of fleshed-out characters to pick from here. I was disappointed by the lack of a 'by CR' table, that there was only a single bard character, the lack of multiclass characters, and I would have liked to see a few more tips for in-game interpersonal behaviour traits and operational (rather than just combat) tactics. But on the whole, there are some unusual and interesting characters presented here with a good selection of spells and magic items to boot. And enough information to use them ready-to-run in a campaign or adventure.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This is the first book in the series and covers 25 arcane spell users,
providing a GM with a collection fully detailed NPCs or possibly PCs if
the need arises.

This book is filled with interesting NPCs with fully detailed histories
that interact not only with other NPCs from this book but from Volume
2: Faithful as well. All the NPCs are on their own page, starting out
with a stat block followed up by a brief history. After that come
sections on personality, uses and finally tactics. Also included is a
picture that makes it easier to describe what the npc looks like. Each
npc also has a new spell, magic item or feat that helps to make them
unique.

This book uses a lot of different races half of them are not the
standard races. These races range from kobolds to undead and are of
various levels and CRs. Of the 25 NPCs in this book one is a generalist
wizard and one is a bard with the rest being split between specialist
wizards and sorcerers.

Each stat block not only lists the basic information but what spells
are memorized, domain spells and domains they know also included are
gear that they have magical and otherwise. There is also a listing of
what gear to give them if used as a PC.
The history of each npc not only gives you a background but also helps
to flesh out the personality on the npc. If need be you could use the
histories as one time adventures or with a little work as a campaign.

The personality section is only a paragraph long but offers a good
description of how the NPC or PC should be played. The thing I liked
about this section is that is takes the histories into account and
works to make them a part of how the person acts.
Following personality is the section on how to use the npc. This to is
only a paragraph long but gives you information on how to introduce the
npc to your group, reasons why the npc would be interested in your
group and ideas on using the NPCs as PCs.

Finally is tactics which details the general outline of what the NPCs
will do in combat, spells they use, who they attack, etc.
This book also includes 1 new feat, 15 new magic items and 11 new
spells. The feat Vitality Spellsource is a little weird it allows you
to use points of Con to prepare spells into a lower spell slot, while
not to powerful it does have the draw back of losing points of con
until you can rest. Most of the new magic items can be created with the
craft wondrous items feat and are not that powerful. The spells are
anywhere from levels one through fifth, with most being of first or
second level. Not all of the spells are limited to wizard/sorcerers two
can be used by druids and one by a bard.

Overall I liked this book; it has enough information for a GM to be
able to use the NPCs without much modification. With the added
advantage of being able to use the NPCs as PCs in case of emergency
makes it even better. With the histories that interact with the second
book Faithful you have a nice amount of NPCs that can be used together
to form rivaling adventuring parties or used separately as challenges
for your players. Also because each npc has her/her own special magic
item, spell or feat helps to make them more unique.