The Book of Eldritch Might

[Falkayn]

At only US$5.00 for 36 pages (admittedly 2 of those are the cover and the OGL) of new content from the one of the authors of the 3E DMG this is a great bargain!

I won't talk much about the qualty of the artwork (for me the photorealistic pieces distracted from the content) as this is a PDF download, not an actual physical book. Being Australian, I must say I appreciated the certainty of downloading a PDF document, even if I won't be able to print it in all it's coloured glory. There's nothing worse than ordering something over the internet and waiting two weeks for it to be deleivered!

Much of the content of this book has been developed to fit the 3 new prestige classes introduced by the author. And much of this depends upon your willingness to introduce new styles of magic into your campaign world. In this case the three new styles are:
1. Internalised elemental powers (fire is the examplem but you could use cold just as well).
2. Runes/Tattoos of power.
3. Magic mirrors (it's all done with smoke & mirors...)

For me, this made the new Feats and Prestige Classes less interesting than I had hoped.

The real meat in this supplement (13.5 pages) is the new spells section. Whilst some of them are connected to the prestige classes mentioned above, most aren't. My favourites are the ones surely inspired by Steven Brust's 'Jhereg' novels, Teleport Block, Teleport Coordinates Transfer, Teleport Redirect and Teleport Tracer. Other great spells are Mass Fly, Marks and Greater Marks and Greater Sleep. For me, having a pro work out the rules on these is beautiful, they are a definite addition to every campaign world of mine that uses D&D.

As well as the higher level spells, Monte has given us a number of 0th and 1st level spells (such as Minor Ward, Tongue of Angels and Guilt) that greatly enhance the usefulness of low-level spellcasters.

The magic item section is another great part of this supplement, and the Rods of Branding will definitely see use by the forces of Evil against PCs in many campaigns. A notable part of this section are the Magic Vehicles that Monte has dreamt up. The Bulette Walker, Diving Sphere, Psychic Skiff, War Altar and War Throne are great ideas and worth reading, even if you don't find an immediate use for them (I'm gonna get that War Throne into my campaign somehow!). The Magic Poisons were a little bit disappointing, particularly since this is what got me interested in the first place. Monte does not link his magical effects with particular natural poisons, leaving the whole concept a bit nebulous in my mind. But I will still use it. The Minor Artifacts are good, but like the prestige classes they may not fit your campaign world. Personally once you start defining something as an artifact, any DM can have a go at making one (they don't really need to be balanced).

Lastly is the new Monster Template, an area I glanced at but will probably not bother using, it is also freely available from Monte's website as a sample of this book.

Overall, I found this work very useful, and I am particularly pleased at the price. I would recommend it to any DM. Well done Monte!!!

 

[Psion]

The Book of Eldritch Might (the title page says the Book of Eldritch Magic, but Monte's Errata tells us it it is "Might". Talk about a strange bit of errata...) is a D20 electronic book from Malhavoc Press, the independant D20 vendor owned by DMG author Monte Cook.

As the name implies, the book is primarily focussed on arcane magic. The book is divided into sections detailing feats, prestige classes, spells, magic items, and a new monster template.

The feats are interesting, many of them a new type called Eldritch feats. To make a long story short, eldritch feats can enhance your magic (much like spell focus can) or give you special abilities, but they may be selected with wizard bonus feats. They do not require additional spell level slots like metamagic spells do. This will make them very attractive for arcane spellcasters and especially wizards. They are simple but imaginiative. The are a variety of lace spell feats that add special properties to your spells, such as adding elemental energy to single target spells, making them more effective against certain target types, and so on.

One of the more imaginative ones that I likes was Item Image, which allows the character to make a tattoo that can store a specific magic item and boost the recipient's ability with the item.

There are also item creation feats that let you make magical poisons (described later in the book) and etch runes on items that can be used like scrolls.

There are three prestige classes in the book, all thematic arcane spellcasters: the embermage (a fire themed spellcaster), the graven one (wears magical tattoos) and the mirror master (a mirror themed mage). All take the same basic approach -- they have some significant class abilities and advance in their old spellcasting capabilities every odd level, which is a fair compromise between the likes of the loremaster (which some claim are overpowering) and classes without spellcasting advancement (which seriously hinder any arcane spellcaster).

These prestige classes are the best I've seen Monte turn out. Considering that the ones he has made to date are pretty good to begin with, that is no mean assessment.

The spells consume the bulk of the book. Many are outgrowths or extensions of existing spells, like greater sleep. However, there are other totally fresh spells. Many are part of a theme or collection. The Mark spells, for example, grant abilities related to a given element or energy type. There is also a fair selection of mixed element attack spells like Flaming Corrosion (inflict fire and acid damage) and icebolt (acid and impact). Many stand alone and most of are interesting and functional.

The magic items fall into the traditional categories for the most part. Monte introduces magical poisons, which can be (or in some cases, must be) added to mundane poisons and inflict hideous or useful effects on the target, ranging from preventing raising the victim, removing memories, inflicting additional damage, and more.

If you liked magical machines like the Apparatus of Kwalish, the book features a selection of new magical vehicles among the magic items.

The remainder fall along traditional lines, but like the spells are interesting and useful. For example, there is a whole category of rods called Rods of Branding, which can bestow a magical mark with detrimental effects on a helpless target.

The last section of the book contains a new template: magical construct. This template gives DMs a technique for making constructs that resemble existing creatures, along with two sample constructs. They don't have DR or the immunities of golems that all constructs don't have. But they do have a considerable armor class and keep most of their abilities... so you can have fire breathing dragon constructs or beholder constructs with eye beams.

Drawbacks -- there are a few editorial mistakes, like 2e movement stats for some of the magical vehicles and some copy and paste errors in the magic items. As others have mentioned, the layout should be more printer friendly. As it is, the header design is going to be an ink hog for those wishing to print it out.

Further, I regretted that so little of this book was OGC. Only the template and stuff that is directly descended for SRD material (frex, greater sleep) are opened as OGC.

Does that knock it out of the running for a "5"? No. This is still a great bargain, with lots of imaginiative material with excellent rules execution, and you can put it on a disk or a laptop. For $5, I think this is a fantastic value.

News flash!

Monte has released an update program on his site. It requires that you have the original program, but fixes many of the problems such as the incorrect title page, flubs in spell and item descriptions. Free, clean errata! You've got to love that, and this only heightens my support for PDF medium stuff.

 

[The Sigil]

The Book of Eldritch Might was Monte Cook/Malhavoc Press' debut onto the d20 scene (as an independent publisher) and is a sourcebook for arcane spellcasters of all stripes.

OGC Designation: Not too good. New Monsters and "all material wholly derived from the d20 SRD." That second phrase is always problematic because it's redundant (in the OGL anyway) and unclear. Given that Monte is not a lawyer and this is his first OGL/d20 foray, I won't hold this against him here.

First Impressions: This is the book that essentially launched the entire PDF-as-RPG-Supplement industry. There were releases prior to the BoEM but none had an impact even remotely comparable, as the BoEM immediately established that the PDF industry was indeed viable. Production value was superb, the content was excellent, and the price was right. For that in and of itself, the Book of Eldritch Might deserves a place in the annals of d20 lore. While I loved this book, I did feel that there were a few things that appeared to be "stuff left on the cutting-room floor of the DMG" and a few "inspired by Magic cards" items (more on these in a bit). Nonetheless, this was not really an annoyance as these were (thankfully) few and far between.

Initial Annoyances: The vagueness OGC designation bothered me - I can't stress enough that it's important to me that there be no ambiguity whatsoever as to what is and is not OGC (and in a conversation with Monte, he told me that there is indeed ambiguity in the designation). Other than that, the only real annoyance is the lack of an ink-saving version - though those who view this product on-screen only or have an inexpensive means of printing it *cough work cough* aren't going to have that hangup.

Content Breakdown:

Off the bat, Monte presents us with a hatful of Feats, including a new type of Feat - the "Eldritch" Feat (which can be taken in lieu of a Metamagic or Item Creation Feat if a class grants those as bonus feats). In general, these provide special bonuses to spells or spell-like abilities, such as Conjure Mastery (any creature you summon gains a +2 bonus to Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution) or Lace Spell: Elemental Energies (when casting a single-target spell, you can add +1d6 points of energy damage, such as electricity, to the spell). "Lace" Feats also exist to add damage against a specific enemy (an especially neat idea for a ranger character to use in conjunction with his Favored Enemy) or can be laced with "alignment" energy (law/chaos/holy/unholy). Most of the Feats provide moderate and well-defined bonuses. I do have deep reservations about the Item Image Feat, however; it allows the character with the Feat to scribe a tattoo on himself or others that allow the character to carry a magic item (though not use it, and each tattoo is specific to one magic item). The character with the tattoo may call forth or store the item as a free action, and furthermore, the item gains extra magical enhancement. There is no XP cost, only a gp cost (1/10 of the item's value) for this. I would have had no problem with all of this if the tattoo had taken up a chakra (item slot) on the character's body or even if characters were limited to, say, four tattoos. However, as written, the character can have unlimited tattoos... the potential for abuse is great, to say the least.

After wrapping up a couple of pages of Feats, we move into Prestige Classes: The Ember Mage, the Graven One, and the Mirror Master. The embermage is Monte's take on the "fire mage" stereotype, but with a twist - the character must have been killed (or nearly so) by fire. The extremity of this experience bonds the mage to fire, and a character who takes this class literally begins to have fire coursing through his veins. Most of the character's abilities center around fire, heat, and flame, specifically with the mage projecting flame (or burning blood) from various parts of his body. A nice variant, but nothing too out of the ordinary. The graven one is a little more off the beaten path; this is a mage whose power centers around runes - including (and especially) runes carved into his own body! The graven one can gain ability score enhancements, natural armor, spell or damage resistance, or other benefits has he scrivens runes upon his own body (the power of the abilities he can gain is dependent upon his level and Int modifier). Furthermore, the graven one has the ability to scribe tattoos that transform into animals (sort of a free summoning spell) on himself as well. This class has what the Item Image Feat did not - a limit on the number of runes/tattoos the character can scribe on himself, so I see no major issues here. Finally, the mirror master is essentially a diviner who specializes in seeing and affecting things remotely through mirrors, allowing him to do more than just scry, but to interact (assuming there is a mirror in the vicinity). Not so exciting for PCs, but can make for an excellent NPC (friend or foe).

The meat of the book, new spells, follows the prestige classes. Two commonly recurring themes are found here - half-and-half damage spells (such as Coldscream or Flaming Corrosion, 4th level spells that does 1d6 damage/level up to 10d6; half the damage is sonic, half is cold for Coldscream, while Flaming Corrosion is half fire, half acid) and "Mark" spells - spells that place a special mark on a creature and provide it with a bonus of some sort but allow the recipient to voluntarily end the effect early for a one-shot spell effect (as an example, Mark of Earth provides a +2 enhancement bonus to strength but may be terminated early to conjure and throw a large mass of rock that inflicts 5d6 damage if it hits). These reminded me very much of mechanics available in Magic: The Gathering cards (this is not necessarily a bad thing, I just thought it was interesting that I immediately thought of Magic cards on reading these spells). There is also a small selection of spells that deal with teleport spells (Teleport Block, for instance, prevents teleporting into or out of an area, while Teleport Redirect creates an area where the caster of Teleport Redirect - not the caster of a subsequent teleport spell - chooses where any subsequent attempt to teleport out of the area will end up). Finally, Freezing Claw allows you to literally freeze your enemies solid and introduces a new state that a character can be in - Frozen. "Frozen creatures remain alive but cannot take actions. They stay frozen until they suffer 20 points of fire damage, after which point they are free (but sustain the 20 points of damage)." Nifty little gem that a casual reading might miss. I'm sure I'll find other things that can Freeze a character, too *evil laugh*.

Monte then provides a nice selection of new magical items, including some that appear to have been left on the cutting room floor at WotC such as the Mirror of Vanity (check out the equipment for the NPC Bards in the DMG). The ring of red conjures and ring of blue conjures are fascinating for a summoner - creatures summoned by the wearer gain a bonus to AC Constitution and, in the case of blue, to Strength. Wandwrap is a very nifty wondrous item that can be wrapped around a wand - spells cast from the wand pull charges from the wandwrap instead of the wand itself (the wandwrap has 50 charges). A must-have for the sorcerer or wizard with a unique wand (or one beyond his current ability to fashion) who doesn't want to burn its last charge and lose its capabilities.

We then get a chapter on Magic Poisons - these carry a magical effect instead of (or as well as) simply assaulting the ability scores of a victim (for instance, Heartthief forces a Will Save DC 16 or the victim loses all memory of the person closest to him, while Shrivelsoul magically ages the corpse of a victim upon death by one year, precluding raise dead spells).

Also, we are presented with a small group of Artifacts. Of these, I found Liquid Power to be the most intriguing - on drinking it, a character gains 6d6x100 "virtual" XP that do not advance him levels; they can only be used to create items or power spells with an XP cost (these last until used). Cool stuff.

The book concludes by presenting a new template - the Magical Construct. This template is of use for creating stone or metal construct versions of other creatures. A solid addition to the templates already out there, if not necessarily mind-numbingly creative (this sort of idea was old hat to me at least).

Presentation: The BoEM is slightly cluttered - there are no clear section breaks and one topic moves right into the next without warning (much like the creature entries Monster Manual). Graphically, it is very nice-looking, with fair to decent black-and-white artwork inside and nice borderwork on the page. Conspicuously absent are bookmarks, a major advantage of a PDF publication, though its brevity (36 pages) does help mitigate the need for bookmarks somewhat.

Conclusion: At the end of the day, there is a reason that the BoEM basically gave rise to the PDF industry as we know it today. While it may not match more recent PDFs in terms of OGL clarity, features (such as providing an ink-saving version or being extensively bookmarked), artwork, or diversity of content, it is the benchmark by which all subsequent PDF releases has been measured. It is certainly a worthy benchmark. If it were released today, it would probably still garner a 4/5, but we must judge it compared its "contemporaries" - and there really is no comparison there. This is easily "superb" (5/5) material.

--The Sigil
November 20, 2002

 

[Messageboard Golem]

A very solid book, although quite short.

This was, as with many, my introduction into buying PDF d20 product. It definitely set the baseline for the industry, but not as the "best" in the field, but definitely as the benchmark piece.

The book is a (seemingly) fairly random assortment of arcane magics, with a minor emphasis on teleportation, mirrors and tattoos. The overall layout is good to average, but the sections seem to "bleed" into one another, thus encouraging the "random assortment" feeling of the book. The art is alright, but VERY low resolution and looks ugly when printed. I printed mine at a professional print shop and had it bound, which tripled the price of the book.. and now I fear I will have to do so again since Monte has released a patch for the book which totally changes the layout and art...

It starts off with new feats, including the "Edtritch" feats. Eldritch Feats are a nice idea for arcane spellcasters, granting them additional bonuses on certain types of spells (like metamagics) but not requiring the enhanced spell level of a metamagic feat. The main requirement for these feats are very high stats, and this bothers me since it seems to reward those characters with excessively high stats and deny these bonuses to those who lack these stats, as if having such good stats wasn't reward enough of itself. But this is a minor problem with a good idea.

Then we hit the prestige classes. Ember Mage is a fairly typical "fire wizard" type of class, Graven One is a nice "Tattood Mage" alternate, and "Mirror Master" feels like a ready-built villain or protagonist for a game (or from someone's campaign).

The majority of the book, of course, is spells. Some interesting spells, with some being significantly more usefull to the average mage than the ones in the PHB. While the spells are good and unique, I feel that several of them are too potent for their level such as:
- Several spells deal half-and-half damage (half fire, half sonic or half fire, half acid) which means they are at least partially effective against just about any monster, even those immune to one energy type.
- The Mark Spells are interesting tattoo-like spells that grant one bonus (usually +2 to an ability score) for 1 hour / level and can be ended prematurely to trigger a different effect. Once these were introduced, they replaced MANY of the core spells at level 2 for my players. Especially those that convert over into attack spells so the spellcaster doesn't have to actually CAST the spell in combat, just has to end the stat bonus of the spell to launch an attack...
But a majority of the spells are on the money, and work well and introduce new ideas, including a batch of teleport trackers, teleport following, teleport blocking and so on, for high-level magical chase scenes.

Magic Items include some true gems who's themes later appear in Tome & Blood - magic items that enhance spellcasting abilities that the bearer already has.

Magic Poisons are a great addition to the poison rules, particularly since many assassins pick up other arcane spellcasting classes once they learn the power of spells. These are poisons with two effects, they act as a regular poison, but also deal an additional effect like aging the target.

The Magical Template at the back of the book almost feels like an afterthought, as it is the only monster in the book. It allows for making stone or metal construct equivalents of monsters. It's not particularly amazing, but a classic piece of fantasy lore... Iron Cockatrice anyone?

 

[migo]

This review originally appeared on RPG.net

This book is essentially a splat book, the "front" and "back" "covers" (pages 1 and 48) are full colour and the illustration is quite appropriate. The "interior" contents are black and white up to page 45, 46 and 47 are ads for other Malhavoc Press products, one notable being "The Complete Book of Eldritch Might" which is 224 pages, so I assume it has at least the contents of this book as well as CBOEM 2 and 3. I would factor that in to the decision to buy this PDF. There were a few illustrations throughout the book to spice things up but it's mostly text content. I really liked the layout, it had nice style to it but it wasn't intrusive. Speaking of intrusive, unlike some RPG books the background is all white which makes for easy reading and economical printing. There wasn't anything that jumped out and really grabbed me about the style, but it was very professionally done so it gets a 4 out of 5 on style.


Contents, it's a splat book so it gets straight into the crunch after a neat introduction from Malhavoc. Overall I liked that while most of the content was just useful stats they sneaked in some flavour content here and there so it's not as bland as some splat books can be.


Chapter one is Eldritch Feats. 11 feats are provided, a few of them are really neat, I particularly liked Mirror Sight which allows you to look into a mirror and see out another one. That's definitely cool and something you usually don't see in feats. I liked the Lace Spell feats as well, but as there were four of them which were pretty similar I wish they'd just done it as a single feat with four variations of it, I think they could have probably cut a page by doing so, either making it a bit quicker of a read or getting a few more feats in. The one thing I really didn't like about the feats is that they all had really high ability requirements to be eligible to get them, requirements were usually 17 with one that required 15 and the other that required 19(!). That's just a bit high for a system which randomly generates stats. I would probably houserule that the stat needed to be four less than what was listed and they'd be just about perfect. Other than that I don't really have gripes with the feats.


Chapter 2 is Prestige Classes. Three new prestige classes are offered, Ember Mage, Graven One and The Mirror Master. The Ember Mage has some similarities to the fire mage prestige class in the DMG but there's still plenty that sets it appart. The most significant aspect of these three prestige classes is they really have flavour to them. They also have some neat abilities, for instance the Ember Mage essentially has burning blood so he can chose to cut himself and deal fire damage to everyone within 5 feet, at higher levels this is automatic if someone within 5 feet cuts him. The Graven One is essentially a tattood wizard who can get some pretty neat tattoos out of it. The Graven One makes use of several of the feats provided in chapter one. A couple abilities really stood out to me, one was being able to create a tattoo that allowed the Graven One to deal 1 Con damage (no save) any time he deals damage with an attack or spell for 24 hours after which the tattoo fades (although it could be re-applied each day, at the expense of the other tattoos that are also available which might be more useful in some situations). The Mirror Master obviously makes use of the aforementioned Mirror Sight feat, he has other powers that make use of mirors, such as re-rolling saves vs gaze attacks (a Medusa's worst nightmare). At higher levels the Mirror Master can step through mirrors mimicking dimension door, teleport and plane shift. All the prestige classes gain new spells on odd levels. All the prestige classes were well balanced, they have some powerful abilities at higher levels, but that's what high level characters are supposed to have anyway. I'd definitely consider using any of these classes. That's a nice improvement over the DMG where I'd only really consider the Arcane Trickster or the Archmage at epic levels.


Chapter 3 is Spells, 15 pages of new spells. Most of the spells are for Wizards and Sorcerers but a few spells are also provided for other spellcasting classes as well if they are appropriate. Like the prestige classes and the feats these spells have flavour. Some are entirely new, like Guilt which causes evil creatures to lose one action while others are variations on existing spells, such as a couple variations on lightning bolt. Several of the spells are also specifically targetted for the prestige classes - there are quite a few mirror and tattoo/mark spells, new fire spells while there weren't too noticable as they were included in other elemental spells. Most of the spells are combat oriented, they're familiar in some fashions but they have some interesting twists to them. Any group will be able to find quite a few useful spells, although depending on play styles some will be able to make use of more than others.


Chapter 4 is Magic Items. There's also a fair amount of magic items, none are completely useless but some are obviously more useful than others. A few of them are variations of existing items but most are completely new. I found the most useful items would be the rods of branding, which can impose a certain effect (depending on the type of rod) that lasts 5d10 days and offers no save (although it requires a target that can be coup de graced, and can only be used once a day). Some of the powers could be quite useful, such as a domination effect for enemies. The True Rest rod was also notable, as for the duration it prevents the person branded from being raised, animated or turned into an undead, I imagine it would be a very useful item for Vampire hunters, as it basically ensures that any of the members that fall won't rise as Vampires.


Chapter 5 is Magical Constructs. Constructs are similar to Golems, but the Magical Construct is a template that can be applied to any monster or animal. It provides rules for creating constructs as well, the first thing I thought of when I read this is that it was Trobriand's wet dream. Anyone who's read Undermountain will know what I'm talking about. Needless to say, it's cool.


The appendix includes the OGL, as well as a random rune generator. It provides options for 31,160 different runes/tattoos in just two pages. Both GMs and players will find it handy just for adding some unique distinguishing characteristics, and obviously Graven Ones will love it as well.


This is following a rather depressing trend in RPG products these days of not including an index. A spell index is integrated into the table of contents, as are the feats and prestige classes, but the magic items section gets the shaft in this department. This would have been a good use of the extra page provided if the Lace Spell feats had been condensed. As it is it's still quite usable as everything is listed categorically and alphabetically, but it seems that RPG makers are forgetting how useful a good, complete index can be, or they just don't care - I hope it's the former.


Considering it's a splat book the content is quite good, there's a lot of material to work with from the 42 or so pages of actual content, but the lack of an index really bugs me as a good index makes the content more accessible and a bad or non-existent one makes it less accessible. So it gets a 4 out of 5 on substance.