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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009721" data-attributes="member: 18387">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?</blockquote>

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