The Book of Hallowed Might

[Messageboard Golem]

Those who wield power channeled from the gods command the very forces of creation. The Book of Hallowed Might offers exciting options for workers of divine magic, including over 100 new spells, classes, magic items, feats, and more. Plus, the book includes an all-new look at the paladin class.

The Book of Hallowed Might supercharges your divine spellcasters, from clerics and priests to paladins, druids, and rangers. And they will need that extra edge when it comes time to face off against the vilest forces of evil...

Make Yours be the Strength of the Heavens!

 

[GameWyrd]

There’s nothing quite like a sales pitch to put me off buying a book. In this case we’re told that The Book of Hallowed Might will supercharge divine spellcasters. If that were true then I’d be tossing the book out the window. Except, of course, I can’t toss this particular instance of Hallowed Might out of the window since it’s a PDF product and my computer is too precious. Fortunately, there’s no supercharging, Monte Cook does what he’s especially good at and introduces a wider range of rules and maintains game balance. As a matter of fact, variant rules in the Book of Hallowed Might are presented early on as a way to improve on game balance from the core rules. The variant Ranger class in the supplement is not the one already available for free at MonteCook.com. That’s one thing the PDF could do better, it could hyperlink the Internet addresses.

The Book of Hallowed Might is rather like the first two books of Eldritch Might. Rather than studying arcane magic and spellcasters Hallowed Might looks at divine magic. This supplement, however, focuses heavily on good aligned divine spellcasters when it comes to the mechanics. One new domain is introduced and that’s Light. Feats include the likes of Vow of Poverty but never the likes of a Vow of Perversity. The new creatures in the book are Angels and Blessed Children. Blessed Children are the spirits of the not yet born and are supposed to be the opposite of the undead. I really do like that sort of thing, I have lots of fun playing around with forms of undead and their opposites and Blessed Children are as good a suggestion as anything else I’ve seen. GMs will have to watch the implication though; everyone’s born pure and innocent. They become evil later. You can scrap that implication and allow the risk of calling on an evil Blessed Child but if there are such creatures then they’re not mentioned here.

Issues of alignment are addressed with an even hand in the first chapter. The scaling of alignment is particularly successful here, successful enough to overshadow the earlier quick discussion of the responsibilities and duties of good clerics and churches. We’re taken through the discussion of responsibilities partly to help stop good clerics from being "walked all over". It’s a fair observation; clerics are expected to heal the party without protest. It may sound like counter intuitive logic but giving clerics even more duties can actually be employed as a limitation on their willingness and even ability to heal or resurrect people. I’m not so keen on the (albeit quick) suggestion that perhaps people only have a number of lives and can only be resurrected that number of times. A rule like that seems to lend itself too heavily to having to restart the dungeon at the beginning if you die unless you’ve saved the game recently. On the other hand, I welcome alignment scaling with arms wide open. Alignments do not need to be points on an ethical compass but a scale between extremes. Good 9 is "more good" than Good 1. In fact, Good 1 is barely good at all. This rule suggestion is designed to cover these all too common problems when someone can accurately describe himself as "I’m a good person but if someone attacks me, I’m going to fight back – and not pull any punches." There’s no Neutral 9 to Neutral 1 though, there is just Neutral. It makes truly neutral people very rare indeed. I think this is a much more mature system than the vanilla D&D rules. It would have been better to introduce adjectives to describe the alignment scale rather than numbers; for example, strongly good or weakly good. Then it would be a carbon copy of the house rules one of my gaming groups have been using since the dawn of 3rd edition. I might just be bias. This scaling does not sit so well if you’re using alignment to define where someone stands in the planar Blood War. Are you allied with demonic forces? Kinda.

Paladins also receive some treatment in the first chapter. There’s a variant Paladin class that Monte feels is worth progressing above 8th level. More interestingly there are short rules that amend the class so it’s possible to play a Paladin dedicated to a particular deity rather than just goodness in general.

There are three prestige classes. The Blessed Prelate is suitable for characters with a good alignment. These people strive to please their gods (more so than mere clerics, it seems) and are able to summon Blessed Children. The Hallowed Mage also requires a good alignment and is an attempt to make divine-arcane multi-classing worthwhile. In a designer’s sidebar Monte takes the example of comparing a Wiz10/Clr10 to either a Wiz10 or Clr10. Being able to cast both Cone of Cold and Cure Critical Wounds does not compensate for the loss of either Wish or Miracle. He’s right of course; he generally always is on such issues. Surely, though, players have stopped picking character levels for the spells it might bring by the time they’ve left high school. Players pick classes appropriate to the development of their character in the story. Right? Right?? Oh very well then, you’ll love the Hallowed Mage and it’s cleverly thought out spell list. You don’t need to have a good alignment to meet the requirements for the last prestige class – the Knights of the Pale. You’re required to be neither chaotic nor evil.

Blessed feats and Oath feats are new. There are plenty of traditional style feats in the chapter too. It’s easy enough to find feats that "Improve-Advance-Enhance-Extend" abilities and skills but there are some refreshing and interesting feats too. The chapter makes a good start with the Accolade feat. Characters with the feat are able to "knight" people (although not very often) and this gives the new knight dice-rolling bonuses. If the knight does poorly or unhonourably then it’s the giver of the accolade who suffers a dice-rolling penalty. Blessed feats are supernatural abilities. You’ll find the list of Vow feats in here. If you manage to maintain a Vow of Chastity then you’re blessed with a +4 divine bonus to saving throws against disease and poison. The vows are all based on the sort of thing you’d expect from medieval Christian monks. I’d expect a medieval European monk to have a vow of chastity. I wouldn’t expect a cleric of Freyja to. I wouldn’t expect any cleric to maintain a Vow of Silence – but there are rules for that if you want to introduce an extremely frustrating NPC. Oath feats are dependant on sworn oaths. You guessed, huh? You need to have the Swear An Oath feat before you can look at the likes of Oath of Magic or Oath of Combat.

Let there be light. There you have it, a brand new domain. The spell descriptions start on page 29 (only 50 pages in this book, by the way) and finish at page 39. Ten pages of Monte Cook spells alone are worth the US$6.00 the Hallowed Might PDF costs.

I’m less fond of pages of magic items and weapons but they’re here and probably deserve to be here. Not all the space in this chapter is filled up with specific weapons that may or may not be suitable for your game. Wisely, there are rules for generic special abilities that might be associated with divinely enchanted armour and weapons.

The stats for Blessed Children and Angels come in to finish off the download. Blessed Children have four different sizes - Balsam, Dayod, Fealom and Hallas. Angels are nicely linked with elements so the DM is blessed with stats and descriptions for the Angels of the Winds, Angels of the Waves or Angels of Stone. The inclusion of eight new creatures in this supplement is justified. You’ll want them.

There’s food for thought and numbers to crunch in The Book of Hallowed Might. There are enough of both to please most types of gamers but there’s more of the latter. The PDF is easy to read and print off. I printed it without bother and read it on the screen without fuss. Malhavoc Press stick to their tried and tested layout of lightweight sidebars and illustrations. It might be getting a little boring now but it remains practical. If you’re interested in the variant classes, new prestige classes (for good alignments), new spells, items or the friendly creatures then the Book of Hallowed Might has something for you. It might not laden with game enhancements if you’re only interested in one or two of those topics but on the whole this supplement is good value for money, DM friendly and well thought out.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Sammael]

I wouldn't describe myself as a "fan" of Monte Cook in the sense that I have both liked some of his products and disliked others, but I do recognise him as an important RPG writer. With this in mind, I was intrigued enough by the various Books of Eldritch Might to purchase and peruse them. I decided to go for the Book of Hallowed Might after seeing a few comments on the Messageboards here. I benefited from the special offer which allowed me to purchase this 48 page product at $6. Since that's less than the average magazine I'm likely to buy at the newsstand, it would be hard to judge the product in terms of value for money, so I'll judge it on it own merits below.

First of all, I'm glad that Monte decided to focus on Divine spellcasting a bit. A lot of the supplements out there, especially supplements providing more spells, focus mainly on Arcane magic, even if they profess otherwise. The BoHM is a bit more focused than that though, since it addresses the divine magic from a definite "holy" angle and therefore a lot of the material is geared towards good-aligned characters. No complain from me on this, since again, a lot of supplements out these days focus on the bad and the ugly. It's a nice thing to see the good in there too !

OK, so what do you get in there ? The first chapter focuses on Divine Spellcasters in Campaigns, ie. how to integrate divine spellcasters, where does their power come from, what social roles do clerics play, etc. This chapter is kind of a hodge-podge, briefly mentioning a lot of diverse subjects but rarely going into any depth. This was kind of a disappointment considering that very little of this has been covered in generic resources (like the WotC DMG.) This could have been more of an idea mine than it is. I would especially have liked for Monte to go in a lot more depth on the impact of resurrection magic in a campaign and various options to either live with it or change it, and the consequences of these options.

You do get some crunch in here as well, with an alternate ranger (essentially a slightly less front-loaded and less-specialised one). There's nothing very exciting about it, and that's how it should be IMO. I'll certainly be using this variant from now on. The alternate Paladin was, in my opinion, unnecessary, but then again I don't like the idea of the Paladin as a core class, so who am I to judge. There's also an alignment variant which brings in "shades of grey". I don't really see the need for such a mechanic, but others may. On the whole it's well conceived, but again, nothing revolutionary...

Chapter Two presents the obligatory Prestige Classes. Monte's prestige classes in previous supplements have been of varied quality and usefulness, and the BoHM is no exception. The Blessed Prelate is a good concept, makes a nice (if rare) NPC class for living figures of religious significance. I'm not entirely convinced by the abilities that go with it (not unbalanced, just unconvincing), especially the ability to Summon Blessed Children (a monster described later in the BoHM) which is essentially a combat-enhancement ability, very unlike what the class seems to be about. The Hallowed Mage is a purely mechanical concept of combining arcane and divine magic with no power loss. As such, it's pretty weak from a background point of view and uninteresting to me. The Knight of the Pale on the other hand, is pretty cool, being linked to the great heroes and saints of the past and being able to let themselves be inhabited temporarily by their traits. The "suites" of abilty represented by the various saints are pretty cool and make sense. Good one there.

Chapter Three presents the Feats and this is where the books shines the most. Unlike the overly complex and/or specific feats of the first two BoEMs, the feats presented here are not only useful and sexy, but, for the most part, they actually fill a non-combat function which is refreshing ! Vows and Oaths, in particular, are very nice additions, giving bonuses based on a ceratin abstinence (Vows) or linked to a specific goal (Oaths). The Fealty mechanic also is very nice, adding an in-game mechanic (and incentive) to such Oaths. The rest of the feats are mainly religious feats, and make sense in the context of a church hierarchy or church objectives. Considering that the choice of feats for non combat-oriented Clerics in the PHB is very poor, this is a most weclome addition. There are 20 feats in all, and they're all good an useful.

Chapter Four focuses on Spells. It starts with a new domain, Light, a surprising ommission from the Core Rulebooks. Overall, the spells presented are designed with the good-aligned cleric in mind, and they're nice and balanced. A few of them I liked a lot, like the Aeonian Lantern a permanent light that hinders Evil creatures, or Ethereal Prison and its variants that allow the magical imprisonment of enemies in various locales (the sun, a pond, the ethereal plane, etc.). On the whole, these are valuable additions to any campaign.

Chapter Five describes new Magic Items. On the whole I'm not keen on additional magic items in supplements. There's already way too many of these in the DMG for my own use, so I'll freely admit I didn't read this chapter with all the attention required for a serious review. There are some cool concepts, but nothing that made me want to use it immediately. Some of the new properties are a bit too much, or a bit too specific, and some introduce yet more mechanics, which I'm not keen on (Enough book-keeping in 3E as it is !) Since it's only three pages long, though, I won't complain.

Finally, the book closes on Creatures. You get Angels of the Elements (of the usual four kinds) and Blessed Children, souls of beings not yet born and therefore parangons of purity. Interesting concepts both, but again, do we need yet more outsiders ? I guess it's up to each DM to decide whether he wants to use this or not, but I didn't find anything stunning enough in there to make me want to do so.

Overall, I'd say BoHM is a great buy for any DM and for players of good-aligned clerics. Although there is some stuff in there for Druids, Rangers and Paladins, there's not enough to justify getting the book just for that. Monte Cook's usual attention to game balance issues means that there is little that seems overpowered in here, which is a comforting thought for any DM who doesn't have time to review the hundreds of spells, feats and prestige classes that we usually see out players bring to the table.

 

[Psion]

Book of Hallowed Might

The Book of Eldritch Might series of books by Monte Cook expanded upon the role of arcane spellcasters in d20 System fantasy games with new prestige classes, items, and spells. This left players of divine spellcasters wondering "where is the love."

Well here it is. The Book of Hallowed Might is a collection of prestige classes, feats, spells, and rules variants by DMG author Monte Cook targeted at divine spellcasters.

A First Look

The Book of Hallowed Might is distributed in PDF format as a 50 page document, including a front and back cover page and an ad, so essentially you are getting 47 pages of content. The book is available at www.rpgnow.com at the seemingly permanent sale price of $6.00, which is fairly reasonable. The cover price of $8.00 is less reasonable.

The front cover is illustrated by rk post, notable Wizards of the Coast alumni artist responsible for work on the Alternity and Planescape lines, the Diablo II adaptations, and Dragon magazine. The cover depicts two holy characters (apparently a cleric and a paladin) facing off with a black masked staff-wielding villain with glowing skeletal creatures behind him.

The interior art is black and white, and features art by another WotC alumni, Arnie Swekel. The art is generally good, and is similar in style to the sketches that adorn nearly every D&D 3e hardbound book.

The document makes good use of PDF format features, including a fairly complete selection of bookmarks.

A Deeper Look

The Book of Hallowed Might is organized into six chapters, with individual chapters on the divine spellcasting classes, prestige classes, feats, spells, magic items, and creatures.

The first chapter talks about the basic divine spellcasting classes provided in the d20 System fantasy rules, the druid, ranger, cleric, and paladin. The section provides discussion of common issues with these classes and how to handle them as well as rules variants.

Each class receives a fairly informative and thoughtful discussion of what roles they might play in a game and how a GM might define that role. For example, clerics might have certain holy days or strictures.

The rules variants come in two types: general variants, and variant classes.

The most enticing of the general variants is intended to make life restoring magic less accessible by adding cost to the cost of such spells. I do intend to use these rules myself, but feel it would have been more functional if the describe costs were component costs instead of merely NPC cost boosts, as that way it would have a meaningful impact for PC divine spellcasters as well as NPCs.

Another significant variant is a set of variant alignment rules. The variant alignment rules "grade" a character's alignment for each of the four cardinal alignments (good, evil, chaos, and law). A character can have a rating for good or evil from 1 to 9, and a similar rating for law and chaos. Each rating has a general meaning as far as the character's general behavior and attitude. Depending on the rating, alignment affecting spells and effects may affect the character more or less than under the core system.

Variants are provided for both the ranger and the paladin class. Ranger variants are legion since D&D 3e came out, so few would argue the necessity of one here. However, the ranger described here is not the previous ranger variant that Monte posted on his website. Indeed, this one seems rather more balanced. The Book of Hallowed Might ranger is not front-loaded with two-weapon fighting feats, but instead receives a good reflex save progression and bonus feats at every fourth level. All-in-all, the ranger presented here is a reasonable variant.

The need for the paladin variant seems less urgent to me, however. The general argument is that the paladin lags behind at high level, a phenomenon that I cannot say has been a problem for the paladin in the high level game that I recently wrapped up. The Book of Hallowed Might paladin receives extra smites at high level, as well as receiving additional free magic bonuses with a "special weapon." This latter benefit is not likely to amount to much, as a paladin usually has access to better weapons by that level at any rate.

Perhaps a bit more appealing is the idea of "alternate paladins," i.e., paladins of alignments other than Lawful Good. The rules here provide different abilities and names for neutral good and chaotic good paladins. This concept has been tried elsewhere. Most recently similar concepts have appeared in Green Ronin's Book of the Righteous and AEG's Good, but Dragon magazine featured articles on a similar concept as far back as the 1st edition of the game. Of the current incarnations, I must say I prefer the approach of the Book of the Righteous to this books, as that book not only allows the character to modify the abilities of a holy warrior type character for alignment, but for deity.

The second chapter introduces three new prestige classes:
-Blessed Prelate: The blessed prelate is a cleric or monk who has attained a special state of righteousness and/or enlightenment. The blessed prelate has impugned spellcating advancement, but a number of bonus feats as well as a growing ability to summon a new sort of outsider called the blessed child (see below).
-Hallowed Mage: The hallowed mage is an arcane/divine spellcasting hybrid. The character does not have continued spellcasting advancement. Rather, it has its own spellcasting progression and its own spell list, which is a specialized hybrid of cleric and wizard/sorcerer lists. The characters spellcasting progression starts out at 4th level, but the character has to be able to cast 3rd level spells in an arcane and a divine spell to qualify for the class. This is an interesting concept, but might strike some GMs a bit wrong.
-Knight of the Pale: This is primarily a class for paladins. The essential concept is that the Knight of the Pale receives abilities corresponding to a number of saints that existed in the past. As the character advances, he gains access to a number of named suites. At higher levels come the more powerful suites. Each day, the character can select one of the suites and gain all of its benefits for the day. The suites vary according to the theme of the saint. For example, the protector of the just suite provides a cure spell and defensive abilities, an the judgement from above suite provides a flight spell use and bonuses against outsiders. This is probably the best conceived of the classes herein.

The feats chapter is probably the most exemplary chapter of the book, but even it has a few not so great entries.

Feats are divided into three types: general, blessed, and oath.

The general feats are pretty typical of feats that you would find in third party d20 System products, such as favored enemy smite or favored enemy critical strike, which provide improved combat abilities against a ranger's favored enemy.

The feats I like least among these are tempt, reform, and redeem. These feats allow a character to change the alignment of a target so long as they are allowed to communicate with the target for sufficient time. These attempts are resolved with will saves opposed by the character's diplomacy skill ranks. As skill ranks increase at twice the rate of will saves at best, using these feats will become entirely too easy at high level. Further, I find that using will saves is too cut and dry a system for such a daunting task. Such a conversion seems like it would warrant a more complex system (like that in Monagoose's Encyclopaedia Arcane: Enchantment) and/or a bigger role of roleplaying.

However, the Oath and Blessed feats are very good ideas, and are great additions to any game that uses concepts of divine right.

Blessed feats grant supernatural abilities. Some blessed feats require the character to have the turn undead abilities. Others require the character to take a vow of some sort; so long as the character keeps the vow, the benefits are gained. For example, the vow of silence feat gives the character a +2 insight bonus to all wisdom and intelligence based checks and saves so long as the vow is kept.

The Oath feats require the character to swear a very specific oath to someone capable of accepting such an oath. The feats provide a character with bonuses whenever in pursuit of the goal. However, the character loses all benefits of the feat and receives a temporary -1 morale penalty if they fail to fulfill the oath in a years time. These feats are very good ideas and have very good roleplaying possibilities.

The spells chapter has are eleven pages of spell lists and new spells for divine spellcasters, including druids and rangers. There is one new domain, the light domain. Spells run the gamut, with a variety of offensive, defensive, and utility spells. A few of the spells include:

-Ethereal Prison/Sunfire Tomb/Watery Prison/Woodland Prison: These spells all perform a similar function: they all imprison the victim in an altered state. The spellcaster can communicate with the target in some cases, and the target remains conscious and unharmed, but helpless to do anything.
-Glory of the Beast: This spell temporarily grants a creature the celestial template.
-Crystal of Reflection: This simple spell creates a crystal that floats around the caster like an ioun stone. The first ray spell that targets the caster is reflected back at the target.
-Peaceful Weapon: This simple but potentially aggravating spell makes it so that the target weapon is completely and totally incapable of harm.

The magic items chapters provides qualities and specific types of weapons and armor, as well as potions, rings, and wondrous items appropriate to divine spellcasters. Examples include ray absorbing crystal weapons and armor and holy avenger variants.

The last chapter provides a number of new celestial creature types. The concept of angels corresponding to the elements is not an outlandish one, so their appearance here is not that special a feature. On the other hand, the blessed children are an interesting concept. Blessed children are essentially pre-mortal spirits that are especially concerned/good at fighting undead. Blessed children only appear when summoned, and do not retain any memories between times that they are summoned.

Conclusion

Much of the Book of Hallowed Might is fairly solid. The only things that struck me immediately as things I would not use are the alignment conversion feats. That said, for the most part, new spells and feats are useful, but pretty much par for the course for a product of this sort.

What really stands out in the Book of Hallowed Might is that many elements - particularly the Oath and Blessed feats - stand out as being more than just interesting mechanically, but having great roleplaying potential. This alone should make anyone thinking of playing a divine spellcaster take a look at this book.

Overall Grade: B

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Corporal_Cupcake]

Re: Hallowed Mage, does anyone have a good alternative for someone who wants to play a divine/arcane multiclass and still get decent high-level spells? I'm not familiar with every single d20 publisher's products, so if there's a Hallowed Mage equivalent somewhere else, could you describe it?

Re: non-LG paladins, thanks for the information on alternative interpretations. I am leaning more and more towards picking up Book of the Righteous, but the $40 price tag scares me.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

The Book Of Hallowed Might is a sourcebook on divine magic from Malhavoc Press.

The Book Of Hallowed Might is a 50-page (inc. 'covers') 3.08 MB .pdf file, currently available at $6 - the 48-page print version has also recently been released. The clear layout is similar in style to the Eldritch Might series. Decorative margins are mono and limited to the chapter title page. Font size is generally fine, though I still feel the sidebars use slightly too small a font size. The file makes good use of the bookmarking system in Adobe Acrobat, and its easy to hop around from section to section. Interior mono sketches are good to superb, better in fact than the front cover showing a cleric and paladin attacking a demonic figure wielding a skull-topped staff. Writing style is crisp and clear. Editing seems good.

Chapter One: Divine Spellcasters In Campaigns
After a look at the difference between arcane and divine magic (including a logical extension of the Spellcraft rules giving a -5 penalty to identify divine spells if you're an arcane caster and vice versa), the chapter takes a separate look at the main divine spellcasting groups:

Clerics - some ideas for limiting certain powerful spells based on alignment, holy days, holy ground, and church politics. Cost modifications to raise dead and similar spells to limit resurrection. Reminders of the goals a good-aligned church might have in improving the world such as food distribution, struggling against another church (including a section regarding competing good-aligned churches), and converting the heathen. A sidebar suggesting other means for limiting resurrection. Ideas for tenets based on the mythology of the deity. Holy figures (like saints), holy places (with advice on the uses of consecrate/desecrate). An interesting variant rule which requires clerics casting spells such as remove disease, remove curse, etc. to make a caster level check in the same manner as dispel magic - this would allow the GM greater facility for using plot hooks based on finding a rare cure for an NPC struck down by a disease, curse, or similar.

Druids And Rangers - ideas for integrating druid and ranger communities, and use in a non-forest setting (including ideas for groves in different terrains). There is a ranger variant, which swaps ambidexterity and two-weapon fighting abilities for fighterlike bonus feats every four levels and improved spell progression at higher levels, a better Ref save progression, and adds Diplomacy into the list of skills that gain a bonus with favoured enemy.

Paladins - Variant Paladin class, which adds some extra strength to paladins at higher levels by increasing the number of times per day the smite evil ability can be used at higher levels, and adds two new class features - a special weapon at 12th level which gains powers as the paladin progresses in levels and a blessed aura at 20th level. This section also discusses paladins dedicated to a single god (with some advice for swapping paladin abilities for greater spellcasting power and domain access). It also looks at neutral good and chaotic good paladins (with variant powers), and gives some examples of behaviour codes that could be built into a paldin's code of conduct and some advice on defining the behavioural elements of good and evil/law and chaos, using a rating system from 1 to 9. Some examples are give of how this system could be applied, and some variant rules on applying alignment scores to spellcasting, places, and objects.

Chapter Two: Prestige Classes
Three 10-level prestige classes are presented:
* Blessed Prelate - a saintly figure with the power to heal by touch, call the spirit of an unborn blessed child, and a heightened state of awareness as well as bonus feats from a limited selection, and spellcasting.
* Hallowed Mage - arcanist devoted to a god or the gods (often the god of magic) with reduced arcane spell failure due to armour, better chances of afecting evil creatures with spells (and avoiding good-aligned creatures) and their own spell list beginning with 4th level spells (casting 3rd level spells is one of the requirements of the PrC).
* Knight Of The Pale - knights who revere saints of the past and hunt demons and undead in their name. Each day the knight chooses to benefit from the powers granted by a particular saint. As the knight progresses, he gains access to more 'suites' of saintly powers and can eventually forge a holy avenger sword.

Chapter Three: Feats
This chapter offers a number of feats designed for characters with either noble or holy blood. Those designed for the noble are called Oath Feats and, as the name suggests, require an oath from the character to achieve a certain task, obey a certain character, etc. The character gains benefits whilst performing the task, serving the character, etc. but suffers penalties should he break the oath. Examples include Oath of Combat, and Oath of Fealty. Feats for the holy are termed blessed feats, and give supernatural abilities to those who take them. Some require forfeiting daily 'turn undead' attempts, whilst others are similar to an oath, but are termed a Vow, and give similar benefits to Oath Feats. Examples include a vow of silence, and vow of chastity. There are also some more general feats, including abilities to reform evil characters (and vice versa), and to improve the effects of the ranger's favored enemy abilities.

Chapter Four: Spells
Over forty new spells, mainly designed for characters who cast divine spells. Examples include Blazing Light (a beam of holy power used as a ray attack), Godspeed (speed increases to 60 ft, AC increases by 2), Illuminated Weapon (infuse weapon with daylight), and Redemption From Evil Power (undoes any spell with the Evil descriptor less than 7th level). There is also a new domain - Light, only two spells of which are taken from Core Rulebook I; the rest are from this product.

Chapter Five: Magic Items
The chapter begins with a number of special qualities for weapons and shields (e.g. faith, courage, crystal), along with some specific weapons and shields (e.g. holy avenger of purity). There are also a few other magic items such as a helm of flame and a ring of neutrality.

Chapter Six: Creatures
This chapter concentrates on celestials, focusing on Angels of the Elements (along with their special qualities), and Blessed Children (celestials that are spirits of good unborn children - the opposite of undead).

Conclusion
Bristling with rules and ideas for running paladins, and clerics of good alignment. Less useful for druids and rangers, but still some good ideas. The writing is clear and practical, the rules balanced and well thought out, with little redundancy.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Awesome review, Alan! You rock!