[This review was originally published on
RPG.net. I have tried to correct errors in the review, as well as make a few updates now that some errata have appeared for the book.
The Spellslinger's Guide to Wurld Domination is slated for reprint by Kenzer & Co. and is due
to be released in May of this year.]
Let me begin by saying that I think HackMaster is the best role-playing game to come along for some time. I am also a certified HackMaster GM. I say this not to toot my own horn, but only to make clear where my biases lie.
I had been eagerly awaiting the
Spellslinger's Guide to Wurld Domination (the book is subtitled "Crushing Empires for Fun and Profit") for some time. Those of you who own the HackMaster
Player's Handbook (
PHB) will remember the curious omission of the blood mage character class from its pages. Its further omission from the
Game Master's Guide (
GMG) was even more disappointing. Keep in mind that I am not expressing dissatisfaction with
these products as a whole; they're packed with information and I'm guessing the blood mage was squeezed out for lack of space. Soon after the release of the
GMG, Kenzer announced that the blood mage would be included in the forthcoming
Spellslinger's Guide.
If it seems to you as if I bought the
Spellslinger's Guide just for the blood mage, you'd be mostly right. But in addition to the blood mage character class, the Guide also includes rules for magic-user specialists -- derived from the 2nd Edition AD&D rules -- double specialists, sole
practitioners, etc. More on that below. Also included are rules on "holistic practitioners" (elementalists), "unorthodox practitioners" ("painted mages," wild mages, etc.), scores of new
spells, and new magic-user quirks, flaws, skills, and talents.
The book is divided into seven chapters and three appendices. The first four chapters deal with the new character classes (see above). The fifth chapter deals with "priors and particulars" for magic-using characters, including quirks and flaws but also information on education and apprenticeship. The last two chapters cover additional rules for magic-users, such as magical academies,
spellbooks, ley lines, familiars, and so on. The three appendices cover spells, spell components, and a spell planner, respectively. One page of player coupons -- which allow a player character to modify a certain result -- is also included. With respect to quantity, the
Spellslinger's Guide has
144 pages printed in a very small font (I would estimate 8 points). Contrast this with TSR's
Complete Wizard's Handbook at 128 pages in medium font, or WotC/Hasbro's
Tome
and Blood at a meager 96 pages -- for about the same price! For ease of reading I will discuss each chapter in turn below. These comments will be followed by my remarks on style -- layout, design, and art.
SPECIALISTS
The standard specialists from 2nd Edition AD&D are all included here: abjurers, conjurers, diviners, enchanters, illusionists, invokers, necromancers, and transmuters. A welcome change from 2e is that each specialist class has its own experience table, so that a magic-user specializing in a weak school (such as Alteration) advances much more quickly than one specializing in a strong school (such as Conjuration/Summoning). In fact, conjurers advance more slowly than "generalist" magic-users.
Each school of magic has its
opposition school(s). While 2nd Edition AD&D (and, in fact, the HackMaster
PHB) forbade specialists from learning and casting spells from their opposition schools, the
Spellslinger's
Guide instead assigns them massive penalties on their "chance to learn" percentile rolls. For example, a conjurer has a –81% penalty when attempting to learn spells from the school of Invocation/Evocation. Even if he has a very high Intelligence score, such a character has almost no chance of learning spells from this school. Likewise, an illusionist has a monstrous –84% penalty
to learn spells from this school, so your 1e munchkin dream of a
Fireball-casting illusionist most likely won't come true.
Also covered in the chapter on specialists are the
double specialists. These characters are similar to their single-specialist colleagues but are even more limited in their choice of spells. For example, a double-specialist illusionist cannot learn Evocation spells at all. However, a double specialist is very powerful within his chosen school. A double-specialist invoker could cast a
Fireball spell at 3rd level of experience, because he can cast Invocation/Evocation spells
as if they were one level lower (so he would cast
Fireball as if it were a 2nd level spell; he can also memorize
two first level spells of his chosen school for each first level spell slot). Furthermore, he casts the spell as if he were one level higher than his actual level, so his
Fireball would do
four dice of damage.
All double specialists, including gnome and gnomeling illusionists, are prohibited from multi-classing.
SOLE PRACTITIONERS
These classes continue along the same path as the double specialist (see above). The difference is that they specialize in a
type of spell from a particular school, rather than the entire school itself. A shadow weaver, for example, is a type of illusionist who "creates quasi-real stuff out
of shadow." In other words, he concentrates on spells like
Shadow Magic,
Shadow Monsters,
Demi-shadow Monsters, etc., and eschews the use of
Light spells and electrical
effects. These characters also gain some unusual abilities -- the shadow weaver can Hide in Shadows like a thief -- but they suffer from even more disadvantages than double specialists.
HOLISTIC PRACTITIONERS
This is a brief chapter dedicated to elementalist magic-users, those who specialize in a certain
element (air, earth, fire, or water) rather than a school of magic. I believe much of this material is cribbed from TSR's
Tome of Magic and the concept is not as fully developed as it could be. There
are no 'para-elementalists' or 'quasi-elementalists,' for example.
UNORTHODOX PRACTITIONERS
Three types of "unorthodox practitioners" are described in this chapter: the
blood mage,
the painted mage, and the
wild mage.
As I noted above, the blood mage was my chief reason for buying this book. I was not disappointed. The HackMaster
PHB describes the blood mage briefly (p. 40): "Instead of drawing errant magical energies from without and channeling them, the blood mage derives his power and casts his spells by drawing upon the life-energies of his own body (and those around him)." The
Spellslinger's Guide runs with this description, enumerating the possible effects of a blood mage casting a spell. The blood mage's other special ability is the ability to
cast a spell
Woefully. These spells ignore saving throws, magic resistance, etc., but the caster pays a price: he loses 1d3 points of Constitution (some or all of which may be permanent) and falls
into a coma for 36 hours.
Blood mages are specialists in Necromancy. As their spells draw on life-force for their power, there is a significant chance each time a blood mage casts a spell that he and those around him are injured. This chance increases with the power of the spell. The most devastating effect (which can be caused only by 9th-level spells) is that the blood mage and all living matter within 10d12 feet lose
all life force. Fortunately the chance of this happening is very small.
Painted mages -- who are also specialists in Necromancy -- are magic-users who have developed a refined form of pixie-fairy tattoo magic (see the
PHB for more details). Alone among
all the classes described in the
Spellslinger's Guide, painted mages cannot spell-jack (that is, memorize more spells than normal at a risk of having a spell mishap).
The distinction of the painted mage is that his spells are tattooed on his own skin in the form of sigils. Instead of memorizing a spell, the painted mage "activates" one of his sigils. Eventually the mage's entire body will be covered with tattoos, and the
Spellslinger's Guide notes that only members of huge races or very fat people can ultimately become successful high-level painted
mages. Unfortunately, the image created in my mind while reading the description of this class is that of Hennett, the leather-fetishist Sorcerer from the d20
Player's Handbook. Not pretty,
and it might be enough for me to restrict this class in my own campaign.
The final unorthodox practitioner to be described is the wild mage. As with the section on holistic
practitioners, most of this information is taken directly from the
Tome of Magic, though the wild mage Level Variation Table goes to greater extremes. A 20th-level wild mage's casting level can vary as much as
eight levels in either direction.
MAGIC-USER PRIORS AND PARTICULARS
Most of the fifth chapter is taken up by new features that fit in with HackMaster's underlying framework -- quirks, flaws, skills, and talents. The real value of this chapter, in my opinion, is the new (for HackMaster, anyway) concept of
packages. Taking a cue from 2nd Edition AD&D's "kits," the folks at Kenzer & Co. have developed a number of packages for magic-using characters that can speed character creation. Where these packages differ from those detailed in 2e is that they are not created equal -- each has an associated Building Point cost, varying from as low as six to as high as 22 -- and they are more flexible than their 2e counterparts.
The other "new" feature presented in this chapter is the list of "personality types" for magic-users. Frankly, HackMaster's character creation process already goes along way toward helping a player develop his character's personality, so the value of this section is dubious.
MAGICAL ACADEMIES AND ORGANIZATIONS
I am truthfully not at all prepared to comment on this chapter because the subject has not come up in my own campaign. In addition, HackMaster GMs who do not set their campaigns in Garweeze
Wurld (I know of a few who have set their campaigns in the Kingdoms of Kalamar, for example) will probably not find this material all that vital.
RULES OF THE ROAD
The seventh chapter illustrates the "rules of the road." Here we see information on "Magic-users
and Hack" -- "hack" meaning combat -- ley lines, "alternate" familiar rules, spell copyrights, and spellbooks. Some of these rules are welcome additions -- the long list of possible familiars
comes to mind, as does the discussion of the magic-user's "arsenal" of offensive and defensive spells -- while others are amusing but perhaps unnecessarily complicated -- for example, the rules on spell copyrighting (i.e., if you want to copy the spell
Drayton's Hidden Stash into your
spellbook, you must pay a licensing fee to Drayton or his estate. Huh?).
The rules on spellbooks are interesting but cumbersome. Personally, I recommend instead the spellbook rules from
Unearthed Arcana (pp. 79-80).
THE APPENDICES
Appendix A gives descriptions of over 200 new spells, while Appendix B lists all of the monsters from the 8-volume
Hacklopedia of Beasts that can be used (whole or in part) as spell components. Appendix C is a spell planner listing all of the magic-user spells from the
Player's Handbook in addition to those found in the
Spellslinger's Guide.
By my count are well over 200 spells described in Appendix A -- 235 to be exact. Admittedly, some of these are simply spells normally available to clerics or druids and listed in the
Player's Handbook, while others are spells that Kenzer & Co. probably forgot to include in the
PHB.
In any case, there is a huge amount of new spells, some of which are silly but most of which are useful and creative. There are 24 (!) new "power word" spells, along with new restrictions on their casting -- a caster of 6th level or below who attempts one of these spells must make an Intelligence check or suffer a spell mishap.
Also interesting is the Vengeance class of spells. There are two of these of each level, 18 in all,
from the 1st-level
Blood Missile to the devastating 9th-level
Blood Curse. They are the sole province of the blood mage, just as Wild Magic spells are the sole province of the wild mage.
Taking a cue from the d20
Player's Handbook, the list of spells is in alphabetical order rather than level order. (Why not? Even I'm prepared to admit that some good ideas went into the creation of 3e.)
LAYOUT, DESIGN, AND ART
As with all of the HackMaster books so far published, layout leaves little to be desired. Tables are prominent and easy to read, as HackMaster follows the old AD&D convention of using alternating colors for tables (which 3e so regrettably abandoned).
Art is copious and for the most part well-distributed and relevant to the text. My only complaint is that some of the art -- especially that of HackMaster standbys Brendon and Brian Fraim -- seems to have been scanned in at low resolution, and appears pixelated and blurry in parts (see p. 11 for a particularly egregious example). I expect to see this sort of thing in the HackJournal, but a production-quality work ought to have higher standards.
All in all, the
Spellslinger's Guide to Wurld Domination is a very solid product that should not be overlooked by aficionados of HackMaster and AD&D. The writers at Kenzer & Co. have demonstrated once again their exceptional ability to push an already-great system to its limits.
