Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2008259" data-attributes="member: 172">Tome & BloodIt’s here at last. Amidst tales of inconsistent release dates and the sinking feeling I’m going to be the last to get it, I finally have Tome & Blood, the third installment in Wizards of the Coast’s “classbooks” for D&D 3e. Tome & Blood expands upon the options of arcane spellcasters – sorcerers and wizards – in D&D 3e.It hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride for the first two books. Both were greeted with some harsh criticism. Sword & Fist in particular earned a lot of grumbles over rules gaffs and allegedly unbalanced inclusions. Defenders of the Faith had some questionable inclusions of its own, but in my eyes the biggest problems with Defenders of the Faith was that its world specific assumptions were too telling, making some of the material hard to use in a home brewed campaign or a published setting other than Greyhawk. Considering that describes a majority of D&D campaigns, that is no meager problem.So does this mean that Tome & Blood doesn’t have much to live up to? Well, perhaps. But WotC would be fools to ignore all of the customer gripes at the previous two books. Though you won’t count me among those who thought S&F and DotF were useless, I certainly do think they can do better. Given that Cordell and Williams are the lead designers for this effort, my hopes are high that this will be an improvement. At the same time, I’ve heard some grumbles from playtesters of Tome & Blood. Alas the only way to decide is to take a look inside…A First LookTome & Blood is a 96 page softcover book. The cover depicts some of the iconic D&D characters fighting some sort of fiendish or draconic creature. The interior is black & white with average text densities and margins, and makes fair use of sidebar blocks.The black & white interior art is by Wayne Reynolds, who actually gets credited this time – he was not properly credited in previous D&D classbooks. His artwork really brings some of the concepts in the book to life and could easily inspire some interesting character in and of themselves. I am especially fond of illustrations associated with the spellsword and true necromancer prestige classes.IntroductionThe book leads off with a fairly standard introduction, including a statement of what the book is about, and overview of the chapters, and the standard (but as a DM, much appreciated) statement that the book is providing options to be exercised at the DM’s pleasure, not the players.Chapter 1: Arcane LoreThe first chapter is mostly essays on applying the existing rules. The chapter begins with a fair discussion of how to make intelligent selections leading to a competent mage, including what the best placement of ability scores will likely be, selection of feats, spells, and magic items, and if your character is a specialist wizard, how to intelligently select your schools.Some reviewers pan this sort of material as being obvious and hence unnecessary. Personally, I think it has its place. While gaming enthusiasts and rules minded gamers may already have a bead on how to design an effective character, assuming that all players are armed with this sort of knowledge would be erroneous. Many players who aren’t that heavy on the rules buy these sorts of books that correspond to their particular character type and these sections can and do come in handy.One thing I will say about this section is that if you were going to discuss how to design characters, they could have also discussed how to give your character a theme or flavor, or other role-playing considerations. The section on selecting magic items (which players often have little control over anyways) could have easily been removed to make space for such a discussion.Next, the chapter dives into the topic of a wizard or sorcerer’s familiar. Much of this section is devoted to advice on how to use the familiar, though there has a good page worth of material that I felt was recanting of the familiar rules that could have been done without.Of great benefit, however, in an enumeration of alternate familiars, including possible familiars for especially small or large familiars, or strange familiars that can be had with the improved familiar  feat (introduced later in this book and also in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting.)The next section of the chapter dwells on the use of the Spellcraft and Knowledge (Arcana) skills, how they differ, and ways to use them in a game. DMs may derive some use out of this section in adjudicating the use of the skills. Overall the section is brief, as it should be.The next section is also brief and discussed the role of sorcerers and wizards in the world, and makes some fair conclusions about how they may be different. This section could have afforded to be larger, discussing some different options on how their roles may be different in specific campaign worlds. Alas, they only tend to cover a fairly middle ground assumption.A sizable section is devoted to a variety of organizations involved with arcane spellcasters. The list includes mostly staple organizations, such as those involved with learning of wizardry (including a map of their abode), but does have a few interesting and exotic ideas to throw into your campaign such as the Queendom, a mobile island hosting an academy of learning led by an immortal queen.Finally, the chapter includes the abode of a pair of arcane spellcasters, complete with map, keyed location, and NPC stats. As far as it goes, this section was well done, but I imagine that many DMs won’t find it useful.Chapter 2: FeatsIf you are like many enthusiasts out there, this is where you skipped to first. For the most part, I don’t think you will be disappointed unless you really have a sticking point with reprinted of material that has appeared in other products.The first topic the chapter dives into is existing feats. It contains the same guideline for virtual feats as you see in S&F. More importantly, it finally clarifies what weapon type feats apply to spells and which spells they apply to. All spells are divided into rays, energy missiles, and touch attacks for the purposes of feats. This has already been discussed in places such as the online forums and Dragon magazine, but it is nice to have the guidelines in print in a convenient place.Finally is the first “crunchy bit” that many fans doubtlessly flipped to: the new feats. A quick enumeration of the feats is as follows:Arcane Defense: each time you take this feat, you get +2 saves versus one school of magic.Arcane Preparation: Allows sorcerers to prepare spells ahead of time to allow them to get around the “full round” casting time limitation for using metamagic feats.Augment Summoning: Improves HP and attack rolls of your summoned creatures.Chain Spell: Metamagic feat that can produce an effect similar to chain lightning with other spells.Cooperative Spell: Metamagic feat allows multiple casters with this feat casting the same spell to combine their efforts for greater effect.Delay Spell: Metamagic feat that allows you to delay the effects of a spell for 1-5 rounds.Energy Admixture: Neat but expensive level-wise metamagic feat that lets you add an equal amount of a second type of energy to a spell. So you can add acid to your burning hands or cold to your fireball and essentially double the damage. But it costs 4 levels.Energy Substitution: Similar to the above, but you merely replace the energy type of a spell with another one. Yes, you do have to pick a particular energy type.Eschew Materials: Tired of collecting live spiders and bat guano? Get your spell component bag stolen from you often? This feat lets you ignore cheap material components in spellcasting.Extra slot: You get one more spellcasting slot of a level up to one lower than the best you can cast when you take the feat.Extra spell: Obviously intended for sorcerers, you get one more known spell of a level up to one lower than the best you can cast when you take the feat.Greater Spell Focus and Greater Spell Penetration: Improved versions of the PHB feats.Improved Familiar: Do you miss your old psuedodragon familiar from those old D&D games? This feat lets you have one. This is the same feat that appears in the FRCS, but gives you an expanded list of familiars you can take, such as celestial hawks, fiendish vipers, small elementals, and more.Innate Spell: Very expensive (requires a slot 8 levels higher than the ability), this feat lets you surrender a spell slot to gain a spell as a spell like ability.Persistent Spell: Metamagic feat that allows some spells to last 24 hours.Repeat Spell: Metamagic feat that causes a spell to occur again automatically in the round following the initial casting.Sanctum Spell: Metamagic spell that allows you to prepare spells that are enhanced within a spellcaster’s lair but diminished outside of it.Sculpt Spell: Metamagic feat that allows you to reshape the area of a spell from the given one. This one could have been fun (frex, making your fireball reach up to the ceiling to get the flyer, and down the hall to get that other guy…) but alas, you have a limited selection of shapes to choose from. It’s probably for the best, though, as trying to derive volumes of spells in the middle of a game is not conducive to the flow of play.Spell Specialization: This feat does for arcane spellcasters what weapons specialization does for fighters: adds damage to an attack type they already have a focus in. This feat can be applied to energy missiles or rays (pick one).Subdual Substitution: Similar to energy substitution, this metamagic feat lets you replace the energy damage of a spell with subdual damage.Twin Spell: Metamagic feat that allows you to fire off two of the same spell in the same round.Widen Spell: What you probably though enlarge spell was if you haven’t read it closely. This metamagic feat lets you expand a sphere, burst, or emanation spell by one half the given dimensions.As mentioned, there is a good chance that you have seen some of these feats before in the FRCS or the Psionics Handbook. I don’t consider that a huge problem, as the feats actually don’t take up many pages and are only a very small part of those books, and I consider it far better that FR fans should have a few repeated feats than having non-FR fans have to go out and pick up a $40 book to get those feats.Overall, I found the feats to be more solid rules-wise than those in S&F, and many of them are very appealing. I consider this chapter to be very well done.Chapter 3: Prestige ClassesThis chapter I embarked on with much trepidation. Prestige classes seem to be the topic of much debate, often the victim of editing errors and balance issues. Rules wise it would be hard to ask for a better team than Bruce Cordell and Skip Williams, so there may be hope yet.Let me proceed with a disclaimer here. Some people find prestige classes to be an abomination, an excuse to sell books, or merely unnecessary given the already flexible nature of the existing class and feat system. However, I am going to proceed under the assumption that if you are buying the book, that you accept the prestige classes as a viable part of the game and I am not going to slight the book for there mere inclusion.Given that we know there are prestige classes at the core of the book, how did they fare? Generally speaking, there is less of a correspondence between the listed prestige classes and organizations as there was in the prior D&D 3e classbooks. I don’t find that all that objectionable. On the downside, it detracts from immersing the classes in a given role-playing background. However, it will make them more adaptable. In the case of arcane spellcasters, the theme seems to be more the development of exotic techniques of magic than association with a given discipline or order. The lack of historical grounding widens the usability of these prestige classes in home-brewed games somewhat.So let’s breeze over the prestige classes, shall we?Acolyte of the Skin: Somewhat twisted, the acolyte of the skin grafts a demon skin to his own to gain certain magical powers. Sounds like a nice, twisted villain NPC to me.Alienist: A spellcaster that has dealings with pseudonatural (read: Lovecraftian) creatures. Nice villain for a horror themed game like Gates of Firestorm Peak.Arcane Trickster: A mage/rogue type whose main class ability seems to be to use rogue skills at a distance. This will certainly appeal so some players.Bladesinger: The classic elven warrior-mage type revisited. The class has its own spell list, which may throw some old fans of the class off. This is still a fairly playable class that most DMs can afford to let into their game. It is a bit more melee oriented than the AD&D 2e bladesinger was.Blood Magus: A mage who deals with the properties on blood in his magic. This one struck me as a little odd at first, but on second blush it seems to work. He can do things like prepare potions that are stored within his body and use blood instead of material components, i.e., costing him HP. The concept is somewhat different from the blood witch in Relics & Rituals. I’m still up in the air on whether I’ll use this one, but it’s not a bad class.Candle caster: Another exotic spellcaster, the candle caster uses candles as a focus for their magic. They can imbue candles with magic effects, somewhat akin to potions and scrolls. This may be a nice character to drop into a game as an exotic spellcaster theme, but I doubt many PCs would want to take it.Dragon disciple: The character, who must have been an arcane spellcaster that does not prepare spells, slowly morphs into a half dragon. The class gets only meager additional spellcasting ability as they go up levels, and most of their class abilities are simply the half dragon abilities spread over the levels. This is quite easily my least favorite class in the book; I don’t see anyone taking it unless they are really grabbed by the concept. It certainly isn’t an overpowering class.Elemental savant: Finally, elementalist mages have a comeback! The class isn’t a bad class mechanically and seems like it would be fun to play, but someone looking for rekindling that old “four elements” theme may find the “energy association” bit lacking, especially where the earth element is concerned. They associate each element with an energy type that is common to the game: earth-acid, air-electricity, water-cold, and fire-fire. Fire’s good, and air/electricity and water/cold I can see. How they come up with earth/acid, I don’t know. From a mechanical standpoint I understand why they did it – those are the common attack types in D&D and already have descriptors built into the game. However, it seems like if they took a little more effort, they could have fleshed out abilities that fit better with the for elements better.Fatespinner: This class deals with fate, and is a somewhat interesting concept. The character can do things like give some opponents a lower DC in exchange for giving some a higher DC later. That sounds like a worthwhile skill to me. The class has many of these “legal ways to load the dice.” It sounds mechanically iffy at first blush, but overall I think it is balanced.Mage of the Order Arcane: This class is apparently inspired by the AD&D 2e supplement “College of Wizardry,” for those who are familiar with it. You must belong to a specific guild to use the abilities of this class. The signature ability of this class is the spellpool. If you leave a spell slot open and you have the appropriate level ability, you can call a spell from the spellpool (which can be any Sorcerer/Wizard spell in the PHB) and use it on the following round. In doing so, you acquire a debt and must “repay” the spellpool. This will doubtlessly be a boon to the flexibility of wizards and may prove popular with players.Mindbender: Sort of a telepathic mage with mind control powers. This one bothers me a little as I think in some ways it is a better telepath that a psionic telepath, with many free spell like abilities.Pale master is the classic image of a necromancer type master of the dead. I can’t count how many gripes I heard when 3e came out that the create undead spells weren’t part of the Sorcerer/Wizard list. Well this guy has them, and a bunch of other ghastly abilities. This is bound to make it into many DM’s arsenals.Spellsword is a more classic fighter/mage type than the bladesinger. The spellsword’s two main signature features are the ability to defray the arcane spell failure percentage in armor, and the ability to channel spells through a weapon. Overall, it is a fairly viable class that will appeal to many players who didn’t want to split advancement between fighter and wizard or sorcerer.True Necromancer: A little different take on the necromancer than the pale master. The true necromancer must have both arcane and divine spellcaster levels, which sounds like a liability from the get-go. However, the true necromancer is partially aimed at making the combination viable. For example, they always count both their divine and arcane spellcasting levels when figuring the casting level of any necromancy school or death domain spell. I still think it may be a slightly weak class, but for a flavorful NPC villain, I think it will do the job.Wayfarer Guide is a curious class. Some time ago when people were alarmed that there were five levels in some of the prestige classes in the Living City Character Creation Guidelines, a WotC representative went on record as saying that there is no fixed amount of levels a prestige class must have. Well here they are with a class to prove it too you. The wayfarer guide has just 3 levels all told, and is focused on making the job of teleportation a little easier.Overall, I though the classes were mechanically sound, and were less entrenched in overly campaign-specific concepts than material from the previous class books. Though there are some I won’t be using, overall I see this as a much better collection than previous classbooks. The prestige classes are largely things that people have been clamoring for (elementalists, better necromancers), have a feeling of exotic magic, and easily dovetail with many existing campaigns.Chapter 4: Tools of the TradeThe mundane items section is brief, listing a few items that aren’t so much startling as staples in a would-be wizard’s repertoire.  It includes items like alchemical labs, writing desks, scroll organizers, and yes, a handy carrying case for your familiar. (No, I’m not kidding…)New special items are provided as well, with strange but potentially useful items like disappearing ink, healing salve, and scentbreaker (for throwing creatures with scent off the trail.)At last we get to the guts of the chapter: magic items. The chapter doesn’t dive directly into magic items, but spends a few pages on clarification and examples of pricing magic items. For DMs and players a little confused about the process, this may be helpful, but there is not much new here.Several new magic items are provided in the chapter. There is a new set of rods called metamagic feat rods. (That sounded like a clunky title to me – I would have just called them metamagic rods, personally.) The concept is pretty straightforward: the rods each emulate one metamagic feat that can be used without cost three times per day. There are three “power” categories of rods, lesser, normal, and greater. The lesser rods can only be used to enhance spells of level 3 or less. Normal rods can be used for level 6 or less spells. Greater rods can be used on spells up to 9th level.There are a variety of new staves as well. There is a staff of illumination with a variety of light-shedding powers. In addition, there is one staff for each of the eight schools of magic, with spells from that school. A simple enough concept, but one of these staves would be a worthwhile addition to a wizard or sorcerer PC’s inventory.Finally comes an array of wondrous items, include a belt of many pockets, belt of spell resistence, golem manuals (with a rules section on making golems), the rug of welcome, and vest of resistance.Chapter 5: SpellsWhat book on arcane spellcasters would be complete without a smattering of spells? As with many other sections of the book, it doesn’t dive right into the crunchy bits. It does start you out with a discussion of spells, including the usefulness of the prestidigitation spell, some minutia on casting time, and guidelines for researching new spells.The section of researching new spells is probably the most useful essay type section in the book, as it spells out a number of benchmark spells for each level (this strikes me as the type of thing that “was once an internal guidelines document” for Wotc) and a discussion of how to evaluate the power of a spell. This should be a definite boon to creative DMs and players who like to create their own spells.Finally, the moment you have been waiting for, the new spells list. First off, there are a couple of spell chains or other common spell concepts.The largest such theme group is the energy orbs. There are five 1st level “lesser orbs” and five fourth level “orbs”, one for each energy type (acid, sonic, fire, cold, and electric). The lesser orbs deal 1d8 damage each and requires a ranged touch attack and allows a save for half. As with magic missile, you start with one orb at first level and get one additional one per 2 levels.The “full” (4th level) orbs deal 1d6 damage per level of the appropriate type (maximum 15d6), which you may split into different targets and causes a side effect. It also requires a ranged touch attack and allows a saving throw to halve the damage and avoid the side effect.The orbs aren’t especially powerful combat spells, but do present a consistent take on energy attack spells. Some DMs and players may appreciate them over some of the other attack spells that provide more sporadic coverage of the different attack types.A second major category is the repair damage spells. The repair damage spell exactly parallel the cure wounds spells, but works on constructs and only constructs.The “ability bonus spells” are rounded out with eagle’s splendor (adds to charisma), owl’s wisdom (adds to wisdom), and fox’s cunning (adds to intelligence).A variety of necromantic spell are here for your (un)death-oriented wizard. These include spells like negative energy ray (1st level spell much like magic missile damage wise but with slightly more damage, only takes one target, and requires a touch attack, heals undead instead of harming them), disguise undead (change self on undead), command undead, negative energy burst (sort of like a negative energy fireball, less damage but heals undead), [/I]negative energy wave[/I] (allows you to rebuke or bolster undead), spirit wall (creates a fear inspiring wall of spirits), and hide life (a really powerful necromantic protective spell that lets you put your life force into a small part of your body. So long as it remains unmolested, you do not die from hit point damage.)There are mass versions of previously existing spells: mass fly, mass resist elements, and mass teleport.Modified versions of the polymorph other and polymorph self spells appear here. These versions have appeared in the dragon, and are considered official errata.There are also a variety of spells that aren’t part of a theme or chain, many of them translations of 2e spells: Absorption (lets you act like a rod of absorption), arcane sight (lets you detect magic by sight and scrutinize creatures to see if they have spellcasting or spell-like abilities), chain contingency (three contingencies in one), choke (same as the 2e spell, play Darth Vader…), corpse candle (calls a ghostly candle that can detect invisible, hidden, and ethereal items), dimension lock (prevents extradimensional travel in the area of effect), energy buffer (a very useful protective spell against energy attacks), energy immunity (total immunity to one energy type), enhance familiar (adds combat bonuses to your familiar), familiar pocket (is that a mouse in your extradimentional pocket are you just… aw, never mind…), false life (adds temporary HP, seems a little powerful to me for 2nd level), feign death, filter (protection against gas attacks), fortify familiar (protects your little buddy), gaze screen (protects against gaze attacks), ghost form (become incorporeal), great shout (powerful sonic attack), ice burst (sort of like an icy fireball), ice knife, imbue familiar with spell ability, indifference (reduces emotion-causing influences), Mordenkainen’s private sanctum (protects an area from observation, magical or mundane), Otiluke’s dispelling screen and greater dispelling screen (creates a screen that dispels anything passing through it), and undeath to death (like circle of death, except it affects undead.)Summary and conclusionsAs has been the case with all Wizards of the Coast softbounds released in recent years, the price sticker on Tome & Blood is high for the RPG market. I would point out that they do this because they can charge this much and sell books due to their market position, but that is cold comfort for the would-be buyer. Of the three 3e softback classbooks released to date, this is quite easily the most solid. Editing errors seem much less prevalent, and the rules material seems much more solid than in Sword & Fist. It doesn’t have near the level of dependence on the Greyhawk setting as the first two classbooks did. None of the classes, feats, or spells stick out as being especially overpowering and many of them seem like viable and interesting concepts that address existing needs.Other peers to consider when rating it are the Relics & Rituals and Book of Eldritch Might, two resources on magic from D20 vendors. Tome & Blood doesn’t have near the page count per dollar ratio that R&R does, and Relics & Rituals seems to have a broader scope of spells and magic items. However, a lot of the space in Relics & Rituals includes setting information that is basically extraneous if you aren’t playing in the Scarred Lands setting. The rules material in Tome & Blood is more solid where spells and items are concerned, and Tome & Blood’s prestige classes are better than Relics & Rituals in both variety and playability. So in short, there is a lot to be said about both books, but given $25 in your wallet and the choice, you might tend towards Relics & Rituals unless you have a real hunger for prestige classes.In the case of the Book of Eldritch Might, you are paying one-fourth the price for one third of the material, but you only get an electronic document for that price. You get one fifth of the prestige classes, but probably just as many spells and magic items and near as many feats as Tome and Blood. Qualitatively, I consider the Book of Eldritch Might to be more creative. That being the case, I’d hand that bout to the Book of Eldritch Might. But then, at the price you got the Book of Eldritch Might for, you could probably afford them both.Overall, the spells, classes, and other rules material in Tome & Blood appear as if they will fit well into a typical D&D campaign without much shoehorning. The essays on character construction may be lost on some more advanced players, but I imagine that players that aren’t experienced with 3e character creation or who aren’t mechanically minded will benefit greatly from those sections. I feel that Tome & Blood is a good addition to the bookshelf of a DM or player looking to add a little variety to their magic.</blockquote>

Verification