The Complete Book of Eldritch Might
Apr. 20th, 2012 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroMonte Cook wrote a three-part series of Books of Eldritch Might. This collects them into a single volume and updates some of the rules to 3.5 standards. Short form: It’s a D&D 3.5 arcane caster splatbook.
My biggest concern with third-party D&D supplements is always the balance issue. While there are certainly some issues here, I was heartened right off the bat by the fact it was written by one of the original designers—so he understands the value of testing the crunchy bits and not just putting in numbers that “feel right”—and the extensive list of playtesters that are thanked in the introduction.
The first chapter has variant Bard and Sorcerer classes that rebalance their spell lists (and change the way bardic magic works), as what looks like for the better. An acknowledged problem with Sorcerers is that you always end up learning the same half-dozen spells, and never bother with “once-in-a-blue-moon” or “awesome-when-you-need-it-but-otherwise-useless” spells. This seems to make an effort to fix that, though I’d probably need to playtest it to see for sure. A few of the bard spellsongs strike me as iffy—the equivalents to Hold Person and Disintegrate probably shouldn’t be on the same level.
There’s a whole chapter on “soul magic”, basically intelligent spells that want you to cast them. Either basically spell “traps” that compel you to use them, or plot-magic that you can use at a much higher level than you really are (and can provide exposition before that), or highly variable magic that can be cast at a high level but carries a big cost in ability point damage.
There’s a segment on intelligent items that goes much more in-depth than the DMG does. My big concern with intelligent items (beyond the basic “empathic weapon” level) is the same as my issue with familiars: It’s one more NPC that the GM always needs to be dealing with. If I had a fully intelligent talking item in my campaign, I’d probably want to build it as a full character and let one of the players take it. …And that makes me want to build Grimoire Weiss as an intelligent, talking and hovering book with Sorcerer levels.
The selection of magical locations is sweet. Each one is a side-story, at least in my usual gaming approach. They’re fairly self-contained so you can slot them into your campaign world, and each has a gimmick. I may use a couple in the (currently) less interesting areas of the world I’m assembling.
About half the book is then filled with new spells and new magical items; and it ends with a few new creatures (mostly to stock the magical locations with). I give them credit that they try to add more variety than most splatbooks manage, and there are a lot of fun GM ideas in here, even if I don’t necessarily want players to have at them.
Oh, and it has conversion rules for Arcana Evolved, if that’s more your bag.
Overall: This makes me wonder how feasible an all-wizard / all-arcane-caster D&D 3.5 party would be if you threw open the gates to this and a number of other splatbooks. You might be able to run that as a sandbox game, even…
My biggest concern with third-party D&D supplements is always the balance issue. While there are certainly some issues here, I was heartened right off the bat by the fact it was written by one of the original designers—so he understands the value of testing the crunchy bits and not just putting in numbers that “feel right”—and the extensive list of playtesters that are thanked in the introduction.
The first chapter has variant Bard and Sorcerer classes that rebalance their spell lists (and change the way bardic magic works), as what looks like for the better. An acknowledged problem with Sorcerers is that you always end up learning the same half-dozen spells, and never bother with “once-in-a-blue-moon” or “awesome-when-you-need-it-but-otherwise-useless” spells. This seems to make an effort to fix that, though I’d probably need to playtest it to see for sure. A few of the bard spellsongs strike me as iffy—the equivalents to Hold Person and Disintegrate probably shouldn’t be on the same level.
There’s a whole chapter on “soul magic”, basically intelligent spells that want you to cast them. Either basically spell “traps” that compel you to use them, or plot-magic that you can use at a much higher level than you really are (and can provide exposition before that), or highly variable magic that can be cast at a high level but carries a big cost in ability point damage.
There’s a segment on intelligent items that goes much more in-depth than the DMG does. My big concern with intelligent items (beyond the basic “empathic weapon” level) is the same as my issue with familiars: It’s one more NPC that the GM always needs to be dealing with. If I had a fully intelligent talking item in my campaign, I’d probably want to build it as a full character and let one of the players take it. …And that makes me want to build Grimoire Weiss as an intelligent, talking and hovering book with Sorcerer levels.
The selection of magical locations is sweet. Each one is a side-story, at least in my usual gaming approach. They’re fairly self-contained so you can slot them into your campaign world, and each has a gimmick. I may use a couple in the (currently) less interesting areas of the world I’m assembling.
About half the book is then filled with new spells and new magical items; and it ends with a few new creatures (mostly to stock the magical locations with). I give them credit that they try to add more variety than most splatbooks manage, and there are a lot of fun GM ideas in here, even if I don’t necessarily want players to have at them.
Oh, and it has conversion rules for Arcana Evolved, if that’s more your bag.
Overall: This makes me wonder how feasible an all-wizard / all-arcane-caster D&D 3.5 party would be if you threw open the gates to this and a number of other splatbooks. You might be able to run that as a sandbox game, even…
