I got a copy of Complete Mage a couple of days ago and managed to spend about an hour flipping through and giving it a once-over. There’s a lot that I like and I think it has a few nice things to contribute to spellcasting classes.
Click the link for a breakdown.
Having not officially reviewed a book before, I’m making up this process as I go – so apologies for any oddities. I’m just going to break things down by topic / section and expand on it from there.
RP & Creative Content
I’ve seen a number of books try to add depth to pre-existing concepts (the “Races of” books are a good example of this). Some of them are OK, some are simply horrible.
Complete Mage, however, did a great job in two sections. The first outlines the different schools of magic and delves deeper into each of them. They even tacked on a bit to add some diversity to the Warlock class (while this works out to be mostly RP material, the Warlock class can use all the help it can get).
The second breaks down a number of arcane archetypes. As it describes each, it goes on to list out strengths, weaknesses, classes, PRCs, feats (to take and avoid), spells to take and avoid per level, etc. While many more “advanced” players may find the information old news, it’s great for someone that’s looking to hone a character concept or someone that’s not the most familiar with spellcasters.
Alternate Class Features
I think this is a change in direction from Substitution Levels that we saw in earlier books. They function on the same premise though – instead of gaining X at at given level, you can give that up and gain Y instead.
Personally, I like the concept. It allows you to add even further diversity to your characters. Most of the trade-offs, however, seem to fall a bit short. If they were “too good” then everyone’d take the alternate class level – so they have to be slightly weaker to preserve balance. Some are crap, but others are likely playable and offer up some interesting character ideas.
The one thing that impressed me was that Complete Mage has something for most classes in here. I was expecting a few wizard and sorcerer entries, but it runs the gambit of options.
Feats
There’s two feat types that I hadn’t seen before picking up Complete Mage: Reserve Feats and Heritage Feats. While I think Heritage Feats may have been published somewhere else first (though I could be wrong), Reserve Feats are certainly new – and pretty damn cool.
Reserve Feats
This is a great feat concept that grants you a benefit in the following way:
- You take a reserve feat that you meet the pre-reqs for. This is going to typically be a caster level requirement and the ability to cast a spell of a particular type.
- The feats tend to grant two benefits.
- One is small bonus to some skill or ability that is “always on”
- The other is a benefit when you have memorized or a spell slot available (pending arcane class) for a spell that aligns with the pre-req spell.
What you end up doing is holding onto a spell or spell slot of a higher level to gain a lower-level benefit. You can naturally cast that spell or use up all of those spell slots, but then you lose access to the “more powerful” of the two benefits.
Here’s one reserve feat picked at random to illustrate the flavor and how they work.
Borne Aloft
Pre-req: Ability to cast 5th-level spells.
Benefit: As long as you have an air spell of 5th level or higher available to cast, you can fly up to 30 feet (perfect maneuverability) as a move action once per round. You must begin and end this flight solidly supported, or you fall. You can’t use this ability if you wear heavy armor or carry a heavy load.As a secondary benefit, you gain a +1 competence bonus to your caster level when casting air spells.
As you can see, your potential to cast an air spell of 5th level or higher grants the ability to fly each round. Even if you don’t have the spell memorized (or a 5th or higher air spell and a spell slot that’ll allow you to cast it for spontaneous casters), you still gain the secondary benefit.
Heritage Feats
Heritage feats can be neat, but you need to take multiple heritage feats of a particular type in order to gain “useful” effects. The first heritage feat will give a fairly minimal bonus to a particular thing. Once you’ve taken that feat, additional feats that require that feat can grant better benefits – DR, spell-like abilities, energy resistances, etc.
While potentially powerful, the big issue is that most classes have to pass up other feats that are probably more useful in order to gain these effects that might not fully compliment a class. They’re likely best taken for a “concept character” or one that will closely align itself with a particular benefit granted.
Tactical Feats
One thing that was neat to see was some tactical feats for spellcasters. With the host of feats for spellcasters to take, I doubt these will be that useful or taken that often, but they’re still “fun”. Spellcasters have too many good feats to take and too few granted feats to worry about these in most cases.
Prestige Classes
Complete Mage introduces 11 new prestige classes (but no new base classes). For those warlock fans, three of them specifically target invocation users, including a Mystic Theurge-like alternative.
We also see options for bards, illusionists and a rogue-spellcaster prestige class.
If you’re looking for some potentially powerful spellcasting options, then some of these may fit the bill nicely.
Magic Items
I always enjoy reading through the magic items in new books. There’s a few neat ones in here, but nothing really mind blowing. I’d say most of the items are lower-level utilitarian items that can be very helpful to spellcasters. I didn’t see any magic weapons or armor in here – but this isn’t surprising given the focus is on the spellcaster – whose spells are their weapons and armor.
Spells
This is really the bread and butter of the magic-focused books, isn’t it?
We’ve got over 25 pages of spells for wizards, sorcerers, assassins, bards, clerics, druids, hexblades, paladins, rangers and wu jen. There’s also 2 pages of new warlock invocations.
I haven’t read through every single spell in here, but many of them look very promising. I especially like seeing new spells that are able to be cast as immediate and swift actions.
Wrap-Up
As far as supplements go, Complete Mage is a winner. A player that enjoys playing a spellcaster of virtually any type will be able to find something in here that they like.
The introduction of reserve feats alone is something worth looking into and I’m excited to see new reserve feats in future books.
If you’re able to get your hands on this book, make sure you read through the first chapter that outlines a number of spellcaster archetypes – it’s a great read.
Scrag.net definitely recommends Complete Mage.