Game: Arcane Strife
Publisher: E.N. Publishing
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 7th, July 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 6/10 [ On the ball ]
Total Score: 6
Average Score: 6.00
Twice the Arcane Strife for the price. You get two editions of the PDF when you buy one, an on screen version and a printer friendly version. This is a good thing. The on screen version is as about as printer unfriendly as you can get. The background to the PDF isn’t plain paper white but ancient paper yellow and brown. This colouring trails off with a torn and worn edge effect. Both editions make use of an arcane-rune-like font for background text and headers. It’s quite appropriate. The on screen edition is properly bookmarked. That’s the basics of PDF publishing done and they’ve been done right.
Arcane Strife is about harmonious divine spells. Not. Arcane Strife is a d20 supplement full of arcane spells. The strife? In addition to many of these spells being rather nasty the supplement is wrapped up in the Shtar campaign setting. After a three second noise around I couldn’t find any reference of Shtar being mentioned in any other Ambient Inc or E.N. Publishing products except for the forthcoming Divine Strife. It doesn’t really matter, you can take the quirk Shtar add-ons or you can leave them. Well. Nearly. Some of the prestige classes probably need the war-torn world’s unique touch. To use all of the spells mentioned you will need a copy of Crimson Contracts – The Assassin’s Manifesto though. You don’t need that extra to use the vast majority of the spells.
In Shtar arcane spell casters can quite easily loose their spell slots. If an arcane spell thrower has their concentration interrupted then they face two saving throws in order to avoid a back slash of unstoppable damage and the permanent loss of that spell slot. Ouch. Once all the spell slots are gone (it does seem almost inevitable, does it?) the poor spell caster pretty much looses to will to live. Most commit suicide. It’s not over then. The arcane spell caster will rise as a terrible undead horror. Double Ouch. The trickiest part here is what happens if a PC looses all their spell slots. If the player looses all their spell slots but wants to keep on playing the character then I don’t think it would be right to impose a suicidal tendency on the character. The rules for True Names are just a spicy but rather more player friendly. If you know your target’s true name then you can target spells at them more effectively. You can tell if someone’s alive or dead by writing their True Name down and burning it. You know your own True Name because it’s whispered to you in your sleep. This same chapter also presents nearly a dozen arcane spell feats and rules that state wizards and sorcerers have unique glyphs under their skin, glyphs which show their level of power (so I assume they change) but which can also be used to brand other people as a form of bizarre signature. Many of the feats are voice based, for example, the ability to inspire demons and scare celestials or visa versa.
The new spells include more than just Wizard/Sorcerer and Bard lists but Assassin too. That’s a bonus. Assassin fanatics (and there are plenty of them) will be chuffed too pieces. In addition there is a healthy whack of General Spells that are available to everyone. This chapter starts with spell list summaries, as you’ll have seen in the core rules and then moves on to the detailed description of each. These start at page 8 and finish at page 53. On average there are six spells (two columns of three) on each page. Yes. In other words – there are lots of spells. Randomly sampled names: Dance of the Nine Beggars, Killing Wind, Phantom Bison Stampede and Telepath Bane. It’s easy to find the spell you want, open the bookmarks up, access the spells bookmark and it’ll give you access to an alphabet index. Jump straight to the “K” spells, if you want.
There’s a good range of spells too. They’re not all high level wonders. They’re not all just interesting ways to kill people or soak up damage. At the same time, and this is the important bit, most are the sort of spells which will have the players say, “I want to use this spell!” and allow the DM to reply, “I have no problem with you using that spell”. Let’s not use the term “game balance” for that. If you’re running a low fantasy campaign where magic is almost unheard of then these spells aren’t game balanced… but then a product like this isn’t suited for that style of campaign anyway. You fill find that many of the spells refer to events and places that probably aren’t in your game. This is Shtar again. Well. There’s no problem there. They’re easy to ignore or to assimilate into your game. I even quite like piecing together the Shtar world. Here’s an example of the sort of Shtar campaign text you’ll find in the spells, “This spell is attributed to much of the damage that the humanoids did during the First Humanoid War, accredited with allowing humanoid spies to enter much of the kingdoms and research defenses and military readiness. This spell is still in circulation, even more heavily now in the aftermath of the recent wars.”
There are four prestige classes. They all have cool names but not a single one of them is a 10 level class. Ha! Two of them are 15 level prestige classes. Where you expecting that? I wasn’t! The Bloodsong Dancer is a 15 level prestige class with its own Spells Per Day and Spells Known tables. It’s a prestige class for those mages who embrace the backlash risk of spellcasting on Shtar and go with the flow. The Master of Minor Magic specialises in doing impressive things with low level spells. These “impressive things” are all the more impressive because they continue past the normal limit of a 10th level prestige class to the 15th. Automatic Defences (13th level) allows the mage to assign spells that go off automatically whenever the mage is attacked. The Master of the Hive has the especially sneaky idea of having a queen insect as a familiar! Think of the possibilities! Prestige Classes pretty much go in one ear and out the other with me these days – but not this one. Oh no. The Singer of the Dead is one of those rare Bardic based magic-cum-song prestige classes. All these prestige classes get the thumbs up from me and that’s rather rare. It’s not because their mechanics are slick and smooth, nor the 15 level shtick but because they all have a gritty flavour to them. Grit and prestige are almost always mutually exclusive.
The final chapter lists four hefty monster templates. They’ve the same dark ambience as the prestige classes before them and of many of the spells. They’re the Arcane Ghost, Balak-Mak, BloodWraith and Undead Warrior. So, okay, they’re not quite as refreshingly unique as the prestige classes but they are the sorts of encounter you’ll want to put into your game after reading through Arcane Strife.
Make no mistake – this supplement is all about the spells, about arcane spells. Most wizards will rub their hands with glee at the prospect of being able to select their magic from such an extended list. If game balance comes an issue then there’s always the mage-hammering Shtar effects as a counter. Arcane Strife is entirely successful. It does what it says on the tin. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better collection of spells than this.
