1001 Spells gives you—yes, you guessed it—1001 spells, that will help you realize the vision you've had for your spellcaster.
From spells that are cast as move, swift and immediate actions to maw of the purple worm which lets you swallow your opponents whole, or just have your dragon tattoo bite him instead. 1001 Spells brings you at least a hundred spells for each level of casting, from cantrips to orisons all the way up to the world changing spells of 9th level, making your character's spellbook truly unique.
I don't have time to wax episodic over the usefulness of this book for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. Even if you only use 10% of the material within, that is still a hundred uses!
All I can really do is ask the question, why hasn't every Pathfinder gamer purchased this book yet?
...Other than the fact it is sold out. I am sure that will change. :-)
This pdf is 291 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of advertisement and 1 page SRD, leaving a whopping 285 pages of content!
The compilation starts off with very extensive lists of the spells - the vast array of excellent spells provided so far by the 101-series. I did reviews for all of them, so my individual scores were:
Apart from the content from the individual files, we also get additional content: the APG and UM get full support with Alchemist formulae, Inquisitor spells, Summoner spells and Witch spells and yes, even Magus spell-lists, providing a great support for the new classes and making sure they also get their share of the pie.
Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are excellent, I didn't notice any significant amount of hick-ups - quite a feat for a book of this length. Layout adheres to RiP's old, rune-covered b/w-2-column standard and the artworks are stock and mostly repeated from the series, although I actually did notice some pieces I couldn't recall encountering in the individual pdfs.
The pdf comes with extensive bookmarks, which is a necessity for a book of this length. Content-wise, the vast majority of these spells rocks and the added APG-support and UM-support as well as the hero-lab support provided make sure that this vast tome retains its usefulness.
However, that's also where a part of my criticism falls: While spell-lists for the new classes are included, the entries of the individual spells don't feature this information (i.e. they only read clr, sor/wiz etc.), which is a pity. While I realize that including this information in the spell-lists would have been a tremendous amount of work, I would have loved to see it nevertheless, as it would have felt like it integrated the support for the new books instead of adding it via appendices. The additional Hero-lab support, for everyone using the software, is awesome. By the way: If you have purchased all individual 10 101-spells pdfs, you can get this compilation for free by shooting an e-mail @ Rite Publishing - stellar support for the customers! So, how to rate this one? While the minor gripe I had is unfortunate, you still get more than 1000 spells for less than 20 bucks. Now if that is not an awesome bang-for-buck ratio, I don't know what is. Add to that the high individual scores the component pdfs garnered from me and I'll settle for a final verdict of 4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 - excellent, almost perfect compendium of spells at an unbeatable price for the vast amount of content provided.
This product’s tag line of “never cast the same spell twice!” is entirely accurate, 1001 Spells is a source for new spells that should outlive any campaign. It provides a wide selection of interesting and dangerous spells for all casting time. If you think can never have enough new spells, this product seeks to prove you wrong.
1001 Spells is a 291-page PDF (287-pages if you remove the cover, OGL page and ads) for the Pathfinder RPG written by Steven D. Russell and published by Rite Publishing. A HeroLab file for the spells for use with that character building program is also included.
1001 Spells has a traditional two columns layout and is easily readable, though done in a tight font. The art is full color cover with a variety of interior pieces in black and white tied to various spells.
1001 Spells contains what it says on the label, many, many new spells. It leaps right into the spell lists for the core spell casting classes without preamble and then to the spells themselves and ending with two appendices covering spell lists for the Advanced Player’s Guide classes and the Magus from Ultimate Magic.
The spells are roughly evenly divided among the ten levels of spells (from 0 to 9th) providing a wide range of options, though -as usual for fantasy game magic- they are weighted toward combat spells. Curses, charms, explosions, all are catered to. Fans of illusions will not be disappointed either. Many clever implementations of various ideas are included among the various spells. A little more color description of some of the spell effects might have been nice but I understand that the product is long enough as it is.
Ironically, it is the very mass of spells here that makes this product troublesome. There is no way to sort them beside the spell lists, which do help especially for wizard’s schools of magic, but some thematic lists (fire spells, good aligned spells, undead affecting and such) would have made it a bit easier to pull thematic spells for a villain or tome. But when the major problem with your product is too much of a useful resource, overall you are good.
This product is 291 pages long. It starts with a cover, ToC, and credits. (3 pages)
Spell Lists(34 pages)
Here is has the spell lists for each of the PFRPG casting classes. Each class gets a number of spells. I started to count how many each class got but it is hundreds each. They range from level 0-9 or max level for the class.
Spell Descriptions (232 pages)
Here is the meat of the book with full descriptions of all the spells. Luckily the book is heavily bookmarked to allow one to quickly find the spell one needs.
Appendix (19 pages)
Here is the spell lists for all the caster classes in the Advanced Players Guide and Ultimate Magic.
It ends with a OGL and ads. (3 page)
Closing thoughts. The art work is black and white and range from fair to pretty good. Editing and layout is very good. I didn't notice any errors at all. It is well bookmarked which is a must for a PDF this size. This is a collected version of the 101 spells series done by Rite Publishing earlier. Which means there is 1010 spells or should be, I honestly didn't count them to be sure, just to many to count and not lose track of at some point. I do like how they added in the AGP and UM classes to this, I was hoping for them as web supplements for the previous series. For the price you just can't go wrong with this. The real question is, if you have the other books do you need this one? No not really, it is handy having them all in one place and having the extra spell lists but this isn't needed. For the price though for those that don't have the other ones I recommend picking it up. So what's my rating? Well the previous series got mostly 4-5 star reviews. A couple of complaints I had, has been fixed and I didn't notice any errors so I will give this a 5 star review.
Supplements that add new spells are, more than anything else in Pathfinder, risky for a GM. While feats are fairly tame in how powerful they are, and magic items can be destroyed or stolen in-game, a new spell that wreaks havoc tends to be difficult to extract. So adding even a few new spells to your campaign can be a cautious exercise.
Taking a look at Rite Publishing’s 1001 Spells, however, will make you want to throw caution to the wind.
A compilation of Rite Publishing’s series of 101 X-Level Spells, this puts all of the previous material in one place (strictly speaking, it also means that there should be 1,010 spells here; I confess that I haven’t counted). I haven’t confirmed that any previous errata or fixes are present here, but given that my PDF copy has “v4” at the end of its file-name, there are likely some changes that have been made.
In terms of the books technical presentation, I was actually a little surprised by how minimalist its approach was. To be fair, it does have full bookmarks to each section and the beginning of each alphabetical listing of spells (e.g. you can click to go to the beginning of all the spells that start with “B”), and copy-and-pasting is enabled. No printer-friendly version (or epublishing version) is present, however.
Moreover, there’s no introduction or discussion of what’s here. The book goes straight from the credits page to the spell lists. These lists are initially only given for the Core Rulebook spellcasting classes. The APG and Ultimate Magic class spell lists are presented as appendices at the end of the book, something that found to be an oddly artificial distinction; why not just list them in the beginning with all of the other classes?
I suspect that the answer to this one may be in how none of the original spells were written with these additional classes in mind. Each spell’s listing, for example, deals only with the Core classes; if you want to know if a given spells can be cast by an alchemist or an inquisitor, you won’t be able to tell just by reading its entry – you’ll have to go check its spell list.
If it sounds like I have only bad things to say about this book, rest assured that these are merely footnotes. I’d much prefer that these issues were tended to, but it doesn’t change the fact that what’s here are over a thousand spells which are as innovative as they are imaginative. It’s unfortunate that I can’t go into any significant detail in this review, simply because there are so many spells of such a diverse nature, but when you have spells like Minor Miracle (a cleric’s Limited Wish), Steal the Painful Memory (remove the memory of an event from a large group of people), Counter Silence (a somatic-only spell that dispels magical silence), or Giant Boulder (guess what you’re throwing now), how can you not want to see more?
I should note that I’ve personally used some of these spells (albeit not a lot) in my game, so I speak from experience when I say that the book’s tagline is true – this really will make it more agonizing to pick what spells you learn throughout the campaign, simply because there are so many great ones here that you won’t be able to easily pick.
I also have to commend the book for coming with a dataset for Hero Lab. I don’t use the program myself, but I know a lot of people who do, and I suspect that this will make the book into a “must have” for them.
Overall, I’d give this book four and a half stars were I able, due to the class listing thing; as it is, I’m rounding this up to a full five stars simply because what’s here is so plentiful that I can’t really hold such a comparatively minor problem against it. 1001 Spells will give you more new magic than you could possibly use in a campaign, but you’ll have a lot of fun trying.
