If the spell-slingers in your game are losing their magic for you, this book may be what you need! Inside, you will find the rules for playing a new arcane class, the mage, that casts arcane spells in a whole new way. Like many magical characters from fiction, the mage isn't limited by a list of prepared spells for the day, or by a limited number of spells he can cast before resting. Instead, he prepares the spells as he needs them, at will. Also included are rules for specializing the mage to your style, and suggestions for how to play this new class.
This product is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and is 100% Open Gaming Content.
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Okay, a bit of a warning. This is a pretty nice class but you may never ever want it anywhere near your table.
What this is is pretty much a wizard. It has the wizard spell list and casts with Int. Has the same saves, HD and basic stats. What it does not have is a school, arcane bond or bonus feats. Instead it gets a mage talent every other level. The Talents are actually pretty interesting. They grant various buffs to different casting, one grants a familiar, one gives you access to a 'college' that has it's own talents for a form of magic. All around it's a pretty okay class.
Then there's the controversial part. The single most interesting and broken thing: It casts spells infinitely. Basically you can only have one spell prepared at a time, but you can prepare spells as many times as you want per day. Preparing a spell takes a full round action for the first level. As you level up your lower level spells can be prepared faster while your more powerful spells still take a full round to prepare. You don't have a spell book but you can spend money to memorize a new spell. You are capable of learning spells from a new level at the same rate as a wizard. If you're familiar with the Wizard's spell list this is broken beyond reason. About the only place it's not broken is in mid combat when you have to start preparing things while being attacked but the out of combat versatility is way too much.
But I'll give it this, in combat it is pretty worthless so there's that. And that's why it has such a high rating really. Its a different kind of wizard that wins in different ways. A more interesting and dynamic way and if the wizard spell list were different I'd allow it. But this thing is way too good out of combat, to the point of probably being able to avoid it altogether. But you may be able to have fun with it and I'm just paranoid so I'm leaving it with three stars but noting that I won't let this class ever touch my games.
Alright, so I picked up this new PDF for several reasons. First, I was heavily intrigued by the description of the magic system given in the product information. Second, no one else had commented or reviewed this product, and it’s fairly inexpensive so I said, “The Hells with it! I’ll review me some third party content!”
The Class
The Mage is a fairly cool class that ends up being fairly simple. You know a specific number of spells as you level up; you just sort of know them the way a Sorcerer does, but you can pay a fairly hefty sum of gold to learn additional spells. In theory you could learn as many as, say, a wizard, but you’d be paying ridiculously huge sums of money. Personally, I’m not convinced that using the prices for writing spells into spellbooks is too cheap for the class because of the second way the class is limited in its power.
Basically, you can cast any spell you know spontaneously, but you have to prepare it first. Unless you take a special mage-only power, you can only prepare a single spell at a time, so you get the spell memorized and in your head, then unleash it when you’re ready. It’s very reminiscent of an MMORPG’s “casting time” mechanic. As you level up, your lower-leveled spells can be prepared more quickly. Overall, it’s a very interesting mechanic. It takes a spellcaster and gives them the ability to cast as many times per day as they wish (there is no spell slot system or anything), but in many cases, casting your best spells takes a lot of effort and time.
The class is heavily molded after the wizard in terms of its stats, which is to be expected. There are a couple of oddities, though. First, the Mage has a specific number of known cantrips, like the Sorcerer. It’s kind of odd, to be honest, and the number they get is surprisingly small. Also, there is a section on epic rules for the mage, but to the best of my knowledge, no publisher (including Pazio) has done epic content for Pathfinder.
Overall, the class is interesting, and warrants a 5 / 5 points for this category.
Mage Talents
Mage talents are similar to an alchemist’s discoveries; they add additional powers that the mage can draw upon to alter their spells and spellcasting abilities. In addition to regular mage talents, there are also college talents that belong to a specific branch unto their own. This is the place where the mage both shines and falls on its face. There are some extremely powerful talents here; one of them basically makes your spells scale with your level in terms of setting the DC, which is amazingly good. So good, as a matter of fact, that it’s a no-brain choice. Then there are mage talents that give the class weapon proficiency, but there are absolutely no talents to support weapon use at all. It’s pretty … bad. The “colleges of magic” as they’re called range from “oh my gosh that’s so cool” to “wow … that’s lame.” It’s really kind of sad, especially in the case of the college of self, which had the potential to be really good. I may make some comments about it in on the forums.
Overall, mage talents deserve a solid 3/5 because the ones that aren’t strong aren’t even flavorful. It just ends up being a bit of a mess, and some talents even get a little close to creeping on each other; there are two talents that add two different bonus types to rolls to hit with rays. Which are touch attacks. And almost never miss because of it.
Looks
The PDF has a very clean, crisp look. I'm partially surprised that so much of the art is from open sources, as it all flows really well together. One thing that annoyed me, however, was the table that the class is presented on; it completely abandons the Pathfinder style (which is fine) and uses a really goofy font to designate when the Mage gains a Mage Talent. It ends up looking that the author's kid cut the word "Mage Talent: off of a printed sheet a bunch of times, then glued them back on the chart before Dad scanned the picture back into the computer. That, however, is in terms of its art. In terms of formatting, this PDF is bad. There are huge areas of blank-ness with no text at all; there’s an entire page with only three mage talents on it, and maybe a 4th of the page is covered! Because of that, I can’t give the product more than a 2 / 5. You have the art down; it’s not bad, but the formatting leaving so much wasted space? It’s not about wasting my money, you’re not. It just looks so unprofessional.
Closing Thoughts:
This isn’t a bad document and the class is cool; it just doesn’t feel supported at all. The fluff is very generic and parts of it tread on the wizard’s toes a bit. Things feel incomplete and the PDF as a whole looks like an incomplete puzzle. There’s enough there to know what the finished product will look like, but the big gaps in the picture are distracting.
Final Score:
Class – 5
Talents – 3
Looks – 5
10 / 15 – About 3 Stars.
I just bought this product now because I was interested in the description of the spellcasting system. I'm currently reading the PDF over and working on a Review for it, but in the meantime, I am going to post the oddities (if any) that I find here as sort of an FAQ system.
#1 - How does the Arcane Extension mage talent interact with spells that have an instantaneous duration? How about spells that are benefiting from the Extend Spell feat?
#2 - As written, the Quicken Spell metamagic is all but useless for the Mage unless you Quicken Cantrips, as you cannot take more than one Swift action in a round (I suppose you could prepare a Quickened Spell beforehand, cast the spell on turn one, then prepare a spell a spell with your remaining turn, but this is still a very underwhelming benefit for +4 spell levels. Is this intentional, or simply an unfortunate result of this new casting system?
#3 - Can you take the Arcane Feat mage talent multiple times?
#4 - TheCunning Accuracy and Arcane Accuracy mage talents look extremely similar. As written, they stack, but it's still a little odd ... is this intentional?
#5 - Does Forceful Casting mage talent require any actions to use? If not, why wouldn't I take this exactly?
#6 - Does the Mage suffer from Arcane Spell Failure? If so, it's not listed anywhere in the document, as far as I can see.
#7 - Does the Summon Horde college talent stack with similar abilities? There is a summoning feat in Ultimate Magic (can't remember the name; might be Greater Augment Summoning) that has a near identical effect. Further more, this talent lists your Charisma modifier as the bast number of times per day instead of your Intelligence modifier.
#8 - Does the Contract of Peace college talent apply to only specific creature (say, Bob the Horned Devil from the 8th layer of Hell) or to all creatures of the selected type (as in, all horned devils)?
#9 - Several college talents (Summon Horde, Contract of Fear) refer to using your Charisma modifier to determine the talent's effectiveness, where everything else involving the class seems to be based off of your Intelligence. Is this a typo or is it intentional?
#10 - Does the Reign of Death college talent have uses per day?
#11 - Does the Lifesense college talent work like blindsense / sight? If so, you may want to add it there, because it's written extremely liberally and could be subjected to cheese. EDIT: Wait, just read Lifesight. So wait, what exactly is the point of Lifesense?
#12 - The Dimensional Steps spell-like ability really ought to be a supernatural ability; that way, you wouldn't need to add the line about it not provoking an attack of opportunity. Regardless, can you use this ability while prone?
#13 - Innocoulous Form college talent specifically says that I can't speak human languages. Can I speak elven? How about gnome? :-P
Comments on Mage Talents (they're the real heart of this class, after all):
Additional Prepared Spell: This is one of those talents that everyone will take at least once. My question? What happens if you take Intelligence damage to the point where you couldn't use one or more applications of this talent?
Arcane & Cunning Accuracy: As written, these are both very bad. Rays don't miss often because they go against Touch AC, and having two separate talents to boost a ray's to-hit is lame. Boosting damage would have been cool, but two talents for hit is too much, and not many people will take either of these.
Arcane Dilettant: This is REALLY good. Amazingly so. I love it, thank you for making multiclass spellcasters everywhere happy. This should really be baseline for all spellcasters, in my opinion.
Arcane Turning: This really should have had something like "when a creature fails to overcome your spell resistance OR you succeeded on a saving throw," because as written, only an enchantment or illusion specialized mage would take this, as anything but their Will will be awful.
If Favored Spell and Favored School's action reduction stack, they could end up being extremely powerful.
For my opinion on Forceful Casting, see my opinion on Arcane Dilettant.
Intense Spell: I like how in-depth you went on to how this power is used. There are others that could have used this treatment.
Showman and Warrior Mage are both awful. Instead of showman, a talent that increased the Mage's skill points per level as well as added additional skills to their list of class skils would have been great. Not optimized, mind you, but still a reasonable pick. As for Warrior Mage, there is NOTHING in the class to support a melee mage. Nothing. The page these two appear on is almost completely blank; there could and should have been more warrior mage talents.
College of Self is really, really bad. It gives almost no real benefits to the class. Physical Score bonuses? Why do I need those? Nothing in the document supports a warrior mage. Sustence? Eating and drinking are practically ignored by most groups; where's the mechanical benefit? And the ultimate ability is a hash of MONK talents? Everyone trades those away for Quiggong Powers; why would a mage want them? This College really needs some help ....
Why doesn't the College of Form simply use the rules for Beast Shape; just specifically designating Tiny or smaller animals? That would be so much less space here, and so much more for Warrior Mage talents.
Another thing that irks me is that there's a fairly large section on mages of various races, yet there are no Alternate Favored Class Bonuses for those classes. It's like, "If you were gonna write it down, why didn't you go the extra mile and give more new content?"
@TriOmega: It's definitely a good PDF and you can't beat it's price. However, it lacks that extra "umph" that makes it a 4 or 5 star product. Like I say in my review, looking at this product is a lot like looking and a half completed puzzle; you can see where the product is heading and it may even look good, but the big, missing gaps in the piece are really distracting.
Gotta say, I was kind of hoping from some comments from Glenn Taylor Games on this one. I like the idea of the class, but unless some of my concerns are at least addressed or rebuffed in this thread, I don't think I'll be allowing this one in my games.
