Flatboxes and Solipsism - (how I fell in love with Magic again) (AD&D Tome of Magic)

Member Name: The Daz

Product:	AD&D Tome of Magic
Date:	13/03/09 (165 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: New avenues for your spellcasters, greater spell flexibility.

Disadvantages: Yet more to have to choose your spell allowance from!!

'So - these creatures are immune to Sleep, the roof of the cavern is too low to Levitate in, and I don't want to Fireball my party's Thief hiding at the other side of the outpost... hmm...I could, no...erm...argh - I need some new spells!'

Spells. No matter how many are created, you always feel there could be more to help you out of that tricky situation when your usual array of spells just aren't the precise thing you need.
Obviously, any decent gamer will relish the thought of several hundred new spells to get their teeth into, and the DM will equally enjoy letting his put upon bad guys use the same spells to great effect. So it's all fair you'd say...

The Tome of Magic is an excellent addition to the Core set of rulebooks for AD&D 2nd Edition.
It begins with 2 new Mage Classes - the Wild Mage and the Elementalist. The first is somewhat tricky to play, and requires a certain fatalistic humour from the willing PC Wizard, whilst the second is a more traditional outlook on power.

With a Wild Mage - in simple terms, your character attempts to control the Wild energies of Magic and use them in a variety of ways. The sphere of Wild Magic contains many spells that simply shape the magic, allowing several uses for each - relying on the ingenuity of the spellcaster to focus its energies. Using the Wild magic table you can get significant increases and decreases in spell power, as well as the risk of a Surge which will create something spectacular (enormous Fireball centred on the enemy), or ridiculous (bunch of flowers sprouting from your hat). Clearly not a Mage for the fainthearted!

The Elemental Mage chooses one of the four traditional elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Their strongest suit gives them bonuses to those spells learnt and cast, normal abilities with two other elements, and no ability to cast spells from the element to which their suit is diametrically opposed (Fire Mages can't cast Water spells for instance). The Elemental Spells are, obviously, those spells from the regular Schools of Magic which happen to be based on the Elements. This Mage is simpler to play than the Wild Mage, and creates a new avenue of roleplaying for your character. Instead of studying Abjuration at a stuffy College, your Mage could be an Earth Mage from a mining community deep in the mountains, or, if you extend it to Para-Elementalism, perhaps an Ice Mage from the frozen wastes.

Following this section is one concerning the new spheres created for Cleric Spells. Some of them like War and Travelers, are a bit focused on the Battlesystem for miniature battles, but the others are useful additions to the regular spheres. Numbers, Thought and Guardians all contain some clever new spells.

Metamagic is also mentioned. This concerns spells that affect spells. In the Wizard realm this involves spells such as Alacrity and Extension which, when cast first, increase the duration, speed, effect, etc of the following spell. Make your Fireball even larger! Make that Hold spell last longer... all far better than cursing the lowly level of your Mage.
With Priest spells, the metamagic concerns Devotional and Faith spells. These involve more than one Priest being involved, usually to create more powerful and wide-ranging effects than can be achieved with a single caster.

The Spell sections contain plenty of new spells for each level, with a deliberate attempt to move away from producing more of the same spells found in the Players Handbook, and to widen the scope of spell use. The addition of Wild Magic and Metamagic greatly enhances Wizard powers, and the new Priest spheres make the Cleric class a much more useful one than simply the role of a Healer or Chanter.

I should mention my favourite new spell - Solipsism. This Illusion spell actually requires everyone to disbelieve, rather than believe, its effects. So you and your party flee over the Illusory bridge you have just created, believing in its reality - whereas your enemies get halfway across, fail their checks, suddenly see it as an illusion and plummet into the chasm... marvellous.

After the regular spells can be found a section of about twenty Quest Spells. These powerful magical effects are granted as one use spells to a Cleric or group of Clerics in dire need, if their deity can be sufficiently persuaded to allow their use. Less likely to be used in an actual battle or on a small adventure - these spells allow wide reaching changes and specific actions to be undertaken that would previously have just been carried out by the DM on behalf of the Deity.

The back of the book contains a small section of new magical items to add to the ever-growing list. Dust of sneezing, Portable Black Holes, Boats of Folding, and (my favourite) the flatbox* will certainly cheer up your PCs used to complaining when they kill yet another Dragon and await the revealing of another standard horde of treasure - Not another Longsword +2!

With some spiffy full page artwork, attention to detail in spell creation, and the enhancement of the spell casting classes, the Tome of Magic is a more than useful addition to both the DM and PC gaming needs. It might take your spellcasters even longer to decide which spells to memorise or pray for each session, but will make for a more rounded approach to spellcasting that moves away from the tiresome (if you're a DM anyway) method of simply trying to smite, torch, annihilate or blow up all the enemies in their path.

*Flatbox - a storage box roughly 18" long, 6" wide and 3" deep. It's innards are completely and impenetrably dark due to Hypermathematics, and is in fact up to 6 feet deep inside and can store several tonnes of equipment. (Hatstand anyone?!)

Summary: Great addition to the spellcasters library.