101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires

[Messageboard Golem]

Expand Your Library!

No longer does a treasure have to be merely a book.

This book is designed for the use of players and gamemasters. Inside you will find more than 101 different books for use in any d20 fantasy campaign as well as the spells (75 of them), feats, skills, magic items, and poisons presented in some of the books.

This 59-page PDF is presented in landscape format for easy viewing on your monitor. Also includes a 41-page B&W PDF in portrait format perfect for printing. All of the text within is designated as open game content so that it may be freely used in other products that follow the OGL.

This revised edition includes values for the books, random tables for book selection, and many more spells, feats, and books. The material from A Dozen Free Spellbooks and The Assassin's Guide to Poisons has been included

 

[GameWyrd]

101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires have been kicking around in RPGNow’s catalogue since September and so you wouldn’t expect the product to be bristling with technological innovations. It doesn’t. The bookmarks, for example, are nothing more than six entirely capital letter headings. They seem to have been rushed in. I spotted my first typo in the 36-paged book in just a few minutes. As ever - there’s a twist in the tale, it’s not quite as simple as that. This is a d20 product but I had to double check. Author Philip Reed is a name I associate with many top SJ Games books. Chalk up one impressive RPG industry name. The PDF’s illustrator is Larry Elmore. Chalk up another famous industry name. By design, or perhaps by accident, 101 Spellbooks does a clever thing with its layout and printing. On screen the PDF looks like a series of weathered pages. Elmore’s illustrations are sketches drawn in a similar colour but darker shade of the weathering. The text is printed cleanly on top in black. It’s easy to read and it looks pretty. This design prints out nicely to! That’s the surprising thing. The weathering effect is light enough to just barely register on a greyscale printer. The printed pages just hint at a background, lightly draw Elmore’s sketches and enjoy crisp text. You’re not wasting any ink.

Magic.

That’s a good word. It sums up my feelings on the clever layout and with the exception of a couple of skills it describes the contents of this specialised supplement. There are 20 pages of spellbooks and 11 pages of spells. The rest of the 36-paged product is taken up with a full index at the start, a couple of skills and the OGL legal foo. 36 pages isn’t very much but every inch of space is used. You’ll find spells on the same page as the OGL and I’ve not seen that before. At the time of this review 101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires is a mere $4.00 at RPGNow too. $4 is a trifle.

Spellbooks are a quirky D&D thing. In their vanilla form I think they’re more of a plot hindrance than help. I think it’s much better to make a meal out of the role of the spellbook in a wizard’s life rather than fudge over it. Handily, 101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires makes this easily possible. For a start they give the spellbooks a bit of character, a bit of interest, even if they don’t bring any special features or added twists. Taking an example from early on in the download we can see the nicely named "The Dark Scrolls". They are described in detail as 14 scrolls tightly rolled and protected by ornate silver and platinum case. Sometimes the spellbooks have extra features. Another example from early on in the download is the "Liber Arcanus". This time the spellbook looks as if the last 20 pages are blank but if you read them in the light of a full moon you’ll discover ancient and potent information on Liches. If you make your knowledge check then the book will teach you how to damage liches more effectively. Other spellbooks contain advice that’ll boost your knowledge skills. The d20 system handle (at all) reading books to boost your knowledge but the problem goes away entirely if the book is magical and it’s supernatural effects increase the character’s skill. There are a wide range of these special abilities and some prerequisites too.

The spellbooks come equipped with spells. That’s easy to ignore if you’d rather design the spell lists yourself. That doesn’t stop you from keeping the special abilities of each book. The loading of the 101 tomes with spells allows them to straddle high and low fantasy in a way few other supplements manage. An effective way to hamstring magic in a low fantasy game is to decide the art of writing spells into spellbooks has been lost to the world. This doesn’t need any tinkering with the system. It means anyone determined enough to play a PC wizard will have finding new grimoires very much on the forefront of their mind. Spellbooks that contain only a few low level spells become a real treasure here and this supplement is a great sourcebook for that. That’s the sort of thing that started to roll through my mind and that’s always a sign that the supplement’s a good one. The PDF is equally effective in a high fantasy game. Spellbooks with powerful special abilities become sought after assets. Spellbooks that contain the only copy of a rare spell are treasures in their own rights.

There are spellbooks in these Tomes of Knowledge that contain spells neither you nor your players will have seen before.

There are brand new spells, plenty of them, in the download. Okay. There are some brand new spells and "just new" spells. The just new spells include the likes of Acid Arrow, Crushing Hand and Grasping Hand. Right. You’ve seen them before except with someone’s name in front of them. These are a minority though. Sample spells include Black Lightening (a mixture of electrical and evil damage), Moonspray (damaging moonlight) and the Uncontrollable Weeping enchantment.

101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires does what it says on the tin. There really are 101 new spellbooks and they’re worth having, especially for $4. It does more than that with the new the spells. The effective layout and colouring in a bonus.

I’m not sure what it would take for a list of spellbooks and new spells to attain a great rating but this product easily secures itself a good one. It’s an inexpensive and effective aid for GMs.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Glenn Dean, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
101 Spellbooks is a 36-page PDF supplement written and published by Philip J. Reed. The black-and-white on parchment pages contain line art by Larry Elmore. The product is available for download for $4.00.

First Blood
101 Spellbooks, Tomes of Knowledge, and Forbidden Grimoires provides just that – a compilation of 101 different spellbooks and other magical tomes for the GM to introduce into a campaign as treasure or plot items. In addition to the books, 101 Spellbooks also provides seven new feats, ten magic items, four poisons, four skills, a familiar, and 51 Open Content spells.

The books cover a range of type from the mundane -- “Halfling’s Breakfast”, a children’s story book – to the routine – the “Grimoire of Dark Arts”, which contains all core necromancy spells – to the truly unique, like the “Crow’s Grimoire” which contains new necromantic spells as well as a new Concentration-based feat. The spellbooks may contain collections of existing spells, completely new spells, or grant any number of additional powers upon reading – anything from skill bonuses to inherent spell abilities.

The powers of these tomes are both baleful and benign. Some are downright weird, like the “Book of Sight” with its roving eyeball, while others carry powerful curses, or open mysterious doors or gates. Most of the tomes are designed for arcane casters, but there are some (un)holy books for divine casters, and a handful benefit any character class.

Critical Hits
While the books themselves are interesting and entertaining, most players and GMs will find that the best reason to invest in this PDF are for the new spells. While some of them are the Open Content versions of the “named” spells in the Player’s Handbook, most of them are completely new. The spells are generally well-designed and balanced, and provide some nice changes to routine spells – flame bolt, for example, provides an alternative to magic missile for those that find magic missile a little to obvious spell choice. Gamers looking for new necromantic spells will find 101 Spellbooks particularly valuable, as there are a significant number of necromantic spells and items included.

Critical Misses
The one item that each book in 101 Spellbooks is lacking is an approximate value. While there are a number of books that seem to have been included just to bring the total to 101 – like the “Book of Minor Magic”, which contains cantrips, or the “Book of Ultimate Power”, which is completely blank – there are many that are extremely powerful. “Planar Writings”, for example, imbues the reader with the ability to cast gate once per day. It would be much easier for the GM to be able to measure the value of these books against each other when placing treasure if they had an approximate value associated with them, so that the careless GM doesn’t hand out a powerful book he might later regret.

There are a couple of mechanics that seem excessive in 101 Spellbooks, as well. One feat, Improved Caster Level, grants +1 spellcasting level to a multi-classed spellcaster – far to great a benefit for a feat, in my opinion. Several of the books also grant an increase in skill ranks, a mechanic that can violate the core d20 mechanic that limits skill ranks to character level +3. Granting a skill bonus would be a more appropriate mechanic than granting skill ranks. Most of the spell mechanics that gamers will find interesting, however, display an appropriate balance with the core rules.

Coup de Grace
101 Spellbooks is a product designed primarily for Games Masters, but one that has content players might find useful as well. Though it has a few minor rules issues, by and large this 100% OGC product contains a high density of usable features and is worth the relatively minimal cost.

*Note: Philip Reed just recently announced that due to some changes to the SRD, he would be dropping some out of date material from this product and adding some new information in, and making the new version available to those who had already purchased it.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to Fast Tracks at www.d20zines.com.

 

[Crothian]

There is something about a book about books that people seem to like. 101 Spellbooks is more then a book about books, it describes new types of poisons, has new feats and spells, as well as a few skills. But this PDF is centered on the books it describes and brings to life.

101 Spellbooks is a 59 page PDF by Ronin Arts. It is one of a series of 101 books that cover different areas in depth and in ways not seen by the other companies. Phil Reed is the author of the series and has done a good job of making the products cover a lot of area and be complete products. The PDF has bookmarks in it which I like, but I would have liked to see the bookmarks to be more complete. The art as always is done by Christopher Shy. His style is distinct and always adds a nice feel to the PDFs. The layout of the PDF is well done making it easy to read no matter if one prints it out or uses it from a computer or laptop.

The PDF starts with the spellbooks. All the books in here are unique items adding to the flair of them. The spellbooks are organized by price going from cheapest to the most expensive. Each book starts with an appearance of the book. The appearances are nicely detailed and make it easy to visualize the book. The descriptions are enough to use but not so detailed that they can not be easily changed or altered to fit a particular need or style. Each book contains certain spells with in it. These spells are either from the Player’s Handbook or from the spells listed later in this PDF. Some books also have special features. These are mostly found only on the higher priced spellbooks. Some of the special features are like a bonus to the heal skill when using the book or secret instructions to build a magical item. Lastly each item has the gold piece value. The books have a wide range of value going from a cheap 200 gold pieces to one book priced at an even million. The books have many abilities and it is important for a DM to read them over and understand them before allowing them to enter into his campaign.

The next section of the PDF covers special books. These are similar to spellbooks except they have no spells in them but all of them have a special feature. Some of the special features are mysterious like the ability to unlock an unknown tower that the book is an unmarked map to. Other books have features like learning about dwarves or about poisons, or even allow a gate to be created to another world. Each book can be seen as some type of adventure seed.

The last section of books covers the mundane ones. While these books just have a title and description they are no less interesting. There are not as many books in this category and they cover things from dwarven prayer to a child’s book about a Halfling and his breakfast.

New spells are always an interesting section. NPCs using spells the players never knew existed allows the NPCs to seem unique and fearful with unknown abilities and powers. After the spells the book has a few new feats, poisons, skills, and some random table for determining what book might be found in a treasure trove.

Over all I found this book to be a fun read. The descriptions are simple and easy to use. The book s are creative and can serve as rewards, treasure, or just a simple prize found in a duke’s collection. The spells and feats are well done and are always a nice addition to a book. For any DM wanting some interesting ways to give wizards spells, or take advantage of the fact that most characters are literate these days; this PDF has much to offer.

 

[MarauderX]

This PDF left me livid. I cannot see how this would be of real use to anyone's game, as it would never work for drop in items in a campaign world. The lack of stats, weights, and all the vitals made me stop reading several times. I would never use anything but the misleading titles to the books (the empty book of Unlimited Power), and even so I think many DMs could think of better books of lore & legend on the fly.

The books are beyond weak. The four skills listed are unnecessary. The spells lack imagination. The worst is the spell descriptions, describing how wonderful the spell is before finally explaining what it does. None inspire me to use in my game.

Granted it has been several years but I do not understand how any of the reviewers gave this 4 stars. There are grammatical errors in the first book listing, paragraph 1, second sentence. It is far too kind, about 3 stars too kind. The only good that can be done now is if it is taken off the market.