The Book of Curses

[Messageboard Golem]

Remove Curse? You wish...

10 New Arcane Curses for Bards, Sorcerers and Wizards to wreak physical and mental vengeance.

10 New Divine Curses for Druids and Clerics to promote their faiths by teaching the fallen horrible lessons.

A new look at lycanthropy, how to use werewolves in game and a progressive ten level template to represent the growth of the lycanthropic curse.

Three new vampiric templates - the Risen, Elder and Ancient One to represent different ages of vampires and three prestige classes for vampires - the Undying Lord, the Sybarist and the Sin Eater.

 

[ced1106]

Introduction

"Curses are unjust, but none are random."

This quote is from Rogan R. Hamby's "Book of Curses", by Heyoka Studios. The PDF is 64 pages long. Some content is for mature readers only (see the Sybarist, below) and the book includes a picture of a nude woman. The introduction to the book has some pretty good moody advice about the often ignored curse. I wouldn't mind if the author, Rogan R. Hamby, wrote a general GM advice supplement or adventure.

I should note that much of this material is suited for d20, not just D&D. Certainly they can be used in both Call of Cthulhu d20 and Modern d20. I didn't see playtesters mentioned in the credits.


Chapters 1 and 2: Curses

Of course, the first problem with D&D curses is that they're so... mundane. The Bestow Curse spell, for example, can reduce a PC's rolls by -4. The cursed Backbiter spear makes a U-turn to attack the attacker. Big deal.

The Book of Curses reminds us what a curse **really** is. The Bitch Queen's Embrace. Evil Eye. Creeping Blue. Treasured. (Yes, the last one's ironic.) **These** curses are highly suggested as reserved for DM use only, and require both an XP sacrifice and specific hard-to-find components. The curses in the book are less variants of the Bestow Curse spell than individual and unique fates. They serve as much as example templates for the GM to create his own curses. And none of these curses can be removed with a Remove Curse spell. They require special components and quests for information, thus serving as adventure hooks to your next adventure. About 35 pages of curses, ten arcane and ten divine, are provided. No curses are provided per se as cursed magical items. (Chapter 1 are the arcane curses, and Chapter 2 are the divine ones.)


Chapter 3: Lycanthropy

The Book of Curses also develops the curse of lycanthropy. The BoC primordial lycanthrope is a gradual transformation, reflected in a progression of ten levels / templates. They can be used alongside the DMG lycanthrope, referred to as the natural lycanthrope. Only templates for the werewolf are provided. As characters, PCs loses half their XP gained, and when they gain a PC level, they gain a level / template.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about this chapter. I haven't playtested the rules, but, in my opinion, the lycanthropy section has more mechanics than suggestions about roleplaying a lycanthrope. Lycanthropy, of course, is a unique problem in D&D. Unlike curses, the powers gained with lycanthropy usually encourage certain players to become lycanthropes. Each template **does** include a "mental state", so roleplayers have ideas how to run their character. However, this section doesn't address munchkin players, other than letting them use their powers until the last template, at which time they become an NPC.


Chapter 4: Vampirism

This section expands the vampire template into three progressive stacking templates: Risen Vampire, The Elder, and The Ancient One. Additionally, vampire prestige classes are provided for the different "flavors" of vampires in myth and folklore. The Undying Lord is the Dracula-like noble ruling his land. The Sybarist is the decadent sensualist, as fascinated watching as they are experiencing. The Sin Eater see themselves purged of human unreason, and seek enlightenment over power. All three, of course, would make suitable NPCs.

Unlike the lycanthrope chapter, I see the vampire prestige classes as having some potential for players. Each class has a unique goal the player can use to drive the character. A GM, however, should make sure a party of PCs has overlapping goals, and that his adventures are suitable for the goals of his players. For example, a Sybarist would need an adventure that suits its quest for sensuality.


PDF Format

A quick PDF rant. PDFs aren't printed books. If you're putting out a PDF product, create two copies, one for looks, one for printing. In the print version, include only minimal interior art, such as prestige class art and shaded charts. Color maps, except dungeons, are definitely worth putting in color. Cover art can be safely ignored. Don't put two-page spread border art in a PDF. Assume the printout will be single-sided sheets with a three-hole punch into a binder. Besides art, good use of whitespace can help break up text. Start a new section on a new page, so that individual pages can be printed out. Feel free to use worksheets and other pages that can be printed out and written on.

Book of Curses, then, follows the two-page spread format, with 1.5" border art. When art wasn't on the left-hand punched side, there wasn't enough margin to punch holes. The text otherwise follows a two-column format. It has some nice standard fantasy interior art, which doesn't apply directly to the text. On the upside, charts are shaded for ease of reading. Chapters begin on new pages, and, when possible, so do short sections, such as new spells.


Conclusion

Personally, I would have preferred to see more curses (for example, cursed magic items). Heck, I'm hoping I can spring Hamby's next book on my Call of Cthulhu campaign! The curses / adventure seeds were fantastic, but, in my opinion, the lycanthrope (werewolf) section added more mechanics than roleplaying or GM advice. The vampire's prestige classes add three interesting, unique flavors of vampires. However, players and GM must work together so that the goals of these classes fit the party and adventure (or vice-versa).

But at $5, perhaps its better to compare this product less to an rpg supplement than a roleplaying magazine. In that case, if you're interested in the contents (particularly the curses), it's money reasonably well spent. Likewise, in the offchance you're a non-D&D d20 player, The Book of Curses is an inexpensive way to add curses, werewolves, and vampires without the core books. (Modern d20 anyone???)

 

[JoeGKushner]

Time for another quick PDF (overdue) review. Heyoka Studios early work, the Book of Curses, is meant to augment and add details to the mundane use of the Curse in the 3.0 d20 system.

The book is roughly broken up into four chapters. Arcane Curses (10), Divine Curses (10), Lycanthropy and Vampirism. The introduction gives the GM a good idea on what the book is about and how best to use it. I agree with the author in that “it is his (DM) job to screw with the characters...” Curses are one interesting way to do that.

One problem with the Arcane Curses is that due to their experience point cost, casting time, and material components, I can never see a sorcerer taking such a spell, even an NPC one. It would have to be one really ticked off sorcerer who took something like Pox, a 3rd level spell for Sorcerers and Bards. It costs 350 experience points, takes an hour to cast, and requires a dead or dying person. When cast, it effects a total number of hit dice twice that of the caster's and gives those victims a pox with many nasty visual and game effects.

The best part of these spells isn't necessarily the game effects. Rather, it's how the characters have to cure themselves. It's the background information around the spells. For example, the divine spell, Bless You, has history about how a person's soul is air that doesn't leave the lungs and only leaves at the time of final breath. When you sneeze, some of your soul is lost. So here's how the spell actually works. Clerics and Priests preserve remains, someone disturbs it and is cursed. Every time they sneeze, some of their soul, which represents luck to the clerics who cast it, is lost. It's not something that's generally going to effect someone in combat unless the character's enemies know about it, but it will make life much more interesting with advice on what can cause the spell to be triggered, likely places where lots of dust can be encountered.

To cure the curse, the thief must replace all stolen items of a royal tomb from the Filchme house and consecrate it. Not that easy as those tombs were robbed long ago. Another option is to get fifteen nails made by a grandfather and seal a casket filled with all of the character's worldly goods, and other role playing limitations like not speaking his name for a year and a day, in addition to a casting of Remove Curse. It's very detailed and provides a lot of options for those who want more depth to the curses in their games.

Now the section on Lycanthropy makes the 3.0 werewolf quite a different beast. The book even suggests keeping the original 3.0 version, natural lycanthropy, and using this version as a primordial version, as this is “darker, more violent, screws the player harder and works well in settings filled with dark mysteries of the world.” Perfect for say d20 Warhammer or a d20 Modern X-Files style game.

The lycnathropes have detailed backgrounds and ideas on how to cure it. In many ways, the evocative writing is worth reading just for ideas for your own campaign. Those who enjoy Savage Species or racial levels, will like the fact that the lycanthrope here uses levels to showcase its growing power and savagery and includes details on how to stack these levels with standard d20 classes.

The vampire in chapter four, offers some base ideas for how to use vampires but acknowledges that there are so many variants, that this isn't the vital or quintessential version, just another version to add to the game. The templates start with the Risen Vampire, moving to the Elder, and finally the Ancient One. These are templates that stack with each other, representing the aging of the vampire. Those that need more power can take the Undying Lord Prestige Class to further augment their undead strength. These undead lords remind me of Warhammer's Von Carstein bloodline in that they are the noble or elite of the undead. About the only thing I noted wrong is that the Hit Die is a D8, and since the character must be a Vampire, it'd probably be a D12.

Another alternative PrC is the Sybarist, vampires that enjoy physical sensations and their transformation into a vampire, as part of expanding their physical senses. Others like the Sin Eaters PrC, are rooted in cultural lore. These individuals eat fruit that was used to absorb the sins of the dead and because no one eats their sins, they rise “as much angel as devil”.

Art is minimal and not up to some industry standards but does have a few good pieces. My favorite is probably of the werewolf tearing apart a bear in the woods Text is laid out in two column spread. Side column, a marble column shaped like a woman, or a woman in the mists, takes up too much ink but is useful when the author uses it as a third column to provide more information. Writing is easy to read and ideas are original and useful.

The Heyoka web page doesn't indicate if a 3.5 version is available but for those 3.0 die hard fans or those fans of the curse of ancient history who want more variety in their game, this book is for you.

Reviewer's Note: As of 1/13/2003, the book is on sale for $5.00 at RPG Now.

 

[jaerdaph]

I bought the original edition for 3.0 and received a free update to 3.5 sometime around the end of last summer. Haven't had a chance to look at the new version, but I greatly enjoyed the original.

jaerdaph

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ah, so it has been revised. They need to add that to their description on the RPGnow site.

 

[Heyoka_James]

Actually the book will be going through another revision soon to take into consideration some of the comments made in earlier reviews and will be getting a completely new layout done to it ("Curses" was my first experience with a layout program and it painfully shows).

I'm not entirely sure when this will happen but it should be before the end of the year once we get a few new projects out of the way first.

 

[Skade]

The Book of Curses from Heyoka Studios and written by Rogan R. Hamby describes a number of curses, both divine and arcane as well as two common curses of fantasy gaming, lycathropy and vampirism.

The pdf is 64 pages long and and costs $6.oo, and only available as a printable version, not optimized for screen use. The art contained within the book is suffient, but sparse. Each page is bordered by an interesting image of what may be a woman turned to stone, which may be a problem for some printing the material out. The layout is simple and efficient, with little wasted space. The book does not include page numbers, a small mistake but one that could be annoying.

The curses contained within the first two chapters are a bit more involved than most commonly encountered in fantasy gaming, and like curses of literature and mythology enforce a moral, or answer the transgression that inspired the curse. Mechanically these spells are slightly more powerful than others of their level and require an expenditure of experience points. In story, this is explained by the caster offering a small piece of their soul in the casting of the spell. Though the book only contains 10 divine, and 10 arcane spells, each spell is detailed fully, usually with two pages devoted to a single spell. In addition to the standard information given for a spell is a brief description of the spells casting, detailed component listing, very detailed description of the effect as well as an example of the spell in use, and finally the necessary act to remove the curse are given.

The third chapter focusses on lycanthropy, with a varaint form of the disease that may be placed into any campaign, even should standard lycanthropy exist already. This so called "primordial lycathropy" is a darker, more violent loss of humanity to an alien force, and in game terms will apply ten distinct templates to any character that survives the transformation, though by the end of the process any trace of the original personality has been devoured by the werewolf. As before, with the curses, several means of curing a character of the curse are presented each having a distinct flavor or mystical feel to them. More so than even standard lycanthropy, this curse would be difficult for use with a player character in most games, especially in the later stages of the curse. Some game masters and their players may enjoy the challenge however, and rules to assist in that are included.

Chapter four deals with vampirism and like the lycanthropy chapter offers variant templates from that found in the Monster Manual. The first of these is the Newly Risen Vampire a weak form of vampire focused on physical abilities, negative energy and blood drain, having lost the ability to Dominate, turn to mist, or call the children of the night. This template also enforces several of the traditional weaknesses of the vampire, such as running water, garlic, and the inability to enter a home without an invitation. The following templates of Elder and Ancient One are refinements of the initial template, meant to be stacked with the previous ones. Three prestige classes are included for the vampire, the Undying Lord, Sybarist and Sin Eater. These three prestige classes are intended to further refine the vampire into one of several literary archetypes. The Undying Lord for instance would crate a creature very similar to Bram Stoker's Dracula or Strahd from Ravenloft. The Sybarist is a pleasure oriented class, similar in some ways to Sheridan Le Fanu's Camilla or Lady Bathory of history. The Sin Eater however has no literary corrolary that I am aware of, instead taking a nearly Eastern approach to transcending both the curse of undeath and their past as a mortal.

One thing that makes the book an interesting read are the brief insights into a setting not yet detailed by Heyoka Studios, if it ever will be. Location names and characters are sprinkled throughout that lend a sense of character to the rules. This does not limit the use of the book at all however. Overall the feel of the book is sound, offering somewhat more powerful options that normally found in these areas, but balanced by limitations and requirements.

I would strongly suggest this sourcebook to anyone interested in a detailed horror fantasy game, as the curses presented are interesting as both plot devices and in use by players.