Pyramid Review
Tome And Blood (for Dungeons & Dragons)
Published by Wizards of the Coast
Written by Bruce R. Cordell and Skip Williams
96 b&w pages; $19.95
Broken up into five chapters, Tome And Blood augments your options when playing a character that uses arcane magic in the new 3rd Edition of the Dungeons & Dragons game. In some ways, the theme of Tome And Blood could be everything old is new again. Chapter One, Arcane Lore, provides advice on how to create an "effective spellcaster." Some of this information is also useful for divine spellcasters, such as stat placement and feat selection. The advice goes a little beyond that found in the Herobuilder's Guidebook, but not much. Of more use is the section on Familiars, with lists options for small and giant sized spellcasters, as well as more powerful familiars, available to spellcasters who take the Improved Familiar feat.
Of more interest to me however, was the section on Organizations. In the days of 2nd edition, The College of Wizardry, by Bruce R. Cordell, introduced interesting ideas that have worked their way back to 3rd edition, including the Arcane Order itself, with its leader, Japheth Arcane updated to 3rd edition. There are other organizations such as the Bleak Academy, a guild of necromancers, the Servants of the Flame, Spellswords, and the Hollow, a mage's home. Each section has background information, membership roles, benefits, leadership notes, and where the headquarters is . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: June 29, 2001
Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.