Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus

Game: Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus
Publisher: Malhavoc Press
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 17th, November 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10   [ Really good ]
Total Score: 18
Average Score: 6.00

The Book of Eldritch Might III: The Nexus finishes off the series and rounds things up by giving a home to everything else arcane. It’s the Nexus itself that provides this catch-all basket. There are over hundred new spells in here – 111 spells, 49 feats and 97 magic items in fact – but there are also interesting locations and scenario ideas.

Not every scenario idea is built around the premise that great evil had been locked away somewhere, has now escaped and now has to be defeated. That’s good.

The idea of some mysterious place filled with doors that lead to different worlds is something of a fantasy staple so your players shouldn’t struggle to get their head around the idea. The best use for the Nexus itself is that it’s the obvious way for the lazy GM to quickly link into all the other locations and the magic available there by plugging the Nexus straight into his game.

I don’t see many problems with the Nexus either, the two key NPCs are stated with typical Monte Cook precision and the new creatures in the form of the insectoid guardians are just as well crafted. The only thing that triggered my GM-sense (like a spider-sense but limited to detecting dangers from players) was the almost off-handed comment that the ruler of the Nexus, the semi-divine Niveral-Sca, can close or open the doorways from the Nexus when she feels any given portal is being over-used. “How?” that was the question that popped straight into mind and ambitious players will want to know too.

There are gaps like this one in all of the locations and scenario suggestions – but they’re not supposed to be comprehensive adventures. The sidebars are scattered with “scenario seed” comments but in truth, the bulk of the text on each adventuring location is little larger than a seed.

The Nexus isn’t really about these locations anyway. I think it’s best seen as a collection of new spells, feats and magic items. These locations, plot suggestions and background to each serve as value-added, as a way to break up the monotony of scrolling through spells and to inspire a theme for each collection of spells. The Nexus is associated with new scrying techniques, Vabrin’s Forge with intelligent magic items and the City In The Storm with weather and family magic and so forth.

The scrying spells in the Nexus are one of the best features of this Book of Eldritch Might. In fact, I’ll go as far as saying that Monte Cook has saved this entire fantasy aspect in D&D from the depths of doldrums that the core rules had consigned it to.

There’s now an art and a science to scrying. Once again the magic is capable of instilling fear and paranoia in even a high-level high fantasy game. You can attempt to hide from would-be scry attempts, you can throw attack magic through your magical connection at your scry target and risk them being turned and thrown back at you.

The Bastion of D’Stradi is a realm where mortal races have blocked a demonic invasion of their lands. It’s stalemate but the tide of the war threatens to turn in any direction. If you’re using this location as a scenario then (and as Cook suggests) it’s likely to be one of stealth and surprise since a combat-fest is likely to turn sour against the weight of demonic foes.

There are stats for the especially bred demons for this realm. The feats and spells presented in this chapter are battle orientated. The spells deal damage or are designed so that with a bit of thought you can deal damage more effectively. Acidic globes spin around the spell-casters head like ioun stones before being launched at their target. With the right feat, a brave spell-caster can deliver an area-effecting spell as a touch-attack.

The Pool of Glenmasis is a magical sanctuary where dealing damage is next to impossible. It is a quiet woodland that comes to life at dark when travellers from all over the Planes come to trade. The focus here is on subtly and low-level magic. This comes as a welcome treat if you’re not ready for 13th level mages striding around in your campaign world. Some great spells allow you to animate your tattoos, protect your familiar with magical armour (+1 AC per caster level up to +10) or even turn it invisible. There are a whole lot of fae items here.

Vabrin’s Forge is the strange tale of an intelligent Ettin, the death of a head, the pursuit of magic (arcane magic because despite having Int 18 he didn’t work out he needed divine magic to revive the head), the creation of magical items and then the reviving of the second head again (no sniggering at the back) only for Vabrin to discover it was a typical Ettin that wants to clobber and eat things rather than his intellectual equal. Weird, huh?

This chapter brings you a whole host of rules for creating, improving, enhancing and selling intelligent magic items. New spells allow wizards to temporarily give their intelligent equipment the ability to speak to them, float around and do other cool stuff. If you want to forge an intelligent magic item or weapon that can do all that stuff in the first place then there are rules for that.

The ability to craft intelligence is seen as a feat with a requirement of at least 10 character levels. These rules are mechanically wonderful, people will go out and download the PDF just for these and more people will buy the paperback when Malhavoc’s distributor White Wolf ship it to stores.

If I need to create a game balanced magic item then I’ll use these rules. I find them rather empty though. The whole idea of what it means to be giving intelligence to something, to granting life and personality to a sentient being isn’t touched. Where does the intelligence come from? Imagine creating something more intelligent than you? What if a good-aligned mage accidentally creates something evil? Do items with a free spirit personality trapped in a static object go mad? The mechanics are all here – and as I said, they’re wonderfully done – but for those of us who are not stat-heads then I think important bits are missing.

The Vale of Stars presents a story in which dragons build a castle, teach some of the early humans magic and then lock themselves up with hugely powerful wards and are never seen again. A powerful race of elves that wield starlight magic build a thriving city around the base of the castle but then nearly destroy themselves completely by trying to get into the castle.

The active plot comes into play with the humans who have a small town where the elf city was once and the earth genies trying to mine the area near them. There’s a new prestige class here – the Starlight Mage. Liquid starlight is introduced a whole new tree of magic items. The new spells here are draconic in nature and boast quite a lot of high-level incantations.

The spells from the Tomb of Frozen Dreams tend to all be magic related. I know that sounds redundant at first but hopefully examples like Chains of Antimagic and Slay Illusion clear up any confusion. Slay Illusion creates an illusion of a large and horrible monster which then promptly rushes off to eat the first illusion it finds – kinda cool. It keeps doing this until the spell duration finishes.

Better than the new magic in this location are the quick and easy rule suggestions for inhaling dreams. As the title of the chapter suggests there are frozen dreams in here (and you can go with the idea that it does no harm or take the alternative that they’re being locked up by evil arcanists). By melting the ice which holds a dream with your own breath then you inhale the dream – by inhaling the dreams of a great warrior or mighty mage then you can, for a while, benefit from their memories and experiences.

The City in the Storm is a cinematic masterpiece in which your players can ride the back of flying whales, through a storm and fighting creatures of thunder as they go. It was unfortunate that a powerful archdruid hid the “mana vessel” in the city to keep it safe because when it cracked these thunderkin escaped. Doh. Typical. Shame it wasn’t put in the City Of Perfectly Still Weather instead.

I was surprised but pleased to see that the seven powerful families who rule the city are actually each mentioned and quickly summarised. The spells in this chapter tend to be weather focused or deal with family bloodlines. There’s a template for Mist creatures here too.

I like the way the spells, items and feats are broken up and divided by theme or at least by location. That said; I was worried I’d never be able to find them again but the appendix soothes that concern with a summary of all the available spells and their page number.

In the back of the download, you’ll also get a shortlist of which of these new spells can be treated as music magic for the Bard alternative as presented in The Book of Eldritch Might II. There’s also a quick look at the permanency effect.

I’m not the world’s biggest fan for lists of game mechanics – but if I’m going to read them then they’re likely to be written by Monte Cook and this book proves why. Besides, the Nexus is more than just a list of game mechanics and although I can worry some of the side effects of that I’m very grateful for the whole. Importantly, the Book of Eldritch Might III does what it says it’ll do – it is a resource for arcane mages, it does give you a lot of great new spells and feats.

The magic items are perhaps slightly less inspirational but are rather more flexible, providing something that almost any class can use. I don’t think anyone who bought the previous two issues of Eldritch Might will be disappointed with this one and I suspect there’s a fair chance that The Nexus with its interesting locations provides attraction to a wider audience.