The Book of Hallowed Might

Game: The Book of Hallowed Might
Publisher: Malhavoc Press
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 21st, December 2002
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10   [ Really good ]
Total Score: 19
Average Score: 6.33

There’s nothing quite like a sales pitch to put me off buying a book. In this case, we’re told that The Book of Hallowed Might will supercharge divine spellcasters.

If that were true then I’d be tossing the book out the window. Except, of course, I can’t toss this particular instance of Hallowed Might out of the window since it’s a PDF product and my computer is too precious.

Fortunately, there’s no supercharging, Monte Cook does what he’s especially good at and introduces a wider range of rules and maintains game balance. As a matter of fact, variant rules in the Book of Hallowed Might are presented early on as a way to improve on game balance from the core rules.

The variant Ranger class in the supplement is not the one already available for free at MonteCook.com. That’s one thing the PDF could do better, it could hyperlink the Internet addresses.

The Book of Hallowed Might is rather like the first two books of Eldritch Might. Rather than studying arcane magic and spellcasters Hallowed Might looks at divine magic. This supplement, however, focuses heavily on good-aligned divine spellcasters when it comes to the mechanics.

One new domain is introduced and that’s Light. Feats include the likes of Vow of Poverty but never the likes of a Vow of Perversity. The new creatures in the book are Angels and Blessed Children. Blessed Children are the spirits of the not yet born and are supposed to be the opposite of the undead.

I really do like that sort of thing, I have lots of fun playing around with forms of undead and their opposites and Blessed Children are as good a suggestion as anything else I’ve seen. GMs will have to watch the implication though; everyone’s born pure and innocent. They become evil later. You can scrap that implication and allow the risk of calling on an evil Blessed Child but if there are such creatures then they’re not mentioned here.

Issues of alignment are addressed with an even hand in the first chapter. The scaling of alignment is particularly successful here, successful enough to overshadow the earlier quick discussion of the responsibilities and duties of good clerics and churches.

We’re taken through the discussion of responsibilities partly to help stop good clerics from being “walked all over”. It’s a fair observation; clerics are expected to heal the party without protest. It may sound like counter-intuitive logic but giving clerics even more duties can actually be employed as a limitation on their willingness and even the ability to heal or resurrect people.

I’m not so keen on the (albeit quick) suggestion that perhaps people only have a number of lives and can only be resurrected that number of times. A rule like that seems to lend itself too heavily to having to restart the dungeon at the beginning if you die unless you’ve saved the game recently. On the other hand, I welcome alignment scaling with arms wide open.

Alignments do not need to be points on an ethical compass but a scale between extremes. Good 9 is “more good” than Good 1. In fact, Good 1 is barely good at all. This rule suggestion is designed to cover these all too common problems when someone can accurately describe himself as “I’m a good person but if someone attacks me, I’m going to fight back – and not pull any punches.” There’s no Neutral 9 to Neutral 1 though, there is just Neutral. It makes truly neutral people very rare indeed.

I think this is a much more mature system than the vanilla D&D rules. It would have been better to introduce adjectives to describe the alignment scale rather than numbers; for example, strongly good or weakly good. Then it would be a carbon copy of the house rules one of my gaming groups have been using since the dawn of 3rd edition. I might just be biased. This scaling does not sit so well if you’re using alignment to define where someone stands in the planar Blood War. Are you allied with demonic forces? Kinda.

Paladins also receive some treatment in the first chapter. There’s a variant Paladin class that Monte feels is worth progressing above 8th level. More interestingly there are short rules that amend the class so it’s possible to play a Paladin dedicated to a particular deity rather than just goodness in general.

There are three prestige classes. The Blessed Prelate is suitable for characters with a good alignment. These people strive to please their gods (more so than mere clerics, it seems) and are able to summon Blessed Children.

The Hallowed Mage also requires a good alignment and is an attempt to make divine-arcane multi-classing worthwhile. In a designer’s sidebar Monte takes the example of comparing a Wiz10/Clr10 to either a Wiz10 or Clr10. Being able to cast both Cone of Cold and Cure Critical Wounds does not compensate for the loss of either Wish or Miracle. He’s right of course; he generally always is on such issues. Surely, though, players have stopped picking character levels for the spells it might bring by the time they’ve left high school.

Players pick classes appropriate to the development of their character in the story. Right? Right?? Oh very well then, you’ll love the Hallowed Mage and it’s cleverly thought out spell list. You don’t need to have a good alignment to meet the requirements for the last prestige class – the Knights of the Pale. You’re required to be neither chaotic nor evil.

Blessed feats and Oath feats are new. There are plenty of traditional-style feats in the chapter too.

It’s easy enough to find feats that “Improve-Advance-Enhance-Extend” abilities and skills but there are some refreshing and interesting feats too.

The chapter makes a good start with the Accolade feat. Characters with the feat are able to “knight” people (although not very often) and this gives the new knight dice-rolling bonuses. If the knight does poorly or unhonourably then it’s the giver of the accolade who suffers a dice-rolling penalty. Blessed feats are supernatural abilities.

You’ll find the list of Vow feats in here. If you manage to maintain a Vow of Chastity then you’re blessed with a +4 divine bonus to saving throws against disease and poison. The vows are all based on the sort of thing you’d expect from medieval Christian monks. I’d expect a medieval European monk to have a vow of chastity. I wouldn’t expect a cleric of Freyja to. I wouldn’t expect any cleric to maintain a Vow of Silence – but there are rules for that if you want to introduce an extremely frustrating NPC.

Oath feats are dependant on sworn oaths. You guessed, huh? You need to have the Swear An Oath feat before you can look at the likes of Oath of Magic or Oath of Combat.

Let there be light. There you have it, a brand new domain. The spell descriptions start on page 29 (only 50 pages in this book, by the way) and finish at page 39. Ten pages of Monte Cook spells alone are worth the US$6.00 the Hallowed Might PDF costs.

I’m less fond of pages of magic items and weapons but they’re here and probably deserve to be here. Not all the space in this chapter is filled up with specific weapons that may or may not be suitable for your game. Wisely, there are rules for generic special abilities that might be associated with divinely enchanted armour and weapons.

The stats for Blessed Children and Angels come in to finish off the download. Blessed Children have four different sizes – Balsam, Dayod, Fealom and Hallas. Angels are nicely linked with elements so the DM is blessed with stats and descriptions for the Angels of the Winds, Angels of the Waves or Angels of Stone. The inclusion of eight new creatures in this supplement is justified. You’ll want them.

There’s food for thought and numbers to crunch in The Book of Hallowed Might. There are enough of both to please most types of gamers but there’s more of the latter. The PDF is easy to read and print off. I printed it without bother and read it on the screen without fuss. Malhavoc Press stick to their tried and tested the layout of lightweight sidebars and illustrations. It might be getting a little boring now but it remains practical.

If you’re interested in the variant classes, new prestige classes (for good alignments), new spells, items or the friendly creatures then the Book of Hallowed Might has something for you.

It might not laden with game enhancements if you’re only interested in one or two of those topics but on the whole, this supplement is good value for money, DM friendly and well thought out.