Of Sages and Sorcerers

Game: Of Sages and Sorcerers
Publisher: Children of the Grave Press
Series: d20
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 18th, February 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 5/10   [ Perfectly acceptable ]
Total Score: 5
Average Score: 5.00

This the first offering from Children of the Grave Press and it has a rather experimental feel to it. PDF products are cheap, that’s one of the electronic medium’s main benefits but at the time of writing this review Of Sages and Sorcerers is only $2.50. That’s not cheap. That’s more expensive than free but less expensive than just “cheap”. It’s a small product. $2.50 is probably a fair price for 26 pages. Of Sages and Sorcerers is experimental visually rather than with its contents. The PDF pages are boxes with black borders and headings; that’s the new bit. The supplement’s contents are of classes, prestige classes, spells and feats; that’s the tried and tested bit.

I’m reminded very much of a webpage format and html tables when I sit back and look at Of Sages and Sorcerers. The complete encapsulation of the text works best when the PDF is printed out, it seems to put back that solid and real free that some printed PDFs lack. There’s no black and white printer friendly version for Of Sages and Sorcerers, that’s perhaps the only hitch in the user-friendly pricing scheme. Despite this the product doesn’t guzzle too much ink. There are drawbacks to the layout though. There is a line drawn up the centre of the page to separate the two columns of text but because illustrations rarely fit nicely into the column this straight centre line is rarely in the centre. In fact, the division boundary skips about all over the place. The boxing of all the text makes page run overs awkward. I’ve never been one to mark down products for failing to fit a character class or spell between page breaks but I certainly did notice the page straddling paragraphs this time. I think Children of the Grave are onto a good idea here, a potential winner but the formula isn’t quite right yet.

Ah, but the contents are far more important than the layout. I’m far more impressed by the sorcerers than I am with the sages in Of Sages and Sorcerers. It might be more accurate to say that I’m more impressed with the Shadow. The product could well have been called Of Sages and Shadow. The aim of the supplement is to spice up arcane spell casting and the success is with shadow. Shadow elementals aren’t new and I suppose their inclusion is for completeness more than anything, however, the shadow magic based feats which allow this magic shadow stuff to be woven into item creation and even familiar summoning. The chapter of new magic spells is heavily laced with Shadow descriptor spells and this works for me. The sages appear in the book as two new core classes: the sage and the shadow sage. Both are balanced but I think the sage is too dull; there are barely any class features and the ones that are there either dish out a bonus feat from a tiny list or bump up a skill. The shadow sage is a little better. However, if you’re looking for an arcane class to replace wizard for a middle fantasy campaign, a game scaled down from the high fantasy core of D&D then these two sages are both candidates. Another plus for the two classes is that they’re not short of detail; the spell lists are there in full as are sample starting packages.

Before the classes there’s just a little in the way of a discussion of spell components and the arcane language of Wizen Sigils. I liked where Wizen Sigils was going, that wizards adopt a short hand of their own based partly on their perceptions of magic and that this touch of “self” when used to prepare spells can carry that identifier into the arcane spell itself. For my tastes the chapter finishes too soon, I wish it had explored a bit more and then offered something more solid.

The three prestige classes are the Ether-Walker, Arcane Researcher and Ruin Explorer. These are all ten level classes and that’s another plus for the product, you’d want meaty prestige classes from such a specialised supplement. The prestige classes are specialised entities too. A game without heavy use of the Ethereal Plane is unlikely to get much use out of the Ether-Walker, but if the game does feature frequent use of the Plane then this prestige class is an admirable offering to a neglected niche. Similarly, an Arcane Researcher may find herself twiddle thumbs in games with lots of orc bashing in but will play a central role in a game of research and relics. The Ruin Explorer is the safest of the three since the ruin-exploring speciality can be stretched to cover a wider range of games.

The explorer and researching prestige classes, the sage core classes to an extent as well, combined to leave me imaging fantasy based Indiana Jones style games. I’d normally only lightly read any section of magic items but Of Sages and Sorcerers increased my tolerance for such things. The new items in the supplement rise to occasion and provide shadow influenced items and the likes of magical books that I can see sages pouring over in dusty libraries or adventuring explorers whisking out of abandoned temples.

As a first offering from Children of the Grave Press “Of Sages and Sorcerers” is something of a toe in the water and as such it is not really possible to speculate about what else we might expect from the publisher. As toes go this one could do with a bit of a pedicure but does hint at bigger and more substantial things to come. As a product, a very cheap product, Of Sages and Sorcerers is one to consider if you’re looking to boost the presence of shadow magic in your game.