Tome of Magic: Pact, Shadow, and Truename Magic

Meh. I didn't like any of the three “new” magic systems introduced in this book. I felt they were all implemented poorly and quite superficially - many times to the point of being silly. My primary distaste stems from the flavour and style of the mechanics.

Obviously, if you're not bothered by bad fluff and illogical sense, then you'll find something to like here. These three forms of magic are, to me, little more than just grouping existing spells in a different way, and calling them something other than “spell” - which is unfortunate really, because the core idea behind them are actually good.

Each new form of magic gives us a core class, a few prestige classes, some feats, some magic items, a couple of new organisations, and a few monsters. Each section has a different page border so that's a nice touch; it's like three books in one. The artwork on the whole are pretty well done, though I noted quite a few editing errors (lots of stat block errors too).

The pact magic user is the binder, who draws symbols on a surface to summon entities that exist beyond reality known as vestiges - daily. These “pacts” must be memorised made daily. With most vestiges being mad, or at least nonsensical, there's really no intelligence behind them to make a pact with. Mechanically, you can't really completely fail to bind them, so it's really just gaining access to their powers than making a pact.

They tried to make this class feel a little sinister, and even dangerous, for contacting entities that can exist outside of reality, but they failed. The consequences of failing a binding check mostly just end up being tedious after a while (“Oh right, today I have to be extra pessimistic and voluntarily fail all my fear saves.” or “Oh crap. That dwarf told me his name and now I have to give him some coins.”). You can negate the behavioural drawback if you're willing to take a penalty. Your character also gets vestige-specific mutations (nice touch), but you also get the ability (right off the bat) to suppress it (cop-out).

Different vestiges grant different sets of “abilities”. This places the binder firmly in a support role. These ability sets range from weapon proficiencies, feats, skill bonuses, and spells as spell-like abilities. Most of them are thematically consistent, although it's obvious that some are done just for the sake of giving the binder a bit more versatility. A binder is like wizard who has to pick “ability sets” to prepare each day instead of spells. I would've liked pact magic more if it had a more semi-permanent or longer-lasting feel to it.

The prestige classes and the organisations here are nicely done on the surface, but since binders can bind more than one vestige, it makes these prestige classes and organisations really superficial because even though they declare a vestige to be their focus, it's not really their focus - trying to make vestiges similar to cults just doesn't work. On the other hand, the witch slayer prestige class and its associated organisation are both of a deliciously dark tone than the rest of the pact magic section and is well done.

The worst part of the pact magic section (and the book) is the bestiary - for some inexplicable reason, the designers decided that bizarre creatures that resemble the bizarre appearances of the vestige must exist - just because. Example? How about a two-faced lion with five legs in a circular body? Think starfish. Stupidly ridiculous.

The middle section deals with the shadowcaster, a practitioner of shadow magic. My peeve with it is in the very opening - the designers mixed up the thematic concepts of void, darkness, and shadow. They talked of a return to nothingness and the destruction of light (inspired by Shar of the Forgotten Realms, no doubt), yet completely misunderstood that “shadow” is not the absence of light - without light, there is no shadow.

Luckily, the designers stopped misrepresenting Shar's dogma after the opening and end up just focusing entirely on shadow magic and the Plane of Shadow (which they confuse with “nothingness”). As with pact magic, I think this opening was meant to put a dark spin on shadowcasters, but it too fails miserably. Shadow magic in the Forgotten Realms had a sinister feel because it's thematically tied to Shar, and the fact that there are serious consequences of dabbling in too much shadow magic. Here in the Tome of Magic? It's really just a bunch of spells with the darkness, shadow, and illusion descriptors, and most of its practitioners couldn't care less about the “nothingness” bit. Oh, and they're called mysteries, not spells. Shadowcasters are neither arcane nor divine spellcasters, so they're locked out of a lot of existing spellcasting prestige classes.

What I do like about these mysteries is the way you gain them - you have to pick “paths”. These represent thematically similar sets of spells mysteries. You must learn them one after another to unlock the higher levels. This creates nice decision-making moments when you plan out your character's growth.

The prestige classes for shadowcasters are very interesting thematically, though not the most well-named. The organisations ranged from the academic to the deranged; a bit cliche, but rather well-designed.

Out of the three, shadow magic is the best of the lot, in terms of being able to stand apart from the default spellcasting system.

The third new core class is truenamer, the so-called wielder of truename magic. Truenamers don't cast spells, they utter utterances and recite recitations. When you learn utterances, you're really learning two spells in one go - the named spell, and the spell's reverse. Most of the time, the reverse is really the logical reverse, but there's quite a few reverse effects that don't make sense. Again, just like shadow magic, most of these utterances are just “as per so-and-so spell”. Whenever you utter an utterance, you have to do a skill check (basically, just dump the points normally spent on spellcraft onto the truespeak skill).

The flavour of truename magic is that everything has a truename, and everything intelligent has a personal truename. The designers actually encourage you to make up long random syllables whenever your character utters an utterance... I suppose they encourage people to verbalise the verbal components of spells?

Truename magic is a “classic” idea - knowing the personal truename of someone gives you great power over that someone. But here, knowing the personal truename just mostly gives you a bonus. So you get to research personal truenames. Of course, at the other end, you can change your truename. I don't know, this conceptualisation of a truenamer just feels very bland for me. Even the prestige classes (e.g. a monk who has to mouth off long garbled syllables before making special attacks), organisations (one cliche, one nonsensical), and the monsters are bland (truename-using celestial, check; truename-using fiend, check; truename-using undead, check). This is easily the worst of the three for me. It's like the designers did this last and they just gave up.