3.5e: The Prestige Classes of the Complete Arcane
In Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, there were the core rulebooks, the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide and Monster Manual, and then after that a relentless publication sequence of more stuff. Of my collection, the majority of it is books that were about the addition of player options, starting with four Complete books; the Complete Warrior, Complete Divine, Complete Adventurer, and Complete Arcane.
The Complete Arcane was the third of these books to come into my possession, and it has never had that much fondness from me, as a person. This is because I think that adding new options and power and customisation to the Arcane classes inevitably centralises around the Wizard (which yes, I’m going to be very guilty of) and therefore this book is a delightful trove of sweeties to deliver to the person who already has all of the sweeties. At least Druids can occasionally turn into a bear and eat someone.
Nonetheless, it’s still a Complete Book, and I do find them interesting, and based on an old article where I took the old 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons sourcebook, The Complete Warrior, and looked at it in terms of its large library of prestige classes, I’ve wanted to do that again. I even found myself wondering ‘gosh, isn’t this really easy as a way to make a whole article? why aren’t I doing this almost every month?’
The answer is that this supposedly easy article is at least at this point in the drafting, nearing on five thousand words. And this one needs explanations.
A Real Quick Explainer (Right)
First up, a Prestige Class is a Class that a player can take, in Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition (a Class-based Tabletop Roleplaying Game) that has requirements, limiting your options for getting into the class, and as a result gives the player some interesting alternative class features. Back in the Complete Warrior some of these things are classes that do things like limiting the character to fighting with one specific weapon, and in exchange, being better with that one specific weapon. I personally love Prestige Classes as a designer because they’re a mechanical option which has to be built around incentives and limitations – here’s why a player might want to be this thing, here’s the place in the world that justifies it, and here’s what a player has to give up to get it. It is fundamentally my beloved ‘making choices’ design.
A problem that follows from this, though, is that the Complete books are meant to be somewhat generic (within reason) so they can fit into any setting. Immediately that puts a kibosh on ‘the place in the world,’ and necessarily creates problems for the prestige classes expressing anything but the most broad and bald ideas.
Now, further complicating this article is that the Complete Arcane is not the same kind of book as Complete Warrior. One of the differences is the sheer size of the Prestige Class section. The Complete Arcane has 19 prestige classes in it, but the Complete Warrior has a stonking 35. There are reasons for this! For example, warrior type characters need a lot more help to make them worth building, and there’s a lot more room to make them do distinct and interesting things. The Complete Warrior had to include zero pages of new spells, the Complete Arcane dedicates 50-ish pages to its new spells, comparable to prestige classes. That means there’s less here to talk about, and it can be even winnowed down further for the discerning player who’s afraid of falling into one of 3rd edition’s owlbear traps.
The biggest owlbear trap for any spellcaster prestige class is that, with the exception of spellcasters that are already just bad (the Warlock, the Bard), there is no class feature or perk that any prestige class gives out that can be considered ‘reasonable’ that is worth giving up advancing the character’s spellcasting further. Spells are the most powerful player option in the game, and almost always, they are balanced such that the very first available access to them is the best time to get them. It’s not like a more granular game where say, having 80% of a spellcaster’s ability translates to doing about 20% less than them; thanks to spells coming at new levels, spellcasters who are 20% behind are doing about 50% less than their peers who didn’t fall behind are doing.
What this means is that all the prestige classes in the Complete Arcane can be viewed in terms of how much spellcasting advancement they offer, and what they offer for it. There are two options for this kind of advancement.
Full spellcasting advancement
Spellcasting advancement that only loses one level at the very end
Spellcasting advancement that only loses one level at the very start and where the whole class is really good
You’ll note I listed two, when there’s three. That’s because the third one isn’t really viable for a wizard class. In the Complete Arcane, then, this takes the 19 classes and breaks them into groupings of full casters (or close enough), bad advancement (loses more than one level of spellcasting, mandatory) and oddballs (doesn’t gain or relate to advancing spellcasting). When viewed like this, the classes are a lot more easily handled, because it’s just not reasonable to compare some of these options otherwise. There is a categorical difference, where some of these classes are prestige classes for people who want to do something interesting and weird with their wizard, and the others are for people who know the wizard can already do that because spells are bullshit.
To that end, the classes of the Complete Arcane, not in alphabetical order, but by category.
‘Drop First’ Casters
Anything in this list is a class that has to give up the very first level of spellcasting, meaning that no matter what design the player goes for, characters using these prestige classes will always be worse spellcasters than those that don’t. This means these classes have to do something really cool in their first level, something as cool as being at level 17 and not having access to 9th level spells yet. None of them do or can, which means these classes are, at best a cool vibe to see show up on a NPC.
Argent Savant
The Argent Savant is a spellcaster that gives up a level of spellcasting to become even better at casting and interacting with magical Force effects. Force being either the best or second best damage type in the game (depending on how your Dungeonmaster handles Sonic damage), there is much juice here to be squeezed. The class is only four levels long, and requires the taker to lose one level of spellcasting. It’s inaccessible until level 9, and and requires two fairly advanced skills, meaning that most Sorcerers who were interested in it were giving up all their skills to get in, and even having to wait until level 10 to qualify.
The idea behind the Argent Savant isn’t a terrible one. The fantasy idea of doing better with attack rolls from force spells, bonus to damage die with force spells, and the improvement of spells like mage armour is all pretty exciting stuff, but the problem is by level 10, spellcasters aren’t counting their damage die as much as they are just reshaping the entire combat. It’s an example of someone having a pretty clear, novel idea for a class, recognising a reasonable way to balance the abilities for it by giving up the first spellcaster level, and then completely botching the delivery, because nothing it offers is really that worth it. As a Warmage it might look exciting but the problem there is that it’s trying to narrow an already specialised class.
Effigy Master
3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons had a whole crafting system for making your own weapons and armour, to address the possibility of some kind of lack of access of specific magical items. Making your own items was cheaper, even if it cost experience to do, but the system also took ages and lots of raw materials in gold, which was always a worse deal than just finding the magical items you were after in dungeons. The Effigy Master is a crafting specialist where the thing they want to craft is a, well, critter. It applies a template to a creature, which strips it of an ambiguously-worded set of abilities.
There’s something delightful about the bad ideas of 3rd edition. See, this doesn’t look like a problem in and of itself, but this whole class is built around a problem present in the Polymorph and Wild Shape effects. The power of this ability is exclusively isolated in the monster manuals that the player can use to inspire the creatures that their effigy is based on. What’s more, it’s not obvious what the best options are unless the player has done a ton of research and then when that research is done, it’s solved. I imagine if I go looking, right now, there’s a wiki somewhere with a list of the best creatures to make effigies on based on player budget by level, which was sorted out ten years ago.
There’s a novelty to the class, but it costs a giant pile of money and the player’s budget is now isolated in an object that costs gold to repair. It’s not weak by any means, there’s definitely stuff that can be done, but that stuff has to compare to summons, which are not much worse and basically free to add to the spellbook, and much more replaceable. If the player wanted something really special as a cohort, there’s also the option of just taking the Leadership feat, which is always a problem for classes that want to grant a special pet.
Half-Casters
These classes represent characters that don’t not only get ‘not full spellcasting’ but in fact lose at least half their levels of spellcasting advancement. This kind of character fundamentally needs to be doing something with those other half levels that are really powerful, something akin to adding a whole new role to the character. This is a design more than a few prestige classes in 3rd edition tried to do, but none of them were ever worth it.
Acolyte of the Skin
Acolytes of the Skin are arcane casters that lease their souls. The Acolyte of the Skin boosts a character’s melee combat ability passively, with a better Base Attack Bonus, and some supernatural abilities that are meant to fill in the ‘spooky demon person vibe.’
Even if this class offers some vibe the player wants – like they’re say, a Warlock and they don’t care so much about the spellcasting advancement – the thing it offers is comparable to low-level spells. Resistance to fire, a spooky stare, the ability to summon demons – this is stuff that the spellcaster can do, already, with spells!
What’s more, augmenting the melee and toughness of a character starting at level 5 is a bad idea, because at that point the player has, optimistically, 15 hit points from their class, which they then start adding to in averages of 4.5. Starting with larger dice then adding spellcaster afterwards means the character is less likely to be far behind the hit point needs of ‘standing close’ roles – say starting with a d8 for 5 levels means the character reaches this prestige class level with about 25 hit points on average. And that’s assuming a d6 for a d8, for a wizard’s d4, this is much worse.
In a lot of ways, the way to build a ‘tough caster’ is backwards. Start with the basics to build a decent platform of hit points and defense, then add the magic. Or you know, just make a Cleric.
Enlightened Fist
Do you want to play a monk, but also a wizard? Shockingly, I remember multiple players who wanted to do that, and this does offer a genuinely exciting option in that one of its features lets the caster spend a stunning fist to cast a spell as part of a full attack action. It’s a pretty simple and cool ability, and the class does advance both its needs.
One of my favourite things about this class is the way that it doesn’t get in its own way much. For example, it lets the player cast a touch spell during a full attack, but it doesn’t specify that the player has to cast ths spell on an enemy, meaning that a player can – hypothetically – choose to turn one of the attacks in a full attack action into one of a number of touch spells that players cast on themselves or on allies – which can include some cute defensive measures like Gaseous Form and Fly.
This class has all sorts of problems, like, there’s no reason to want to stick a very weak class to a very strong one with almost no stat overlap, but god help me, it’s trying.
Green Star Adept
The Green Star Adept feels like it’s whispering around the edges of some weird and cool lore that reminds me of two messed up options – Lovecraftian horror, or maybe even Exalted’s horrifying Green Sun Princes. There’s no relationship here, though, which means as cool as the Green Star Adept could be, it very pointedly is not. It’s just ‘there’s a green star and it does green stuff.’ Also, funnily enough, members of this prestige class hate each other because they’re all competing for the same expensive resource to obtain more power. It’s like a prestige class that kind of makes you a magic junkie, something that they got rid of with the Forsaker back in Defenders of the Wild.
I cannot overstate this. The Green Star Adept adds a new requirement to levelling up, where the character has to eat a thousand gold pieces worth of starmetal. Oh ‘consume?’ It means eat. This is a character spooning up platefuls of their budget and chomp chomp chomping down on it. What’s more, as dumb as this is, as much as this looks like a terrible idea, I think it’s actually a good idea for design. One of the things with prestige classes is that they’re power set apart from the ordinary, default player options, and to get that power the player has to choose to accept limitations. These limitations are almost all entirely in the requirements of the class, which tend to wind up being extremely easy and wound up being things that very rarely asked a player to do something they wouldn’t want to do.
The problem with the Green Star Adept is that while it has this good idea, the thing it gives in return for this limitation, isn’t worth touching. Not even a little.
The Green Star Adept requires a base attack bonus of +4 (so 8 levels of wizard), 16 skill points (probably), a feat, and some of that delicious metal to eat. If the point of this class is to minimise wizard stuff, and say, starts with four levels of some combat class (say, Fighter for the sake of argument, but don’t do that) and one level of wizard, then a player can walk into this class at level 6. Either path isn’t great though because this class advances spellcasting at half speed (so a level 6 wizard at level 16, or a level 12 wizard at level 18), and gives medium base attack bonus.
And then, the ‘other’ stuff the class gets is turning the character’s Dexterity into Strength, adds damage resistance and slowly turns the player character into a construct. Which is cool, but at that level, any wizard can do that with the Shapechange spell.
One spell.
A single spell. I want to restate that. Everything this class can do, a wizard can do with a single spell.
The Green Star Adept could give full spellcasting advancement, full base attack bonus advancement and it still probably wouldn’t be worth the effort to get into.
Master Transmogrifist
The Master Transmogrifist is a type of spellcaster that wants access to shapeshifting spells, and then wants to jam the shapeshifting together. To do this it surrenders about half of its spellcaster levels, with the perk of being able to jam together (for example) octopus tentacles to dragon bodies. This is, obviously very cool.
It is also absolutely not worth it.
The Master Transmogrifist take the idea of a character who wants to shapeshift (with spells) and then lets them customise them (without just adding spells). The problems that follow on this are that there’s already a class that can cast spells and shapeshift into horrifying melee monsters, and that’s a druid.
What’s more, the spell Shapechange (that’s coming up a lot in this context) lets the Master Transmogrifist do some pretty busted stuff… but if the character is built using the Master Transmogrifist, they’ll never have access to the spell Shapechange.
This is a great example of when a complex thoughtful design runs face-first into the wall of how good the baseline wizard already is. I don’t think this was intentional, I just think that nobody involved was aware of how absolutely stonkers the wizard really is, and the idea of ‘customising shapeshifting’ needed more time in the oven to make something that isn’t based on which monster books your Dungeon Master owns.
Mindbender
The Mindbender’s another in the vein of trading spellcasting quantity, for, ostensibly, spellcasting focus. That focus is on the dominate spell line, mind controlling people, and the skills that kinda also connect to mind controlling and dominating. It is so nakedly a telepath for the version of the game that doesn’t want to mention telepaths by name (because the psionics system is a technically optional).
And, bad as this class is, as much beef as I have with it, it turns out it is actually filling a niche that the wizard doesn’t actually automatically fill just by showing up! Wizards have to spend a fair bit of effort and spell slots to maintain long-term domination effects.
There is the problem of the feat Leadership, though. That gives a Wizard access to a whole second character that they can just treat like a dangerous pet, and do things to improve the way that pet is regarded. They can even buff it! Leadership is a cracked feat though and I understand if a Dungeon Master refuses to allow players to take it.
The aim, as best I can understand it, is to have a wizard that does mind control stuff, using minions as blunt weapons, then lets them die and acquires new ones.
It’s a novel idea! Again, the Telepath can do it, if the Dungeon Master allows the Expanded Psionics Handbook.
Is it worth giving up levels of spellcasting when summons, that all wizards can use, exist?
No!
Wayfarer Guide
Barely a class, the Wayfarer Guide is a whole class dedicated to answering the question of ‘but how do people do lots of teleports really well for a particular vibe of story’ and this is the answer. It’s pointless. If a class only has three levels and those levels don’t even all give spellcasting advancement the question of ‘what the hell are we doing here’ hovers.
This should be feats, or alternate spells, or magic items made to interact with the spells. It’s incredibly dumb to do this as a whole class.
Almost Full Casters
The next set are characters that can get almost entirely full spellcasting, starting at first level. That includes characters who give up say, the 5th and 10th level of spellcasting (a not uncommon pattern), or ones that only give up the 10th level of spellcasting for some special capstone. These are Prestige Classes that can be used as part of a build without necessarily involving losing something invaluable.
Blood Magus
Conceptually, the Blood Magus is very strong; they’re a spellcaster that can trade a resource that the wizard already has in limited supply (hit points) in exchange for improved spell effects like a higher caster level, which can also translate to more damage. It loses caster levels at 5 and 10.
The Blood Magus represents one of a type of wizard prestige class that I think can be useful and worth pursuing. Specifically, most of what it gets is just ‘re-themed wizard things,’ with a blood-themed version of Scribe Scroll and a blood-themed version of Brew Potion. With just the first four levels, this is a simple flavour upgrade to a character that doesn’t do much to add power but does create a fun tone for a character. Unfortunately, it then drops a caster level for a homunculus (not a great trade), and then adds some damage perks to its spells.
It’s a shame, this is a bunch of neat little things that could be a good feat chain, but by dropping two spell levels for perks like ‘damage reduction 1/bludgeoning’ it makes it clear that this is for players who want to have a vibe and down-power the character.
Elemental Savant
Gosh, what a fun concept. Elemental Savants are spellcasters that can turn a single elemental damage type into another, different elemental damage type, and therefore, must dedicate themselves to a single specific vibe. It’s for fire mages who want to be the fiery fire mages, and it rewards elemental focus. This is, quite frankly, good!
The problems that come from this one are twofold; one, it surrenders two spellcasting levels (though not up front), and two, it rewards a character for focusing on its damage type with a modest boost to difficulty class. If a player makes a ‘fire mage’ in third edition they don’t need help with spell resistance for fire magic, they need ways to overcome fire resistance and immunity.
This whole class is made even sillier by the primary thing it does (elemental substitution) is covered by a feat called elemental substitution, which for wizards? Just does this, by default. And it’s a requirement for the class!
I guess it helps sorcerers, by letting them be even more limited than normal.
(Don’t take this prestige class for a sorcerer.)
Fatespinner
Talking about these micro-classes feels like a waste of time. Look, it’s a five-level class that can spend points equal to its class level to modify spell DCs. It is fine. This is a reasonable mechanic.
It is not worth the whole bloody class. Hey, you wanna play with this stuff? Check out the Complete Divine, which has a few prestige classes that grant access to the Luck domain with just one level, and that adds all the luck effects to the spell list!
Oddball Prestige Classes
The Complete Arcane is not a book that’s actually just for wizards. Ostensibly it wants to support the Sorceror (lol), Bard, and Warlock, as well as anyone who wants Arcane spellcasting, which in 3rd edition was… well, just that list. Oh the Warmage. Let’s not forget the Warmage. Poor Warmage.
Anyway, that means in the Complete Arcane prestige classes, there are some classes that aren’t ‘good’ in the context of a wizard levelling up but y’know, they’re, uh, they’re not trying to be. Presented here for the sake of completeness, though.
Seeker of the Song
Seeker of the Song isn’t a caster prestige class. It’s a prestige class for bards, which takes the bard’s existing problem of needing to do four things (fight at range, fight at melee, cast spells, provide team support) and helps with the spellcasting by getting rid of it entirely. Seeker of the Song requires a character to be level 10 with knowledge and performance and access to bardsong, and rewards the player with always-on boosts to defenses while singing. This is honestly, really great. It turns bardic music into a resource for spending, and this is, largely, pretty fine!
I don’t wanna talk smack about the Seeker of the Song. I don’t think it’s good, because it’s taking something that’s very powerful and flexible (Bardic Spellcasting) and replaces it with something else for characters that just want to focus on fighting. It does however contrast with the Fochlucan Lyrist, my favourite ‘after I get to level 10 my bard gets busted’ prestige class.
Sublime Chord
Sigh. The Sublime Chord is a bardic-style spellcaster that kind of wants to weld the bard spellcasting to a new set of rules that let the bard go from being a second-stage spellcaster (with a unique structure!) to instead being kind of a ‘full’ spellcaster. It gets a spell list and spells up to 9th level. That is the gimmick.
The requirements are silly, because this is a bard at level 10 deciding it’s time to get serious about spellcasting, which is somewhat like starting a race after everyone else has already won.
All that, and it gets to be wedded to the Forgotten Realms lore, which to me is an obvious point of failure.
Suel Arcanamach
The Suel Arcanamach is something that represents an archetype I think this book needs three or four. There should be, for fighting magical types, multiple full-base attack bonus classes with weak spellcasting progression ala the Paladin and its cousin prestige class The Holy Liberator. This could allow a character to build from the tough character into the caster, instead of from the caster into the tough character.
Oh and uh the Suel Arcanamach is that. They get to wear armour and cast arcane spells. Ta da!
The big problem for the Suel Arcanamach is that it’s both fine and conservative. Compared to much more aggressively accessible fight-and-spellcast options of the infamous Gish like the Duskblade (which didn’t come along until much later) or the Phantom Cavalry (which also, didn’t come along until much later). It doesn’t even compare well to the Eldritch Knight (which is in the 3.5 Dungeon Masters’ Guide). It’s good that it’s here, but it’s not a good example of what it is, and it lacks any unique ability or exciting draw to choose this, specific fighter-mage.
Full Casters
Now okay, that’s enough of the pussyfooting around. This is the thoroughbreds, the hard modes, the S-ranks, the actually-considered for taking on the most powerful classes’ most powerful builds. In the whole book there are five of these classes, and they are…
Well, anyway, you’ll see.
Alienist
Okay, so I want you to imagine a wizard. Then, take that wizard, and cover it with tentacles. That is the Alienist. Not related to alienists, actual alienists are just like, psychiatrists with tweed vests and funny hats. In this case, the Alienist is a wizard that adds a bunch of spooky tentacle stuff to summons, familiar, and some stuff that’s basically wizard-adjacent, and in exchange for that, becomes weird, off-putting and unpleasant to be around. For Alienist reasons, not just for the reasons that wizards are all just like that.
This prestige class has some legs. Most of them are coming out of its face, but it works on a pretty reasonable premise. The character gives up something that, being honest, nobody cares about (social skills) and that any given wizard can use spells to ignore (charm person is a first level spell after all) but it at least represents giving something up and getting something in exchange. There’s more of these prestige classes than I used to remember (because I ignored all the ones with actual drawbacks like this), and that makes the ones that last pretty interesting.
Geometer
This is a whole prestige class for adding the spell ‘glyph of warding’ to the wizard. That’s what it does. It makes the glyphs better and cooler but it’s otherwise just a one-trick pony: Do you want glyph of warding? Here’s a way to get it.
In the Dungeon Masters Guide, there’s a whole section on researching and creating new spells for a spellcaster for whom those spells are very appropriate. So, for example, a wizard who really values Glyph of Warding, they could just talk to their Dungeon Master and learn the spell that way.
But you know, a whole prestige class is probably, you know, that’s probably fine, too?
Initiate of the Sevenfold Veil
There are these veils, right, seven of them, based on the rainbow. No no no don’t look up why Isaac Newton says there were seven colours. That’s dumb and silly. No, there’s magic of the seven colours.
I feel like this class was designed with one purpose and then someone dropped it and handed it to someone else who designed it to another purpose. Fundamentally, this prestige class just adds a bunch of spells to the spell list and lets the character cast them. It’s even a spell-like ability. The good news I guess is that I can’t see this class actually being interesting enough with its water-thin lore to pull a player into it.
It might be cool for a Warlock (which I have been pointedly ignoring this whole time, because the Warlock is a really weak class in 3e and doesn’t need me to stomp on its shoes).
Mage of the Arcane Order
A bunch of mega nerdy wizards got together one day and realised that ‘restrictions’ and ‘challenges’ presented to the wizard are deeply unfair when there are other characters who don’t necessarily have those problems. These wizards wanted to know why they should have to respect boundaries just because everyone else did, and the result is the Mage of the Arcane Order. Mages of the Arcane Order get to wear pointy hats and be best friends and drink sherry and cast spells spontaneously, without access to a spellbook or needing to know or memorise the spell. It’s fine. Oh and it gets bonus spells and metamagic feats and languages.
The Mage of the Arcane Order is a fantastic class. It has requirements a player can pretty much just walk into, and the baseline wizard is given a bonus feat to cover the ‘worst’ feat in the requirements (Cooperative spell). This class explicitly only works for Wizards (and a few niche alternatives for whom it’s not worth it), and it gives the wizard the one thing the sorcerer had over them, which is the ability to spontaneously cast spells from a large corpus. It’s not wise for combat spells, because Full Round Casting can have problems reacting to a dynamic battlefield, but that’s okay, the wizard can just split their slots into ‘for combat’ ‘for maybe’ and then just leave a third of them open to barf into the spellpool at the end of day.
It is absolutely one of the best prestige classes of its type, it overwhelmingly benefits the wizard, it has no meaningful drawbacks and it makes them strictly more powerful.
This prestige class is an abomination and its existence and the existence of classes that compare to it, takes probably the most powerful class in the game and makes it better, for no meaningful cost. It is an arcane stockbroker, using its money to buy more money, because nothing ever matters.
Wild Mage
Imagine magic is this reliable, predictable force that multiple structures and classes are built to understand and handle in predictable ways. What if it wasn’t, though? That question is the Wild Mage, a class that takes a -3 penalty to caster level, and every time they cast, they roll 1d6 and add that to their caster level. That translates, over time, to a .5 boost to caster level. There’s also some perks about random spellcasting effects and a kinda spellcaster deflection shield.
After the immense wad blown that is the Mage of the Arcane Order, the Wild Mage is practically a footnote. It’s a shape, the Wild Mage is a clearly well-beloved fan thing, but what makes it well-beloved tends to be the stories of wild Mages completely fucking up campaigns by somehow, like, summoning a god or turning the plot maguffin into a cactus or something. This is just a mathematically reasonable adjustment to luck that a savvy player could actually route around (with a lot of spells that don’t care about spell level) if they wanted to. It’s fine, but it is a bit like false advertising. This isn’t the reckless ridiculousness of a Wild Mage of older days, this is just a bit of extra randomness to add to a character.
If you want.
There’s no strong reason to, but maybe you want that.
It’s honestly pretty fair, which makes it even worse to follow up the Mage of the Arcane Order.
Conclusion
Complete Arcane is a shockingly mediocre book. It introduces the Warlock, which is a class long on vibes, popular amongst players, and desperately in need of boosts to make it good enough to play in an environment of people who want to optimise their builds. Then when the Warlock is already available, it presents almost twenty classes, of which maybe three or four are good at their own job, but none of which measure up against the power of just having more spells.
It serves as a great representation of how Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition was a place wizards took primacy. They made a book full of options that were meant to make Wizards cooler and more exciting and even designing occasionally ridiculous or amazing options, they couldn’t actually pull it off.
I still love 3rd edition, I love my books and I love reading them, but this game has a fucking sickness.
Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!
I feel like you’re underselling the Blood Magus by not even mentioning that they can leap into someone’s blood and teleport into a different person’s blood to optionally explode out of them in a shower of gore.
Still pretty bad but metal as fuck
