RPG Review: Pathfinder: Ultimate Magic

Time to get back into the swing of writing reviews for the RPG books I buy!

Review: Pathfinder Ultimate Magic

I've been a big fan of what Paizo have been doing with Pathfinder. While I don't buy the setting specific books, the basic core rules have all been excellent books, high quality and avoiding the rules bloat that afflicted 3.5 and seems to be continuing in 4th Edition.

 Ultimate Magic is the first in a line of class books that focus on an aspect and expands or varies the options available. In this case, we take a look at magic, from the obvious spellslingers, to the more subtle magic users such as the monk.

We get a new base class again, in the shape of the Magus. This class combines aspects of a fighter and a mage to produce a character that is effectively a melee spellcaster. This of course opens up more options for players who may want to play a different type of character. On paper, the class seems balanced, and has some interesting tricks it can do, powered by a limited <arcane spell pool?> that will refresh each day.

A large section of the book is taken up by new advanced options for all the existing magic using classes, including the new Magus. Missing out are the true non-magic classes, such as the fighter and rogue, but they are due for some love in Ultimate Combat.
The class replacement options, and new class features (such as new evolutions for the Summoner) give the player more choice in what theme they want their character to take. You may find the slowly expanding number of options unnecessary, but I think they give the player much more choice, without ending up being a requirement. It also opens up different classes to fill a concept, for example the Necromancer archetype can be done in all the spell caster classes, just with a different emphasis.

Following on, we get introduced to a new type of magic system, Words of Power. Rather than learning a number of spells, the spellcaster knows a number of words of power, and can combine them into any effect they like. This is a very free-form system, that I would not advise a novice spellcaster play. It also would require some quick thinking on the part of the DM to describe the effect from the words used. Its an interesting idea, but not one I can see myself using.

In the book, they also introduce a number of new ideas, both totally new and expanding on existing areas. Spellblights are a new effect that can hamper a spellcaster if they fail to cast their spell properly. Mainly minor effects that act like curses, these add flavour to a setting, but shouldn't be used to penalise casters.
There is also a section looking into more detail about summoning outsiders, and constructing golems, all of which give interesting information, but optional rules.

A class book would not be complete with some new feats to use. A bit hit and miss with these, nothing really stands out, and a lot seem situational at best. But, the point of these books is to provide more options, which the feat section certainly does.

Finally, we get to the new spells. Not surprisingly, all the spell casting classes get some new toys to play with. With the exception of one, which should be getting an errata, they look balanced, and seem to fill in some of the gaps in the spellcaster arsenal. Again, we see some situational ones, and ones that depend on using other optional rules, but thats not a suprise.

The book is let down by some spelling, grammar and proof reading problems which is a shame as its a beautifully produced book. Its hardback and in full colour, with some wonderful full page pictures between sections.

This is not a book every player will need. If you regularly play a spell caster, then you'll find lots to interest you, but otherwise I'd just borrow the DM's.