''Magic of Faerûn'' is an accessory for the fictional
Forgotten Realms
''Forgotten Realms'' is a campaign setting for the '' Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as ...
campaign setting
A campaign setting is usually a fictional world which serves as a setting for a role-playing game or wargame campaign. A '' campaign'' is a series of individual adventures, and a ''campaign setting'' is the world in which such adventures and c ...
for the
3rd edition of the ''
Dungeons & Dragons
''Dungeons & Dragons'' (commonly abbreviated as ''D&D'' or ''DnD'') is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. The game was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TS ...
''
fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy literature and d ...
role-playing game.
Contents
This 192-page book begins with a one-page introduction written from the perspective of the fictional character
Khelben "Blackstaff" Arunsun
''Forgotten Realms'' is a campaign setting for the ''Dungeons & Dragons'' (''D&D'') fantasy role-playing game. Commonly referred to by players and game designers alike as "The Realms", it was created by game designer Ed Greenwood around 1967 as a ...
.
Chapter 1: ''Understanding Magic'', on pages 4–11, describes the nature of magic in the Forgotten Realms, including the deities who most represent magic:
Mystryl, Mystra, and Midnight,
Azuth,
Savras,
Shar
In the Unix operating system, shar (an abbreviation of ''shell archive'') is an archive format created with the Unix shar utility. A shar file is a type of self-extracting archive, because it is a valid shell script, and executing it will recr ...
, and
Velsharoon. This chapter also defines the terminology of magic, and explains the Weave—the barrier and the gate between raw magic and the world.
Chapter 2: ''Magic Variants'', on pages 12–19, presents several forms of magic beyond the standard types, including elemental magic,
elven high magic, gem magic, the mageduel, moonfire, rune magic,
spellfire, and spellpools.
Chapter 3: ''Practitioners of Magic'', on pages 20–41, gives information in increasing a
player character's abilities, including new skills and feats, and ten new
prestige classes.
Chapter 4: ''Places of Power'', on pages 42–67, describes exotic places to explore, including natural sites (mystic maelstroms, sparks, fey mounds, boomshroom patches, doom pits), magically enhanced sites (crossroads and backroads,
mythals), nature venerated (
ranger
A Ranger is typically someone in a military/paramilitary or law enforcement role specializing in patrolling a given territory, called “ranging”. The term most often refers to:
* Park ranger or forest ranger, a person charged with protecting and ...
guilds,
druidic
A druid was a member of the high-ranking class in ancient Celtic cultures. Druids were religious leaders as well as legal authorities, adjudicators, lorekeepers, medical professionals and political advisors. Druids left no written accounts. Wh ...
circles), places of prayer (destinations of pilgrimage, monasteries, shrines, small chapels, rural churches, mid-sized churches, city churches, large or fortified cathedrals), bastions of the arcane (
bardic
In Celtic cultures, a bard is a professional story teller, verse-maker, music composer, oral historian and genealogist, employed by a patron (such as a monarch or chieftain) to commemorate one or more of the patron's ancestors and to praise t ...
colleges,
wizard's guilds, mage fairs), and the magic item trade (the open market, specialty shops, the black market, trade wizards, antimagic organizations).
Chapter 5: ''Spells'', on pages 68–135, contains a spell list for several spellcasting classes, and presents over 130
magic spells.
Chapter 6: ''Magic Items'', on pages 136-181, presents hundreds of
magic items
Magic or Magick most commonly refers to:
* Magic (supernatural), beliefs and actions employed to influence supernatural beings and forces
* Ceremonial magic, encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic
* Magical thinking, the belief that unrela ...
, as well as sections on spellbooks, creating magic items, and extraordinary natural items.
Chapter 7: ''Creatures'', on pages 182-190, present statistics for six monsters.
Lastly, pages 190-191 are an index to the topics in this book.
Publication history
The book was published in 2001, and was written by
Sean K. Reynolds,
Duane Maxwell, and
Angel Leigh McCoy, with cover art by
Justin Sweet and interior art by
Carlo Arellano,
Ted Beargeon,
Carl Critchlow
Carl Critchlow is a British fantasy and science fiction comic illustrator. He is best known for his character Thrud the Barbarian, which originally appeared in ''White Dwarf'' magazine, and for his work for the ''Lobster Random'' comics.
Car ...
,
Michael Dubisch
Michael may refer to:
People
* Michael (given name), a given name
* Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael
Given name "Michael"
* Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and ...
, and
Brian Snoddy
Brian Snoddy is an artist whose work has appeared in role-playing games.
Career
Brian Snoddy and his friend Matt Wilson formed Privateer Press with writer Matt Staroscik to publish their own d20 supplements. Snoddy and Wilson produced the cove ...
.
Reception
The reviewer from ''
Pyramid
A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilat ...
'' felt that the "meat of the book for some would be chapter three where new feats and prestige classes are detailed" but noted that there was some "duplicate creep" of content from books that were still available.
In a review for
RPGnet
RPGnet is a role-playing game website. It includes sections on wargames, tabletop games and video games, as well as columns on gaming topics.
RPGnet was founded in 1996 by Emma and Sandy Antunes, Shawn Althouse ( etrigan) and Brian David Phillip ...
, Alan D. Kohler was impressed with the section on spells as it was both large and inclusive. The reviewer pointed out that many of them were updated versions of older Forgotten Realms spells, and he was rather disappointed with the amount of reprinted material in the book.
References
External links
Magic of Faerûnat Google Books
{{DEFAULTSORT:Magic of Faerun
Forgotten Realms sourcebooks
Role-playing game supplements introduced in 2001