Complete Mage Review
Complete Mage, "A Player's Guide to All Things Arcane" is a Dungeons and Dragons supplement by Wizards of the Coast. It's a nice hardbound book, with good illustrations, 157 pages, retailing for $29.95 US. It is, obviously, all about "arcane" magic, the magic of wizards and sorcerers and the like. Now I'll be the first to say that I don't like dealing with magic-users, arcane or divine, in my D&D games. I personally don't get off on the magical power-trip, though there's nothing wrong with those that do, that's what D&D magic is for. As such, magic is far too much work for my tastes, what with choosing spells and memorizing what they do and when they can be used and so forth. That said, Complete Mage offers some nice bits that I actually find rather enticing.
One nice touch is the "Fundamentals" chapter. Mages are supposed to be all smart and dedicated to their craft, but in conversations about magic they fumble and stumble and make up things that don't make any sense because, after all, magic doesn't exist as such in our day-to-day world. This chapter helps recitfy that (the fumbling, not the lack of magic) by offering more than twenty pages of magic "primer" that explains how things work in broad terms, as well as how they are applied and focused. It offers, for instance, "blasters" and "boosters" and "controllers" as examples of general magical "ideology" that a player may use to refine his character's magical focus.
For those who like a little magic but don't want to handle the book-keeping of maintaining an actual caster, there are "alternative class features". These replace class features of other classes (fighter, paladin, druid, etc) and replace them with various arcane tricks or spell-like abilities. There is also the obligatory list of new feats that tweak spellcasting in various ways. Use your imagination. However what is new is the introduction of "reserve feats". These are neat little things that help you spread out your spellcasting a little longer. Basically these feats grant you a special ability as long as you have a spell of the proper type memorized, like having a water type spell (and the Aquatic Breath reserve feat) lets you breathe water as well as air AND gives you a +1 bonus to caster level when casting water spells, or having a fire spell memorized (and the Fiery Burst reserve feat) allows you to create little mini-fireballs. And you can keep using the special ability over and over again as long as you have the proper type of spell memorized. Being the type I am, I'd pick my spell list just for the reserve feat abilities and only ever actually cast a spell "in an emergency". Plus, this puts a litte more magic into your mage. How lame is it to say, "oh, I can't cast any more spells today. I'm all out". This way, as long as you keep a little magic in reserve, you can always do something to impress the yokels, and it doesn't cost you anything.
There are, of course, a variety of arcane prestige classes, and what would a book called "Complete Mage" be without a butt-load of new spells and Warlock invocations (introduced in "Complete Arcane")? There are a few new alchemical items that operate about like you'd expect, making loud noises or granting save bonuses and such, as well as optional spell components that increase various effects. "Angel Down", for instance, doubles the duration of abjuration spells. The book finishes up with a handful of magical locations ("Bigby's Tomb", "Boccob's Reading Room", etc) that grant special ablities to those who meet their requirements (assuming they can find the places at all).
As I've said, D&D magic really isn't my preference, but if I had to play an arcane caster, I would absolutely make use of this book.