Today we are pleased to present you our review of Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic, an supplement for D&D5e.
First of all we want to thank the authors for providing us with a digital copy. Marco Bertini and Daniel Chivers, Art Director and Art Consultant, are our old acquaintances. If you don’t remember Underwater Campaigns, The Complete Hag, Down the Garden Path or The Complete NPC, check out our reviews and learn about these very useful manuals. In the past we also had the opportunity to write about the work of their Lead Designer, Marco Fossati. You can find a review of his Acererak’s Guide to Lichdom on our website.
Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic is available on DMs Guild, priced at $ 3.95 (approximately € 3.50). This is a digital volume of 24 pages, with a very nice quality / price ratio. Let’s find out better what it is.
Review of the Volume of Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic
As anticipated, the manual is rather light and practical. It features forty new spells, divided into two categories: the “quest spell” and the “cooperative spell“.
Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic was created with Homebrewery, an amazing open source online tool. With a few tricks, it allows you to give an extremely professional touch to your material. And this is what the authors have achieved, making the most of its potential. In fact, the manual has the layout and the structure typical of the official material produced for D&D5e, which makes consultation practical and intuitive. At the same time, however, it does not lack a certain personality, a style that is not intrusive but which gives it its own identity.
Like many jobs for sale on DMs Guild, Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic uses stock images from Wizards of the Coast. If on the one hand this choice sometimes leaves a deja vu effect, on the other hand it gives the possibility of using professional illustrations while keeping the price of the volume low. In this way the result makes a big impact on the pages.
Quest Spells…
Let’s get to the point of this Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic review: what do we find in the manual?
“A spell can be a pure act of will, an ancient force of nature, or simply a god’s word. In fact, it doesn’t really matter as long as it fulfills its purpose.”
The Quest Spell are spells that go far beyond the normal limits of D&D5e. They are in fact granted directly by a deity, for a servant to do his will. They are therefore usually reserved for clerics, but in exceptional cases they can also be extended to other divine spellcasters. In particularly exceptional cases, because certainly the Quest Spells should not be used frequently.
The manual presents the rules and restrictions necessary to memorize and launch a Quest Spell. Furthermore, a series of tables allows you to randomly generate what may have led a deity to grant it to one of its servants. So we find twenty-two Quest Spells, belonging to various schools of magic and related to different domains.
Quest Spell are very useful because they make archetypal events of epic fantasy possible without having to force the rules. A spell like Implosion, for example, allows you to reverse the molecular structure of a creature, making it implode the body without the possibility of escape. A divine punishment of rare magnitude, like Undead Plague, allows all corpses within a mile to be revived as undead.
… and Cooperative Magic
Unlike Quest Spells, Cooperative Magic is not a gift dropped from above by a god to his priest. As the name suggests, it is instead the result of the union of several members of its clergy who focus on a common goal.
Casting a Cooperative Spell works like metamagic. But rather than requiring higher level slots, its effect will be amplified by the number of divine spellcasters participating in the cast. Mechanic simple, perhaps not very original but transposed with particular effectiveness in the regulation D&D5e.
Eighteen spells, random tables for recruiting other clerics and many complications. And above all the chance to play a group of spellcasters who join forces to banish a fiend with Great Circle; or taking down a stronghold of unbelievers by launching Raze.
Conclusions of the Review of Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic
Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic is a small PDF manual, which can be read in half an hour or so, but which offers a lot of ideas. The spells are well balanced, the ideas solid and visibly tested. Both for the large group of playtesters, and because already at a first reading they are functional.
If you intend to offer your players missions assigned directly by their patron deity, or you want to make them feel the sensation of moving within a clergy with mechanical consequences; or if you just want to add a divine touch your campaigns, Quest Spells & Other Divine Magic is highly recommended. A little jewel not to be missed!
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