Spellbound: The Seer
Spellbound: The Seer is a sorcery-themed add-on for Crafty Game’s Mastercraft series of games. By adding the sorcery campaign quality to your game you are able to unleash the forces of magic on your setting and players. This is the second Spellbound release (The Channeler being first) and there is also a preview of a Spellbound setting available for free at their PDF vendors called “Vow of Silence”. Spellbound: The Seer presents one part of a larger puzzle that provides a new magic-based core class as well as the magical disciplines of divination, mechanimancy and truename/power words to the world of Spycraft.
A crunchy electric tome of esoteric wisdom, Spellbound: The Seer comes in both print-friendly and normal varieties. This product is a careful and skilled adaptation of the d20 modern F/X rules to the Spycraft setting. While not having much in a way of useful fluff, this expansion will assist in adding magical spells and a new base class into Spycraft, as well as save gamemasters innumerable hours of conversion time.
So you love the Spycraft system, and you’ve recently immersed yourself in the works of urban fantasy literature or mystical detectives, but lack the tools to pull it off in game. Spellbound: The Seer fills that need (along with The Channeler), giving you access to a sorcery campaign quality that adds spellcasting classes, spells, spellcasting feats and skills. But magic does not work the same in Spycraft as it does in the d20 Modern system. This includes requiring skill checks to activate magical powers, unification of activation/hit roll into a single roll (if you are successful at casting the spell, it will hit.), saves that increase with the power of the spell caster not the spell level (so lower spells continue to be effective), and a single type of spell defense.
Spellcasters in The Seer are different as well. To start with, the Seer is a base class and not an advanced class like its d20 Modern counterpart. The types of spells each class can access are more tightly defined – the Seer in this book covers spells that manipulate/shape machinery, detect and observe, and magical language effects. Spells are cast on the fly, 0th level magic is unlimited (so simple magical powers can be done regular, spells known is based on spellcasting skill, and attributes used are spread out more (in balance with the more well rounded nature of Spycraft characters).
The Seer class is base class with extraordinary vision, mechanical understanding and truename familiarity. He’s is an idea man and a problem solver. His core ability boosts the action dice on spellcrafting checks. The majority of the class abilities are focused on timing when the seer gains access to different spell levels and increasing his spell defenses. Outside of the spell focused abilities there are lore abilities that allow you to strengthen your spellcasting, add more spellcasting trappings, or repel foes (nine options, five of which choosable over your career). The ability to “Turn” constructs or fey is a selectable ability of the Seer.
The largest part of the supplement is the reworking of the magic system. This product has disciplines of spells from the Seer school. They are the disciplines of artifice, divination and word. Each discipline has nine spell levels with three spells in each level for a total of 27 spells per discipline, or 81 potential spells for your Seer to learn. Many of the spells have familiar names to d20-based players but all have been rewritten to fit more flawlessly into the Spycraft game. Some of the familiar spells include Detect Snares and Pits, See Invisible and Align Weapon, and they operate similarly to their d20 counterparts whereas others like True Strike, Wish, and Identify all have multiple variants that are accessible at different levels. For example, Wish is scaled to three different levels, allowing for varying levels of effect. There are many new spells (or at least new to me) such as Wise Wisdom that grants a bonus on electronics checks; Purge, which sickens, damages and/or banishes those of an alternate alignment; and Jam Construct, which stuns constructed beings. Some “game breaker” spells that ruin investigation-type games like Find the Path are included, as is Pinpoint (which replaces Locate Person).
There are additional NPC qualities included so that the material in this book allows Game Controllers to utilize the book as well to add mystical villains. Three 70ish XP NPCs are included in the book, one for the discipline of artifice, one for divination and one for the word discipline.
The Seer is a must have Spycraft supplement for people who want to expand the power of their adversaries into the realms of the mystic or who want to use the Spycraft system to power an urban fantasy campaign. Though light on fluff, this supplement makes me hope that the setting “Vow of Silence” is out, because at that point I’ll be putting together the sorcery/horror options to build dark modern fantasy game for home play.