Old School Essentials Genre Books Preview – Part 2

               I hope everyone enjoyed last week’s preview with the Paladin class. This week we are taking a slightly different route and examining a few of the new spells that are being offered in the Old School Essentials Advance Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells. One thing that I cannot stress enough is that if you are buying one of the add-on books for Advance Fantasy, you really need to add both of them. The Illusionist and Druid are introduced and both books are required to play them, not to mention the Gnome and Bard as well. Needless to say, for the cost of both books you are getting a great value and adding a huge amount of new material to your OSE games.

I love this cover.

               We will begin with the Druid spell Heat Metal. It is a classic from other editions of D&D, but how does it transfer over to OSE? It is a 2nd Level Druid spell that has a range of 30’, and a duration of seven rounds. It can affect one target per two levels of experience. Thus, out of the gate it can effect a minimum of two targets, which is strong. All the targets metal objects will begin to heat up for the first four rounds, then it slowly decreases in heat for the next three. Over the course of rounds two, three, five, and six the subject will take damage if they refuse to discard all metal objects. The fourth round is key in that targets that refuse to give up their metal objects could possibly suffer the loss of a limb if they fail a save vs spell and they take additional damage. 

               This spell is a good selection, but a gamble as well. You are gambling that something in the near future will be relying on metal. It is a reasonably safe bet, but many monsters rely completely on natural weapons and will immune to these effects. Creatures that do rely on metal are going to be up a creek without a paddle. They will have to make the choice to disarm and/or remove their armor, or just eat the effects. Unless they make the saving throw, they will lose access up to several appendages and possibly be knocked out by the spell. Either case is a boon for the party.
  The next spell is coming from the 2nd half of the book, the Illusionist spells. For this, I chose one of the unique spells from the book, Shadowcast. This is a 5th level spell, adapted from 2nd Edition AD&D, that is used to gather information. It  does not have all the flash/bang of the direct damage spells, but it should not be over looked. The premise of the spell is that you go into a dark room that was recently occupied by someone you want to gather information. The Illusionist lights a candle and the shadows that form on the walls show a recreation of the events 6 +1 per level turns in the past. The events create a shadow play in real time and the party can try to piece out any information they need. The basic spell does not come with sound, but if the Illusionist creates a special candle made with a large monster's earwax and gold leaf runes (200 GP), the images will have sound as well.

  I really like the theme around this spell; it feels very appropriate for the Illusionist and can be very useful for a party. Players and GMs are going to have a lot of fun with this one. If you are a backer, and have not added this book to your BackerKit, you should before the kit closes. If you missed out on the Kickstarter, you will have the option to pre-order this and all the books from the Kickstarter right HERE. 
              What do you think of the new spells? Are you excited to see more from the two expansion books? Make sure to comment below on things you would like to see, follow the blog for the next four parts, and share with other interested parties. Did you miss Part 1?
               If you are looking for the creators of this great product please check out their website. https://necroticgnome.com/

EDIT: This article proved to be very popular. I went ahead and created a Facebook group for the blog, if you are interested the link is here.