The Genius Guide to Fire Magic

By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Super Genius Games is 12 pages long, 2/3 of a page front cover, 1 page editorial/SRD, leaving 10 1/3 pages of content, so let’s check out the new fire magic, shall we?

I know what you’re thinking: Do we need another fireball, another flaming sphere? No, we don’t. That’s why I was interested in this little pdf. While it would have been easy to cobble together a pdf full of bland damaging spells, this pdf goes beyond that by…well…providing damaging (AND non-damaging) spells that add interesting abilities and versatility to your pyromaniac urges: The very first spell, “Aleya” is a floating fire used to spot hidden items and creatures – iconic and cool: Just imagine the party’s rogue trying to hide from these orbs…

The other spells herein, surprisingly also come with imaginative additional traits: The charcoal lash for example does ignore armor, but also might damage the caster. Are you an agent of the divine? Punish those heretics with the Brand of Shame – extra painful and permanent for those caught defiling your belief’s tenets. Want to ignite those pesky undead? Why not make shambling Corpse Candles out of them?

One spell really excited me with its iconic simplicity: Explosive disarm damages your foe and if you manage to surpass your enemies’ CMD with the damage, blow the item he holds from his hands.

A class of steam spells is also introduced – while steam does fire damage against most creatures, but being composed of water, also works against fire creatures as cold damage. Three new spells provide new kinds of walls and cinder field makes for another neat spell for terrain control.

The additional material provided is interesting as well: From the inquisitor’s judgment that enables you to change your weapon into flame to the Oracle’s new dragonfire mystery and 2 new Witches Hexes, APG-classes get some neat love. Especially the hex to manipulate pyres is a stroke of genius and roleplaying gold.

Additionally, we get a nice short, simple template for fiery creatures and 2 new feats: One feat infuses your flames with divine power and the other one lets you change your damaging spells to steam.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, while I did notice 2 minor typos, that’s not enough to rate this pdf down. Layout adheres to the 3-column standard and the full color artworks are beautiful. The pdf has no bookmarks.

This Genius Guide pleasantly surprised me – I liked each of the spells, especially explosive disarm, and the APG-support is extensive and cool. The two metamagic feats are nice additions to one’s game and the simple template is a neat addition as well. However, the dragonfire mystery, while interesting, felt a bit unfocused at times, representing my only minor gripe. With the glitches, though, this minor lapse from an otherwise absolutely stellar quality results in non quite making for a 5-star file. My final verdict will be 4.5 stars, rounded up for the purpose of this platform.

Endzeitgeist out.

The Genius Guide to Fire Magic is available from: