DriveThruRPG.com
Browse Categories
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook) $24.99
Average Rating:4.5 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
12 0
1 4
0 0
0 0
0 1
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Evan L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/23/2018 10:16:58

There's a lot of good, a fair amount of bad, and a moderate dose of ugly, here. The new options for Awakened characters/NPCs run the gamut from amusing to awesome, with lots of great new Traditions to change up the flavor of Mages/Mystic Adepts, lots of new Qualities and options to throw at Aspected Awakened, and the return of some Talent options I'd sorely missed (The Traveler is 5E's version of the Astral Adept, and tons of flavorful fun in my opinion; the Apprentice is able to access some Sorcery and some Conjuring, in a limited fashion, etc.), and some new options that are loads of fun (The Return of optional 'Old-School' Shamanism, the useful-but-restrictive variants on Buddhist, Romani, and others) and some fairly powerful, though none are to the point where they'll make metagamers and optimizers scoff at previous options. The Shadowtalk bits are some of the most humorous and ominous in any 5E product to date, and really impressed me. Also, for the long-suffering players/GMs who keep trying to make Alchemy a fun and feasible option for characters, there's many traditions/qualities/gear in this book that help it substantially.

Now, for the rough parts: Some of the mechanics are just not able to be used. The book included 'rules' for Focused Awakened which looks like tons of fun . . . but neglected to include the cost or other options for selecting them. There's also a ton of tantalizing new options for Blood Magic, some explicitly for players, but they're all locked behind the Sacrifice Metamagic, which is a bit of a tough sell as character development goes, and will likely still be a no-go for players in many games. Additionally, expect the (sadly) status-quo amount of grammatical/referential errors that are the new normal for CGL.

All in all, I love the book. The flavor, the options, all are great. I'd caveat that most of this content requires more GM/Player discussion beforehand before including in the game than most supplements, but almost all of the fiddly bits make for GREAT hooks and motivations intrinsically. Kudos to the creative minds behind a lot of these ideas.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by A customer [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/14/2018 16:16:47

This book will break your game.

It's another example of Catalyst shoveling content into a book as quickly as possible to make some money.

It's clearly not been playtested, is totally unbalanced and poorly thought through from a mechanics perspective.

it also has some bits that directly contravene canonical shadowrun lore on magic.

i.e. it's mostly crap.

There are a few good things in for aspected magicians but that's about it.

if you have any concern about the horrific tilt towards magicrun that Catalyst has purused as part of 5e then this book will break your table.

My advice, avoid entirely.

On a separate note I've read all of "featured reviewer" Sean H's srun reviews and they are totally ill-informed and universally 4 or 5 stars for even the most broken drek. He's obviously a shill to be avoided at all costs.



Rating:
[1 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Mikhail M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 11/28/2017 10:30:23

This is a great book. It might be one of the best SR5 books as of late.

The book does have its flaws. There are typos and editing errors, and some of the mechanics are broken as-written. Some of the rules are ambiguos. This is why I rate the book 4/5.

However, those are relatively minor complaints - the book as a whole is tremendously informative and extremely fun to read. I really enjoyed reading it, and the piece about the bridge in the astral literally gave me goosebumps. Phenomenal writing.

Even if you have a bone to pick with the rules and magic in SR5, the book is worth it just for the flavor text. And I actually like a lot of the rules in this book too.

SR5 authors! If you are reading this - please do not be discouraged by some of the hate on the reddit and forums. It is a good book. Just please pay a little more attention to the rules.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Sean H. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 06/25/2017 09:46:44

Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana will be on the list to acquire for anyone GMing a magic heavy Shadowrun campaign, both for useful background information on what is happening with magic and new things to play with. For players, sightly less useful but there is still a lot of good information and interesting options for characters here. Overall, one of the more solid works to come out of for Shadowrun lately.

Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana are the Advanced Magic Rules for the 5th edition of Shadowrun, expanding on the earlier rules presented in the Street Grimoire (which is required to use several sections of this work).

The book begins with one of the ubiquitous fiction sections, then it begins with a section called Seeing the Invisible World which talks about how non-magical people perceive magic with a variety of (in game) first hand accounts of encounters with magic. This is useful for both for players and GMs when describing magical effects to characters who cannot directly see magic.

The Magic Mastery section is the character option section starting with new Mastery Qualities representing the ability to manipulate magic in refined ways all of which have requirements, usually skill based, and which can be acquired after character creation (which is good as many of them have steep requirements) at no increase in cost. Some of these provide interesting options, from improved alchemy to allowing mundanes to assist with rituals and new options for peace makers, which are rare in most game systems. New focused spellcasters: elementalist, hedge witch/wizard, null mage and seer provide more ways to have character to use a narrow section of magic. There is new metamagic, including way for characters to flip to insect or toxic shamanism, most of which builds on that presented in the Street Grimoire but tarot magic and necro magic is new to this book. Aspected magicians are expanded with new options for “apprentices,” enchanters, explorers and the barely magical Aware. Of course, there are new spells, including one that manipulates gravity(!) and a few new rituals, including the necro-magic one that creates animated dead things, always good for a scare.

Traditions talks about, well, traditions and how there are changing under the effects of Unified Magical Theory (UMT) and its effects on existing traditions, updating seven existing traditions which include some radical changes to how some of them work which may cause problems in an ongoing campaign with practitioners of these traditions. Some advice for GMs on how to incorporate (or not) the way these traditions change for existing characters would have been helpful. The eleven new traditions cover a lot of ground and variety, from cosmic to green (plant) magic, Olympian gods to Tarot, red (animal) and necro magic, good tools for players and GMs alike. Fourteen new mentor spirits are presented, including one for religions Holy Text, and alternate versions of three existing totems (rat, spider and wolf) are included again, providing some strong new options for those using mentor spirits. Magic oddities introduces the possibility of hybrid traditions and rules for an awakened martial art (Way of Unified Mana Hapsum-do). A section on magical demographics, i.e. how many magically active people are out there?, rounds out this section and is an interesting read.

No prize for guessing what is in the Blood Magic section, this builds on the rule presented in the Street Grimoire and tries to restrict the use of blood magic as well as presenting a noble path (self-sacrifice) that uses blood magic. There is a lot of information on how blood magic works, what sorts of people are drawn to using it and the dangers of doing so. Additionally, there are new blood magic spells and rituals, blood crystals (functionally magical cyberware) and new spirits (bone spirits and blood shades). Lastly, there is the addiction danger of blood magic which will turn the user of blood magic into a remorseless and casual killer if they succumb. Placing limits on blood magic, social and cultural as well as mechanical, is a good call as maybe that will keep players from messing with it.

Where the Wild Things are drops back into UMT and how that has affected the application of magic and spirits in the Sixth World and what (may have) been behind the explosion in the number of wild spirits in the world and the new sorts of spirts than have been appearing including the spirits of beast, radio waves and vehicles! So much fun to have with spirit here. Then, then, a huge amount of metaplot partly revealed through in-game world discussion. This section concludes with statistics for the new spirit types and new rules for summoning and negotiating with wild spirits.

Advanced Alchemy is just that, with a discussion of corporate alchemy, new reagents, new tools, compounds (which are new ways to use alchemy) and preparations (which are common ways spells are bound into alchemical items). All of which give the alchemist considerably greater flexibility and utility which they sorely needed. A short discussion on how the “dark traditions” (blood, insects and toxic) use alchemy to leverage their forms of magic in ugly but effective ways. Research, Rumors and Legends are five bit of knowledge which, unusually but usefully, each come with a set of adventures seeds both for groups with or without an alchemist in them. This section ends with some brief advice for the shadowrunning alchemist, basic but solid.

The entire book ends with an index of all of the new things included inside.

Forbidden Arcana is a useful resource for any Shadowrun campaign in which magic plays a major role and even in those where it is just a background element, it is a useful book for the GMs shelf. It does provide considerable support for alchemist characters and anyone playing such will want at least access to this book (a gift for you GM maybe?) but that is probably is not worth the purchase price alone.

Note: Read more reviews and other gaming articles at my journal https://seaofstarsrpg.wordpress.com/



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Shadowrun: Forbidden Arcana (Advanced Magic Rulebook)
Publisher: Catalyst Game Labs
by Simon H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 05/03/2017 20:05:32

Interesting! Not the best shadowrun product ever but it certainly has it's charms. Updates and adds a number of new magic rules and variants, such as sub groups and sub paths, details on various traditions of magic with bonuses and penalties. Newly discovered paths of magic are interesting and the addition of a dark grey but not inherently evil set of blood magic rules feels appropriate for shadowrunners.

There are a few typos here and there, nothing major, and also a couple of rule changes or additions that definitely should be up to the GM if they include them in the game or not (and one which I wondered if it was also a typo. Since when can Mystic Adepts not craft? I agree they're a little overpowered as is but I tend to default to the old fourth edition method of mana OR chi rather then allowing them to buy both for each point of magic). Overall I think it's a worthwhile product... though I hesitate to recommend it to everyone at the current price point. It's not too high but I think it's a little too high for an automatic buy.

One reason I might be going a little easy on this (and I want prospective buyers to be aware of that) is I'm a sucker for the metaplot. Minor Spoiler Alert ,

without giving anything away this book has some interesting metaplot moments, including one which necessitates the involvement of Laughing Man, Wordsmyth, AND Orange Queen.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 5 (of 5 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates