Tome and Blood

Posted in RPG on 2017-06-19 — last updated 2017-06-22

Tome and Blood (2001) was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons splatbooks¹, and the first to grab my imagination. Although early D&D 3e books generally suffered weaker balance, the lore in Tome and Blood evokes a D&D world which not only canonically possesses variant forms of wizardry, may possess any number of undiscovered others.

1. Origins
2. Splatbooks
3. Organizations
   1. The Arcane Order
   2. Beastchasers
   3. Bleak Academy
   4. Broken Wands
   5. Escriers
   6. League of Diviners
   7. The Queendom
   8. Savants of the Flame
   9. Spellswords
   10. Wayfarers’ Union
4. Prestige classes
   1. Acolyte of the Skin
   2. Alienist
   3. Arcane Trickster
   4. Bladesinger
   5. Blood Magus
   6. Candle Caster
   7. Dragon Disciple
   8. Elemental Savant
   9. Fatespinner
   10. Mage of the Arcane Order
   11. Mindbender
   12. Pale Master
   13. Spellsword
   14. True Necromancer
   15. Wayfarer Guide
5. Other content
6. Conclusions
7. Footnotes

Origins

The list of sources of Tome and Blood is interesting.

After the TSR buyout in 1997 but before the launch of D&D 3e in 2000, Wizards of the Coast published several late-era AD&D 2e books under the TSR brand. Some of these would go on to inspire D&D 3e content and even share the same writers.

One such book was College of Wizardry (1998), a wizard class book describing a guild called the Arcane Order, headquartered in Mathghamhna², a castle carved from an extinct volcano. College of Wizardry author Bruce Cordell was also a designer on Tome and Blood.

Splatbooks

Comparing the two books, we can see how Tome and Blood represented a trend of D&D books as character customization tools for players, something which would come to dominate D&D 3e.

College of Wizardry was almost all background detail on a particular guild. It devotes only a few pages to character options: a nonweapon proficiency called Aleph I resembling a precursor to what D&D 3e would call metamagic (and indeed Tome and Blood credits the Arcane Order with the rediscovery of metamagic), the Arcane Order’s spell-sharing ability that re-appears in Tome and Blood, and a few spells that were largely too dull to re-appear in any third edition book onward.

By comparison, Tome and Blood is all player based, with most of the book dedicated to new character options like feats, spells and prestige classes. It intentionally shifted the target market to players, since they’re more numerous than Dungeon Masters, and so the book sells more copies.

There are a few pages of lore, or “fluff”, such as guild descriptions, but nothing like the entire book College of Wizardry dedicated to describing a single guild. This trend would continue in D&D 3e with Complete Arcane (2004) having almost no fluff at all.

The dungeon master or player of today can still mine old D&D editions for lore, that is to say canon D&D inspiration as it appears either in its descriptions of the world, or as ideas about the world implied by the existence of game material.

Organizations

The Arcane Order

The amount of detail on this guild, with two pages of text and one page of maps, is nothing compared to its depiction in College of Wizardry.

An ordinary guild for wizards and sorcerers, the Arcane Order’s headquarters, Mathghamhna, is carved into the side of an ancient volcano. Its focus is the study of an ancient magical grammar called the Aleph, or Language Arcane, from which the guild developed D&D 3e’s metamagic. Members can “borrow” prepared spells from each other via the guild’s Spellpool.

College of Wizardry gives vastly greater detail on the guild. Most notably, the guild’s full name is The Arcane Order of Enchantment & Exposition. Its founder, Japheth Arcane, named the guild after himself. He originally gave himself the name Arcane as an apprentice when he stumbled upon part of the Language Primeval by accident. Japheth is based on one of Bruce Cordell’s own D&D characters³, who would go on to appear in Cordell’s 2010 novel Key of Stars.

Maththamhna is considerably greater than described in Tome and Blood. It has three towers, stands 435 feet above the ground and its basement extends 210 feet below, plus further unexplored ruins. It is considerably more ancient than the Arcane Order and was built during the Elder Age by the authors of the original Languge Primeval.

Beastchasers

A guild who collects creature lore. The kind of group you want to go to for information on a specific creature. They also make a good plot hook: perhaps they hire the PCs to hunt and capture a specific creature alive for study.

It makes me think of Monster Hunter, where you have an entire settlement of magically advanced hunter-gatherers that rely on hunting to survive. A guild hires adventurers to track and hunt powerful monsters, and an entire village’s economy is based around crafting mundane and magic items from creature parts.

Bleak Academy

A necromancy guild, and one of the coolest groups in the book.

A common theme in D&D is that necromancy is shunned or associated with villains. There are counter-examples to this stereotype, but the Bleak Academy is not one of them. You can straight-up train in classes like blackguard and assassin here. The leaders are said to be devils who steal the souls of the students with the lowest marks.

What’s most excellent about this guild’s headquarters is its location: “in the midst of a dreary swamp, built on the crypt of an ancient lich”. College of Wizardry explicitly links this to the Tomb of Horrors.⁴

Broken Wands

Spellcaster assassins-for-hire. Their base of operations is a magically created demiplane, and their leader is a white dragon with levels of rogue, sorcerer and assassin named Winter who never leaves their headquarters without a magical disguise.

You hire the Broken Wands simply by drawing the symbol of their guild in blood on the inside of a door. Any door. They’ll see it.

Escriers

A bunch of lameoids who send each other messages with an expensive magical brooch. Why not simply cast sending?

League of Diviners

Spellcaster diviners-for-hire. This was back in D&D 3.0 when Scry was a skill. Really useful as a group to hire when you have money and need information. Not very interesting to be a member of, nor do they generally need to hire adventurers to find out information for them, but perhaps some dungeon or extraplanar location is proofed against scrying and they need real people to physically go there.

I imagine the League to be extremely neutral. Knowledge is power, and it would be significant if this group sided with one faction or the other in a conflict. They’ve got to be either doing it independently for money (in which case divination becomes a standard power any rich person can use), or purely for its own sake (in which case they are dedicated only to their craft and care not for the world of politics).

Members are required to meet once per year. The meeting location is not given out. You have to divine it.

The Queendom

A magical island nation which only grants citizenship to spellcasters. It sails through the seas of the world like an enormous ship, with a population of around 10,000. Its ruler, Queen DiFate, is some kind of being beyond the power of ordinary spellcasters.

This is the kind of thing I skimmed past when I first held a copy of Tome and Blood and only looked for character customization options. It’s the kind of element you can base a D&D adventure or an entire campaign around.

Savants of the Flame

Tome and Blood introduced the idea of a transformation prestige class; one by which your character gradually transforms into something other than human. The Elemental Savant is one by which you master an element (such as fire) and gradually become as an elemental of that type.

The Savants of the Flame are a group of this sort, whose base is built over an active volcano. Only Elemental Savants, with their fire resistance, can survive here.

One of their members has a toad familiar, but Elemental Savants’ familiars don’t gain their master’s fire resistance, so that’s potentially a problem. Toads were popular familiars in D&D 3.0 where they gave their owner +2 to Constitution, compared to, say, a hawk, which gives you nothing. D&D 3.5 nerfed toad to +3 HP (as Toughness feat).

The Savants are really a group who exist purely for their own craft. They do not care for wealth (gold would melt in their volcano base) or power; they do not work for kings or nations.

Spellswords

Another group tied to a prestige class. I recall a game developer (Monte Cook? I’ve forgotten) saying that prestige classes were definitely intended to be linked to groups or guilds like this⁵, and that this intent was broken by later prestige classes like Mystic Theurge that didn’t have any lore to them, as well as players level-dipping into multiple prestige classes for the optimal build. Complete Arcane even suggests that high level members Arcane Order often level-dip in multiple arcane prestige classes, something which would conflict with their guild’s own prestige class.

The spellswords are a guild who combine magic with combat. They hold an annual fighting tournament, and every ten years the tournament’s winner becomes the Spellswords’ new leader.

Although there’s a Spellsword prestige class linked to this guild, it’s not exclusive to that guild. Nor do guildmembers necessarily need to be Spellswords. It’s also distinct from the Bladesinger, which is a fighter/arcane class specifically for elves.

You can also hire Spellswords for 10gp per day, which I guess makes Spellswords sellswords.

Wayfarers’ Union

A guild of hired teleporters. Teleporting is tricky in D&D 3e and you have a high chance to land off-target if you aren’t familiar with the area, so it helps to hire an expert. They have a shop in every major city.

The existence of this implies a world where you can, for enough money, pay to have yourself teleported to anywhere in the known world. They’re essentially operating the fantasy equivalent of an airline for the very rich.

This is a big deal for NPCs who don’t have a party wizard to cast teleport, or even parties who don’t have a wizard (D&D 3e introduced sorcerers who have limited spells known and can’t afford to waste a high level slot on a non-combat utility spell.

Guilds like the Diviners and Wayfarers suggest that for certain spells, at least, guilds often spring up who will not only specialize in that field, but offer that technology to anyone who can pay.

Prestige classes

A general problem with early D&D 3e spellcaster prestige classes was that they often had considerably less than 10/10 spellcasting progression, meaning that you ultimately gave up your highest level spell slots in exchange for weak abilities that don’t scale with level⁶.

Some call this a D&D 3.0 specific balance issue, but it’s rather that earlier D&D third edition material made mistakes that later writers knew to avoid, as opposed to any changes specific to D&D 3.5.

Of course, we’re still able to mine it for interesting lore. The question to ask is, if people with this prestige class exist canonically, what does it say about the world they inhabit?

Acolyte of the Skin

One of the coolest prestige classes in all of third edition, and one which would have lore implications later on.

The Acolyte of the Skin uses a secret and painful ritual to replace their skin with a living demon. As they progress in the prestige class, they gradually become more fiend-like in appearance and gain various powers.

Mechanically, this is a poor class. You have to be at least a fifth level wizard to take Acolyte of the Skin, but only five of its ten levels grant spellcasting progression. You end up at level 15 with the spellcasting of a 10th level wizard, plus a set of 1/day special attacks that aren’t as good as the 7th and 8th level magic you gave up. The Complete Arcane version raises the hit dice from d4 to d8 but doesn’t solve the essential problem.

But thematically? Acolyte of the Skin is amazing.

It’s also a plausible origin story for tieflings. From D&D 4e onward, tieflings were described as ancestors of people who made a pact with Asmodeus or some fiend, and were transformed by ritual. The lore suggests that tieflings (at least some) are either humans who conducted a ritual like this one, or are descended from such a person.

Acolyte of the Skin suggests that tiefling is something a human can become with the right ritual; changing a character’s race to tiefling is already possible with reincarnate, so a ritual which changes one’s race is not unreasonable.

Alienist

The Alienist is an arcane or divine spellcaster who delves too deep into Lovecraftian mythos of the Far Realm, a distant plane at the edge of sanity introduced to D&D canon by Bruce Cordell in The Gates of Firestorm Peak (1996). It’s likely no coincidence that it appears in this book.

The main features of the class are that his familiar and any creatures he summons become pseudonatural creatures, whose true form is some eldritch horror such as a mass of tentacles. The alienist himself develops pseudonatural qualities and the cost of some sanity.

The Lovecraft mythos is so classic as to be cliche now, but it offers a pattern for player characters to gain some benefit at the cost of some penalty. It’s also something that makes for an excellent opponent, like the insane cultist stereotype.

The Alienist cements the Far Realm as a plane in D&D and other works would establish that the Mind Flayers and psionics are linked to it.

Arcane Trickster

Rogue/wizard multiclassing patch. It exists primarily to make that class combination work, but the idea of a rogue/thief who uses mage hand to pick locks at a distance is neat too. You’ve got this idea of a thief or spy who excels at their craft by using magic.

Bladesinger

An idea inspired by AD&D’s Complete Book of Elves, the Bladesinger is an elven warrior who also casts magic. Realistically, you play a level 5 fighter with one level in wizard, and then gain useful combat spells without losing swordfighting ability, almost like an arcane equivalent of the paladin.

In lore, this establishes that among the elves there are those who study both magic and swordplay, remembering of course that elves in D&D 3e are automatically proficient with the longsword.

The Complete Book of Elves version of Bladesong makes no mention of magic, only describing the subtle dancing style of movement, like a kind of elegant equivalent to drunken fighting.

The closest D&D 5e version of this is the fighter Eldritch Knight path.

Blood Magus

A mage who casts using their own blood as a spell component. Mechanically worthless due to the 5/10 spellcasting, a lack of any especially powerful abilities, and a hit point cost on most class abilities, but the Complete Arcane version improves this to 8/10.

As an NPC, the blood magus is a remarkable character. First of all, you have an entirely different style of magic, that suggests it developed separately and perhaps due to necessity. He can scribe spells on his own skin, cast without material components if captured, and teleport to freedom by jumping into one person and out another.

Candle Caster

A pointless prestige class who crafts scrolls in the form of candles. Crafting still costs XP. Perhaps a reference to Dalstrom’s Wondrous Candles, a set of magical candles from College of Wizardry that do things like store spells or perform divinations by lighting when a certain trigger becomes true.

What it suggests is that there are or were candle casters at some point in history who may have crafted these magical candles and left them behind for people to find as treasure. The candles aren’t readily identifiable by anyone other than their creator, and are quite obscure things, so someone may find one and light it without knowing which spell is in it, or even that it’s magic at all.

One wonders what necessitated the invention of candle casters. The class isn’t limited to arcane casters; in fact, it makes more sense for clerics who don’t get the wizard’s free item creation feats. Did it originally hold religious significance?

Of the core races, only humans and halflings lack good night vision, so the spellcasters of these races would have the greatest need of candles. Perhaps some people who lived underground or indoors in cities and guilds made heavy use of candles and this inspired their magic. Perhaps some group were unable to create scrolls, perhaps somewhere magic was outlawed and mages were forced to hide their spells in more mundane form, or perhaps at one time paper and ink were far too rare and expensive and candles were developed as a substitute.

Dragon Disciple

Another transformation prestige class. This one turns you gradually into a half-dragon over the course of ten levels. Immensely popular in our group, until someone noticed you can just take half-dragon up front for a level adjustment of +3.

Since D&D 4e and D&D 5e include dragonborn as a core race, the idea of starting human to become a dragon-person seems unnecessary. Half-dragons or full dragon disciples are considerably larger and more powerful creatures than dragonborn, but unlike Acolyte of the Skin there’s no real need in lore for dragonborn to descend from transformed humans.

This is the kind of class that wouldn’t be likely to appear in D&D 4e or 5e, because it’s so powerful that all your class abilities are “become more like a dragon”. Even D&D 3.5 would never have introduced this if it wasn’t grandfathered in in 3.0.

Elemental Savant

Another transformation prestige class. You become an elemental, while also matering spells of that element. So while you become a fire mage, you really do become a fire mage.

Elementals are somehow “pure”. They’re not tricking people into dark pacts or creating offspring with human consorts. Elemental Savants are simply mages (or other classes - clerics, thematically even druids) who become beings of fire, or water, or the like. They gradually become less a person, and more a force of nature.

You get this sense that they tend to be neutral. Elemental Savants transcend our world. That’s true especially for the high level casters, but perhaps less so for low-level ones. I can imagine some random warmage taking a few levels in this just to be a specialist, without going all the way and transforming into an elemental being.

Mechanically, this is a very good class for, say, a sorcerer. You lose nothing and gain both resistances and straight-up bonuses to spell DCs. Not many deities take an element as their domains.

Fatespinner

A mage who twists fate. He mainly affects his own spell DCs by deliberately taking a penalty in order to build up points which he can spend to increase DCs or power his class abilities later.

Tactically interesting (and similar in function to Iron Heroes’ token system), but not very interesting to encounter as an enemy in combat. The Complete Arcane version of this switches it from 6/10 spellcasting to a five level class with spellcasting progression on the first 4/5, very easy to take and broadly useful.

It would be more interesting to encounter a Fatespinner whose ability to change fate allowed him to place curses and sense destiny in a broad way. I imagine them as rare and enigmatic diviners.

Mage of the Arcane Order

A wizard who joins a guild that lets them increase versatility by borrowing spells from a common pool of energy. I’ve written about the Arcane Order earlier in this article.

The D&D 5e Loremaster path⁷ is a good fit for this. It is a tradition of mages who study the underlying mechanics of magic, and their abilities include performing kind of metamagic, and swapping out one prepared spell for another. This fits exactly with the Arcane Order. It shares a name with the D&D 3e Loremaster prestige class, but it’s mostly unrelated.

Mindbender

A specialist in mind control. A mindbender makes a fantastic main villain because of their ability to control others, both by magical and non-magical means.

In my view, the thematic difference between a mindbender and an ordinary Enchantment-specialist wizard is an obsession with control and power. A group like the Scarlet Brotherhood would make excellent use of this kind of ability. It’s a subtle power that’s best deployed for large, political goals.

The D&D 5e equivalent of this is the Enchantment-specialist wizard, who gains certain Mindbender-like abilities.

Pale Master

A necromancy specialist who gradually becomes more undead themselves. The back of the book calls this class the Pale Apprentice, so I guess they changed it to Master to sound cooler. At 5/10 spellcasting progression it’s another pointlessly weak Tome and Blood prestige class, but thematically, it’s excellent.

This is a great concept for a villain or morally ambiguous player character. It’s only available to nongood characters and from level 5 onward he becomes visibly undead, which is hard to hide in society without wearing dark hooded robes everywhere (even in summer).

Spellsword

A neat combination fighter/wizard class. Like a lot of the multiclass prestige classes it’s not very powerful, but interesting concept.

Unlike the elven Bladesinger, anyone can be a Spellsword. That opens it up to any race or culture with a tradition of arcane magic. Canonically, it’s taught by a specific guild, but isn’t necessarily tied to that guild. Their main abilities are to cast spells through their weapon, and store spells in their weapon.

This isn’t a fighter/wizard multiclass patch; for that you want D&D 3.5’s Eldritch Knight, a flavourless class where a wizard essentially gains fighter base attack and nearly full casting progression.

D&D 5e’s Eldritch Knight is somewhat closer to the Spellsword, having limited spell selection and the ability to wear armour. In D&D 5e, the Spellsword guild would recruit and train Eldritch Knights. The implication is that the guild’s novices would begin as fighters before beginning any training in magic.

True Necromancer

A wizard/cleric patch class to make multiclassing practical, with the added benefit of becoming a specialist in raising undead. A reason for this to exist is that evil clerics made better necromancers in D&D 3e than actual Necromancy specialist wizards.

Wayfarer Guide

You get better at casting teleport spells. Useful if you’re an NPC working at the Wayfarer’s Guild.

Other content

Some of the spells and equipment in this book made it into later D&D editions, especially via inclusion in D&D 3.5. The spell lesser acid orb and its variants made it to D&D 5e as chromatic orb, which very cleverly has a 50gp focus cost to encourage you to use the more classic spells at level 1.

Feign death first appeared under the name peace of dissolution in Bastion of Faith (2000), a late-AD&D 2e book by, you guessed it, Bruce Cordell.

There’s advice on crafting new spells and items. This is really important for instilling in players a sense that it’s absolutely possible to invent new spells, and how to balance these in a way that doesn’t break the game.

Conclusions

Most prestige classes in Tome and Blood are of two types: you gradually become something other than human, or you multiclass in a way that normally doesn’t work. Another theme is you become really good at one specific type of magic.

Most guilds and organizations ask one of two questions: “We have this magic, what should we do with it?” or “We have this problem, how can magic solve it?” Some guilds get together to specialize in a field, only to find their skills are in demand. Others specialize to sell a service. These are the types of guilds that make the biggest changes to society.

The greatest lesson we learn from Tome & Blood is that D&D expansion books exist for two primary reasons: to provide game balance, and to inspire players.

Footnotes