(D&D 3.5) Complete Mage

To me, the image that will forever exemplify Complete Mage (Skip Williams, Penny Williams, Ari Marmell, Kolja Raven Liquette) in my mind is the "Rod of Many Wands." It's a magical rod that lets you slot in up to three magic wands, and subsequently activate all the loaded wands at the exact same time.

I'm trying to imagine how I would feel, as a DM, if a player came to me pitching that bullshit as a homebrew. I think I'd find it funny, but I'm haunted by the idea that I'd find it so funny that I started to be a bit rude about it. Because it really does seem like something from the depths of power-gamer parody ("let me tape these three wands together so I can use them with a single action"), so much so that it's hard to believe that idea was offered in good faith. My knee-jerk reaction would be to assume that the player was testing me, seeing what ridiculous nonsense they could get me to say "yes" to. I worry that I would so quickly leap to that conclusion that I might inadvertently quash the enthusiasm of a novice player.

And yet, here it is, in an official supplement. This baroque, power-gaming monstrosity is canon. And that is something I find very funny. But I don't wanna be a dick about it. The item is probably roughly balanced by the massive number of wand charges it consumes (one per wand per wand, so a maxed out rod would use nine total wand charges - three from each of its three wands) and the burden that would place on your expected wealth per level. My only real problem with it is aesthetic. The Rod of Many Wands feels like something that was designed backwards from its effect, rather than as something that grew organically out of the logic of the game world.

That's what makes it so representative of the book to me. Very little of the Complete Mage material is similarly laughable, but most of it shares that same function-first agenda. You've got the Eldritch Disciple and Eldritch Theurge prestige classes, which are obviously meant as Warlock/Cleric and Warlock/Wizard multiclass patches, a la the 3.5 DMG's Mystic Theurge, the reserve feats, which are meant to mitigate the notorious 15 minute workday by giving casters more endurance in exchange for not using their highest level spell slots right away, and a bunch of magical locations that, while not unappealing, were clearly designed by moving down a checklist and creating one for each school of magic.

I never got past the sense that I was reading a pure workhorse of a book, something that tweaked arcane casters by identifying mechanical hooks for new abilities, but which never quite got around to building up a fantasy universe.

It wasn't all (or even mostly) bad. I actually quite liked the direction they were going with the Eldritch Disciple. A pact mage that worshipped their patron, despite the various fey, demons, and devils being a tier below true gods, or maybe just a heretic priest who had a really inappropriately personal relationship with the faith's deity. Both of those interpretations would make for great character concepts and intriguing hooks to explore religious expression in a fantasy world. But while the text drops a few nods in those directions, it never really gets off the ground. I'd say it stops just when it gets interesting, but it actually stops some time before that point.

It's an experience that kept happening throughout the book. There were moments when it would flirt with the sublime - like the stormstrider boots that allowed their wearer to turn into a lightning bolt and flash across the battlefield or the Crystalline Memories spell, which somehow transforms the target's thoughts into a small crystal that shoots out of their head like a bullet (the accompanying art is disgusting in the best possible way, but of course it only does 2d8 damage) where the caster can later examine it at their leisure - but every time it gets close, it quickly moves on to more box-checking filler. Ultimately, it was a book about the arcane caster classes, not about characters in the setting who wielded arcane magic.

And maybe that's actually okay. It is a supplement for a roleplaying game, after all. It's entirely fair for it to cover its mechanical bases and leave the stuff about themes and worldbuilding to the players. I may not have enjoyed reading it as much as I did Magic of the Incarnum or Tome of Magic, but I am significantly more likely to use it in a game.

Just warn me before you try and buy a Rod of Many Wands, okay? It will take time for me to react appropriately.

Ukss Contribution: I once again find myself in the awkward position of having my favorite thing in the book be something incredibly goofy. I always wonder if I'm being mean by liking something like this, because I find it funny in an unironically enjoyable way, but I can't tell if it was meant to be funny, or even just understood as possibly being funny. I'm going to go forward here, though, because I'm sure they at least suspected someone would have this reaction when they wrote the Tomb of Bigby.

For those not up on their D&D nerdery, Bigby is a famous name due to a series of distinctive spells (Bigby's clenched fist, Bigby's crushing hand, Bigby's forceful hand, Bigby's grasping hand, Bigby's interposing hand, and the newcomer published here Bigby's Slapping hand . . . and those were only the official ones I could find with a 30 second internet search). In this book, we get a peek at his final resting place.

Can you guess the decorating motif?

I don't know what I find funnier, the idea that Bigby built this tomb for himself, implying that he lived his life very conspicuously being "the hand guy" (I'm picturing a b-list celebrity going around offering people high fives and then being disappointed when they don't immediately lose their fucking minds) or that he was actually kind of just a regular wizard who got on a roll with this particular magic, but after he died that was all people remembered him for and so they built him this garish, hand-themed tomb out of a misguided urge to honor him. 

Either way, it's hard to imagine using the location in a game without it rapidly devolving into farce . . . but then again, everyone loves a good farce, so why not go for it?