By Thilo Graf

This pdf from Abandoned Artsis 4 pages long 1 page front cover, 1 page SRD, leaving us with 2 pages of content for 4 new sorcerer archetypes, so let’s take a look!

The first one would be the Blood Mage, who may select bonus spells from either his bloodline or a list of blood-related spells and may enhance the DC of his spells by using the blood of his targets. Blood acquisition is handled via logically-crafted rules that take e.g. bleeding, touching the dead etc. into account. Okay archetype, though as far as blood magic goes, unfortunately the lamest incarnation I’ve seen so far -even 3.0’s Blood Magus was more exciting.

The Deathless Sorcerer must choose the undead bloodline and gains a limited channel resistance he can extend to undead allies as well as a capstone ability that lets him get a perfect cover as a living. Cool capstone or an otherwise utterly uninspired and bland archetype.

The Jinx may also alternatively chose from his bloodline or from (ill) luck-based spells and emits an aura of unluck. LAME. Both 4WFG’s Jinx-PrC (in Strategists & Tacticians) and TPK Games’ Malefactor are vastly superior to this when it comes to the “unlucky” concept. 0 points for this one.

The final archetype is the Raycaster, who may cast a ray 2/day to orbit him until he discharges it with a standard action or 10 minutes per caster level elapse, automatically hitting creatures that hit him with natural or unarmed attacks. At higher levels, this means guaranteed hits of disintegrate etc. for creatures. Not sure whether I like this. They also get weapon focus (ray) and similar ray-centric feats in exchange for their bloodline feats. I am on the edge about orbiting rays balance-wise and would also like to know whether both orbiting rays can be in effect at the same time – the lack of specified information regarding this (dual disintegrate – OUCH!) is another minor bummer. Also: Can the orbiting ray be dispelled as usual?

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, I didn’t notice any significant glitches. Layout adheres to Abandoned Art’s 2-column standard and the pdf has no bookmarks, but needs none at this length. Oh boy. These archetypes…just didn’t do it for me. The Blood Mage’s signature ability is complicated, yet weak. The Deathless Sorcerer is uninspired to say the least, the Jinx’s concept has been done in vastly superior ways not only once, but twice and the Raycaster needs clarification regarding its potentially unbalanced signature ability. All in all, this ranks among the blandest, most uninspired archetypes in the whole Class Acts-series and I find no real reason to like any of them. Excitement-wise, I’d rate this 1 star for me personally and with the rather boring content and problematic raycaster, I’d stick to this, but since your mileage may vary, I’ll instead go up to 2 stars. I just can’t bring myself to rate this higher.

Endzeitgeist out.

Class Acts: Sorcerer Archetypes is available from:

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