Books of spells have always been enjoyable. Spells are easy for many player characters to use as well as fun for the DM’s many NPCs. Many spell books deal with a wide variety of spells or have then specific to a single class. The series of books this one is a part of presents spells that all of the same school of magic.
50 New Ways to Turn Things into Other Things: Transmutation is a PDF by Silven Publishing that covers more then fifty new transmutation spells. The PDF is written by Matthew J. Hanson who’s done a few other things in the RPG market. The PDF is thirty two pages long with an okay lay out and light on the art. The PDF comes in an on screen version and a print version.
This PDF is a nice collection of a wide range of transmutation spells. It has something I usually like in lots of descriptive texts. It is presented as if a wizard is presenting the spells to a customer. In some of the text though it talks in character of meta game concepts and words the most obvious being a buff spell. I have no problem with certain types of spells getting slang names but I think that the name being the same as gamers use is a bit of a stretch and lacks some creativity.
In a collection of spells this size there are going to be good and bad spells in here. Balance is very relative so some people will see many of these spells as over powered and others will see them as weak. Other spells I think have unfortunate or misleading names.
Dire Form is a spell that increases the power of an animal. This spell uses Dire in its name when it does not actually make the animal into a dire animal. There is a very well done Dire template by Necromancer games and it would have been very good to see a spell that uses that template instead of just using the name with no connection to that type of animals.
Down and Out I can see some people also having a problem with as it gives a +10 bonus to disarm or trip.
Fall Up is a good spell that reverses gravity for a short period of time for the caster. I like this and it as a low level spell that would make a good addition to an Arcane Trickster.
Fearsome Familiar is a fun spell that turns one’s familiar into a fighting power. It is not going to be a powerhouse but it will be able to hold its own for a bit.
Flexarmor is a great spell for arcane casters that want to cast in armor. It does have a short duration so unless someone persistent meta magic feats this it won’t be lasting all day.
Gravitational Crunch is a neat spell that affects an area with high gravity making strength checks really hard and creatures take damage each round. It is a high level spell though that allows for both a save and spell resistance.
Holding the Viper is a nice sword to snake type spell. .I like that in destroying the viper one can also destroy their own sword.
Morning Enhancement is a mid level spell that enhances either all three physical or mental stats. It offers a small bonus to each stat but has a very nice duration.
Nigh Destructible is one of the few spells I have seen that has duration in years. It does what it says making something very hard to destroy.
Pit Trap is an interesting spell that can function as both offensive and help characters get around in a complex.
Rigged coin is a nice little cantrip that will have the coin always come up with the same side.
Time Slow is a nicely written weaker version of Time Stop.
That is just a few of the spells in the book. There is a wide variety of transmutation things in here and many have other uses then pure combat. The rules seem pretty sound over all. There is nothing new introduced that will not fit well into a normal D&D campaign.
