I'm thinking of picking it up. I saw some earlier comments on it briefly covering whats in it. I was wondering if this would give me the ability to make a necromancer NPC or something close to it? Also, does it cover summoning of baddies? Was going to plan a Halloween adventure for my kids and their friends. Probably spruce up Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh.

Thanks.
Mike

It covers the nature of the life force and blood, summoning, bloody miracles, blood sorcery, the nature and types of different kinds of blood sacrifices, bloody enchantments, concert casting and Games Master rules on blood sacrifices and bloody campaigns.

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Hypnotist, Dreamer, Plainclothes Clown, Agitator, Author

What he said!

If you are interested in building necromancers, I recommend tracking down a copy of the Necromantic Arts book for MRQ II. It's not a perfect book by any means (having been hastily converted from MRQ I), but it does contain some useful goodies. Hopefully some of the better content from this book will resurface in future Legend releases.

Blood magic may still be very useful for you if your necromancer will be engaging in human sacrifice. There's also a nice section on the Summoning skill on pp.73-96 of the book that may be very useful to you.

Like Alex said it's all about blood related magic and sacrifices. The book has plenty of new spells to sorcerers and priests. Bit disappointingly it doesn't offer anything for shamans. Personally I think that spirits and blood would have been a match made in Heaven (or Hell ). The demon summoning rules are quite nice and allow you to create all kinds of demons with weird physique and traits. Book doesn't have anything about the undeads or necromancy. RuneQuest book Necromantic Arts covers that kind of stuff, but there's no Legend version of it. With luck you might still find it somewhere.

I suspect the Summon entry covered the shamanic aspect of it, in that it covered the summoning of demons. Should not take much retooling to amend Summon to Spirit Binding, use of Concert with the skills Spirit Walking + Spirit Binding, and so on.

Though a treatment of Blood Spirits, in the same vein as the blood spirit rules from Shadowrun, would have gone down well.

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Hypnotist, Dreamer, Plainclothes Clown, Agitator, Author

In my opinion summoning is just an alternative form of magic which can be used by any magician who has relevant skills. It doesn't have any specific link with spirit magic. IMO it would have made the book better if it had chapters about spirits and blood. And I don't mean just spirits and blood sacrifices, but also spirits and certain bloodlines. The saddest thing is that the book occasionally mentions those things when it tells that there are things like totemism (kinship of a spirit with a certain clan or family) and bloodlines, but it doesn't actually give any description and rules of that stuff.

Thanks all for the input, looks like it would be a fun addition to my adventuring ideas. I'll probably spy on Ebay for the Nec book.

Thanks.
Mike

Blood Magic is worth the price of admission - also because it seems to be in a state of transition between the way magic is treated under the MRQII / Legend rules and the expanded treatment provided in the RQ 6 rules.

Hopefully Mongoose will tackle Necromancy properly at some point as part of their Arcania of Legend series. It wouldn't surprise me to see a book at some point in the future that combines material from the MRQ II Necromantic Arts book with some converted material from their old d20 Necromancy: Beyond the Grave book.

Personally, I'd love to see expanded rules for ghosts and haunted locations that are compatible with the spirit magic rules.

I really liked this supplement and it can be used simply as a different way to make your magic work.

There are a lot of dark fantasy books that use blood to power magic. My personal favorite is "The Fionavar Tapestry" by Guy Gavriel Kay.

Also, Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" series about a fantasy world at war uses blood magic without getting into Necromancers etc.

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My friends call me Richard.
You can call me Sir.