A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Affordable Arcana – Magic Tattoos

Affordable Arcana – Magic Tattoos by Andrew Ready is a role playing game supplement published by d20pfsrd.com Publishing for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This entry in the Affordable Arcana series is a collection of cheap magic tattoos and related material that can be inscribed on an individual’s skin.

This is a 22 page PDF that is available from RPGNow at the regular price of $1.95 but which was purchased at the reduced price of $1.46. One page is the front cover, one page is the Contents and front matter, one page is the Open Game License and one page is an ad for various d20pfsrd.com Publishing sites.

The brief Introduction covers tattoos in general before moving onto Crude Magical Tattoos. These are magic tattoos that are easier to make, and easier to destroy, than normal magic tattoos. They cost a lot less, take less time and can only have the equivalent of 2nd level or lower spells.

Next is New Magical Tattoos. These are all crude tattoos, and there are 21 new tattoos in total. These range in price from 113 gp to 2,250 gp, with the majority costing under 1,000 gp. There are a whole range of effects here, from minor damage to minor protection with a few more unusual ones.

Tattoo Spells has three new spells, one of which is a greater version of another, designed for tattoos. One causes the tattoo to either inflict damage to its owner or cause them to temporarily lose its effects, the other two are intended to suppress the effects of tattoos.

New Magical Items has a single new wondrous item, which allows the user to, painfully, remove a tattoo from another person and store it be added to a new individual, basically by carving a chunk of the tattooed individual’s skin off. The victim must be willing, helpless or recently dead for this to be done.

There are then six new feats related to tattoos. These enable the user to emit light or ink from their tattoos, consume those of others, manipulate tattoos to gain new effects or temporarily consume energy from one of your own tattoos.

Affordable Arcana – Magic Tattoos in Review

The PDF is very well bookmarked with every major section and all the new tattoos, feats, spells and items linked (for some reason there are a bunch of weird extra bookmarks as well, but these can be ignored). The Contents is to the same level of detail and is also hyperlinked and there are also hyperlinked tabs to the main sections as well. Navigation is therefore excellent.

The text maintains a two column format with a full colour layout (the PDF is layered and visibility of the images and backgrounds can be turned off) and no errors were noticed. There are a number of colour images of various tattoos that certainly appear to be custom, as well as having been created in some type of 3D software. Presentation is therefore very good.

One assumption that appears to be made is that the reader is already familiar with normal magical tattoos. If not, the tattoos look massively overpowered, as there is no mention of limits regarding how many can be added. So the assumption could be made that an individual could have as many tattoos as they can fit on their skin. Normal magic tattoos can be inscribed in ten body slots, taking the place of the magic item that would normally go there. Presumably, crude tattoos follow the same limitation, but this does not appear to be made clear – a fairly significant oversight.

Excluding this possible error, there is a nice collection of new tattoos and related material here. The new tattoos have a range of useful and inexpensive properties, some of which are really quite substantial for the price. The supplement itself is reasonably priced too. The feats and spells are thematically appropriate and the new wondrous item is a possibly useful and potentially gory item that looks pretty much designed for some type of magical serial killer. Affordable Arcana – Magic Tattoos is a nice collection of tattoo related material and it can be found by clicking here.