A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Mostly Useless Grimoire

The Mostly Useless Grimoire by Michael Klamerus is a role playing game supplement published by Petoskey Games for use with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is a collection of low-level spells.

This is a six page PDF that is available from RPGNow as a Pay What You Want supplement. One page is the front cover and one page is the Open Game License.

A paragraph introduces the spells, which are for 1st level characters and are intended to add an element of humour.

Next are the spell lists, assigning the spells to the various spellusing classes.

Finally there are the spells themselves. There are fifteen first level spells and two cantrips. The spells are of varying degrees of utility, as is stated in the introductory paragraph. Some, such as glitter bomb, which after exploding can highlight invisible creatures and items, are definitely useful. Others, such as a talking dog! which summons a golden retriever that can speak and make dog related puns, are pretty much useless. Most fall into a midrange where they are possibly useful in some situations.

The Mostly Useless Grimoire in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and at this length does not really need them. The text maintains a two column format with background and no errors were noticed. Bar a stock black and white image on the front cover, there are no illustrations. Presentation is okay.

The spells, as mentioned, have varying degrees of utility. Glitter bomb may not work quite as well as spells specifically intended to counter such, but it works pretty well if a caster believes there to be something invisible around. Lord Demonhead’s undead salon has an interesting name for a cantrip, but is perhaps not as useful.

Although aimed at D&D 5E the spells should work, with perhaps some adjustments, to most games derived from Dungeons & Dragons, including Pathfinder.

This supplement does have an interesting collection of odd spells that can be used as proof that the ability to create spells does not grant the ability to create sensible ones. The Mostly Useless Grimoire is perhaps not as useless as it says and it can be checked out for free by clicking here.