Iap’s Practical Guide to the Arcane (#1) is a collection of new spells and magic for D&D/D20 Fantasy by Aren Arendsen and published by Seraphim Guard. It is a seven-page product (six after OGL) with decorated borders and a few nice pieces of black and white art.

The main body of the product is fifteen spells all credited to the mysterious Iap (though a Minos is accidentally referred to instead in one of the spells), the majority of them are non-combat spells, a field that can stand considerable expansion. The ideas for the spells are nearly all excellent: magical palanquins to all travel in comfort, a set of spells (“Iap’s Spell Hanger(s)”) that holds other spells for later use, another that creates an extradimensional pocket, one that make a temporary crude shelter and more. Excellent ideas all, but the execution is flawed. In many cases the duration is too long (who needs to buy a bag of holding when you can use a spell for the same effect and minimal cost?) or the effect too good when compared with equivalent level spells or break the usual rules with no significant cost (the Spell Hanger spells).

Three magic items, which also suffer from being entirely underpriced for their effect, and a new feat, which seems balanced (though requiring a full round casting time to gain its benefit would also be reasonable) and encourages creative use of non-combat spells.

Iap’s Guide is useful for inspiration but the power levels of the spells must be checked carefully before allowing them into a campaign.

Iap's Practical Guide to the Arcane is a short d20 book of new spells. The product is just under two megabytes, and contains a single PDF. This is seven pages long, including a page for the OGL. No bookmarks or table of contents is given.

While short, there is some artwork to be found here. All of the pages are bordered on all sides by a flowery black and white border that is quite pretty to look at. There?s also two black and white images tucked away amidst the new spells. There shouldn't be, in other words, too much trouble if you want to print this out. All but the feeblest printers should be able to handle a few pages of this.

There's no introduction of opening here. The book immediately begins with the new spells, all of which are named after Iap (which is apparently short for Iapetus). Several of these are the same spell at increasing levels of power; Iap's Handy Palanquin is a stronger version of Iap's Floating Throne, etc. Several of these seem to be reworked versions of spells from the PHB, such as Iap's Diminutizer being a different version of Reduce Person. In some cases, these work nicely (one spell is like a less powerful version of Contingency, which is nice for lower-level spellcasters), but in others, they don't seem to be as well defined as the original (the Diminutizer Spell, for example, talks about reducing a character's dimensions, but nothing about size categories). Three new magic items based on the new spells, and a single new feat, round out the book.

The bad news is that Iap's Practical Guide to the Arcane is a book whose spells are hit and miss. The good news is that, overall, it hits more than it misses. There are several very good spells here, and it's definitely worth the download price. This is a good book to round out a mage's utility magic. <br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: Several of the new spells here are quite handy, either as original ideas (such as the floating throne spells) or as lower-level versions of existing spells.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: A few of the spells didn't seem as good as spells they were obviously based on.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>