I was very disappointed with the spell selection, because I wanted spells that control the battlefield. The most promising spell in the spell descriptions was PUSH. Unfortunately, it was left out of the actual listing of spells. This product has been around for a while. I can't believe this oversight wasn't updated. The 0 level spells deserve 5 stars. 1st level spells only get two for layout and ease of use.

This pdf is 28 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1page SRD and 2 pages of ads, leaving 23 pages for 101 spells.

The pdf kicks off with a one-page introduction to the series.

The spell-lists take up 3 pages.

The spells are:

-Adjust: Resize clothes, armor etc. -Alter Liquid: Turn Water to Ale -Alter Poison Damage Type: Change e.g. Str-damage to Dex-damage in a poison. -Animate Element: Animate an element as a small elemental -Animate Skeleton: Self-explanatory -Animate Tattoo: Lets your tattoo attack at your normal range -Animate Wood: Animate wooden object as an animate object -Astute Fighting: Grants competence-bonus to BAB depending on the level of the caster -Awesome Strike: Imbue your blows with the power to knock an enemy back and knock him prone -Bee Sting: minor damage and possibly minor con-damage -Bleeding Wounds: lets the enemy bleed from wounds he receives -Blossoming Footsteps: Creates plants for usage with other spells and just plain looks cool -Borrow Skill: Borrow Skill from another character for 1 round -Breathtwist: Change the energy of a breath weapon -Briefly Visible: Cancel Invisibility for a short period -Brimstone: Throw a glowing stone with acrid smoke to damage your foes -Brilliant Arc: Electric Arc damages enemies and has minor secondary bolts -Clarity of Faith: Bonus to Knowledge (Religion) -Clarity of Thought: +4 to Concentration -Clear Conscience: Lose 1 min/level of memories prior to casting this spell. Awesome idea! -Cock's Crow: Awaken sleepers -Contingent Minor Healing: Contingency 1-point healing, minor damage to undead -Color: Permanently alter the color of a creature or object -Contrariness: -10 to Diplomacy -Crop Circle: Use incorporeal scythes to cut crops and enemies -Curse of Ineptitude: 50% failure to do stuff for one round (OP imho) -Cutting Flame: Basically a way to cut through inanimate objects, this spell could be the safecracker's best friend -Deep Shadows: Increase concealing properties of shadows -Discerning Eye: Determines exact monetary value of one item -Dispel Magic, lesser: As Dispel Magic, but the max bonus is +5. (I've been using this spell in my home campaign for years and designed it just like the people at RiP did!) -Distract: Flat-foot an opponent -Divine Beacon: When the target is within range, the caster knows any negative conditions on it -Down and Out: +10 to the next CMB to disarm or trip -Draw on Faith: Scaling Bonus up to +5 to either one attack roll, a save or check in the next minute. -Earth Charger: Grant mount +4 and trample-damage -Energy Missile: Shoot missiles of an energy type -Energy Weapon: Sheathes weapon in energy type, dealing more damage -Escape Grapple: +5 to check to escape a grapple -Flashy Defense: Gain DR 1/ or Resistance 5, depending on the attack -Foul Flesh: Makes own flesh nauseating for enemy bite attacks -Foe's Measure:: Learn class or creature type along with level and HD. Disguised creatures are exempt. While the disguise-clause is nice, I don't like metagamey spells. -Flank Shield: Prevents being flanked, unless flanked by a rogue with 4 lvls more than caster -Glamour: +5 to Diplomacy and Bluff -Gloomlight: Lets creatures with darkvision see in color Guilt: Force enemy to think about past misdeed -Harden: Increase objects hardness by half or +1. -Heat Lightning: Lightning that may dazzle and set on fire -Hesitation: Reduce initiative count of enemy by caster level -Hey of the Bull's Eye: This spell makes it 20% possible for a missed attack to hit. Quite powerful for a 1st level spell. -Hex Weapon: Succeed a Will-save or drop weapon -Hidden Shelter: Magically create shelter that is hidden by your Stealth-check -Ice Arm: Gain touch attack and minor ability to resist Fire -Id Seizure: Affected creature can take only move actions -Ignore: Make creature suffer -5 penalty to perception -Illuminated Weapon: Disrupt undead enemies hit by the weapon and give them a penalty -Inflict Pain: Deal non-lethal damage -Invisible Familiar: Self-explanatory -Inspired Initiative: +2 on next Ini-check -Keen Senses: Gain/expand low-light vision -Lash Fey: Damage Fey with Iron -Malicious Intent: Penalize saving throws and a school of magic -Mental Sentinel: Enhanced perception and Initiative -Minor Lasting Image: Very small immobile illusion -Missteps: -10 ft. movement and -2 to Dex -Mistsight: See through fog -Overcompensation: Lets weapon grow to the size that barely makes it wieldable -Pearl of Brilliance: damage and dazzle foe, especially powerful against undead -Peephole: Create a peephole -Pins and Needles: Distract enemy, minor penalty, hampers spellcasting -Poison Weapon: Adds weak poison to weapon -Potent Weapon: grants weapon bane quality -Precipitate: Conjure rain, sleet or snow, depending on the temperature -Pressure Spray: use a blast of water to knock enemies back and quench fires -Quill Skin: Damages constricting or swallowing creatures -Reactive Armor: +2 to AC, can be cast as immediate action -Righteous Strike: +1 to attack and damage and bypass all DR for one strike. (Paladinspell and as such limited and not op) -Sacred Watch: Mental image of subject and whether it is in danger but not where it is -Scentless: Suppress scent-trail -Second Change: Retry a saving throw -Self-loading bolts: Bolts targeted load themselves -Shadow Hands: More subtle variation of burning hands -Shadow Weapon: Conjure quasi-real weapon -Share Sacrifice: Target heals half current HP damage, you gain the same amount of damage -Skill Lore: Scaling insight bonus to skill -Songstrike: Sonic damage -Sonic Dart: Ranged touch attack sonic damage -Soul Beacon: Bolster against Undead, but can easily be seen -Spikes of the Locust Tree: Bolster unarmed strikes and makes unarmed attacks against target painful -Stunning Note: Stun enemy -Supernatural Ward: +4 on saving throws against supernatural effects -Summon Weapon: Self-explanatory -Sword Shock: Lets electricity damage target from held items, possibly causing him to drop them -Torchbearer: Similar to an Unseen Servant, this spell conjures a creature to shed light -True Shield: +20 Ac against the next attack With 1hour/level, the duration of this spell is MUCH too long. -Tunnel: Gain burrow speed -Undetectable Poison: Mask the presence of poisons -Unspeakable Tongue: Subject speaks gibberish, but still can cast spells -Valiant Resolve: Subject gains DR 10/non-lethal -Ward, lesser: Create either a blast ward or a spell ward of up to 1st level -White Noise: Target object hinders both sight and sound -Wind Churn: Inflict Air (never knew this damage type existed...does it?) damage on enemies, force flying creatures that fail the save to land or fall.

Conclusion: Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any typos. This b/w book follows the standard-two-column-layout and the artwork is ok - it's a combination of stock art and Joe Calkin's work. Before I go on any further, let me say that the 3.5.-glut has made me very, very wary on which spells I'll introduce to my game. Combine that with a rather skeptical approach to even more spells and you'll get this review. Most of the spells actually, as I'm happy to report, are not per se stronger than similar spells from the Core rules. Where the book truly shines, though, is with spells like "Torchbearer" and "Undetectable Poison", spells that make me think "Why hasn't anyone made them before?". Unfortunately there are also some spells like "True Shield" that are in my opinion not perfectly balanced. The above example has a duration that simply is too long. Some of the skill-bonus/penalty spells felt a bit like filler to me, but these are few and far between. On the other hand, though, many spells scale with levels and thus stay useful beyond the first level. What's my final verdict, then? Due to my minor points of criticism, I won't rate this a perfect 5-stars but rather, I'll rate this 4 stars: Good buy for the low price, but there is still room for improvement.

101 1st level spells. Exactly what it is. There are a lot of spells here and some are of limited utility; that is they will work great in one, very specific situation. But that is kind of the design philosophy here, so I will say it works. If you are a player it is a great way to customize your character without having to go through the needs for multi-class combinations. For GMs it is a great way to surprise your players and give your NPC spell casters a different feel or provide interesting new magic items/scrolls as treasure. Many of these spells are from OGC sources, some could be new. A lot of them were unfamiliar to me but I did recognize a couple. There are no spells for the new Advanced Classes coming out, but that is not that big of deal really. In life they say you can never be too rich, in RPGs you can never have too many monsters or spells. If you want a bunch of new spells then this is not a bad place to start.

101 1st level spells by Rite Publishing.

This product is 27 pages long. First three pages is cover, credits, and intro. The next 3 pages are spell lists for each class, with the sorc and wiz list broken up by spell school. Below is how many each class gets, obviously there is some overlap.

Bards – get 29 spells Clerics – get 27 spells Druids – get 30 spells Paladin – gets 10 new spells Ranger – gets 12 new spells Sorc/Wizard – gets 75 spells by school Abjuration – 11 spells Conjuration – 6 spells Divination – 7 spells Enchantment – 10 spells Evocation – 9 spells Illusion – 8 spells Necromancy – 9 spells Transmutation – 15 spells

Of the spells here is a couple of examples. Hidden Shelter – This one I thought might be a little strong for a first level spell. It creates a shelter that protects against normal weather, rain, heat, cold etc. It creates the shelter out of the natural world around it, it requires a opposed perception/stealth check to spot the shelter as it blends in. Duration is the part that bothers me, 1 week/level. Ranger only spell.

Blossoming Footsteps – Makes plants grow where you walk or can even force flowers to grow. I loved this spell for the flavor.

Precipitate – creates normal rain or snow, depending on the temperature when cast. Another spell I loved.

Shadow Weapon – It creates a shadow version of any normal weapon, caster is is proficient with it for free. It does damage like the weapon of it's type. Will save for half damage. Now for the part for the part that makes me think it is a bit weak. After each hit the target gets a +1 to their save cumulative. So after 5 hits they get a +4 save and so on. (the bonus comes for every previous hit)

It finishes with 1 page of OGL and 2 full page ads.

Closing thoughts. If you like new spells you will love this book. Most of them are very inventive and full of flavorful fluff. I was often left thinking, how can I work this spell into my game. The art was by Joe Calkins and ranged from fair to good. Layout, editing, and production values are top notch as what one has come to expect from Rite Publishing.

The vast majority of the spells are very well done, there is only a handful I had questions or comments about, like Hidden Shelter. Of course some might find Hidden Shelter fine or even weak, others might think Shadow Weapon is strong. This is just my own person opinion. But considering there is 2-3 spells that I felt the same about as Hidden Weapon and Shadow Weapon was the only one I thought was weak. Most of the rest are like Blossoming Footsteps and Precipitate, flavorful interesting new spells that has me really looking forward to the next set of 101 spells. Really I can't find anything negative to say about this product, since it is to be expected not everyone is going to like every single spell. So with that in mind I am giving this a 5 star rating. If you are fan of new spells, I greatly recommend this.

***Note: I was given a advance copy of this for the purpose of this review. I would like to not that I had planned to buy it, Steven Russell just sent me a copy before I could buy it. I will also say I already plan to get the next one in the series.