Opening with a short story showing an Oracle in action, the Introduction gives an overview of the underlying ideas behind the 'Colours of Magic' philosophy, in case this happens to be the first component of the series that you pick up; before going into the meaning of White in more detail.

White is the colour of the divine and the spirit world. Many of the spells are those relating to divine intervention: as Evan points out, deities in your average D&D world like to meddle in the affairs of mortals (and especially the characters!). These spells are grouped in an 'Intervention Domain' while divination spells are part of the 'Omniscience Domain' which involves those spells that convey knowledge to the caster in some way.The option to keep White Magic purely clerical in nature is given, but some people may prefer to make at least such as divination magic available to arcane spellcasters as well. Both these domains are so generally god-like that virtually any deity is likely to offer them to their priesthoods. The final group of White spells to be discussed are the Summoning Domain, again something very useful to any deity, or to an arcane spellcaster.

Next we get the full details of the Oracle as a class. While the nature of an Oracle means they are not likely to be adventurers, and hence more liable to be NPCs than PCs, there are times when someone with these gifts may find himself undertaking more typically 'player' activities - perhaps following up on a prophecy that calls for personal intervention, or even on the run from local authorities or religions that don't like what the Oracle has to say. Thus as well as being someone your characters call on when they want some advice, he may end up a travelling companion or patron as well. Quite a few bits here spawn ideas (particularly as I'm planning a campaign revolving around a group of characters acting as missionaries for their religion...).

The rest of the book covers a listing of all those spells that fall into the White groups, using the SRD versions. The PDF is accompanied by an Excel spreadsheet listing the spells for easier manipulation.

Return to Colours of Magic: White page.

Reviewed: 8 April 2005