Wizards & Spells (Dungeons & Dragons): A Young Adventurer's Guide (Dungeons & Dragons Young Adventurer's Guides)

The Reasonable Reviewer family was a gaming place when the kids were younger, and all of them spent hundreds of hours around the gaming table as they grew up playing role-playing games. This would have been a great book to have 30 years ago.(Normally, I include pictures and videos with my reviews, but recently the system does not allow the upload of those. When the capability comes back on-line, I will upload some visual files with the review.)The book covers six character classes: bard, cleric, druid, sorcerer, warlock, and wizard.For each class, the book describes the aspects of the class, what kinds of equipment and attributes work best with the class, and give an example of a high level avatar of the class to give the younger gamer an idea of what his or her character might be like one day. (Long time D&D players will recognize some of the exemplar characters from the earliest days of D&D.)One of my favorite aspects of the book is the flow chart on pages 28-29 that help the young player trace the potential mystic path that might work best with the player's desires for his or her character.Also, the whole book is lavishly illustrated. It is really a work of art and highly giftable.Pages 30-75 have example spells by level and include spells at each level from across the mystic professions. There are enough spells to give players an idea of the general kinds of things that the character might do, but not enough to create a spellbook.The last 30+ pages describe magic items that a character might or might not see in a campaign.This is a lovely book to garner legitimate interest in and answer basic questions for the would-be mystic, junior gamer.I was hoping that you might be able to use the material in the book to create a basic level character in each of the classes, but you will need a player's handbook to do that.

I purchased this book, Wizards and Spells, at the request of my 10-year-old. Previously, I had purchased the other books in the series (Warriors and Weapons and Monsters and Creatures). I don't know a lot about DnD, but my son loves dragon stories, so I figured he might enjoy these fiction books in a expository style. As a child who loves taxonomy, these books were a fun way for him to categorize an imaginary world. He read the first two books in the series multiple times and keeps them by his beside for reference.The books are not rule books, so I wasn't sure how useful they would be. But once the Dungeons and Tombs (the third) book arrived with guidelines on how maps are drawn, he had invented his own rules for role-playing. He began a dungeon master, and his 7-year-old sibling and I (his father) became his adventurers. He didn't need all of the fancy official rules to run his imagination game. He had monster ideas, hero suggestions, and item details to create and run his own DnD lite campaign.This newest book on magic has been highly anticipated since now he can learn all about druids as well as the other magic classes (and lists of spells and their effects). It's the ultimate book for a Harry Potter fan + future biological taxonomist.Beware: these books are a gateway to the world of table top RPG. His next requested purchase has been the DnD Essentials Kit which appears to offer official rules. We are becoming a DnD family, and I can trace it directly to the purchase of this seemingly harmless series of fantasy description books. We have been ensnared.

This is pretty much as good as all the other books, but the section on spells is a bit weird, and the complex usage of words like the names of the schools of magic may go over children's heads. Mostly I just wish they would've been able to have a picture for every single spell so that kids could fathom the weirder ones a bit easier.That's basically my only complaint though. The illustrations are beautiful and it's a solid addition to the collection.

Great book for new, old and young players alike! My 7-year-old loves these books! We have been playing D&D for about a year and these books have been a great jumping-off point for him and our family members. He even got grandma and grandpa to play a session with him.

We have purchased this entire series for our family. These books are such an amazing way to get and keep our children engaged in D&D. They have them at their side while playing like the players hand book, constantly looking up monsters, spells, famous, characters and locations. Great work highly recommend! Players handbook for kids/younger audiance might not be a bad idea for the next book as long as it's this same group making it.

Good introduction.

I am in the process of introducing D&D (a game I have played for 40 years) to my nephews and niece. They adore these books. The quality is superb and the books are incredibly readable for ages 6+. I appreciate the author's choice of not using ANY mechanics - all abilities are narratively described rather than using mechanics.

These are written for kids and my kids say that the books have information that you can't get in the monster manual, so they find them invaluable!

Amazing for kids

Great intro to the world of fantasy tabletop role playing games for youngsters.

Exactly what i expected

Fascinating and lovely book! Some great, creative ideas and beautiful art in it, not just for kids, but also for more experienced players and DMs. 5/5, full endorsement, thoroughly enjoyed reading it!

Just right for an introduction to Dungeon & Dragons for my 13yr old grandson.