The Inside Scoop on Gaming

The back cover states that "Indespensible to both players and Dungeon Masters, this book adds excitement to any campaign." I would have to disagree with that statement on all points.

Sword and Fist is alledgedly a book to expand on the fighter types in your game. It is not a splatbook. (Splatbooks are those books that expand a specific class beyond what is given in the core book - ie Complete Basketweavers Handbook, Clanbook: Noseferret, etc.) It's scope is meant to be of broader use then a "standard" splatbook.

I would prefer a splatbook in this case. And I'm general not a fan of splatbooks. At least the splatbooks provide something specific for a game. Something with flavor.

Sword and Fist tries to be broad, and just comes across as generic. It tries to cover too much ground and devotes too little space to be really useful or even in most cases to be interesting.

It's contents (roughly) are

4 pages of feats.

2 pages of altnerate uses of skills

26 pages of prestige classes.

2 pages on monks and society.

9 pages of warrior groups.

2 pages of which skills are the best choices for 5 classes.

1 pages telling you that you should take those feats that apply to the prestige class you want.

3 pages of extremely basic combat advice. (ie, if you have Cleave, you should move so that you are next to two opponents, instead of one. When fighting undead, stay near your cleric. . .)

1 page of statistical breakdown of when to use a Monk's flurry attack.

1 page of statistical breakdown of comparison damages between three magical axes.

A page and a half of giving monsters class stats. (Ogre/fighter, bugbear/monk, etc)

5 pages of example combats.

1 page of rules variants

4 pages of new weapons.

3 pages of magic items

2 pages for chariots

16 pages of buildings.

2 pages of alternate types of gladiatorial fights.

Seems like a lot - but it's all lightweight. The 26 pages for prestige classes are split between 19 classes - less then a page and a half each. Even less when you consider artwork. It doesn't help that I don't like prestige classes. If you want to give me a class, give me a class I can play at 1st level - not something that I have to work for after being stuck with the "lesser" classes for months. (and no - I don't think of the core classes as being inferior, but with all the focus on prestige classes, I'm wondering if the WotC folks think so).

And the feats? Nothing special. You can make your own by locating any rule in the game and then coming up with a feat to bypass or bend that rule.

The 16 pages for buildings are split between 8 structures. 1 page for description and one page (again roughly) for map.

I will give some bonus points to the fighter organizations section. 9 pages for 5 organizations means that a couple of them actually recieved some room to be developed. One of them, the Fists of Hextor,I immediatly introduced into my game.

The Fists of Hextor are, unfortunately, the only thing in the book I liked enough to put into my game.

The weapons were. . . silly. . .in my opinion, even for a fantasy game. And they are all exotic requiring a feat to learn. Even the weapon that is a javelin with a string wrapped around it. THAT takes a feat to learn? A lot of the weapons were like that - thin variations of existing weapons, but requiring someone to spend a feat to learn.

The magic items weren't anything special. The buildings were there I guess and I might end up using one or two of them in my game. . . maybe. The charts and combat advice are of no real use. The combat examples are worth the read once, but there's no reason to read them twice.

Call them loss leaders, but I've been spoiled by the core DnD books. 300 glossy pages, hardback, dense printing, well thought out system and rules. . . for $20. This is 96 pages, softcover, cheaper paper, larger font, worse artwork, and the rules were considered less.

To sum up - this book is going on my shelf and I doubt I'll be looking at it again anytime soon.

Unless I can talk someone into buying it from me. $10 and shipping and it's yours. I figure in just a few months I can find better material off of Blue Troll's netbook site anyway.

One final comment - one of my player's is now convinced that the Wolverine claws, er, bladed gauntlets, are THE weapon to use - just pick up a little ambidex, some two-weapon fighting, work your way up to Improved Critical, and you're looking at your favorite member of the X-Men, DnD style.

Of course, this is the player who mocks just about everything. He's the guy who figured out that the halfling strength/weight ratio is phenomenal and wants to start a halfling mule train business.