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The book starts with three new base classes, the hexblade, the samurai and the swashbuckler. The hexblade is the best of these. Similar in concept to the sorceror, it as an individual who from an early age had a reputation as a jinx, or who might possess the evil eye, and turned that ability towards combat. With a d10 for hit points, a 1/1 BAB advancement, and a very slow spell advancement, the hexblade is more like an arcane ranger or paladin than a bard. Their main ability is to curse enemies, and they have an interesting and flavourable spell selection. I think we might be seeing a rogue based version in another book.
The samurai is very disappointing. Rather than redoing the oriental Adventures samurai, which I've found to be very easy to adapt to non-pseudo-Japanese (is that a word?) settings - I've got a tribe of orcs with ancestral battle axes - the samurai here just takes one aspect of the samurai - wielding two swords at once - and bases pretty much the whole class around it. There's little here you can't do by taking a fighter with appropriate bonus feats, and the whole class would be better as prestige. There's a funny picture of a dwarven samurai, however.
The swashbuckler looks overpowered at first, and then you realise that most of the special abilities are to compensate for not having decent arms and armour. Or, to put it another way, you can ponce about in your flowery shirt and wave your rapier and still fight one on one the guy with platemail and a zweihander. What the class also gives you is a nice set of skills (tumble, bluff, escape artist, etc. - which you can actually use because you're not wearing heavy armour) and some complimentary special abilities. I have to quote acrobatic charge here:
"A swashbuckler of 7th level or higher can charge in situations where others cannot ... This ability enables her to run down steep stairs, leap down from a balcony, or tumble over tables to get to her target".
Finishing off this section are non-spellcasting variants of the paladin and ranger. I don't think that they're worth it.
Chapter two is all about prestige classes. Its 66 pages long and has 36 classes in. By my estimate just under half are reprints of earlier classes, 3.5-ified. Nearly all look useful. Highs and Lows are:
Exotic Weapon Master: Not the Master's of the Wild version, thnakfully, but a 3 level prestige class with some quirky combat tricks, like ranged disarm.
Invisible Blade: A dagger fighting specialist, giving a 1/1 BAB advancement and sneak attacks. More for combat minded rogues than anyone after serious fighting power.
Kensai: Now this is what the samurai base class above should have been.
Master of the Unseen Hand: What's this doing in a warrior book? The masters are mages or psionists who are very good at telekinesis. They can use the telekinesis spell to wield melee weapons at a distance, and do other tricks. A good concept well executed.
Order of the Bow Initiate: Very nasty archery specialists. Want +5d8 damage on a bow attack? Go for this.
Chapter three contains mainly feats, with a few other bits and pieces. There seem to be more feat reprints than there were presitige class reprints. Notable amongst the new stuff are tactical feats. Each tactical feat actually gives you three related but minor abilities.
A few spells follow, including some new domains, plus three new monsters. These monsters are three new familiars which are also constructs. Again, I'm not sure what they're doing in this book. After this are some skill variants, such as Perform (Weapon Drill).
Chapter four is a big improvement over Sword & Fist. This is the soft chapter, full of discussion. Historical warfare is discussed, along with Modern-inspired warfare (as in substitute fireballs for howitzers and flying creatures for aircraft). The section on mercenaries is dull, but does contain a few ideas as to how to give adventurers interesting things to do in the middle of a battle or war.
Sporting combat follows, with jousting, gladiator combat and archery. These all have rules, and useably ones too; gladiators, for instance, get morale bonuses and penalties depending on how the crowd likes them. Perform a successful trip attack, and the crowd goes wild; get it wrong, and their attitude worsens. After this comes some very dull magic items and some equally dull organisations linked with some of the prestige classes.
Things pick up again with a new pantheon consisting entirely of warrior deities - and they are different from the Nordic pantheon. Unfortunately, they get barely over a page. Then there's a bit about epic warriors, and finally weapons. All the "new" weapons I think I've seen before. However, improvised weapons are fun. A wagon does 5d6 damage if you wield one.
Conclusion
I flipped through this in the shop and bought it on the strength of the three random pages I looked at, but then I had just been paid. There's lots of good, a little average and a little bad.
