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Title: Sword and Fist: A Guidebook to Fighters and Monks (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by Jason Carl ISBN: 0-7869-1829-2 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 13 January, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.53 (36 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The ultimate suppliment
Comment: I found that this book contained everything I've been looking for: great new weapons, very useful feats, and lots of new prestige classes (I always wanted to make a Samurai!) "Sword and Fist" also contains various buildings which can be useful for DMs to base, for instance, a guard tower or an elf house on. If there is anything I was dissapointed about was how little information there was on chariots, but then, the book would also be better a thousand pages long. FIVE STARS!
Rating: 2
Summary: Aspiring to Mediocrity and Failing
Comment: Sword and Fist is the first book in one of the worst series of supplements to ever be released for D&D.
Sword and Fist has the following significant problems:
1) There are six pages of errata for a 95 page book.
2) An excessive amount of space is wasted in repetitive charts.
3) The feat section is a handful of feats that seem to have been chosen at random for their "cool" factor.
4) Many of the feats are either incredibly useful, or not useful at all. For example, Power Lunge could allow a third level character to inflict 14 extra points of damage with a single attack while on the other hand Dirty Fighting requires that a character forego all his extra attack to get 1d4 extra damage. These benefits are not equal in any way, shape or form.
5) Some of the prestige classes, like the Fist of Hextor and the Ravager, absolutely can not be used by a player character, so why are they present in a player oriented book?
6) Other prestige classes, like the Duelist, Devoted Defender, Ghostwalker, and Gladiator are obviously copies of movie characters without giving any credit to the source of inspiration.
7) Some of the prestige classes, like the Fist of Hextor, Knight Protector of the Great Kingdom, Ninja of the Crescent Moon, Order of the Bow Initiate, Red Avenger and Warmaster are tied to specific organizations and/or locations. It simply makes no sense to put them in what should be a relatively generic source book. For example, the Warmaster and the Knight Protector should be in a supplement for the Kingdom of Furyondy or the Great Kingdom respectively.
8) The organization section takes some of the organizations from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and rewrites them, and then adds new organizations that have nothing to do with the World of Greyhawk. Focusing either on Greyhawk material or on generic material would have greatly improved the book.
9) The "Game within the Game" chapter is just a basic tutorial on tactics. Not very interesting and it's recommendations are mediocre at best.
10) The tools of the Trade section is probably the single worst section of the book. The stats for most of the weapons are wrong, and many of the weapons are either bizarre, inappropriate or both. The "cool" mercurial weapons are a joke, because mercury reacts with steel to create a brittle alloy. Thus the weapons are not only impractically difficult to manifacture, they'd be worthless in combat.
11) This is a player oriented book, thus there is no reason for any magic items to be in the book at all.
On the upside:
1) The Cavalier, Duelist, and Weapon Master are among the best prestige classes in this entire series. They are generic enough to be adapted to any campaign world, and useful enough to be worth the costs to a variety of character types.
Overall, I received the impression that the author did not try to write "a good book", but merely one that was "good enough". He failed. I heartily recommend to anyone who is thinking of buying this book:
Save your money and buy something good.
Rating: 2
Summary: Too pricey for a little book like this
Comment: Honestly the only reason to buy this book (or any of the Class Guidebooks)is for the new Feats and Prestige Classes. Instead of creating different books for the different Player Classes they should have just created a Feats and Prestige Classes book.... I'll never understand why a flimsy little paperback, black-and white book like this cost as much as the core rulebooks which are hardcover and have color art. So ends my gripe session.
Now the good things about this book are indeed the new feats and prestige classes. They really let you customize your character to get just the Fighter or Monk character that you want. Want to play a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style of Monk? No Problem. There is a Prestige Class for it. How about a true blue Cavalier... again, no problem. By adding Prestige Classes that a Monk can freely multiclass with give a little more depth to a terribly limited character class (by the Core Player's Handbook all Monks have pretty much the same abilities).
I'd have rated this product higher if only Wizards of the Coast didn't try to gouge us gamers with the insanely high price.
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Title: Masters of the Wild: A Guidebook to Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by Mike Selinker, David Eckelberry ISBN: 0786926538 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: February, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Song and Silence: A Guidebook to Bards and Rogues (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by John Rateliff, David Noonan ISBN: 0786918578 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Tome and Blood: A Guidebook to Wizards and Sorcerers (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by Bruce R. Cordell, Skip Williams ISBN: 0786918454 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: July, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Defenders of the Faith: A Guidebook to Clerics and Paladins (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory) by James Wyatt, Rich Redman ISBN: 0786918403 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Player's Handbook: Core Rulebook I (Dungeons & Dragons, Edition 3.5) ISBN: 0786928867 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: 18 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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