Art of the Duel

To duel of not to duel. That is the question asked by this article and it gets right into with some nice art work and a short piece of fiction that shows us how it might have felt to walk into a duel. The second section is short and informative, telling the reader about the rapier and dueling throughout history. The third part showcases some new weapons that a duelist character may want to use. The fourth and final section gives us new feats that can turn your run of the mill fighter into a true dueling character.

Now that you've had your overview of the article lets get down to brass tax.

The Good

- You get four and a half pages of dueling flavor, history, weapons, and rules for two bucks.

- The fiction is well written and provocative.

- The weapons are interesting, historical in flavor, and have some fun rules associated with them to help customize your PC as a duelist.

- The new rule 'Bind' is a winner in my book, adding another fun new twist to martial characters.

- The feats are nifty if nothing else and look to be well balanced. Responsive Duelist looks slightly overpowering at first but you can only use three weapons with it. Challenge to a Duel seems like it could be abused to take spell casters out of fights but it would also remove the duelist from the fight for that duration. In addition the ability could protect the target from attacks. Finally some of the feats have historical notes to show us where the ideas came from. I love personal little touches like this, on top of the fact it shows the writer did his research.

- Finally the layout looks professional and clean, the writing is readable, and the art is quality.

The Bad

- The history section is informative and filled with fun ideas but it kind of ruins the idea of the rapier as a usable weapon in a fantasy game.

In the end this article is a very good buy if your looking for options to introduce dueling, running a pirate or swashbuckling character, or love sword fighting and want to add more options.