Call of Duty
Written by James Garr
Published by Chainmail Bikini Games
65 b & w pages (color cover)
$7
I’ve often been asked how I rate something. Part of it is how does it look? How does it read? Is it entertaining? Boring? What’s the layout like? Those are things that help form my initial impression. Another big part is how can I use this as a GM? Would I use it as a player? Low on the list is game balance issues. Not saying that these things aren’t important, but I’m much less likely to be critical of some powerful spells and magic items than I am a document with no illustrations and poor layout with okay ideas and sound mechanics. Somewhere along the way, price plays a part which depending on the price of the product and type of product (paper vs. pdf), I make a call. A goofy way to grade something? Perhaps but on those grounds, I’d like to state that Call of Duty is a top-notch supplement.
Unlike Beyond Monks, the book is a little light in the feats department. There are numerous feats that take advantage of the Paladin’s unique abilities and augment them but I was a little surprised by the lack of depth. In Beyond Monks, James displayed a massive amount of material (something like 80 feats) useful not only for martial artists, but to all campaigns. Here, you get some paladin specific goods like Aura of Healing where, the paladin’s aura of courage heals extra 2 points of damage. How about an augment Smite Evil via Bolster Smite Evil? You give up a turn undead roll and get extra dice for damage. How about Inspire Mount where you increase your mounts speed and provide a bonus to melee attack rolls? The feats seem solid and useable in a wide range of settings and allow a PC to customize his character in many ways. If he wants to be more of a healer to replace a missing cleric, Combat Healing and other feats go a long way but if he wants to be more of a knightly character, Heroic Effort and True Smite lend a lot more physical power to his abilities.
What really impressed me in the book were the prestige classes. DMing a campaign in the Scarred Lands, and being a player in another SL campaign, there were several PrCs I took to right away. The section starts off with a Paladin prestige class that goes for 15 levels, reproducing many of the paladin’s base abilities. Those who don’t like the Paladin as a core class finally have a PrC to strive for. Of more interest to me though were the PrCs that took the holy warrior aspect and twisted it. The Archon is focused on law and welcomes both good and evil individuals as long as they obey the law. If used in a lawful neutral manner, they’d make perfect servants of Hadrada in the SL setting. Those looking for a more wild ride will enjoy the Chaos Knight, a chaotic master of spikes and rage. One of the nice things about this PrC is that it offers abilities for fallen paladins, reminiscent of the Black Guard in the DMG and is one of the first classes to do so.
Not all of the PrCs are merely alignment shifts though. The Forge Avenger is a dwarf called to duty by the spirits of his ancestors. A nice take on dwarf lore and history that puts them into the paladin role. The Golden Pride Hunter is the creation of Myrcelon, a celestial being who favors the lion. The interesting bit of these individuals is that they are often drawn from the ranks of nobility that lay claim to lion heritage or affinity. It’d be interesting to have a member of the Proud in the SL abandon his brothers and follow this strange new method of combat.
Some of the other PrCs focus on expanding the Paladin Concept. For example, the Merseus are healers of mind, soul and body while the Penitent Sniper is a holy warrior unafraid to use ranged weapons. One of my favorite abilities of the Penitent Sniper is his Call Celestial Spotter, an ability that illuminates targets for the sniper.
There are other PrCs here like the Seelie Knight, a servant of the Pixie Queen and the Sensate, a psionic based PrC that ‘feels’ evil and must fight against it. Of use to those paladins who wish to specialize in the sword, the Sword Saint is right at home alongside the more militant PrCs in the SL campaign that worshiper Corean.
Now each of these is a 10 level PrC with full abilities listed and detailed. There are some great quotes to start off each section. My favorite is the Sniper, “Thou Shall Kill”, with the quote of the Archon, “Eveyone is guilty of something.” Coming in a close second. In addition to providing class abilities, background, and quotes, there are NPCs. Unlike the example NPCs in the Witch’s Handbook, I didn’t feel that these were a waste of paper.
Why Joe? Isn’t that a double standard? Well, if all these were consisted only of stats like the Witch’s Handbook, I’d say yes, but these are characters with names, backgrounds, motivations, and other bits to make them fully useable. I’ll be throwing Pale and some of the others into my campaign with few changes, and to me, that’s the sign of a good NPC.
Chapter Two, Role-playing Paladins, reads quickly and almost seems short. It’s not a section to define a paladin, not by any means, but it does provide a lot of ideas on how best to role-play a paladin. I liked the different ideas on why a character would answer the call, broken down by type, motivation, examples and implications. Take Justice, where your motivation is to provide justice to the innocent, but the implication is that say instead of taking care of a destroyed town and protecting it, you’d hunt down the people who did the act in the first place.
The section on Code of Conduct helps the player and GM understand the role playing restrictions starting with the lawful good alignment and working through the limitations on associates. It makes for good reading and I’ll be sure to hand out portions of this section to one of my players (you know who you are!) who sometimes acts more like a fighter with some clerical abilities than a paladin. Another section I’ll be handing him out is the Fall From Grace. It provides some insights into the repercussions of losing your paladin hood that I’ve never actively thought about.
I mean I know that a paladin loses his powers and abilities but never really thought of how that would effect the paladin on a physical or spiritual level. In some ways, I guess I’m used to all the angst that’s the rage these days so automatically assume most fallen paladins would fit right in there. The important thing I think most people can take away from this section thought is that these fallen ones are individuals who cannot atone rather than chose not to atone, as there is a difference between the two.
Now chapter three, A variety of Paladins, provides some solid ground for multiclassing paladins. In some ways, I hoped that we’d get the tables showing the level advancement to go along with the names. For example, Monk/Paladins fall under the Disciple, while Sorcerer Paladins are Arcane Defenders. An interesting variant that I don’t recall seeing anywhere before is the Odd Combinations where ex classes are thrown in with the Paladin. Ex-Barbarian/Paladin anyone? The advice on when to switch over as well as what benefits are lost and how best to role play these characters is solid and many newer players will take joy in the options they never knew they had.
For GMs looking to expand upon the nature of the paladin in the campaign, Paladin Orders provides the GM with lots of ideas to create his own orders and decide how best they fit into the game. It does this by providing some general ideas of why orders are formed and then makes the GM answer a list of questions to help flesh out the order. For those who are brain dead, the Silver Hand example order should ease their pain.
This chapter closes out with options on customizing the paladin. If I had seen this before Book of the Righteous, I would think, fantastic, but since Holy Warriors and some of the ideas I’ve seen since then, I merely add this to my list of ideas to tinker with when I’ve got more time. There are abilities that may be sacrificed in order to gain greater abilities or different abilities. Don’t want Detect Evil? Take Detect Chaos. Don’t want Smite Evil? Take Clerical Turning as a cleric of equal level. Most of the mechanics seem sound as they are often straight one for one switches but some GMs will want to watch the choices players make carefully and shouldn’t be afraid to disallow anything.
Chapter 4 introduces new magic to the campaign, starting off with spells and moving onto magic items. I disagree with some of the design philosophy behind the divine spell list options. Here the author states that because of the ability to wear armor and other benefits, that when new divine spells are introduced an equal amount should be taken out. I see where he’s coming from but I think that because Arcane spells have such a battle field focus that divine spell casters are usually underrepresented anyway so add away I say. There are thirteen new spells, two 1st, four 2nd, four 3rd, and three 4th. The summary allows the reader to quickly find what he’s looking for like Pious Strength where your strength increases by your wisdom bonus or one soul, where you and your mount have a pool of hit points. I enjoyed this section as I’ve always felt that paladins suffered a bit on their spell list and will be adding these right away to my campaign with few, if any changes.
For the magic items, James provides some sound advice in making items more than just generic named toys for the players by comparing a +1 sword to Newal’s Folly, the same +1 sword with a description, history and current location. This section includes special abilities, common magic items and unique magic items. Want to really make the evil doers feel the pain? Use the Holy Burst property (or the Unholy Burst for those evil campaigns.). Want a specific weapon? Try Newal’s Vengeance, a sword with humble beginnings that is now a gnoll bane holy weapon. How about Pinnacle, an intelligent holy weapon that always comes back to the mortal realm? This artifact is truly a campaign length worthy goal for that high level paladin and it’s preference (16th level or higher) insures that lower level characters don’t wind up with something too much for them. Turnabout is fair play thought and GMs may give their Black Guards the Unholy Destroyers, holy avengers that have become corrupted in the abyss.
Layout is simple with no borders or color interiors, as far as I’m concerned, a good thing in a PDF File. My printer thanks Chainmail Bikini for this. Boxed text is used to illustrate specific points like law vs. chaos as opposed to good vs. evil and works well. One of my issues with the previous book, Beyond Monks, was the poor graphics. That issue is handled here with a full color cover and excellent interior art work handled by Brian England and David Zenz, both of whom capture the feel of the PrCs and ideas without any looking silly or too knight like.
There are a few other things I would’ve liked to see in this product, like more ideas and information about the orders for example. How about some solid, detailed maps to go along with that? Some discussion on races and paladins would’ve been nice too. Besides, James writers in a colorful manner and I’d love to see his take on an order of half-orcs. To see the differences in say a halfling paladin and a gnome paladin, or even some of the template creatures from the Monster Manual, would’ve made another satisfying chapter. Lastly, this is a little pricy for a PDF file. Not much, just about $1 to $2 depending on what you're comparing it to.
That’s more of a preference call on my part though. I found the PrCs to be useful immediately. The NPCs well rounded. The game mechanics fairly sound and the ideas well presented. In short, it’s a book to compare other Paladin based books to as a new standard and deserves to be on any Corean serving PC’s shelf.
