Weapons: Book of Swords vol. 1

Sprawling Shadows, Weapons: Book of Swords is exactly what it appears to be… a book of swords. Within these pages, you will find twenty four uniquely created magical swords for use in your D20 campaign. Every weapon includes full D20 statistics, all Open Game Content, which include the item’s Rarity, Properties, Damage, Critical Chance and Damage Multiplier, and Weight. Each entry also includes item creation information including Required Caster Level, Prerequisites, Market Price, and Cost to Create. The swords range from having moderate enhancements, to grossly powerful magical properties. Some have been generated randomly using the magic item creation tables in the System Reference Document, and others have been carefully crafted to fit a specific concept.

Every sword in this book has been inspired by an original, full color piece of digital artwork created by Malessa Danford. Every image is printed in its full size, which is 3 x 9 inches for the first 23 swords, and 8.5 x 11 inches for the final masterpiece. (The downloadable .zip file also includes a black & white, printer-friendly version)

Finally, each weapon in this volume is further brought to life by an exciting historical background, or carefully written flavor text. This support information is designed to give players and DM’s an insider’s glimpse into the adventure-filled world of Sprawling Shadows. With all D20 statistics being Open Game Content, the backgrounds can be ignored, and these weapons can be inserted into any campaign setting.

This first volume of Weapons: Book of Swords concentrates on longswords, shortswords, and double bladed swords. (28 pages, plus cover, ads and legal pages) At just $0.99, and just in time for Christmas, it makes a fantastic e-Stocking Stuffer!

3rd Edition has been out for a while now and a ton of magic items and magic item supplements have hit the stands. Most of them had been missing unique magical double blades though. I mean here is one of the coolest types of swords in the game system and we don’t have a lot of options for ‘em. Sure, there are enough general types of magic enhancements that you can make dozens of unique swords yourself, a sword with the holy and fire properties that’s +3 called Undead Bane? That requires a little work though.

Enter Weapons: Book of Swords vol 1, covering Longswords, Shortswords and Double Blades. Here, we get some odd thirty pages of swords, each one illustrated with powers boxed and background below to keep the game mechanics separate from the world setting. This allows those just looking for magic items to quickly glance through and see what the blades do and those who want to know more about the Sprawling Shadows setting to enjoy a brief read.

So what types of double swords are there? The Power Arch is a double bladed shortsword of shock while Halfling’s Sorror is a Screaming Double Bladed Shortsword. One of the interesting things here is that one end is a higher plus than the other (+3/+2). The variety in illustrations and abilities, not only for the doubleswords, but for the longswords and shortswords, was enough to make me look forward to another volume with bastard swords, greatswords and daggers.

One of the things that was strange was the Dracus Morii, a blade with lots of background detail, but no abilities. While the idea is interesting, allowing the user to customize the weapon, it defeats the point of buying a magic item book. Most people are probably looking for abilities and powers to go with their background.

The only problem with this method is the amount of white space left on each page. Now this is countered by the price. One of the best things about the book of swords is the price. At 99 cents, it’s a great deal. No ifs, ands or butts. This is augmented by the fact that you get a printer friendly version of the file as well as a regular full color one.

The artist does a good job of providing life to the swords. My only complaint is that nothing is done with the blades themselves. Most of them are just unadorned naked steel. Now when I’ve seen magic swords in other media, the blades usually have runes or something else about them to make them stand out.

The only thing the book was lacking was unique properties. As I mentioned at the start of the review, there are so many properties that anyone can make dozens of magical weapons with little to any overlap. Without those new properties for weapons, the book can’t really break out of being just a standard magic item book that most people, with the time, could eventually come up with on their own. If you’re looking for some more unique weapons to add to your campaign, this book should have what you need.

Thank you!

Our only additional input is that several different versions of possible statistics for Dracus Morii will be made available as a freely downloadable Web Enhancement (since they seem to be all the rage, nowadays) at some point in February or March. We have several ideas in mind... including some unique powers... but we want to make sure they're balanced, and put them in a good-looking download. For now, we are concentrating on getting our next $0.99 PDF finished in time for our self-imposed deadline of February 28.

Suggestions have been noted, and taken into consideration for future releases.

--cheers!
Brian and Malessa Danford
Grell Head Studios

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