BradfordFerguson
First Post
E.N.Arsenal - Two-Bladed Sword, published by E.N. Publishing, is a PDF product sold on RPGNow.com. For more information about the product itself, you can refer to the link above.
I get no enjoyment out of writing an unfavorable review. It is bound to either hurt someone’s feelings or anger a publisher. I do not read any products with the predisposition that I am going write an unfavorable review.
Poor Layout: The product encompasses 20 pages of content and five of those pages are section headings. For each of the section headings a dark watermark picture is "behind" the text, but the bottom half of the picture is a dark gray which makes the text very difficult to read. There is no printer-friendly version to alleviate this. One of the tables has poor spacing between columns, making it hard to read.
Repeated Art: Besides the border art, there are four pieces of art in the product. While I do not mind too much that there were only four illustrations, it was annoying that each piece was reprinted at least once. One of the illustrations (the section header), appears a total of seven times!
Weak Start: The PDF is based around an absurd weapon, but some of the creations and mechanics are unbalancing and poorly conceived. The two-bladed flamberge allows its user to make a free disarm attack after a sunder attempt (it does not say the sunder must be successful), this makes the weapon superior to the two-bladed sword in the PHB. If you’re really into anime, you might like the two-bladed GREATSWORD that only imposes the monkeygrip penalty without requiring the monkeygrip feat. If your character has strong wrists, they make want to use the two-bladed dagger, and still be able to wield a shield! The Craftsmanship modifiers gave strong bonuses for only a little extra cash. It reprints other d20 feats including the gem, Bull Charge, which gives you two actions for the price of one.
Strong Finish: The poor start to the book really soured my mood, but the book did improve. There are two weapon styles with specific requirements where you can pay XP to gain minor abilities with the weapon. These seem very reasonable, and besides, the moves have cool names. The three prestige classes were good as well, though some of the mechanics are a little clunky (have conditional uses that may be hard to remember), and the requirements for one of them made little sense to me. The Keltath Master of the Two Blades requires the member of the PrC to both be drow and Chaotic Evil, but it's abilities were none too dastardly except for their arachnid names. The Dual Soulblade is a cool PrC.
Since DMs can cheat the rules some, you can use this PDF for NPCs, but I definitely would not let a player use the book in any game I ran.
Likes:
Some good game mechanics.
Dual soulblade. Who would have thunk it?
Good production value approach.
Dislikes:
Poor layout.
Repeated art.
Mostly bad game mechanics.
Score: 7 of 20 (or 2/5)
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Bradford Ferguson
I get no enjoyment out of writing an unfavorable review. It is bound to either hurt someone’s feelings or anger a publisher. I do not read any products with the predisposition that I am going write an unfavorable review.
Poor Layout: The product encompasses 20 pages of content and five of those pages are section headings. For each of the section headings a dark watermark picture is "behind" the text, but the bottom half of the picture is a dark gray which makes the text very difficult to read. There is no printer-friendly version to alleviate this. One of the tables has poor spacing between columns, making it hard to read.
Repeated Art: Besides the border art, there are four pieces of art in the product. While I do not mind too much that there were only four illustrations, it was annoying that each piece was reprinted at least once. One of the illustrations (the section header), appears a total of seven times!
Weak Start: The PDF is based around an absurd weapon, but some of the creations and mechanics are unbalancing and poorly conceived. The two-bladed flamberge allows its user to make a free disarm attack after a sunder attempt (it does not say the sunder must be successful), this makes the weapon superior to the two-bladed sword in the PHB. If you’re really into anime, you might like the two-bladed GREATSWORD that only imposes the monkeygrip penalty without requiring the monkeygrip feat. If your character has strong wrists, they make want to use the two-bladed dagger, and still be able to wield a shield! The Craftsmanship modifiers gave strong bonuses for only a little extra cash. It reprints other d20 feats including the gem, Bull Charge, which gives you two actions for the price of one.
Strong Finish: The poor start to the book really soured my mood, but the book did improve. There are two weapon styles with specific requirements where you can pay XP to gain minor abilities with the weapon. These seem very reasonable, and besides, the moves have cool names. The three prestige classes were good as well, though some of the mechanics are a little clunky (have conditional uses that may be hard to remember), and the requirements for one of them made little sense to me. The Keltath Master of the Two Blades requires the member of the PrC to both be drow and Chaotic Evil, but it's abilities were none too dastardly except for their arachnid names. The Dual Soulblade is a cool PrC.
Since DMs can cheat the rules some, you can use this PDF for NPCs, but I definitely would not let a player use the book in any game I ran.
Likes:
Some good game mechanics.
Dual soulblade. Who would have thunk it?
Good production value approach.
Dislikes:
Poor layout.
Repeated art.
Mostly bad game mechanics.
Score: 7 of 20 (or 2/5)
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Bradford Ferguson
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