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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crothian" data-source="post: 2011217" data-attributes="member: 232">Question of Honor: Guidebook to Knights    The fantasy genre of role playing is obviously very popular.  It surprises me though that this is really the only book I have seen that focuses on knights.  Knights are a staple fantasy concept as well as a historical one.  There have been a few prestige classes presented in many books that fill the role of the knight.  These are mostly found in books devoted to the Paladin or Fighter classes.  However, none of them really fill the need or the even cover the possibilities of the knights and their orders.  Question of Honor does a good job of covering these topics.    A Question of Honor is a pdf book by Alea Publishing Group.  This is their first product I believe though they have released more since.  This is also the first product of theirs I have seen.  The pdf is written by Cameron Guill and Joshua Rayneck.  The book is sixty five pages in length and come in a zip file under five megs.  The pdf itself is still a bit under five megs and also comes with a small document that has some new rules in it.  The rules re also presented in the nice pdf.      The book is nice to look at.  They did a good job with the layout and the formatting.  The art is very much on topic and does a great job of enhancing the book.  However, with the art and the colored borders this book is a bit of an ink eater for anyone who would like to print it out.  For those who would like to use it from the computer, there are no bookmarks to help with finding things.  The table of contents is pretty good but there is also no index.  That is not that uncommon though.  It does seem indexes are not being included much in products I see.    The book starts out with a brief overview of knighthood.  This was too brief for me.  It is not even a full page and I have the feeling it could easily have been ten.  I would have preferred seeing too much on knighthoods then too little.  Then the book moves onto new rules.  New rules area tough thing to do.  It is hard to balance useful of rules with complexity of game.  While I can see a point for the rules presented here as they do fit the subject of knights, I feel that they do add a bit too much complexity to the game.  For instance there is Critical Armor Bonus.  This is a special armor bonus that gets added only when someone is confirming a critical against you.  There is also critical attack bonuses and critical damage reductions.  There are other new rules like dragging with a lasso from a horse and two rules on finding items in a town or city.  I do like the dragging rules.    There are of course new uses for skills and feats.  This is a very common section in gaming books these days.  The new skills are okay and really do enhance the theme of the book.  But they might be a little complex.  For instance the new use for diplomacy is getting a besieged castle to surrender.  This is by far the most complex of the skills and while it is very fitting to the material it seems just overly complex with modifier coming from all sorts of things.   The feats are mostly pretty good.  There is however what they call advanced feats that I do not like.  These feats increase a characters level adjustment by one.  The feats are strong but I don’t think they are enough to warrant level adjustment.  For instance one of the feats Weapon Master adds plus one to hit and damage with all weapons one is proficient in.  The feat can be taken as soon as second level for most classes.  I would have preferred to just see tougher requirements for the feat and not worry about the level adjustment.  The feats also include ancestry feats.  These are feat s that can only be taken at first level and define something in the characters forefathers.  I really like these types of feats as they add character to the character.  The third type of new feat is the taboo feats.  These are also really good feats.  There is one called superstitious which gives a +3 bonus to all saving throws against spells, even beneficial ones.  The character can never cast spells though.    There are a lot of general feats as well, most having to do with combat.      There are some optional rules that allow combat styles.  These are skills that one gets skill points for based on the base attack bonus of the class.  Whenever the base attack bonus increases the person gains eight skill points that can be spent of fighting style skills.  This is basically taking combat and making it into a skill itself.  Many of these skills are well thought out but do add a complexity level to ones game.      Prestige classes are a dime a dozen these days.  The ones presented here are well done, but I would have liked the descriptions to be longer.  I do like what they have done with some of the concepts.  The Black Knight is a knight who hides his identity to seek vengeance.  Knight of the Wild is a ranger like knight who takes trophies from his kills.  But for all the kings presented and for are the honor and chivalry talked about, there is no definition of what a knight would do to be honorable and chivalrous.  There are no codes presented or examples of how upholds ones honor.      There are many character right ups in the chapter on knightly followers.  These give good examples of the kind of people and their abilities the a knight with the leadership feat would attract.  Following that is new armor and equipment.  Some of this use the new rules that are presented in the early part of the book.  The equipment is useful and many have special rules for them.  There is an item variant for the whetstone and some historical notes on weapons and armor.  I would have liked to see more items like these.  From there there are some new magical items and spells presented.  The magical items also feature awakened items.  The idea of items the gain power with the character is nothing new but it works well here.      The last section is a place that can be used called the Hill lands.  It is a nicely described place that features knights.  But it is the cartography that is really amazing looking.  The credit is given to R&R Maps and I do not know who they are but the map of the city of Argos they have here is phenomenal.  If only it where bigger.      Question of Honor is a good resource for knights.  It sticks with the subject and everything revolves around it.  I do feel that many of the rules are a bit complex, but it I know there are people that like that.  Through out the whole thing I just wanted more.  Knights are a huge topic and they play a part historically as well as in fantasy.  I would have enjoyed reading more about that.</blockquote>

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