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Message: <blockquote data-quote="monkeynova" data-source="post: 2549662" data-attributes="member: 18939">Review: A Question of Honor: A Guidebook to KnightsThis review is for the PDF "A Question of Honor: A Guidebook to Knights". This is a 65 page PDF file, published by Alea Publishing; I didn't pay for the copy I reviewed.In brief, this supplement aims to give a set of character options (in terms of feats, specialized skills, and prestige classes) to aid in the creation of knightly characters; primarily, the supplement seems to take the viewpoint that -- by using the new rules the supplement provides -- a knightly character will end up having more martial training than a fighter or paladin, but not necessarily as much divine spellcasting ability as a paladin.The supplement is divided into seven chapters, with two appendices. The first three chapters (New Rules; Feats, Skills, and Fighting Styles; Prestige Classes) are the meat of the supplement crunch-wise, especially the chapter on feats. Chapter one (New Rules) introduces four new rules that essentially deal with manipulating scarcity in two areas: critical successes and item availability.Chapter two (Feats, Skills, and Fighting Styles) is the second-longest chapter in the supplement; most of the feats seem to be focused on martial proficiency. However, there are some interesting feat types introduced, specifically the Taboo feats (follow stricter character behavior, gain a benefit); these seem like -- if developed -- they would make a good choice for characters who want to take vows, but don't want to take the fairly restrictive vows presented in Book of Exalted Deeds. An interesting skill idea is the prestige skill, which is only available to members of a given PrC, and which is class if taken with a level of a PrC, and cross-class otherwise; unfortunately, only one example of this is given in the supplement (at least, I could only find one), but it seems like that might actually be a better way of representing special abilities granted by a prestige class: a skill that gets more powerful as you focus on the prestige class, but that can be still developed “on your own” (outside of the prestige class).The real interesting part of chapter two – and I think is the best part of the supplement -- is the Fighting Styles portion of the chapter. In essence, it seems to be an impulse system for combat that uses attacks of opportunity as the impulses. Generally, each impulse is used to perform an action in combat; the more impulses you have, the more action you can perform. I like the fact that the combat skills are actual skills, and not feats; this allows characters without a large feat selection (say, rangers or paladins) the chance to become as lethal in combat as a fighter. I also like the dynamic nature of the combat skills; as written, the combat skills seem to make position and style of blows more important than actual damage at times. I would have liked to see more than one example of the rules in play, though.Chapter three (Prestige Classes) is the longest chapter in the supplement; most of the prestige classes presented here are different ways of looking at the knight. There are two things that struck me as "nice touches": you get a nice diversity of classes (fourteen, by my count), at least two of which deal with "black" knight-type characters and one that covers the squire (interestingly, some of the PrCs in this chapter require having taken the squire PrC first), and a good selection of the PrCs are five levels – allowing for a greater flexibility in developing a character (either, closer to a concept or allowing it grow more organically). Note, however, that there are no multiclassing notes for paladins which would allow a paladin to freely take levels in a given prestige class.The next three chapters (Knight Followers, New Equipment, New Magical Items) present ways to further round out your knightly characters; the chapters are pretty straightforward in terms of items and NPCs. However, chapter four discusses followers, but doesn’t discuss where the followers come from. In fact, one of my major criticisms of the book is the lack of information on the real-world medieval knight: no discussions of feudalism, no discussions on training, no “day-in-the-life” type discussions of a knight in medieval society, no discussions on military orders.I was a little less excited about chapter six (New Magical Items) than I thought I would be: the weapon and armor enhancements, while keeping in touch with the idea of knights being martial experts, seemed a little bland, with most focused on providing minor bonuses to various combat activities (a +1 or a +5 to an attack or skill roll, respectively); also, the two artifacts presented didn’t appeal to me all that much (one of the main concepts behind their use, awakened items which grow in power, seems to be more-or-less similar to ideas presented in Weapons of Legacy, a WotC sourcebook which was able to devote more space to covering the idea; the comparisons are regrettably inevitable, and it is unfortunate that the authors chose this supplement to introduce the concept rather than waiting for a campaign setting book). Additionally, I would have appreciated more examples of the supplement’s awakened items and more wondrous items.Chapter seven (New Spells) is something of a mixed bag for me: I think the spells could be useful for creating a character that, while very martially skilled, has a very limited amount of divine spellcasting ability. On the other hand, after reading the main chapters of the supplement, I am left wondering what the authors’ distinction between knight and paladin is; my own assumption, based on my reading of the supplement, is that the knight is an extremely skilled fighter with little or no divine spellcasting ability. However, a good portion of the spells seems to assume that the caster actually has some level of spellcasting ability (out of the eight spells presented, at least five seem to assume a caster level of at least three); this seems to be at odds with the idea of a highly skilled fighter. While this doesn't affect the utility of the spells in the slightest, it does make them off-limits to the knightly character unless you come from a strong spellcasting background (cleric, wizard, or sorceror) or from an experienced paladin who has decided that paladinhood is no longer the answer.The two appendices (Hill Lands Supplement and Monsters and NPCs) seem to deal with setting information for Alea’s upcoming Terra campaign setting. The Hill Lands Supplement in the PDF iis very high-level, and I’m not sure that you could run a campaign set in Terra based solely on the information provided (although, to be fair, it seems to be based strongly in real-world settings, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to fill in the blanks); however, it could give ideas for unexplored parts of a DM’s campaign world. Two things to note: the second map in appendix one for Argos didn’t seem to have any legend identifying locations and no such information exists in the supplement entry for Argos that I could see; also, appendix two contains two monsters and an NPC, and that’s it – you shouldn’t pick up this supplement with the expectation that there will be a large number of pre-made knightly NPCs (you’re given many tools, but you’ll have to roll your own knights).Overall, I think this supplement is a decent read: I think that the focus on martial side of knighthood is well covered, and I think the authors have introduced a number of concepts that – with further development – could substantially differentiate a highly-trained military character from one who has just survived many wars (and picked up a few tricks along the way). I do think that the potential reader must keep in mind, however, that the supplement doesn’t cover the medieval life and training of a knight as strongly as one would hope.monkeynova</blockquote>

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