EN Arsenal Spiked Chain is the first in a line of books focusing on a specific weapon. This time out, they’ve picked an odd weapon as the Spiked Chain is not a historical weapon and owes its place more to the ‘kewl’ factor of how it looks. This is a short file coming in at twenty pages.
Art is handled by Tony Monorchio, Chris Herndon and Danilo Moretti but the book is very art light. We have an image of someone, a ninja style individual, wielding a Spiked Chain, that is used throughout the book and a few examples of different spiked chains and a really bad picture of a dwarf with a bandage sticking his tongue out that looks like it belongs in a humorous anime. Editing is fair but the book is a little wordy at times, which is odd for a small tome.
The book starts off with the vital statistics or dimensions of the Spiked Chain. This includes little things like length and weight. For those who want their fire giants to wield such a weapon, the author has included spiked chains from tiny to colossal size including cost, damage, critical, weight, type and hardness/hit points. One interesting option mentioned here, that I’ve seen require a feat in other books, is using the Spiked Chain as a double weapon. This eliminates the reach and lowers the damage but gives you two weapons. A fair trade off fort he most part.
Of interest to me were the variants. This is where the lack of art shows. We have one illustration for one of the weapons, the bladed chain. Still, most of the weapons are easy enough to visualize with the descriptions. Take weighted chains, which are normal chains that are designed with heavy ends. Take the chain axe, another weapon with a variant end, this timea double bladed axe-head.
Some rules are included about craftsmanship. In some cases, I was wondering which book they were pulled form as a lot of it seems reminiscent from the Heroes of High Favor Dwarves book as it provides things like improved hit points, hardness or even reduced weight in exchange for craft checks and gold piece increases. It’s a nice idea, but could’ve been pushed further. Where for example, are the ‘dire’ versions, or at least EN Publishing’s version?
Some of the new feats are more aimed at a barbarian or a fighter looking for pure rage. Take Blood Lust where the character gains bonuses to strength and constitution while suffering a penalty to armor class and losing their dexterity modifier or the follow up, blood frenzy, where the character gains damage reduction and a bonus to his natural armor class.
Some of these feats look familiar like Chain Mastery, where the character gains a +1 bonus to hit with all chain weapons or Greater Sunder, where the character gets a free attack if he manages a successful sunder attack. Others take advantage of the Spiked Chain like Greater Disarm, as the character gets a free attack if he disarms his opponent.
It’s a fair section of feats, but to be honest, I don’t see a lot of the Spiked Chain connection here. I see a lot of ‘power’ feats that would be great to add to a fighter’s power attack-cleave-improved sunder list.
In terms of character options, the author starts off with the Sinuous Cobra School for Monks. In exchange for sacrificing their hand-to-hand damage, the monk gains the Spiked Chain as a proficiency and can also use it with their flurry. They also lose their ki strike ability progression but can multiclass with rogue and assassin classes. For me, that’s too much. There are many 3rd party feats that allow a monk to use different weapons as monk feats and a few even allow those weapons to use the monk’s base unarmed damage. Unearthed Arcana provides several options for Monk characters that limits their bonus feats, but provides them with a reward at the end of their bonus feat progression. I don’t see that here. One nice touch though, is that the author has provided a table with the Monk multi-classing with Rogue and Assassin from 1st to 20th level which handles level dependant benefits like bab, saving throws and special abilities.
Of more interest is the Scorpion Warrior. This PrC focuses on smashing things and so puts to good use the new feats here by making them prerequisites. The bad news is that the feats that are introduced in this book aren’t marked with a * to denote that they come from this book. The good news is that there are different prerequisites depending on where the character is coming from. For those from the city, they have to have Expertise, while those who wander, have to have Cleave and those members of the Church seeking entrance, have to have 5 or more ranks in Knowledge (religion). It’s a nice simple way of insuring some differences between the classes even as it leaves most of it standard.
The Scorpion Warrior is a five level PrC with good bab and fort saving throws whose mastery of the chains enables him to get additional attacks with his chains a limited number of times per day in addition to using his chains, after a successful trip attack or takedown feat, to throw his enemy.
The last PrC is the Raveller, a spellcaster who augments his knowledge of spells with mastery of the chain. They have a strange progression as they choose spells from a Chain list and can use those spells in any class they would normally be able to cast. There are limitations to it, but it does involve a little more thinking than just going, “Yeah, +1 Spellcaster Level.”, which is listed on the table, but not mentioned in the text. I’m assuming it means the standard in that they gain spells in their primary spellcasting class and no other benefits. They also gain bonus feats from a limited selection, like a specialized fighter.
Most of the new spells introduced are to fill out the Raveller’s spell list, but a few can be used by any class. Take Eruption of Chains, a 5th level arcane spell that conjures a huge spiked chain from the ground and strikes one target in it’s 30-ft.-raiuds sphere reach for 1d4 points up to 20d4. Might be a little too good due to the expanded radius and the improved reach over fireball, despite its higher level. What’s worse is that those within the radius suffer 1d3 points of damage up to 15d3 points. Playtesting will bear that one out. Much easier to judge are spells like Steel Shrapnel, a 2nd level Raveller spell that inflicts 1d10 +1 force damage per caster level up to 10+10 points of damage with a Reflex save for half.
For those looking for magic versions, we have several new enhancements like Graceful, providing a +2 enhancement bonus to Dexterity, to Ripping, a high enhancement that improves the critical multiplier and inflicts extra damage.
More interesting are the specific weapons. Here the author had a chance to give Spiked Chains some personality via details of previous owners, but pretty much goes into detailed descriptions of the weapon and their powers, giving those weapons personality, but not the weapon itself. What’s worse is that it seems the author went for the brutal nature of the weapon and didn’t provide any ‘Good’ options like a paladin’s chain or a ranger’s chain that tasted deep the blood of orcs.
To provide a deity for use with the new domain of Chains, we have Darreal the Binder, an individual who might have been the consort of Ralthehkos the Devourer and eventually bound Ralthehkos in chains. In some ways, she sounds like a perfect match for those entities on the Plane of Agony from the Tome of Horrors II.
Part of my problem with this book is that to a certain extent, I’ve ‘seen’ it all so many of the game mechanics here come off like reprints and I don’t agree with some of the ‘themes’ in the selection of feats and magic items as it doesn’t necessarily fit with the weapon concept of being powerful, yet graceful. The lack of illustrations hurts the book in the new weapons area and some editing to trim the ‘talk’ of the book would’ve been nice. For example, when discussing new feats, I don’t need to see “as in most E.N. Publishing products,” when talking about fighter feats. I also don’t need references to books that aren’t out yet. I’ll pick up some Palladium books for that. (Mechanoids anyone?)
This is a niche product. If you like the spiked chain and want to see some variants of it, it’s perfect for you.
