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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crothian" data-source="post: 2011589" data-attributes="member: 232">EN Arsenal Spiked Chain    The PDF industry has gone to smaller releases and tighter areas.  They cover something very specific in a few pages and charge a buck or so for it.  This is the trend and while I prefer books with a little more depth, I can understand why it is going this way.  EN Publishing is one of the leaders in PDF publishing and their books are usually top notch.  So, it did not surprise me to see them do a book focused tightly on a single weapon.  Yet, instead of just giving us a few pages they go into great depth and offer up twenty pages all focused around a weapon that has no historical basis.  I cannot wait to see what we get for a weapon that really exists.      EN Publishing is the RPG company associated with EN World.  EN World of course is the place you are reading this review and of whom I am a Staff Reviewer for.  I also happen to be friends with most of the people involved in the company.  So, there may be a perception of bias there.  That is up to the reader to determine bt looking at this and other reviews I have done of their books.  Now that that is out the way…..    EN Arsenal Spiked Chain is a PDF.  It is small under two megs as a PDF file and a zip file.  The layout, art, and overall look of this book is excellent.  The PDF has a great set of book marks, making flipping through the book and finding things a breeze.  EN Publishing has always had great production values in their books.      The book focuses on the Spiked Chain and that worried me.  The spiked chain has a reputation of being an abused weapon.  It is flexible in its uses and for that reason a lot of players that take it do so for the power it gives them.  While there is nothing wrong with that I feared that this book would only give the weapon more power and more options.  And that is exactly what the book does.    The book starts with stating out the spiked chains of different sizes.  Have a Storm Giant and need the stats for the spiked chain he carries?  It is in the book.  Have a sprite that welds a spiked chain and need stats for her?  It is in here to.  I will not be going into the reason why the sprite needs a spike.  Different races prefer the spiked chain and some are even better then others in using it.  The book does not give racial bonuses for some races, but does give the optional rule of having dwarves receive a penalty since they are shorter and do not have the leverage to use the weapon.  The book also discusses the option of allowing the spiked chain to become a double weapon and loosing its ability to be a reach weapon when used that way.      The Spiked Chain is really a simple weapon to design.  It is a length of chain with spikes designed to hurt people.  So, why not have some variants of that idea?  The book agrees with me and that is the next area.  There is the balled chain, the bladed chain, and the Chain-axe. These three are easy to understand by their name.  However others like the Chigiriki, the Chigiriki-Spear, and the Kurari Gama are not.  These are oriental style weapons and while they are nicely described I think a picture of them would have been helpful to allow some people to grasp better what the weapons are.  There are a total of nine variant Spiked Chains described here allowing for a nice distinction between characters that want to use this weapon.  One side bar of particular interest is on the difficulties of stowing the weapons.  It adds a nice small penalty and realism to characters using these large and cumbersome items.      One section that I was not e3xpecting but was very happy to see was on the craftsmanship of a Spiked Chain.  It has three crafting options one to increase hit points, one to increase the hardness, and one to decrease the weight.  I think this was a great section but could have been expanded on and even offer ways to make crafting the item faster and cheaper but giving it flaws.      Onto the section of the book I imagine most people will be buying it for: Fighting and Feats.  This section has new feats and fighting options.  For instance there are rules for making it a short grappling hook and for swing by the spiked Chain.  The feats are of course combat oriented ones.  There are feats for sundering, tripping, climbing, and welding the weapon in one hand.  While the feats have obvious use for the Spiked the Chain they are defiantly not limited to just that weapon.      The class section starts out with something that is not often seen.  That is the suggestion of combing core classes and existing prestige class to form a character that fits a particular archetype as they define it.  Here they have a monk with a few levels of rogue and assassin.  It maps it out from level one to twenty giving the class abilities and combined saves and base attack.  There are two new prestige classes here: the Scorpion Warrior and the Raveller.   The Scorpion Warrior gets some very good abilities like the ability to knockdown any opponent on a successful hit.  And the final ability of the calls is basically a whirlwind attack of everyone with in reach of the character.  While these abilities are strong the class is not easy to get into.  It requires at least five feats with either another feat needed or ranks in knowledge religion, a skill few fighters want to take.  The Raveller is a magic using spike chain fighter person.  I will admit if I ever have a Spiked Chain welding opponent fireball my group, they will be shocked by that.  The best part of this class is a pure fluff idea that I really like.  They renamed spells in the PHB.  Animate rope is animate chain, Prison of Chains is Imprison.  It is a simple yet very effective way of getting more out of the player’s handbook.  There are also spells, magical properties and items, and a new God.      Okay, the book was better then I thought it would be.  It covered more ground and was very well put together.  There are great and balanced options in here and even though it is rules heavy I found a lot of ideas that can easily be transported to the gaming table.  Of course this means that the rest of the books have the bar raised for them, even if just a little.</blockquote>

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