[Heyoka Studios] En Ferreus Veritas released!

[Heyoka_James]

Well, its been over a year since we released our first product, The Book of Curses due to personal family matters that disrupted production. However, we're back with En Ferreus Veritas - a book specifically geared towards rapier combat.

What will you get inside it? Lots of cool stuff if you have a rogue who enjoys their rapier or those more interested in the swashbuckling aspects of the game.

Its 52 pages with b&w interior illustrations and an awesome fully painted cover by Jon Hodgson.

"Sharpness of wit, accuity of perception, depth of dedication, steadiness of will, power of arm - these are what the blade needs, not morality or ethics. The duelists are a loose brotherhood of artists, scholars, rakes, heroes and villians. Learn about loyalty, honor, greed, art and survival. But these are only reasons, the truth of steel tempers them all."

Inside are five nations that stress the use of the rapier - three based on historical cultures (Spain, France and Italy) but the other two completely based in the fantastical (Annwvyn and Moldovia). Each nation has its own prestige class associated with it.

New magical enhancements and psionic abilities are presented that can be used to enhance the rapier.

Rules are presented for customizing the "standard" rapier as presented in the Core Rulebook I and the benefits such modification grant.

New magic spells and psionic powers for fencers.

...and a fair bit more....


En Ferreus Veritas is available from RPGNow and can be purchased for $6.00 USD. A preview is also available if you want to check it out before you buy.

 

[Tenbones]

Sounds great to me, James. I'll pick up a copy and let you know what I think. Light fighters tend to get the shaft in D20, so anything remotely swashbuckling tends to catch my eye. (Swashbuckling Adventures is a good buy imho.) I'm looking forward to En Ferreus Veritas.

 

[Heyoka_James]

Sounds great to me, James. I'll pick up a copy and let you know what I think. Light fighters tend to get the shaft in D20, so anything remotely swashbuckling tends to catch my eye. (Swashbuckling Adventures is a good buy imho.) I'm looking forward to En Ferreus Veritas.

Thanks. Please let us know if you liked it, hated it or if you'd have rather had things done another way. My own campaigns focus heavily on light fighters who tend to be situational fighters - standing toe to toe with a heavily armored knight is not a good way to ensure a long life but gaining height advantage, dirty tricks, etc. are all good ways to take away an opponent's advantages.

d20 provides many ways of "underdogs" taking on larger foes - few people really take advantage of them though.

I don't own Swashbuckling Adventures so I can't comment on its contents. I hope that our material doesn't overlap too much.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I bought it. I like it. Especially the integration of background/flavor text with rules. There's an almost even split between the two, and everything blends together extremely well. Usually when a product tries to balance the two, nothing fits together and it ends up not really pulling off either one.

I especially like the way things tie into the different cultures, since it naturally makes sense that they would evolve different styles based need, national character, etc. Plus, there's enough range that I can use rules from the supplement for just about any fantasy setting. I never thought of putting swashbucklers in Ravenloft before this.

That said, the book wasn't quite what I expected, so I was feeling a little disappointed. I guess I was hoping for more of an actual fencing system to use, instead of a prestige class and feat collection. Now, from a D20 design standpoint this was undoubtedly the way to go, as it's balanced and easily usable with other material. I was just hoping for some variant rules, or something a little different, to set things apart from regular D&D combat.

The emphasis on maneuvers and tricks does do that a bit- as you said in the above post, against heavily-armored opponents that would definately be the way to go.

One last thing- the prestige class requirements seemed a bit tough to meet. Especially since many of them seem to require multiclassing. Characters will probably have to be 7th or 8th level to qualify for them, which means that anyone in the styles would already be a pretty good combatant. The book- and especially the genre- have references to young students getting in brawls over which style is superior, which doesn't seem to fit with mid-level characters.

Of course, it could be argued that by the time a character enters the prestige class, they're closer to a master of the style, but before that they're just fighter/rogues (or whatever). If I ever use this in tabletop (a good possibility, with the next Dragon issue I've been thinking of a Red Steel game), I'd probably come up with some sort of "style progression" leading up to the prestige class, along the lines of martial arts styles in OA and the like. Mostly just a mapped plan to the class requirements, but it would give more of a "training" type feel and less of a "now that I'm X level, I can become this class". That could just be my take on things, though. I'm usually in the minority.

Overall, an excellent job. I would definately keep an eye out for similar or expansion products in the future (hint).

 

[Heyoka_James]

I especially like the way things tie into the different cultures, since it naturally makes sense that they would evolve different styles based need, national character, etc. Plus, there's enough range that I can use rules from the supplement for just about any fantasy setting. I never thought of putting swashbucklers in Ravenloft before this.

Heh. I think that one was a favorite of a lot of people that we showed it to It also helps that we at Heyoka are big fans of Ravenloft.

That said, the book wasn't quite what I expected, so I was feeling a little disappointed. I guess I was hoping for more of an actual fencing system to use, instead of a prestige class and feat collection. Now, from a D20 design standpoint this was undoubtedly the way to go, as it's balanced and easily usable with other material. I was just hoping for some variant rules, or something a little different, to set things apart from regular D&D combat.

This was actually a discussion that we had during the design of the book. In the end, we decided that the way it was presented was the way to go as, like you said, it makes for easy integration into any D&D game. Plus the feats and maneuvers allow for characters to design their own school of fighting if they wish. Developing a fencing system would have been possible but would have locked out a lot of the possibilities for someone wanting a more fluid style of combat at least in my opinion.

One last thing- the prestige class requirements seemed a bit tough to meet. Especially since many of them seem to require multiclassing. Characters will probably have to be 7th or 8th level to qualify for them, which means that anyone in the styles would already be a pretty good combatant. The book- and especially the genre- have references to young students getting in brawls over which style is superior, which doesn't seem to fit with mid-level characters.

Students do not equal practitioners Street brawls are expected but rarely do students know more than the basics of the style. Once a character starts taking levels in the prestige class, they are truly progressing into the style itself - taking the lessons and making their own intuitions and personal takes on the techniques - something a mere student trained to follow rote is incapable of.

Overall, an excellent job. I would definately keep an eye out for similar or expansion products in the future (hint).

You mean like epic level content? (innocent look)

 

[LibrarianX]

1. I never thought of putting swashbucklers in Ravenloft before this.

2. I was just hoping for some variant rules, or something a little different, to set things apart from regular D&D combat.

3. One last thing- the prestige class requirements seemed a bit tough to meet.

4. If I ever use this in tabletop I'd probably come up with some sort of "style progression" leading up to the prestige class, along the lines of martial arts styles in OA and the like. Mostly just a mapped plan to the class requirements, but it would give more of a "training" type feel and less of a "now that I'm X level, I can become this class". That could just be my take on things, though. I'm usually in the minority.

5. Overall, an excellent job. I would definately keep an eye out for similar or expansion products in the future (hint).

[writer of book here]

I apologize for hacking some of the context from above but I thought I'd respond to a couple of the things. I'm normally a lurker but I thought I'd chime in my 0.02 dinars.

1. We had to have swashbucklers for Ravenloft. It was a moral imperative, hence the Moldovian Knights. I actually had a lot of fun coming up with these folks.

2. Different combat rules. *writer pounds head against table. repeatedly* I know. I know. This was something I agonized over a lot. I have about five drafts of that very thing sitting around here, at least one of which is actually pretty good. Why didn't I include it? Because I wanted the book to be fairly accessible, by both entire gaming groups or even by the one lone player who wants to be a swashbuckler. To do this it needed to be as transparent as possible but still give options. I don't think there was a perfect choice there so I picked what I thought was the better of two evils. I had to finally accept that I would never be %100 happy with either choice but I think it came out pretty well. There's an old adage along the lines of, there's no such thing as a perfect text, just a publishable one.

3. That was intentional. There really isn't anything in the prestige classes that makes them inherently superior to a good combo or straight class advancement, especially for Fighers and Rogues. But, the master of a style has options that surprise their opponents (unless they've studied the style themselves) and its a point of personal pride.

4. Actually, I think that's an excellent idea and very much in the spirit of something I was going to address in point #3. You're right in that I mentioned students of a style, characters who are below the ability to take levels in the prestige class. But, to me, a student is a student as soon as they begin to build towards that class, take the appropriate feats, skills, adopt an appropriate rapier, etc... Taking the first level of the prestige class is actually the end of merely being a student and becoming a journeyman.

5. There will be at least one expansion. I don't have a release date in mind for it yet but it will probably be second quarter of '04. It will contain epic level rapier stuff. Between now and then I'll be doing some brainstorming to see what else might fit in.

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

Different combat rules. *writer pounds head against table. repeatedly* I know.

Well, I certainly didn't mean to cause personal pain in the company. On that note, I'll just gloss over how little I use epic-level rules...

Anyhow, I can definately see how it would be better for you to publish more compatible, mainstream rules. Swashbuckling would be one of those highly subjective things like dynamic magic rules or survival horror- everyone's going to have different views on what they'd want and expect. The several different versions of swashbuckler classes bear witness to this- no one really seems to be happy with any of them.

This book was definately a good buy for me, and gives me enough to use for what I'll need in my own game. So there you have it.

Thanks for the responses!

 

[Heyoka_James]

Review

A bit late on this but we've been rushing, trying to get our next product through layout and editing. However, we've just had our first review at gamingreport.com - you can read it here:

En Ferreus Veritas Review

Thanks to everyone who has supported us with a purchase!

 

[Heyoka_James]

Review

A bit late on this but we've been rushing, trying to get our next product through layout and editing. However, we've just had our first review at gamingreport.com - you can read it here:

En Ferreus Veritas Review

Thanks to everyone who has supported us with a purchase!