Love and War is another Penumbra sourcebook in the same vein as Dynasties and Demagogues and Crime and Punishment. This book focuses on four knightly virtues, valor, loyalty, piety and love, and includes new crunch like prestige classes and feats to go along with the ideas.
In terms of layout, the book uses a simple two-column format with wide spaced text bordered on the outer edge. This makes it easy to read. One of the problems I’ve had with Atlas hard cover books is the overall value ratio. I know that some people just blindly talk about utility and that they’d pay $100 dollars for a 10 page book if it had what they could use every day. I’m not one of those people. This is a 168 page black and white book that is $29.95. Not outrageous, several Goodman Games products fall into that range. However, when compared to the majority of products in the market, it does seem high.
Throw in a black and white reproduction of the cover for the first page, a page for the credits and OGL license, two pages for the table of contents, and another page for an index of the d20 material, and you can see why some people think the product slightly overpriced.
The book uses a lot of public domain art. I didn’t like it when Fast Forward did it and I don’t like it here. What’s really bad taste in my opinion is that these old illustrations are often a full page and a quick flip through the book shows ten such full-page illustrations. The other public domain art when not used to take up a full page is in good use. I could be remembering things wrong, but I don’t recall such a wide variety of public domain art in use in Unknown Armies or other, non-d20, Atlas product. Other art is by Scott Reeves whose work can also be found in the EN Route series. I don’t like his charcoal style illustrations, as they’re often very dark and don’t add to the overall utility of the book for me.
Alright, enough of the rant. What’s in the actual product itself? Broken into several chapters, the book starts with an introduction, moves on into the four knightly virtues, valor, loyalty, piety and love, and then moves into perceptions and variations.
The introduction does a good job of defining the knight as a concept as opposed to a class. To a certain extend, it works by working on the idea of what a knight is. This is an old argument that has been applied to many classes. Does anyone remember the assassin being dropped from 2nd edition because anyone can be an assassin? It’s a similar idea here where mages, clerics and even scruffy rangers can be knights as long as the serve the four virtues.
This section also presents orders of knighthood. There are different types defined here, the first is honor order and service orders. The former is one that people are invited to join after performing a great deed, as a tribute to their abilities. The second is a group that serves a particular idea, places, person, or thing.
One thing I was a little disappointed in is the idea of troupe-style roleplaying. This is where players take over different characters so that one person can go and do a quest and not leave the other players in a lurch. However, it doesn’t address any of the mechanical issues associated with such a style. The biggest of these would be experience points. In Dark Sun and Unearthed Arcana, suggestions are given on how to keep things balanced. What happens if Sir Robin the Brave is always going off with his troupe and leaving the other player’s behind? Their primary characters will languish while Sir Robin advances with his troupe.
The next four chapters each take one of the knightly virtues. Each section starts off with a quote and then goes into the subject of defining the virtue and then presenting a prestige class for it. For example, the Valorous Knight, the Loyal Knight, or the Pious Knight are introduced for valor, loyalty and piety. One thing that would’ve been nice is that in the requirement sections, that all new feats be marked with an asterisk to indicate that they are new and found in this book. Another thing missing is a description on the special abilities. They aren’t noted if their supernatural or extraordinary, just listed.
Feats for each virtue are also presented. Often these feats can be chained for greater abilities, much like how Power Attack, Cleave, and Great Cleave can all be combined from the Player’s Handbook. In the section on Valor for example, Counterstrike gives you a bonus to anyone whose already struck and damaged you while Coward’s Bane provides a damage bonus to anyone whose used a non-knightly attack, such as poison, sneak attack, or ranged attack, against you.
Items are also included. Some of these are weapon and armor special abilities, and potions. One of the nice touches is the inclusion of artifacts. Unfortunately, in terms of pricing, the author didn’t include a caster cost, just the price so we get no reduced gold cost or experience point cost.
Scattered through the material are various orders. Some of these are general and all-purpose while some of them present the racial idea of knighthood under the virtue it’s most likely found under. Humans are under valor, elves under love, dwarves under loyalty, and gnomes under piety. In some instances, new prestige classes are developed to show how specific orders might develop.
The Arcane Knight shows how arcane spellcasters can work in a knightly fashion. They might be a little too powerful overall as they gain increased spellcasting every level, have two good saves (Fort and Will), and special abilities. These range from spell healing, the ability to use a prepared spell to heal themselves one hit point per level of the spell, to concentration bonuses.
Not in evidence as much are spells for the virtues. One of my personal favorites is Warrior’s Insight, a 4th level arcane spell that provides the caster (personal spell) a +10 insight bonus to every melee attack they make while the spell is in effect even as they ignore miss chances that concealed and invisible targets enjoy.
For those worried that this book is all crunch, fear not, there is a good deal of crunch here and game mechanics that don’t deal only with feats and prestige classes. Some of these are in focus on a particular virtue. This includes adventure ideas for GMs for each of the virtues as well as how the other virtues play off of each other and how a knight ranks those virtues. Just because a knight chooses valor as his main virtue doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have secondary virtues. The one section I thought a little weak, just due to it’s sometimes obvious nature, was character concepts. These were little descriptions of various stereotypes with suggested feat and skills.
Take for example tournaments. While it doesn’t provide information on the costs involved, it does provide enough detail to know what types of weapons and armor to use, what the cost of failure is, and rules for jousting. For those wondering what knights would be like without feudalism, the author looks at several forms of government like oligarchies, tribes, democracies and anarchy.
The odd chapters, perceptions and variations, go into areas that help flush out the other virtues or add a more knightly feel to the game. In some ways, much of this material could’ve been thrown under the appropriate section but that would’ve left the chapters much thinner.
For example, under perceptions, it provides a quick listing of what each of the four virtues should be doing to insure that they are following their virtue. Knights of valor for example, should not allow weapons or armor to become dirty and not allow others to touch their primary weapon even as knights of piety should always display the holy symbol of their deity.
Rules for knights losing their honor by going against their rules are provides as well as rules for how to regain that honor. A new feat, honorable knight, and a new item, belt of honor, help round out the section on honor. The feat allows a honorable knight a +1 moral bonus to attack and damage rolls, but when the knight is dishonorable, it’s a –2 penalty. The belt grants a +2 morale bonus to armor class, but can only be worn by an honorable knight.
Reknown is presented. A base knowledge (local or nobility) check of 30 for starting knights is listed with modifiers for level and great deeds. One of the interesting ideas is creating a reputation for your knight that can get longer as your renown score goes up. Some words are free like “of”, “the”, and “Is”, but every other word comes with a cost. You can go from “Brave knight” to “Brave Knight of the Black Table” or something like that.
Other fields are covered like lineage and social obligations. Lineage can be a great role playing tool because if your character comes from a family of knights, he’s expected to excel and if he’s not, then he has to earn his place with the other knights. In social obligations, it breaks down various fields like generosity, hospitality, law enforcement, and defense.
One section players and GMs will get use from is details on Founding an Order of Chivalry. This breaks it down to the order and the prestige class that is associated with the order and actually includes an example of prestige class creation and the give and take between player and GM.
Chapter seven is my favorite chapter. After reading the rest of the book, it’s interesting to see what changing some of the ideas does to the whole structure. For example, using only three virtues is discussed as are variants on the virtues. For example, you can have valor with the theme of a daredevil. A section on evil knights with dark version of the virtues is included. This allows GMs to hone enemies for knightly players that are disturbingly similar to the knights themselves.
In the end, Love and War, like the previous books in the series, continues to add new and useful takes on d20 mechanics while coming in at a premium cost.
