Masters of Arms

[Messageboard Golem]

Over thirty prestige classes and 300 special maneuvers devoted to the use of weapons whose names you cant pronounce! Special maneuvers such as the Three-fold Strike and Stick a Fork in Him, Hes Done help distinguish the glaive from the ranseur.

Masters of Arms focuses on unusual weapons and those who master them. Combination maneuvers give you lots of different ways to devastate things while defensive maneuvers give you something to do while the monsters try to eat you. All the classes are designed with maximum flexibility and customizability in mind and most of their special abilities can double as new feats, so that those who dont wish to specialize in a prestige class can still expand their library of actions. For gamemasters the Alpha Beast provides a convenient way to upgrade a monster for close in fighting, whether using claws or teeth or tentacles. And the telekinesis master can make fighting demons a very different experience.

Here is a list of the masters of arms included in the book:

Alpha Beast
Axe Power Fighting Master
Bashing Master
Blinking Master
Bow Master
Cloak Fighting Master
Club Master
Crossbow Master
Dagger Master
Double-Pick Master
Dual Sai Master
Dual Swords Master
Flail Master
Glaive Master
Greatsword Master
Immovable Rod Master
Improvised Weapon Master
Kusarigama Master
Longspear Master
Net Master
Precision Sword Master
Quarterstaff Master
Ranseur Master
Rapier Master
Rod of Lordly Might Master
Scimitar Master
Scythe Master
Spiked Chain Master
Sword and Dagger Master
Sword and Shield Master
Telekinesis Master
Tensile Mercury Weapon Master
Three Piece Staff Master
Throwing Hammer Master
Trident Master
Two Axe Fighting Master

Names left generic and descriptive for clarity (and because I used up all my ideas naming the maneuvers).

 

[JoeGKushner]

Masters of Arms
Written by Steven Palmer Peterson
Published by Second World Simulations
www.Second-World-Simulations.com
96 b & w pages
$18.95

So what is Masters of Arms? How about a book that adds a new idea to the D20 mix by means of combinations and showcases how to use that idea in thirty prestige classes that often wield unusual weapons?

Steven Palmer provides the reader with a lengthy explanation of what a combination is. More or less, it’s the ability to sacrifice some part of an attack to gain a benefit on another attack. It’s not just a changing of attack bonuses to hit either, but can involve damage multipliers, penetrating armor values, and other bonuses. He provides formulas that actually break down the math in such detail that he recommends a spreadsheet to handle the calculations. It looks balanced but to be honest, I haven’t gone through the process as it is lengthy and hey, he’s done a lot of the work for me with the rest of the book; Prestige Classes.

Here’s the good news. There are something like thirty prestige classes with lots of different weapon focuses to choose from. Each one gains either a special ability or a feat from a selected list of feats at each level. These feats tend to be a little underpowered and don’t have to be selected in any order (for the most part) that allows the player to customize his character as he builds it. Here’s some more good news. The author knows that people enjoy games that often rely on a Would Point/Vitality Point system ala Forbidden Kingdoms and includes some conversion notes in grayed off sections and a Defense Bonus in the ability breakdown table.

The Prestige Classes have all the goods that you need except for abbreviation. You get a quick description, hit die, requirements, skills, features and descriptions of the feats and special abilities. Some of the class descriptions are amusing like the Scythe Master. “Death carries a scythe and if it’s good enough for him it’s good enough for you.” The feats all work towards pushing the envelope in power and rely a little on the combination maneuver. For example, Careful Attack, a feat for Rapier Master’s, sacrifices the first attack and provides a +8 bonus to hit with the second attack. This means that many of these abilities won’t be of use to lower level characters as the combination maneuvers rely on the character having multiple attacks which generally aren’t available until 6th level for characters with a fighter base attack bonus.

My favorites I admit tend to be the munchkin ones like the Dual Swords Master and the Two Axe Fighting Master, and that actually hails from my days of 2nd edition play with the first being a human fighter and the second a dwarven fighter. Ah, the glories of being able to recreate your old characters in a new system to make them ever more powerful and fitting into the ideas you originally had for them.

Of course GMs are going to get a lot more use out of this book simply be virtue of being able to create any type of character without going through the requirements. And this can be a good thing because some of these classes may be a little too esoteric for some. Take the Tensile Mercury Weapon Master. This PrC is based around a new type of weapon, the Tensile Mercury Weapon, which takes a feat to use and another feat to master. If the DM is very slow to use these types of weapons, the willingness of a player to take the feats to get into this PrC are slim to none. However, a DM can have an NPC with the item and feats easily and can showcase the strange abilities of this weapon, which can turn into any weapon the user wills. The focus on the Tensile is changing the weapon to take advantage of weakness within a foe’s defense or using combination maneuvers to prepare the foe to defend one way and change the weapon to another form to gain an advantage.

Here’s the bad news. Let’s take the Legendary PrCs from the various Path books. I’m doing this because it’s somewhat similar. The Legendary classes have a list of abilities they can select from to customize their character. The trick here though, is they provide more abilities than can be selected by the character. In Masters of Arms, if you go through the whole PrC, you’ll have every ability and this means that two 5th level fighters/10th level Precision Sword Masters, will have the exact same abilities with their precision Sword Master abilities. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does limit the unique factor that’s common at the lower levels. In addition, because some abilities require multiple feats, you’ll know if a character pulls stunt Y he’s got to have at least stun A, B and C behind him as well. Here’s more bad news.

Because some of the feats are open to different weapons, you’ll be more tempted to take them with the feats maked with an * because doing so allows you to use those other weapons with the feats. This once again tends to limit the variety. What do I mean? Let’s take a look at the Kusarigama Master. At first level, they get a feat. Any feat they take here will only be useable with the kusarigama. At second level they get a feat marked with an *. This means any feat they take will have the full range of weapons that are detailed under the “Allowed Weapons” section of the feat. In this case, let’s say he takes Chain Entangle. He’d be able to use it with flails, spiked chains, kusarigamas and whips. If he took that at first level, he’d only be able to use it with the kusarigama.

Part of the fun of the book is the writing. While its not going to appeal to everyone, the frequent references to old favorites like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the Dual Sai Wielders and Dual Sword Wielders, along with text like on the back cover “will not compensate you for mental anguish or possible psychiatric bills.” On the other hand, the writing doesn’t always work out as he uses words like pretty to help define something. One thing I’ve tried to eliminate from my vocabulary in almost 99% of speech is words like basically, pretty, kinda and seems. Can you make some pretty cool maneuvers or can you make some cool maneuvers? Personal writer’s preference there, so others may not mind it but find the descriptions with the off key references boorish.

I don’t like the cover. While it stands out due to the vivid yellow, I can’t tell if this guy is riding the creature or fighting it and I’m left wondering what’s that around his neck. It does remind me of an old John Carpenter of Mars bit and seems to stand out as some alien landscape like Talislanta or Tribe 8.

The layout is standard two columns with tables, art and notes on WP/VP boxed off to break up the monotony. Most of the art falls within the good range with some great pieces and some not so good illustrations cropping up. Some of the pictures stand on their own merely through what they represent though. For me, one of my favorites has got to be the Alpha Beast. Here, a mere cat sits atop a huge pile of dead wolves with blood dripping from one of its claws. Text to white space ratio is good and the text is easy to read.

Masters of Arms provides the reader with lots of options to customize his fighter while providing the d20 system with what appears to be a balanced combat maneuver generator. If the author can include a web enhancement with more specific feats for each class and a list of abbreviations, the book, for what it does, the book would be even better. If the art and layout could be knocked up just a notch or two, just a notch mind you, and augmented with the riddance of words like “pretty”, the book would jump up another category. If the author took a more 3rd person off hands writing as professional, it’d probably make some more people happy.

For me, I know I’ll be humming the old Heroes in a Half Shell when I whip out a revised draft of an old character as a mind-controlled NPC against my players and watch them strive to overcome the unleashed Turtle Power he brings with his Dual Swords.

 

[Psion]

Masters of Arms

Masters of Arms is a rules supplement written by Steven Palmer Peterson and published by Second World Simulations, publisher of the Bodies and Souls: 20 Templates PDF supplement. Masters of Arms is primarily a prestige class and feat book, with some magic items and other materials.

A First Look

Masters of Arms is a 96 page perfect-bound book priced at $18.95.

The cover of the book has a color illustration by Jim Pavelec depicting some green humanoid on a lizardlike beast in front of a female chained up amidst a dreary desert landscape. I found the colors a bit garish, and I am still not sure if the humanoid is riding the beast or fighting it.

The interior art features artists Craig R. Brasco, Jim Branch, Jeremy Dale, Dominic Hamer, and Fil Kearney. The illustrations are moderate to good, and the use of art is somewhat light in the book.

The interior text is dense, with conservative and straightforward body and header fonts. Sometimes it is easy to skip past the header of a class; a bolder or more stylish title font for the classes or improved layout might have made the book easier to use.

The author is a little tongue-in-cheek in places in the book. While this makes the book a bit more enjoyable of a read, I just know some humor-impaired reader out there is going to be madly searching for the hands with opposable thumbs(Ex) special quality.

A Deeper Look

When first looking through this book, I was immediately a little skeptical, as I saw an array of classes that had "feat" listed as a class ability at every level. This set me aback, as that is twice as many feats as the fighter has, which made the classes seem clearly overpowered.

A closer look revealed what was really going on. The feats are limited to a number of feats specific to each class, so you won't be taking whirlwind attack or the like with these feats. Essentially, the feats are all class abilities that you may select from as you advance in the class. However, the class abilities in essence double as feats; this allows you to use the feats if you can't or don't want to take the class (e.g., if you can't qualify for it or the DM does not use prestige classes.)

The author introduces a few new concepts to help add a little detail to combat and make the classes workable. These include:

- Combination attacks: Many of the feats are combination attacks. This means that in a given attack sequence, some attacks receive a certain bonus or penalty. Often, there are benefits to later attacks that rely on the earlier attacks working.
- Targeting Attacks: Part of a combination attack, targeting are attacks that you roll, but do not have their normal effect. Rather, if they succeed, they grant a specific benefit to later attacks.
- Sacrificing Attacks: This is similar to targeting attacks, but you never roll anything; the later attacks automatically receive a benefit when the character using a combination forgoes the earlier attacks in a sequence.
- Defensive actions: This requires the expertise feat. The character receives a number of "defense points" equal to the expertise penalty taken for the round to spend on maneuvers that are performed on an opponent's turn.

An example of a combination attack is fatiguing strike from the bashing master. This combination explicitly takes three attacks, which can be those gained from advancement, those gained from feats, and so forth. When doing this combination, the disadvantage is that each strike must hit for the next strike to have a chance to hit. However, if all three hit, the target must make a fortitude save or be fatigued.

Most of the prestige classes in the book utilize specific weapons, types of weapons, or combinations of weapons. These include:

Axe Power Fighting Master
Bashing Master
Bow Master
Cloak Fighting Master
Club Master
Crossbow Master
Dagger Master
Double-Pick Master
Dual Sai Master
Dual Swords Master
Flail Master
Glaive Master
Greatsword Master
Improvised Weapon Master
Kusarigama Master
Longspear Master
Net Master
Precision Sword Master
Quarterstaff Master
Ranseur Master
Rapier Master
Scimitar Master
Scythe Master
Spiked Chain Master
Sword and Dagger Master
Sword and Shield Master
Three Piece Staff Master
Throwing Hammer Master
Trident Master
Two Axe Fighting Master


Some other classes are a little more exotic. The Alpha Beast is a class intended for creatures with natural attacks, but is otherwise similar to the weapon classes. Some classes (Blinking Master and Telekinesis Master) hone a character's pre-existing spell or spell like ability for use in combat. The last three classes (Immovable Rod Master, Rod of Lordly Might Master, and Tensile Mercury Weapon Master) are innovative in that they hone a character's ability to use a specific magic weapon.

But wait, there's more!

In addition to all this prestige class-y and feat-y goodness, the book has stats for some new weapons, including the sai (unfortunately, the author goes with the cheesy sharpened version of the sai) and the tensile mercury weapon (a weapon made of a metal that can be shaped at will by the user.)

Further, if all of this wasn't enough, the author includes a system for designing and balancing your own combination attack feats. The system involves some math, so it's not for the faint of heart. But if "bow master" is too generic for you and you want to create a few tricks to distinguish the thornwood archers from the willowwood archers (TM - my campaign ), then you can custom design your own combination class abilities/feats in the same vein as many of the ones herein.

The author provides as an option the idea of granting 1.5 of his "maneuver" feats for each feat. While this might be okay for general or fighter feats, I find this idea a little dubious when it comes to the classes herein. First off, the reserved nature of many of the feats makes the classes balanced as is, but pumping the classes up would probably make them unbalanced. Second, most of the classes do not have a sufficient number of class ability feats to last until the end of its progression if you speed up the acquisition of these abilities. Fortunately, this is only an option and not a major assumption of the book.

Finally, it is worth noting that the author provides small sidebars with note for adapting the classes to a WP/VP based system such as that used in Spycraft and Star Wars, complete with a "defense bonus" advancement for each class. This being a primarily fantasy supplement, I can't imagine too many people using that, but it is there for those who might have gone to the trouble to port their fantasy games to use this system.

Conclusion

I really have to give Masters of Arms the thumbs up. I wince whenever I see a d20 system publisher create a special system to represent special training in fighting techniques when there are already mechanics for such things: prestige classes and feat chains. It is quite refreshing to see a publisher not only use the intended method, but to present it in a way that provides a GM with options to create new classes in the same vein. Even if you disdain prestige classes, most of the class abilities are usable as feats and as such allow you to add these styles to your game as feat chains.

The prestige classes lack the sort of "campaign details" that help bring prestige classes in books like Path of Swords and the Librum Equitis series to life. However, I find the basic concept portable enough that I don't think that will present an obstacle in integrating the classes into a game.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[GameWyrd]

Oh great. A book of prestige classes, 36 prestige classes in 96 pages for $18.95. That’s just over 50c a prestige class and would sound fairly cheap if the d20 world didn’t already ooze with thousands of prestige classes. But wait, there’s more going on in Masters of Arms than just yet another collection of prestige classes. This is a Second World Simulations product and the lead author Steven Palmer Peterson wields one of my favourite writing styles in the entire industry. Peterson’s style is great at getting across flavour and detail clearly and succinctly. There’s a lot of complex game mechanics in this book. The only thing that drives me mad in the use of first person. "I" is an opinion, a chat or a friendly review – so my dull academics taught. The dull academics have won and I just can’t stand it any other way.

In terms of money there’s still more at hand than just 36 prestige classes. Masters of Arms is a book with a clear theme: weapons and interesting uses for these weapons. The prestige classes are just the natural evolution of that. The book makes heavy use of technical combat manoeuvres; multi-staged attack moves which gobble up your entire turn in an all-or-nothing attack or do-or-die defence. These manoeuvres come with additional basic definitions for game quirks like brute strength or what it means to target opponents on either side of you in a system without facing. SWS also recognise that readers who want the sort of combat mechanics that this book brings may also want to deal in terms of Wound Points and Vitality Points and so there are notes throughout explaining how to do this.

As the d20 system matures I’m surprised to find that so many supplements style themselves for the lowest level of experience and game intelligence of possible reader – ie, for the newbies. Some supplements could clearly be entry points to the hobby or the d20 system and so have to pitch to this level but a book such as Masters of Arms which sets out to expand on the basic rules is unlikely to be bought by a beginner. Masters of Arms is not a book written for the beginner. There’s insightful and helpful game mechanics discussion early on in the book. Early on we’re talked through an investigation to see whether the extra damage done by a sample combat move (the threefold strike) is so greater than a normal combat round as to be effectively broken. In just a few paragraphs we look at the actual math and make the comparison. This time round Peterson trumps the boring academics and managed not to put me to sleep by talking about numbers. Later on there’s an awful seven-paged set of game rules for the phased construction of combat manoeuvres. It is awful, we’re warned up front that it’s not so the feint hearted. There is even a downloadable spreedsheet command from SWS to help you with the maths. Right at the end of the book you’ll find a summary sheet for manoeuvres templates.

You’ll quickly notice that each and every one of the prestige classes are detailed through the full 10 levels and that’s a great bonus. You’ll also notice that there is a special ability at every level to. Oddly, though, at a first glance, every one of these special abilities seems to be a new feat. This would make the prestige classes overpowered. All is not how it seems though; the feats available are limited to the manoeuvres that the class can access. This works for me. This is expanding the system without breaking the system. The names of the prestige classes follow a clear pattern too; everything’s "[weapon type] master". Where as it’s not original it does avoid a pet peeve of mine that sees the synonym come in to play and it’s impossible to refer to the prestige class in game. With the suffix "master" appended to everything then it’s clear from any character discussion that they’re talking about someone capable. For example, "Renton is a swordsman" would leave you with little clue that ‘swordsman’ was a special title and yet you’ll find prestige class books that use that sort of name for their classes. A better name, perhaps, would allow for discussions like, "Renton is a rapier master".

Some of the weapons and prestige classes make use of exotic weapons. These weapons are typically straight from martial arts. The stats for any new weapons are presented in the book. Weapon starts and armour are actually further developed by Masters of Arms. Weapons have a penetration value and armour a hardness score. These do what you’d expect them to do; some weapons are better at getting through armour than others and some styles of armour are better at resisting damage (which isn’t quite the same thing as helping the wearer resist damage).

It’s worth noting that not all the exotic combat styles and weapons are inspired from real world arsenals. There are manoeuvres and prestige classes based on purely fantasy weapons – such as the immovable rod or even telekinesis. These fantasy forms are in the minority but are certainly my favourite offerings. Their inclusion helps keep the RPG element firmly in mind in a book that might sound rather more technical without them.

Masters of Arms is not an original book but once you get over that it’s hard to find fault. The artwork is good but rare, the formatting is clear and the text size isn’t too large and neither does it leave you squinting at the page. The credits page has the nice touch of listing people’s websites along with their names. I believe this is Second World Simulations’s first print product; the company being picked up quickly after high quality PDF supplements like Bodies and Souls: 20 Templates and the future really does look promising.

* This GameWyrd review was first posted here.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Masters Of Arms is a sourcebook for combat manoeuvres, demonstrated using prestige classes focused on different weapons.

Masters Of Arms costs $18.95 for a 96-page softcover mono book. Space is used fairly well, with a reasonable font, margins and little white space. Art is on the whole average, but often helpfully illustrates one of the combat manoeuvres. Unlike the front cover, which is somewhat confusing, though it has interesting use of colour. Steven Palmer Peterson's writing style is fairly unique - quite informal, using the first and second person (I and You) to explain things throughout the book. I'm not particularly keen on this style myself, but 'horses for courses'. What does shine through is a good sense of humour and this saves the show for me somewhat. Editing is fairly good.

Masters Of Arms begins with a few definitions of terms and concepts used within the book. One of the most important concepts is that of a Combination Attack, as this is the crux of much of the rest of the book. A Combination Attack must be run as part of a full attack sequence, and is typically two or three actions linked to create an impressive or unusual attack. These may involve such actions as sacrificing an attack, skill use, a targeting attack (also known as aiming), a defensive action (requiring the Expertise feat), and changing grip on the weapon, as well as the actual final attack where appropriate.

Five new weapons are discussed - the Sai (like a tined short sword), three piece staff, edged shields, kusarigama (a mix of the kama and spiked chain), and immovable rods as weapons. There is also a new material discussed - tensile mercury, which (Terminator-like) can change its shape under the psychic guidance of its wielder.

There follows a somewhat lengthy and complex discussion of creating your own combination attacks, with the promise of a spreadsheet to do most of the math on the Second World Simulation website. Essentially, you look at:
1. The bonuses to hit you want each phase of the combination attack to give
2. Any increase or decrease in damage (or special damage effects such as blinding or entanglement)
3. The interaction of the different phases - e.g. is the second phase dependent on having made a successful skill check in the first phase?
The rest is probability calculus. Basically a means is presented to ensure that any combination attack you design is relatively balanced in comparison with others. The author does note that the results still need the human brain to take an intuitive look at it to check for balance, but the math can provide some interesting options you might not have thought of before. My guess is that this stuff is probably too complex for most people, but if math is your thing and you want to create balanced combination attack manoeuvres, this seems a very thorough take on it. Since my math is pretty average, I can't tell you how good the system is in reality. There is also a combo manoeuvre construction template sheet at the end of the book.

There is also a note about using the combination attacks as feats, though since they're somewhat more focused than normal feats, the author posits an option for gaining extra combination attacks in trade for feat slots on a 3:2 basis. All the combination attacks are presented as feats, for use as such if desired.

The remainder of the book is essentially prestige classes that specialise in a particular weapon. Each prestige class has a number of combination attacks or manoeuvres that act as class features or feats. Each prestige class is 10 levels, and has information on using it with a Wound/Vitality Point system.
* Alpha Beast - designed for monsters and animals using natural attacks. Includes combination attacks such as grab and twist, bite and thrash, and pounce and slam.
* Axe Power Fighter - includes combination attacks such as beheading, mighty blow, and stand fast.
* Bashing Master - includes combination attacks such as concussive strike, knee-capping, and knockout blow.
* Blinking Master - uses a ring of blinking or suchlike. Includes combination attacks such as by-pass threatened areas, grab heart, and step through attack.
* Bow Master - includes combination attacks such as aiming, multi-targeting, and shoot through (one target into another).
* Cloak Fighting Master - includes combination attacks such as cloak disarm, concealed strike, and cloak as shield.
* Club Master - includes combination attacks such as vital strikes, nerve blows, and spinning throw.
* Crossbow Master - includes combination attacks such as disarming shot, lung puncturing, and one shot, one kill.
* Dagger Master - includes combination attacks such as hand switching, hidden blades, and throat slitting.
* Double Pick Master - includes combination attacks such as double strike and flip, embed pick, and spike shield.
* Dual Sai Master - includes combination attacks such as double parry, dual thrust, and hamstringing.
* Dual Swords Master - includes combination manoeuvres such as crossed blade hold, dual striking, and high-low switch (an attack with both blades at once, one high, the other low)
* Flail Master - includes combination attacks such as bypass shield, chain entangle and kick, and whirling shield.
* Glaive Master - includes combination manoeuvres such as double weapon grip, spin swing, and threefold strike.
* Greatsword Master - includes combination attacks such as armor piercing hit, greatsword spin strike, and underbelly strike.
* Immovable Rod Master - includes combination attacks such as plant rod in throat, rod acrobatic kick, and power crush.
* Improvised Weapon Master - focuses on the ability to use anything handy as a weapon or shield and includes features such as improvised shield, toss anything, and use person as weapon (throwing people at your enemies).
* Kusarigama Master - includes combination attacks such as chain entangle, grab and spike, and wrap-around cut.
* Longspear Master - includes combination manoeuvres such as hold at bay, skewer and flip, and skewer and pin.
* Net Master - includes combination manoeuvres such as quick fold, ranged disarm, and spinning the net.
* Precision Sword Master - focuses on targeted attacks, includes combination attacks such as blinding slash, finding the vitals, and sword thrust. Also contains a ruleset for duelling.
* Quarterstaff Master - includes combination attacks such as double trip and double strike, leg sweep, and spin staff.
* Ranseur Master - includes combination attacks such as damaging disarm, stick a fork in him he's done, and strike and thrust.
* Rapier Master - includes combination attacks such as carve initials, cut clothing ties, and twirling blade.
* Rod Of Lordly Might Master - uses the magical qualities of a rod of lordly might to effect such combination manoeuvres as lordly might (extend rod down someones throat and twist the rungs), launch self (ride the expanding rod), and launch strike (launch self as an attack).
* Scimitar Master - includes combination attacks such as arrow cutting, blade whirling and hand switching, and whirling slash.
* Scythe Master - includes combination attacks such as hook and grab, hook and pass, and hook and toss.
* Spiked Chain Master - includes combination manoeuvres such as bypass parry, chain entangle, and chain toss.
* Sword And Dagger Master - includes combination attacks such as block and throw, desperate defense, and pin and multi-stab.
* Sword And Shield Master - includes combination attacks such as duck and leg slash, rush smash and slash, and shield slash (after sharpening the edge of your shield).
* Telekinesis Master - focuses on the ability to use some form of telekinesis to attack with melee weapons at range and such-like.
* Tensile Mercury Weapon Master - uses weapons made of tensile mercury (see above) to effect some neat tricks.
* Three-Piece Staff Master - includes combination attacks such as numbing strikes, strike and disarm, and three-piece staff choke hold.
* Throwing Hammer Master - includes combination attacks such as rebounding hit, concussion throw, and knockdown throw.
* Trident Master - includes combination attacks such as bull rush leverage, tail grab, and underwater fighting.
* Two Axe Fighting Master - includes combination attacks such as doble-hit then toss, scissors, and split strike (attack 2 different targets at once).

Conclusion:
Masters Of Arms is replete with ideas and examples of its subject matter. You can choose to use the combat manoeuvres presented as either class features for the 36 weapon-focused prestige classes as presented, or as feats to introduce as required to players who want a neat trick to capture the flavour of their character's fighting style. Some of the combat manoeuvres and prestige class are more interesting than others.

For those who like their math and rule design, this book allows you to also create your own combination attacks and manoeuvres, but as the book itself points out, the process is not for the faint-hearted.

I'm not immensely enamoured with the author's writing style though I really liked the his wry sense of humour. The book is at its most useful for those players/GMs/groups who make combat tactics a focus of their play, and to those people I would highly recommend the book. For those whose style is more story- and character-focused, there is less of interest here, but the odd combat manoeuvre here and there will still be of interest to most players to take as a feat to round out their character.

The combat manoeuvres definitely have a high 'cool' factor, and from the thorough presentation of a system for balancing these combined manoeuvres, it seems likely that they will not unbalance play, whilst greatly enhancing the excitement of combat.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By Bruce Boughner, Staff Reviewer and Co-host of Mortality.net Radio

This review is for Masters of Arms by Second World Simulations, which is 96 pages in length and carries a retail price of $18.95. Usually, when I look at a book of fighter skills and classes, I judge by my own, some-what large wealth of immediate and intimate knowledge of sword swinging, having been a heavy-armored fighter in the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) for almost 18 years and a rapier fighter for about 3 years. I keep looking for the rising ‘J’ shot, a retique, a molinet, a windmill or the flashy showboat Kali cut to be made into gaming terms. In this regard, this book let me down >sigh<. But mi compadre Steve Peterson (SWS-Steve of the Mortality.net boards) did NOT disappoint in the regard of he took a good number of weapons and combinations and gave them feats enough to make prestige classes out of the masters of these fighting styles.

This is not even limited to standard weapons, Steve has brought together 3 dozen styles, many traditional combinations like sword and shield master, bow master or rapier master but also some exotic style like Rod of Lordly Might Master, Alpha Beast and Tensile Mercury Master.

New weapons are introduced, like the Sai, Three-pieced Staff and the Kusarigama. While some of these are very familiar from previous works and other sources (like Daredevil and Iron Fist Marvel Comics), they are potent weapons to be sure. The Tensile Mercury weapon is listed as psycho-active metal but it isn’t specified as purely a psionic material. This is followed by a maneuver combination generator. It is self-described as not for the faint of heart. It requires many calculations, but the results seem solid enough (maybe I’ll get that ‘J’ shot yet!!).

Each of the weapon master classes are presented in standard form and are prefaced with the requirement of actually mastering the weapon that they are named. Obviously some classes generated more feats than others, but they average out around 9-10 feats per class.

Each class comes with its own set of goodies. The Bow Master, for instance, has a feat called ‘Threading the Needle’, mimicking Robin Hood’s splitting the arrow stunt. Sherwood fans can also gain a Quarterstaff Mastery for that forest campaign. Conan fans, fret naught, the MoA has several classes to satisfy the barbarian hoard. The Two-Axe Master is right in the vein of Kull the Conqueror giving a cross-bind and dual strike feats. Ivanhoe and Arthur aficionados can revel in the Great Sword and Sword and Shield masteries giving them decent sword strike maneuvers. The great foes of the Crusader, the Saracen infidels can field a great Scimitar Master for their defense.

Others get more esoteric, the Blinking Master requires that you possess some form of blinking magic readily at your disposal, a spell or a Ring of Blinking, and then it develops feats based on the Blinking fighter. The Immovable Rod Master has some rather unique feats like slow fall that prevents full falling damage. The Rod of Lordly Might and Tensile Mercury Masters have similar requirement and feats, the difference laying mostly in the origin of the weapon. The Telekinesis Master allows for the usage of weapons by a telekinetic and has some impressive feats like Slam-Stab and Simultaneous Attack.

The Oriental Master include the Dual Sai Master, the Kusarigama Master (a Kama {ax} with a weighted chain attached) and the Three Sectioned Staff Master are given, the Great sword, Bow Dual Sword, Sword and Dagger and others can be adapted from European weapons to Oriental equivalents with a little work.

Besides the Rapier Master, the class I found the most intriguing was the Improvised Weapons Master, much like Jackie Chan in ‘Drunken Master’, this guy can turn anything or anyone into a weapon and has the feats to turn a melee into a scene from ‘Shanghai Noon’.

This work provides a good amount of not only character use, but NPC material for your campaign. Here is the material to make the mentor or tutor of your characters. Imagine a quest for the Mako-like character from Highlander 3 to remake a masterwork sword and having to learn a new style to defend him while he repairs the blade. A very well done accessory indeed, redundant, maybe, but I found enough material in it to make it worth MY while.


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