The Player's Guide to Fighters and Barbarians from Sword & Sorcery Studios is a 140 page supplement on just that topic. The Cover features Thain, King of Burok Torn (Representing the fighter aspect of the book) and a very perturbed looking Zarra, a Barbarian/Sorcerer (representing the Barbarian half of the equation). Both characters are described in the wise and the wicked (which also has a much more flattering picture of Zarra).
Introduction: This sections starts with the role of Fighters and Barbarians within various roleplaying setting, high fantasy, low fantasy, gothic horror, and Science Fantasy?!?!. The Four page chapter is rounded out by types of campaign designed around these two classes. In all this chapter was pretty weak and struck me as filler, I'm also not a fan of the "one class" campaign approach. The purpose of using other classes is to increase flexiblity... they also don't address the issue of the characters being too similar (something that I believe would inevitably happen in an All Barbarian game... at least fighters get a boatload of bonus feats to distinguish themselves).
Book One: Fighters; This starts with a short history (a page and a half) of warfare in the scarred lands. It quickly jumps head first into the Crunch... we are then given information aboutfighters from all over The Scarred lands. Each region/nation are given a short description, and favored armor, weapons and feats for those who dwell there. These feats are considered to be the "fighting style" of the region.
[Rant] Unlike some products fighting styles dont give a fighter an added bonus, it seems more like color for the fighters. Personally, I'm on board for that concept, if only because I dislike people trying to wring every bonus they can get out of the system. [/Rant]
In all these base fighters for each region won't be of much use to Players, they exist for the use of DMs. Your players heading into the Durrover Highlands disguised as agents of Lageni? You better know they'll run foul of the locals.... and with this you'll know how to equip those locals to give them a special flavor.
The next chapter covers the Ledean War Colleges, anyone whose read Scarred lands material knows full well that the War Colleges produce the best fighters on Ghelspad. Many people (myself included) have been looking forward to seeing a more detailed write up of the war colleges and examples of what kinds of warriors they are. We don't get the latter, but we do get a listing of "feats normally taught" so we can use those to round out the colleges. They are as follows.
The Major Colleges:
Clayborn- The most high brow of the colleges, heavily armed and armored they also seem the most... vanilla.
Glamerhill- They combine the arts of war with those of magic and often specialize in illusion to better misdirection their foes.
Hammerdale- Devotees of the Lawful neutral God Hedrada this bunch wade into battle carrying warhammers.
Plague- This school, while not aligned with evil Cult of Ancients per se, is definetly their kind of group. They specialize in subtely and espionage, many of them taking the Assassin Prestige Class.
Wake- This college is made memorable by virtue of the fact that they are the only college to specialize in Naval combat.
The Minor Colleges:
(interestingly enough many of these colleges have Prestige classes associated with them, perhaps because they recruit from the larger colleges)
Iron Wind Brotherhood- More suited to monks this group makes use of their favored weapon, the Iron War Fan.
Legion of Chains- You guessed it, spiked chain wielders.
Legion of Steel- No... not Dragonlance, these people specialize in using their longsword unarmored and attacking with grace.
Nine Stings College- This group master the use of twin short swords in combat attacking their foe with a hail of attacks.
Sisterhood of the Scythe- Yep, women who use Scythes... they're devote worshippers of the Titan Denev as well.
Warriors of White Fire- They take the usage of magic and warfare further than Glamerhill (I know sounds like they're going over old terrtortry to me too)
They go into othersystems of fighting that are less widely regarded, but no less dangerous. Following right behind it is an entire chapter about Mercenaries and a sampling of companies active throughout the continent.
Book Two: Barbarians; The first chapter of the barian section of the book?!? Nothing but fictional accounts by various tribes from throughout the land. Each one representing a region of the world.
The next chapter has a sampling of Barbarian tribes. They turn out to be a mixed bag, some I love, others I had to force myself to finish reading.My personal favorite are the Oaken Furies. The next chapter focuses on Barbarian spituality, it brings in the notion of Totems and the like. The totems save this chapter as I found it hard to trudge through.
The Appendix
Feats: DANG are there alot of feats, side by side with varient rules for decting styles, permanent wounds, prone movement, signature attacks, weapon speed, and Stapling. Most of these don't do much for me, though I like alot of the feats (especially the Totem feats).
Prestige Classes: (Cause you knew they needed to be there, instead of giving a description of each and everyone I'll rate it on a scale of 1-10)
Archer of the Steppes- 6
Chain Legionair- 4
Dancer of Steel- 8
Knight of the Coventacle- 9
Knight of the Oak- 8
Lodge Warrior- 8
Master of the Iron Wind- 5
Mercenary of the Hawk- 5
Nine Stings Master- 7
Rage Witch- 3 (sorry folks the Rage Mage rules my heart)
Totem Warrior- 6
Warrior of White Fire- 6
Whitefur- 9
Average Prestige Class? 6.5 (Not too bad a group)
Equipment: Most of these things are reprinted from old Scarred Lands products... on an especially galling note the Whipsword, while listed has no price, description, damage, range, NOTHING ...I needed to go and devel into Warrens of the Ratmen to find stats on this sucker... I needed my Soul calibur fix after all.
Next they add new weapon/armor enchantments and different weapon/armor materials to the mix. These are good, and I apperciate them alot more than the recycled weapons section.
Final Verdict: If you like the Scarred lands, and are trying to give depth to your game, then you'll eat this up with a spoon, unfortunatly if you're not playing in that setting a great deal of this product will not intrest you, and you'd probablly score this closer to a 2, simply because so much setting information is included.
Don't be fooled, just because the prestige classes come with a "use in other campaigns" section doesn't mean this isn't a scarred lands product, because that's exactly what it is.
