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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MDSnowman" data-source="post: 2011150" data-attributes="member: 6255">Ah, it seems like only yesterday that reviewed the Player's Guide to Fighters and Paladins. And here we are reviewing (hopefully) the last book in the series, The Player's Guide to Monks and Paladins, or as I like to call it No Multi-classing Madness.The Player's Guide to Monks and Paladins (yes paladins,not Barbarians as I may have suggest via Typo earlier >_> ) is 134 page perfect bound splat book for SSS's Scarred Lands setting. The cover depicts an armored paladin of Corean; my guess would be the famous Mithril Knight Barconius and a female monk, and guessing from her total lack of hair I'd guess she was an Exemplar of Onn. IntroductionAh yet another one of these introductions trying to tell us how to run a generic campaign in several different "genres" of fantasy. Of course since this book is entirely dedicated to the Scarred Lands setting the entire thing is out of place. This is why I dislike introductions, they seldom accomplish much.Book One: MonksChapter I: Tale of the Perfected OneThis chapter gives us a basic outline of the history of the monk, from the view of Exemplars who tell the story of the first of their number, the so-called perfected one. This turns into one of the best "history" chapters in any of the scarred lands players guides and reads like a novel. Whoever wrote this section needs to take a bow, I thoroughly enjoyed this. However the chapter rounds out with a page and a half quick and dirty "second theory" of how monks spread learning how to harness their own natural energy from dragons. In comparison to the grand fable of the perfected one it was bound to suffer.Chapter II: The Seekers of KiWithin this chapter we're exposed to several different flavors of monkdom. What they stand for, notable personages, and how they view Ki energy. Here's a list of a few of my favorites.The Annoth-Uri: Formerly dedicated to the snake Titan Mormo, after their death they dedicated themselves to Denev and are despised by current Mormo worshippers.The Blades of Belsameth: Because what goddess of death doesn't want her own army of religious zealots/assassins/chorines who can kill with their bare hands?Brotherhood of the Four Winds: Aside from the somewhat generic name this turns out to be one of the gems of the chapter. This martial art was created by a slave in the Charduni Empire and is disguised as folk dancing. When the slaves do revolt they may be surprised to see how effective their slaves fight without weapons.The Brothers of Steel: The monastic arm of Corean's church. This group support their paladin brothers and can use long swords as monk weapons (with the aid of a feat anyway).The Dawn Spear: The church of Madirel's monastic arm these monks learn to use the long spear to non-lethal effect, that's right they don't like killing people (always a nice wrinkle).This chapter finishes up with a discussion of multi-classing, which isn't as impossible as I originally made it out to be. Different groups can multi-class depending on the foundations of their teachings for example the scholarly monks of the Order of the Closed book may multi-class as wizards, clerics, and Loremaster. Finally we get descriptions of famous monks throughout the scarred lands, unlike previous player's guides they don't give you the one sentence blurb about their stats as all but one of them appear under each order's notable personages section.Chapter III: The Way of the Warring HandThis chapter discusses various martial arts styles used in the scarred lands. And at first this appeared to be a rehash of the stuff I had just read in the chapter before. But this serves as a history of each style, which uses it, and what kinds of feats one is expected to take to be considered a master or the style. This chapter has a lot of the pseudo-hidden crunch that I like in this series of books. You read the descriptive text and can see a list of feats each style uses. It helps put things in perspective from a rules standpoint.Book 2: PaladinsChapter IV: Scions of CoreanThis chapter gives us the grand creation myth for paladins. In short the need for great warriors arose during the divine war prompted Corean to ask each god for their best warriors, not to mention some of their more useful traits, to create warriors for the cause. The Evil gods were less than forth coming, which is supposedly why paladins are so good. What really sparked my imagination were the hints at a sort of proto-paladin that existed before the divine war. And a special treat was the inferences that one of these proto-paladins was in fact the god Goran when he was still a mortal. And of course what dissertation on paladins would be complete without an explanation of why they fall?Chapter V: The Holy OrdersThis chapter deals with the religious aspect of Paladins. First we get a listing of the virtues a paladin is supposed to have, and which orders favor which virtues. Then we're treated to the Orders of Corean's paladins (which don't get expanded too much by this, but they're put into perspective.) Then we get orders of paladins serving other gods, a lot of these are well known to people familiar with the Scarred Lands. However we also have orders dedicated to Scarred Lands gods so obscure even I needed to look them up. (What's more amazing is that I admitted that.) This was probably the slowest chapter of the book it rehashed a lot of information I already knew or was bewildered by (seriously....who is Imal Wheatsheaf and why is he horning in on Denev's territory?)Chapter VI: Knights ErrantIf the previous chapter dealt with paladins in a religious context this one dealt with them from a civic standpoint. Meaning while paladins have religious responsibilities many of them affiliate themselves with a state as well. Here we're shown paladins who serve the nation of Vesh, a Paladin's take on the Order of the Four Winds (which paladins who can multi-class as monks!!!), Insurgents in Calastia, and Paladins sensitive to the spirits of the dead within the city of Hollowfaust.Next they discuss orders of fallen paladins, new to us here are the Tarnished blades, ex-paladins who believe that to fight evil you need to be ready to fight fire with fire. And The order of the dark moon, wolf riding blackguards to Belsameth who seek to topple the duke of Lageni and restore her church to that country. I was somewhat disappointed not to see a prestige class based on the Tarnished blades though the idea behind them is classic for a fallen paladin.Appendix One: The Ways of DevotionOnce again we make it to the end of a player's guide where the majority of the crunch lives. This chapter is dedicated to feats, we get a great wealth of feats available to characters of various classes, but we also get martial arts feats, and paragon feats (for those of you who want your monks to go Chow Yung Fat on someone). Next are Virtue feats where a paladin's strong beliefs let them use their turn undead attempts in different ways. My only complaint with these feats is that they require you to role play a certain way, that part itself doesn't bother me, but the DM gets final say on when you've violated the virtue of your feat. I could see these sparking hour-long arguments over the gaming table.Appendix Two: The Masters of DevotionAnd behold on the 8th day he said LET THERE BE PRESTIGE CLASSES!!!!Acolyte of Justice (6): Paladins of Hedrada dedicated to bringing justice to those places where it doesn't exist. I would have scored it lower but I got a Judge Dread kind of vibe from it... and I liked that.Brother of Steel (5): Monks of Corean who master their long sword swinging martial arts style.Dawn Spear Adept (8) Monks of Madriel's faith who draw power from the sun and outstrip all other in combat, as long as the aim is to subdue your foe and not kill them.Exemplar (6): The famed monks, made tough by virtue of the fact they get all sorts of bonuses to their Ki-strike and 5 bonus paragon feats.Hearthguardian (7): Dwarven Paladins, both tied to the mountain fortress of Burok Torn, but also a tradition of nomadic wandering.Initiate of the Forge (7): Monks who take their bodies to its limits and in the process become constructs.Knight of Tears (6): Paladins of Hollowfaust perfectly equipped for laying troubled spirits to rest.Knight of the Silver Heart (5): Elven Paladins specially trained to use a flying mount.Mithril Knight (7): Back and updated to 3.5 trading in their uber-paladinhood for their Mithril Holy swords and a mastery at battlefield command.Nightblade (4): Belsameth's Monastic Assassins. The class seems to struggle with comparisons to the Assassin PrC, as well as various ones I've seen for Ninja.Swan Knight (6): Vow of chastity aside she looks awfully good in that armor. The class is dedicated to defending the weak, and you can't take the 10th level in the class until the current "high" Swan Knight is no longer in service.Waverider (7): Monks who learn to fight onboard ships, and are masters of fancy footwork.Average Score: 5.6 Nothing really broken, but nothing spectacular either.Appendix Three: The Tools of DevotionThis chapter is the standard grab bag of items, magical and mundane, and new spells. The new Iron Legion armor is simply insane (every player in the world will want some, especially if they haven't seen exotic armor from Arcana Unearthed yet). Aside from that nothing leapt out at me.Final Verdict:Once again the Player's guide puts lots of useful information at the fingertips of scarred lands fans. This time around both paladins and monks benefit greatly having the spotlight turned on them. Of course monks get a lot more out of the process than the paladins. Paladins become a bit more interesting, but at the same time I find them wanting. Another thing that irked me was white space. There was lots of white space in the prestige class chapter, nearly the entire first page, and most of the prestige classes had a full half page of white space at their end as well. That's a lot of wasted space when you're paying $23.95 for a book. However this book is going to be very useful to anyone trying to come up with ideas, or simply background for a scarred lands game and you'll be glad you bought it.</blockquote>

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