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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Cooper" data-source="post: 2011017" data-attributes="member: 24255">Power Classes II:  GladiatorBy Ian SturrockMongoose Publishing product number 110216 half-sized pages, $2.95The second booklet in Mongoose's "Power Classes" line, this one takes a look at the gladiator as a 20-level character class.Cover art is again by Nathan Webb and Scott Clark, with a Roman-style male gladiator wearing only sandals, a loincloth, and a helmet, and wielding a trident and a short shield.  Nathan also provides the 3 pieces of black-and-white interior artwork, all demonstrating a need for more work on correct human proportions.  The combatants on page 3 are way off: the attacker's right forearm is way too thin and his face is squished into a tiny part of the front of his face, while the victim's arms are way too thin, his head is too small, and - to sidetrack off of the body proportion issue a little - seems to be wearing plate mail leg coverings held up by a garter belt!  The two half-naked women gladiators on page 16 are completely unappealing; if that's supposed to be "cheesecake" art, the cheesecake's long since gone moldy!  Fortunately, Nathan redeems himself with his illustration on page 10: while the gladiator there is physically repulsive, it certainly looks like he's supposed to look that way.Proofreading/editing slipped a bit on the very first page, with the statement "This is the first book in the Power Class series from Mongoose Publishing."  No it isn't, you sillies: it's the second book - it even says so on the back and the inside front cover: Power Classes II.  Apparently that bit was copied and pasted from Power Classes I: Assassin.As far as the game mechanics go, this isn't a bad gladiator character class, although the argument can be made that there isn't really all that much call for a gladiator character class in the standard D&D game.  (Still, this is all about options, and for those looking for such a class, here it is.)  The class is also perfectly suitable for Mongoose's Gladiator: Sands of Death d20 game; in fact, perhaps even more so.  (It should be noted, however, that this character class is not required to play Gladiator: Sands of Death, nor is Gladiator: Sands of Death required to use this character class; they complement each other well, but each is perfectly usable as a standalone.)Specifics:  There are multiple character concepts provided (gladiatorial slave, untrained slave, soldier, and criminal), a sort of mini-version of the Character Concepts that appear in the "Collector Series."  This goes a long way toward making each gladiator a bit different, and I like the fact that many of them start out with initial disadvantages that go away over time as the gladiator gets more experience in the arena.  There are also different combat styles: the equite (mounted warrior), hoplomachus (footsoldier with sword and tower shield), retiarius (net and trident guy with minimal armor), and secutor (short sword and shield, light armor).  Apparently there should also be an andabata style as well, judging from the equipment list, where andabatae armor costs 600 gp, but no rules for either the fighting style or the armor are given in the book.  (An asterisk in the armor chart says that special rules apply for the andabatae armor, whatever that is.)Gladiator PCs get to do the sorts of things you'd expect gladiators to do: gain special combat moves, play the crowd, gain exotic weapon proficiencies, etc.  I can't really complain about the way the 20-level class was built: all in all, it makes for a fine gladiator.  The new armor and weapons section in the back of the book (while missing the andabatae stuff) gives you plenty of new toys to play with in the arena, although anyone planning on actually running an arena-based campaign would be well advised to pick up Gladiator: Sands of Death, as it's got much more information than the 16 half-pages in this booklet can provide.  Still, at $2.95, this isn't a bad start.</blockquote>

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