Quintessential Fighter/Arms & Armor/Sword & Fist: What books are you using?

[Plane Sailing]

and one person even rated it with five stars. Hardly a universal opinion, then.

So would that be the person who said that he ordinarily would have given it 3 stars, but decided to give it 5 stars to invalidate other reviews?

For my money Sword and Fist was the worst of the class books. There are no feats in it which I consider using, and several which seem just awful to me. The only prestige class which I use is Duellist which I already had in Dragon magazine, none of the others are of any use to me at all. The weapons were almost entirely laughable and several of them broke the internal consistency for how critical threat ranges and multipliers were assessed.

I haven't seen the other two books in the survey; I remember a furore over Sword and Fist on the ENboards when it appeared - the last two class books have been a whimper in comparison.

 

[Dinkeldog]

I would say that Sword and Fist has provided more feats to our group than any of the others. Tome and Blood would come in second.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Quintessential:
Of, relating to, or having the nature of a quintessence; being the most typical.

Quin·tes·sence:
The pure, highly concentrated essence of a thing.
The purest or most typical instance.

If the "Quintessential" fighter is required to have a 20 Wisdom to master a fighting style, perhaps the "Quintessential" rogue will be required to have a 20 Constitution to master his chosen craft.


Wulf

 

[Roland Delacroix]

TBoarder: I agree, magic of Faerun was a better 'class' book than any single one put out, maybe TaB and SaS combined. The spells, magic areas, new materials, wow this book is by far my favorite from WotC so far. The PrC's need some work, but they have some interesting ideas and abilities. And the only think Faerun specific is the 2 harper classes. Great book. Sad thing is I lost it last week. Its so good though i think ill buy another.

Sword and Fist did it in teh splatbooks for me. I pulled 2 feats out of it unchanged. I basically spent $20 for a list of Feat and PrC names that I had to make up rules for myself because they just sucked. Duelist was ok, oh wait, I already spent $4 for that Dragon magazine. Lots of interesting CONCEPTS, but so what the rules were lame. I'll never buy another 3e splatbook from WotC.

Psion: I too was going to vote solely for Sword and Fist in this poll. That doesn't mean at all that it's my favorite book. As a matter of fact I hate that book. I considered burning it and pissing on the ashes, but a friend wanted it instead. He gave it back next week. As soon as the snow melts its going into my compost pile so it can die a slow painfull death. Anyway, i was going to vote for it because its the only book I bought. I was suckered into thinking a company like WotC had to put out a great fighter book. I was so enthralled with the beautifull PHB I bought 2, so I was feeling good about WotC. Guess I was wrong.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

If the "Quintessential" fighter is required to have a 20 Wisdom to master a fighting style, perhaps the "Quintessential" rogue will be required to have a 20 Constitution to master his chosen craft.

Wulf [/B]

I agree it was poor in that regard, but it wasn't an issue for me. The styles were cool enough that I simply removed the scaling Wisdom requirement and added an XP cost. Seems fine to me, and gives the PC fighters something to blow their XPs on like the caster's item creation feats.

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Psion: I too was going to vote solely for Sword and Fist in this poll. That doesn't mean at all that it's my favorite book. As a matter of fact I hate that book. I considered burning it and pissing on the ashes, but a friend wanted it instead. He gave it back next week. As soon as the snow melts its going into my compost pile so it can die a slow painfull death. Anyway, i was going to vote for it because its the only book I bought.

I paid $20 for my copy and I can't throw it away or I'll feel cheated all over again. I just try to make the best of it. There are certainly some usable bits in it.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I agree it was poor in that regard, but it wasn't an issue for me. The styles were cool enough that I simply removed the scaling Wisdom requirement and added an XP cost. Seems fine to me, and gives the PC fighters something to blow their XPs on like the caster's item creation feats.

I didn't want to give a whole laundry list of complaints (I did that already in another thread, and in pretty poor taste at that) but suffice to say that was only the most glaring annoyance.

So you're ok with the quintessential "longsword and whip" style? Why, I can hardly conceive of a fighter without that one...

I just found much of it silly and not at all relevant to any campaign I have ever played in-- even campaigns that are far from "quintessential." In all fairness I have the same complaint with most of the PrC offerings out there-- including most of them from WOTC.

As for changing around the Styles and creating xp costs for them, etc.-- you could have done this yourself and saved $20 in the first place. I buy a supplement with the assumption that (a) I won't have to do added work, especially not core design work; and (b) it's been playtested and balanced.

Kudos to you for taking the initiative and coming up with a way to get TQF material to work in your campaign-- that's the DM's perogative and a true labor of love.

I hope your method proves to be well balanced! If it works, I could send my $20 to YOU.

Wulf

 

[Kaptain_Kantrip]

Admittedly, my tweaks are untested at this point, and may require further tweaking down the road (have to look over that Sword & Whip style more carefully). I too, don't like to have to majorly tweak stuff that the game designers should have done in the first place. That is a cheat, but once you've plopped down your $20, you have no choice. Still, it's a lot easier to tweak someone else's work than come up with your own system of fighting styles or whatever and they did prove inspirational, at least.

I still like TQF more than S&F, warts and all.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

That is a cheat, but once you've plopped down your $20, you have no choice.

Of course you do. I took TQF back to the store and exchanged it for Of Sound Mind and some dice.

Even if you can't get a full refund, it's not like you're hurting for stuff to exchange it for! Lots of good d20 stuff out there-- including good Mongoose stuff.


Wulf

 

[Regdar]

Bah peasents!

Peasent Hero is a prestige class! Can Regdar be one? It's not a prestige class, it's called poor fighter.

You will never please everyone, and people will always look for the negative if they don't like it.

Nightfall, can you ever post anything about any product, concept, rule without somehow bringing Scarred Lands into it, Divine and Defeated and Relics and Rituals has NOTHING to do with fighters or splat books. Do you work for them, wishing to give free advertisement. Please Regdar wants to know.

As to the question, Regdar uses Sword and Fist in Regdar's game, it sees about the same use as the other books of the five. Feats are more common then prestige classes.