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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!
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Sword & Fist
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<blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2008185" data-attributes="member: 18387"><p>Sword and Fist should have come out about six months after when it did. This might have given time for some playtesting, editing, and rewriting.</p><p></p><p>Feats - Fairly basic editing mistakes are present. Feat descriptions are ambiguous. In many cases they have abusive potential (Expert Tactician with the baguette-armed Blind Kobold springs to mind) that weren't picked up. However, there are also a good number of interesting but non-abusive Feats here that I could see myself using.</p><p></p><p>Prestige Classes - I can't give a fair review of the individual Prestige Classes, because I think the entire concept is poor. Especially for fighter-types: if you want a certain 'focus' or 'school' of fighting, you should IMHO be able to achieve that through Feat chains, and I think that most if not all of the Prestige Classes in here could usefully have been replaced with (hopefully well-thought-out, balanced, and abuse-tested) Feats. There is nothing here I would use in my campaign as it stands. But hey, some people like vast proliferations of prestige classes. To each their own.</p><p></p><p>Weapons - Some are useless. Some are unbalanced (Mercurial Greatsword.) Some are silly (Orcish Shotput.) Some are both. Overall you'd be better off coming up with your own weapon statistics for any new weapon you wanted to introduce into your campaign world. The problem I have is that looking at the PHB, there are implicit guidelines on the level of power a weapon should have, relative to its size, abilities, and whether it is simple, martial or exotic. With the possible exception of the Spiked Chain, there is no PHB weapon which is 'out of line' with the others. Sword and Fist takes those principles and tosses them aside. The historical weapon equivalents table could have been the saving grace of this chapter, but was laughably small and non-comprehensive.</p><p></p><p>War wagons, Chariots, and Arenas - These are very campaign-specific things, and so guidelines for creation rather than exact statistics might have been nice. I have no major quarrel with the quality of this section, I just think it is unlikely to be used by more than 1% or so of those who buy the book.</p><p></p><p>Magical Items - Actually not badly done (relative to the rest of this book.) Perhaps because magic item guidelines already exist in the DMG, the S&F writers couldn't unbalance them too badly. Overall, I like this section (although it has only a small selection) and can see myself using some of these items.</p><p></p><p>This book had some good ideas, but it was outweighed by the poorly-thought-through and the very-campaign-specific. It was not at all up to the standards I would expect from a product that cost as much as the core rulebooks, despite being soft-cover. Overall, if you want new feats, classes and weapons, you are better off going to the D&D message boards - at least if someone there publishes something open to abuse or overpowered or stupid, it gets caught. The S&F writers could have done with some feedback like that BEFORE publishing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Messageboard Golem, post: 2008185, member: 18387"] Sword and Fist should have come out about six months after when it did. This might have given time for some playtesting, editing, and rewriting. Feats - Fairly basic editing mistakes are present. Feat descriptions are ambiguous. In many cases they have abusive potential (Expert Tactician with the baguette-armed Blind Kobold springs to mind) that weren't picked up. However, there are also a good number of interesting but non-abusive Feats here that I could see myself using. Prestige Classes - I can't give a fair review of the individual Prestige Classes, because I think the entire concept is poor. Especially for fighter-types: if you want a certain 'focus' or 'school' of fighting, you should IMHO be able to achieve that through Feat chains, and I think that most if not all of the Prestige Classes in here could usefully have been replaced with (hopefully well-thought-out, balanced, and abuse-tested) Feats. There is nothing here I would use in my campaign as it stands. But hey, some people like vast proliferations of prestige classes. To each their own. Weapons - Some are useless. Some are unbalanced (Mercurial Greatsword.) Some are silly (Orcish Shotput.) Some are both. Overall you'd be better off coming up with your own weapon statistics for any new weapon you wanted to introduce into your campaign world. The problem I have is that looking at the PHB, there are implicit guidelines on the level of power a weapon should have, relative to its size, abilities, and whether it is simple, martial or exotic. With the possible exception of the Spiked Chain, there is no PHB weapon which is 'out of line' with the others. Sword and Fist takes those principles and tosses them aside. The historical weapon equivalents table could have been the saving grace of this chapter, but was laughably small and non-comprehensive. War wagons, Chariots, and Arenas - These are very campaign-specific things, and so guidelines for creation rather than exact statistics might have been nice. I have no major quarrel with the quality of this section, I just think it is unlikely to be used by more than 1% or so of those who buy the book. Magical Items - Actually not badly done (relative to the rest of this book.) Perhaps because magic item guidelines already exist in the DMG, the S&F writers couldn't unbalance them too badly. Overall, I like this section (although it has only a small selection) and can see myself using some of these items. This book had some good ideas, but it was outweighed by the poorly-thought-through and the very-campaign-specific. It was not at all up to the standards I would expect from a product that cost as much as the core rulebooks, despite being soft-cover. Overall, if you want new feats, classes and weapons, you are better off going to the D&D message boards - at least if someone there publishes something open to abuse or overpowered or stupid, it gets caught. The S&F writers could have done with some feedback like that BEFORE publishing. [/QUOTE]
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