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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2008820" data-attributes="member: 2205">It's hard to review Sword and Fist without referencing the greater family to which it belongs: the 3rd Edition brand of "classbooks."  It's unfortunate, in a way, that Sword and Fist was fated to come out first, because Wizards of the Coast learned a lot from the mistakes made in this book and improved upon later versions.Sword and Fist is a 96-page soft-cover book with decent full-color cover art, and black and white interior art by Wayne Reynolds (incorrectly credited.)  Wayne Reynolds is definately of the comic book school of artists, and his work reminds me a lot of Marc Silvestri's work on the late 80's Uncanny X-Men which is a good thing, in my opinion.However, that's probably the best thing I can say about the book.  And printing the incorrect art credits is only the first of several major errors that crept past the editors as the book was (apparently) slammed through quality control and into the market as quickly as possible.Don't get me wrong: it's not so much that Sword and Fist is a bad book, nor that the rest of the series is, it's just that they don't try to be very much either.  Primarily, the books serve as additional rules, who's power level is sometimes dubious relative to the carefully balanced core rules, without really giving a whole lot in the way of new options, fresh ideas and the like.Chapter 1, for instance adds a number of new feats of the fighter or monkish variety (did I forget to mention?  The two classes covered here are fighter and monk!) as well as some new applications of already extant skills.  Chapter 2 is probably the best of the bunch, with a load of new prestige classes that, while certainly it doesn't take a fighter or monk to qualify for them, certainly follow through the same ideas that a fighter or monk would develop towards.  Despite a rather heavy World of Greyhawk slant on the prestige classes, this is probably the most useful section of the book, even so.  Rename a few of these if you use other organizations besides "The Great Kingdom" or other gods besides Hextor, for example.Chapter 3 is probably the most disappointing of all the chapters.  It purports to give loads of role-playing advice for using a fighter or a monk, and fitting him seamlessly into the campaign world.  Unfortunately, even the best ideas here are painfully obvious, tired and cliched.  None but the most rank, wet-behind-the-ears beginners to roleplaying will find any value in this chapter, and even then, the ideas are so common sense and obvious that little will help even them.Chapter 4, the so-called "game within the game" is probably more useful to beginners, containing hints on how to use the figher class mechanic to come up with slight variations on archetypes, and also hints on how to make monster's with fighter or monk class.  Again, not rocket science, but arguably appropriate, and arguably worth pointing out for those who don't find it fairly obvious.  The final chapter gives a bunch of new equipment (mostly weapons -- magical and otherwise, no doubt) for fighters and monks and includes the infamous mercurial greatsword amongst others.  Some of the balance of these is questionable.  It also contains some very simplistic maps of things like basic border keeps, temple compounds and the like.None of the book, with the exception of chapter 3 is outright useless, but much of it isn't exactly clever, new or fresh either.  Because I'm rating it partly against it's siblings, I have to give Sword and Fist a slightly lower score than them: an average product, of average utility and presentation.</blockquote>

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