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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009872" data-attributes="member: 172">Swords of EvilSwords of Evil is an artifact sourcebook by Fast Forward Entertainment. Unlike their items of power series, swords of evil is less a collection of short stories. Instead, each item is presented with the statistics of its current bearer and their current domicile/dungeon.A Frist LookSwords of Evil is a 96 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $19.99.The cover of Swords of Evil has the same grainy red motif that other FFE books use. The front cover depicts a white robed figure with black flesh and glaring red eyes wielding an evil-looking sword.The interior is black-and-white, with artwork by William W. Conners. As with the items of power series, many of interior illustrations appear to be retouched photos of novelty items. There are other illustrations, and the quality of artwork is passable.The interior cartography is also similar to that of other FFE products (such as Dungeon World and Treasure Quests.) The maps appear as computer grapics-generated pictures with beveled 3d shaped dropped on a gridded map. A Deeper LookThere are 22 swords depicted in the book. Each section has four major categories of material related to the sword. First, the statistics for the sword are given, followed by the history of the sword, statistics for the current wielder of the sword, and a lair (read: dungeon) where the wielder and sword resides.All of the swords here are classified as minor or major artifacts. The book calls all swords that have prices and other construction requirements minor artifacts and all other swords major artifacts. Technically, the former should not be artifacts at all according to the d20 system rules, and most of the latter are about the power level normally accorded minor artifacts.The swords themselves seem interesting enough, and there are no outlandish rules calls or outright errors. There are some breaks with 3e conventions, such as using different bonuses for different types of targets as in first and second edition, vice using the bane quality of 3e, but this does not make the swords unusable. The history and background of the swords are also interesting, painting pictures of a variety of items that any reasonable person would want to destroy. Further, less space is consumed with these histories than in FFE's Items of Power books.The NPCs are villains of various power. The villains are generally interesting and well constructed, but there are some problems here as well, some glaringly so. For example, Antonitus, the wielder of Lifedrinker, is a lich fighter/sorcerer, but has CRs, HD, attack bonus, and other statistics that do not match this class and level.Each of the adventures included is a short dungeon crawl, most with less than 10 keyed locations. Nothing stands out as wrong with any of these, and they have a variety of themes, but the whole concept of 22 dungeons based around a sword seems a bit redundant. However, in some cases, this low level meshes will with the background of the weapon, such as Dwarfeater, which has dominated a relatively low-level rogue as a pawn in its murderous sprees.ConclusionI do think that Swords of Evil is of much better utility than the hardbound "Items of Power" books. There is a much better ratio of background/flavor text to usuable text, and the authors lean more strongly on using the actual d20 System conventions instead of presenting the concepts much more generally as they did in the older books.However, as stated, I doubt that I would use more than a few of these dungeons due to the repetitive theme. Further, there are still some rules problems in the book, albeit not as pronounced or frequent as in the prior FFE magic item related books.Overall Grade: C+-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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