By Chris Sims, Staff Editor and Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack
Sizing Up the Target
Swords of Our Fathers is a 41-page PDF written by JD Wiker of d20 Star Wars fame, who's now a principle figure in The Game Mechanics. Through Swords, Wiker endeavors to bring truly legendary weapons into the hands of characters by presenting a way for items to increase in power with their owners. It can be downloaded for $5 from RPGNow. (This review is from a copy of the work that the author purchased.)
First Blood
The PDF is very attractive and all of its pages are full of relevant prose (with few typos), except the obligatory OGL page. It has great illustrations and the layout is on par with that of industry leaders. While others may find this a flaw, the PDF has no "covers", front or back, thus saving bandwidth and disk space. Unfortunately, some of the electronic features of the PDF format are not utilized (like bookmarks), hindering navigation. Other features of PDF manufacture are exploited, for good or ill, like the lack of option to copy and paste from the PDF.
The legendary weapons found in Swords of Our Fathers all have considerable power that can only be accessed through one of four prestige classes. You see, each weapon displays its full potential only to one who devotes class levels to developing a tie to the weapon. Higher levels offer the character access to better and better features of the weapon. These classes are all called "blade scions": the battleblade scion, faithblade scion, spellblade scion, and swiftblade scion.
The prestige classes are all serviceable, mostly as watered-down versions of one core class or another augmented by "class features" provided by a particular blade. The battleblade is aimed squarely at fighters, and other fighter-like classes may lose too much for the powers of any of the legendary weapons to be enough compensation. The spellblade, primarily for wizards and sorcerers (and the occasional bard), is to any sorcerers and most wizards' advantage due to a higher Hit Die, and no loss of spell progression. Likewise, the faithblade appears to be advantageous to clerics, but not so much for druids (loss of many druid abilities) and middling for paladins (less hit points, less abilities, better skill set, better saves). Strangely, the faithblade shows a minor weakness of this prestige class approach in allowing all of its practitioners access to Knowledge (religion), Knowledge (arcana), Knowledge (nature), and Wilderness Lore as class skills—it's trying too hard to be a "catch-all".
Stranger still is the swiftblade scion, with its potential access to rogue, bard, and monk class abilities (so long as the aspirant already had such abilities). Bards lose a lot of musical ability and spell progression by taking the class (though the class's bonus abilities can replace small amounts of either). Monks lose many class features as well. Rogues potentially lose the least in abilities, and every swiftblade scion gets 8 skill points per level. Further, the swiftblade always gets Weapon Finesse (though the character must meet the requirements of the feat to use it), indicating that swiftblade legendary items must all fall into a category that makes such a class feature useful. (The primary swiftblades in Swords of Our Fathers are rapiers, which makes a monk a questionable member of this class.)
Not that a DM should be handing out legendary weapons right and left, but the rules say characters cannot unlock the power of a second legendary weapon if that weapon requires the same scion prestige class as one already possessed. Why not? To do so is to sacrifice the upper levels of power in both weapons (barring epic levels). Further, a pair of swords in Swords of Our Fathers contradicts this rule. On the other hand, so long as a second legendary weapon requires a different scion class (say swiftblade instead of battleblade), it's okay to unlock its power by ascending in levels of the other class.
Critical Hits
Did I point out how nice this PDF looks? To me, that's a critical hit. Praise goes to Stan! (Creative Director), Mark Schmalz (graphic design), and Clarence Harrison (illustrator).
The weapons (they're not all swords) in Swords of Our Fathers are fantastic. From inspired names to great powers and abilities, JD Wiker did a really good job of crafting each blade and its associated prose. The history (complete with DCs for Knowledge and Bardic Lore checks—real thoughtfulness there) of every item is rich, yet it's still adaptable to a wide array of campaigns. All of these weapons have a place as something special in a game, without necessarily outshining the heroes. (That potential is there, though.)
Each weapon also comes with a relevant adventure hook. These hooks add to the flavor of the weapon's life and history and put some perspective on placement of an item in a campaign. Coupled with the background stories, which can easily give dozens of ideas to a clever DM, these are valuable additions to the book.
Praiseworthy also is the sheer ambition of trying to solve the disparity between magic items that appear in legend and literature and the way D&D handles these same accouterments. Not only has JD Wiker made a noble attempt at putting some wonder back in enchanted equipment, but he has also nobly tried to avoid one of 3E D&D's poorest game balance mechanics—experience points for power.
Critical Misses
Swords of Our Fathers gets dodgy when it comes to a few issues. First of all, there's no information on how any mortal character might go about creating such an item, even though mortals forged many of the weapons in ages past. Of course, D&D seems to have avoided addressing this particular problem for its whole history, so this is hardly unexpected.
Equally predictable and in a case of "cop out", Swords deals with the obvious problem of loss or breakage of a legendary item to which a character has devoted a prestige class by dodging the first issue and making the idea of the second ludicrous. (I admit, such things should be rare and serve the story, but that's no reason not to include reasonable mechanics.)
The "rules" for the loss can be summed up as a scion "should never" lose a legendary item (thus losing many of his or her class abilities). One notes, ironically, that aspects of some of the weapons in Swords can cause a particular artifact to be destroyed or lose its powers. So, which is it?
As for legendary item breakage, only another legendary item has any chance of harming such an artifact. Even in that case, the mechanics are written in such a way that only a fool would try to use his legendary item to break another, since the victim of such attack gets a free chance to return the favor—even if the initial attack destroyed the struck artifact. Best you just leave the other guy's weapon alone.
In these ways, a character can indeed lose all capabilities related to the weapon (sometimes permanently), keeping only the basic features of the scion prestige class to which he or she belongs (a diluted core class). Such a character is irrevocably weakened and no tools are given for any sort of reparations. This is the major flaw in the prestige class system of dealing with legendary weapon abilities.
These very issues were reasons I balked at purchasing Swords of Our Fathers to begin with. I wondered how the problems could be solved. Well, they weren't. In fact, the three-page article "Leveled Treasures" in Dragon #289 solves all of these concerns in a more satisfactory manner, despite the use of the XP-for-power mechanic (though the resultant items are less powerful).
Coup de Grace
Swords of Our Fathers tries very hard to bring legendary items to light as a viable alternative to the disposable magic item system of D&D. I wanted it to succeed, but it doesn't mostly because of the relationship created between items (and their potential loss, sic temporary nature) and the permanent affect of prestige class choices on a character. Only the mechanics are open content, but they're not very viable out of context, and there are a few minor errors (simple typos). The ideas are original, but the prestige class idea doesn't work that well and the rules to arbitrate item loss or breakage are absent or contrived—both lowering playability. In that field as well, the book seems to be for both the player and the DM, but in reality it's primarily an adjudicator and storyteller tool. The DM must choose whether to use any of these weapons or not, how to use them, and thus few will see use in any one game, thus limiting player utility. However, the price of this book is only $5.00, and it's worth that even if you don't use the prestige class system. So, you may want to pick up Swords of Our Fathers anyway.
Special Note: The Game Mechanics are good when it comes to answering the questions and concerns of their customers. They seem pretty friendly too, not to mention interested in making gaming better. I encourage anyone with questions to go to The Game Mechanics site (and forums via the "Torches & Pitchforks" link). (There are some great freebies there too, including Mother's Venom, another legendary blade.) Given the quality of the writing and presentation of Swords of Our Fathers, the way they treat customers, and their philosophy toward helping others, The Game Mechanics are a company to watch.
To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.
