Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="cthulu_moose" data-source="post: 2010999" data-attributes="member: 17946">First, let me state my existing Biases.  Once upon a time I knew Ben Redmond, the writer/designer for Malladin's Gate Press.  He played in one of my games.  But that was 6 years ago now, and we've not kept in touch since.  I recently heard about his endeavours into game design so I looked into it.  Ben sent a free copy of his producs a while back to the RPG club he used to belong to, which I still do (and write reviews for its news letter), a while which I had a look at and thought nothing of it, being a non-D20 gamer at the time.  Since then I havebeen introduced to then new D&D and have decided, to my surprise, that it's not actually a bad game.  Therefore I have started to develop my own setting and started to dig around for support products. That's when I went back and borrowed the Club's CD with Ben's products burned on it.  I liked what I saw, particularly this product, and have been inducted into the PDF world ever since.  As I was already an amateur review writer, I decided to spread my wings a little and begin to develop an onlinepresence as a reviewer.  Having lurked on the E-Publishing list for a while now, I thought I'd specialise in PDF products.Anyway, enough about me, on to the product.Unearthed Adventurers has to be my favourite of Malladin's Gate's books.  I like fantasy that has a bit of a Renaissance feel.  Not completely alternative history type stuff, like 7th Sea, but just a little flavour of light weapons and swashbuckling, etc.  As such I can't get over the brilliance of the Swordman class.  The swordsman is the second complete base (20 level) class presented in this book.  The book also includes the Cultist, a no-armour divine spellcaster (more details below).Each of the classes in this book is described in great detail, with 3 prestige classes specific to the class and another 11 to help with multiclassing it with the 11 D&D base classes.  This section is also supported with a really good indepth discussion on multiclassing the classes presented.  Not only that, but each class gets a decent treatment on new powers and a good GM discussion on how to integrate them into your game.  The detail is great and the discussion is intelligent.  You get a real idea of the direction in which they are going with these classes and why they feel they are needed.  You also get a whole host of supporting material to help bring these classes into your game anduse them to the fullest.Let's have a look at the Cultist.  Essentially the cultist is a sorcerer who casts Divine spells.  However, the really great thing about this class is the way in which they build up their spell list.  Like the cleric, they have domain spells, but these are just extra spells known.  They develop three different domains as they develop their character.  In addition, they can choose from the Cleric of Druid base list.  Even on this score alone you can begin to see concept behind this class: this is designed to replace the existing clerics and druids, and also the shamans, witches and other bolt-on divine casters around.  I really like that one-class-fits-all approach.  I can't seem to get anyone in my group to play a druid, and clerics always end up multiclassing with Figthers (although I has one interesting cross with a Bard).  This approach is further defined by the main class feature they develop; virtues.  The Cultist gets a virtue every 5 levels, which provides them with a package of abilities to help define their own class.  These include skill packages, better hit dice or base attack, sneak attack (helps with that ritual sacrifice), more spells or turn undead.  This is also great for the GM, you can build up your own specialist priest classes for a campaign by giving them different virtues and domains, thus adding a much greater differentiation between the classes than the standard cleric class allows for.  This approach is also supported in the Prestige Classes.  The Druid and Cleric options, instead of discussing how to multiclass the cultist with these classes, instead discusses how to make the cultist into a more typical cleric or druid.The cultist is also well suported with some great new domains and spells.  Some highlights include some really nasty evil ones, such as Seduction and Malice.  Others really bring out the flavour of some minor aspects that deities might have; Music, Science and Love are all fairly classic ideas that you might want to use for deities in your world, and here you get the domains put together for you.  The skills feats chapter is also great for the cultist.  This chapter basically introduces a new skill; Commune, which the cultist uses to read omens and even pray to their patron power for divine guidance.  A good numberof the feats here are used to manipulate the Commune skill, aworking on powerful synergy effects with other skills, but only if you have the feat requirements.  Again, the flavour of these feats is great, particularly in bringing out the potential darker side of the class.  There's a torturer feat, which is a simple +2 to 2 skills feat (intimidate and knowledge (Anatomy)), but the Unholy Torturer feat boosts this up to +6 to intimidate, as the Cultists uses all their divine power and knowledge to really break their victim.  I'm definately going to have a villain with this feat!!The swordsman, as I have said is a brilliant class.  People who have played the original 7th Sea (not the D20 version) will recognise the name, and I'm sure that this was the inspiration for the class.  The swordsman is a classically trained warrior.  Unlike the school of hard knocks type of warrior the Fighter class represents, the Swordsman is a more refined individual.  I can see that the name is perhaps a bit wierd, when you consider that the cultist can also be a martial artist, cavelier, samurai or archer.  Again I can see that here Malladin's Gate are trying to tidy up the existing throng of additional base classes.  This class can replace all the Knight, Martial Artist, Samurai, Archer and any other specialist fighter class you can think of.  The class is slightly weaker than a typical fighter, but they can learn fighting techniques which allow them to specilise in a given area.  Whilst this may make them more powerful than a fighter, there are other systems that enable their opponents to find the weaknesses in their more ritualised style.  I've ready other reviews of this book, and also those on the DarkLore setting, which also uses this same mechanic, and there has definately been a mixed reaction to these Fighting Techniques.  Each technique is a skill, which allows the character to develop feats perform special manouevres, provided they stick to special restrictions of movement and armour use.  Thus as their skill ranks improve with levels, the character gains new feats.  For any individual technique, these are at a slower rate than the fighter, but the character can have multiple fighting technique skills.  I can see that this is a problem, but the slightly different rules in the DarkLore rules fix this nicely.  In DarkLore, each fighting technique has one less feat on the track which instead becomes a requirement feat.  Thus a sowrdsman can only have 2 techniques at first level (if they are human) and gain another every 3 levels when they get their usual feats.  Multiclasing with the fighter class might let you develop more, but you've got a lot less skill points and an additional cost to cope with on the fighter levels.  Overall, particularly with this tweak I think they are balanced.  Another argument I've read is that they are just another way of doing something for which we have existing systems in place.  Well, personally I don't fall into the "if it's not brok don't fix it" lobby.  If someone can come up with a better way of doing something than an existing method, I'm all for it.  And that is what I think Malladin's Gate have achieved.  Linking the feats into a skill and restrictive stance provides a much better, IMO, way of describing formalised fighting styles than any other system I can think of.The swordsman's support is alsoe very good.  There's 19 techniques, capturing a wide range of styles - 'Hard' martial arts 'soft' martial arts, bixing, horseback archery and lance fighting, twio handed swords, multiple rapier styles, crosbow, long bow and blackpowder firearms weapons.  Of particular note is the new equipment.  This includes some classic renaiisance weapons; black powder rules, Main Gauche (which integrates superbly with the Offhand Parry feat), and my favourite, the Smallsword, a classic of English renaissance fighting styles.Overall this is a great book, perhaps let down by the artwork, which is sparse and mainly just pencil sketches instead of a nice bold piece of line art.  It would have been better if they'd just gone over the lines in black in an art package, as the result is somewhat 'thin'.  Another criticism I have is the size of the book.  I think 90 pages is just toomuch for a PDF, especially when itcould quite easily be 2 separate books.  I'm sure some people wil be put off by having to buy one class when they are only interested in the other.  However, this is a fantastic product on its game content alone and a worthy addition to anyone's hard drive.  I would seriously recommend anyone with a homebrew setting buying this and rethinking your deities and priest classes with the cultist in mind.  As for the Swordman, that's probably one for the players.  If you like swashbuckling characters, or any other type of specialist fighter, this is the class for you!</blockquote>

Verification