War
War is one of AEG's "Topic" books targeted towards d20 system fantasy games; previous titles in this series where Dungeons, Evil, Dragons, and Undead. As the title should reveal, War is a sourcebook dealing with War-related gaming in d20 system fantasy settings.
A First Look
War is a 140 page perfect bound softcover book. The book is priced at $19.95 US. War is very inexpensive in terms of price per page for a book of this size.
The cover of the book has a reddish background with a grey piping pattern similar to other books in the series. The front cover has a color picture of a mounted armored warrior in the midst of a variety of armored foot troops.
The interior of the book is black and white. The illustrations are moderate to good value, and are primarily decorative in nature, save for the siege chapter, where a number of siege engines are illustrated.
As with prior books in the series, the interior text is rather large, but the margins are small. However, the price per page is fairly low. Based on quantity of content alone, War delivers a good value.
A Deeper Look
War is organized into five chapters plus an introduction in the form of a short fictional piece. The five chapters are War Without End, Wars Make Soldiers, The Seige, War Magic, and Death of Nations.
Chapter One: War Without End
The first chapter is almost entirely exposition with very little rules material. It discusses some of the basics of warfare in a faux-medieval fantasy world for the consideration of a GM who wishes to run a campaign against the backdrop of such a war. This includes a number of factors such as some possible causes behind warfare, the intricacies that an army has to consider such as supplies and logistics, how a society in a war is affected, how armies are organized, and formations and tactics that might be used.
In addition to mulling over various considerations regarding how medieval style combat that should be considered in a campaign, the chapter considers how fantasy elements might play into the more historical view of warfare. For example, the chapter examines how magic might impact warfare and how various standard fantasy races might practice warfare.
All if this is very practical advice. Some of it may be old hat for GMs who already have a familiarity with history or warfare, though many GMs should find it good food for thought. Part of the weakness of this chapter is that many of the considerations in this chapter do not have mechanical support in the d20 system. The GM is left to his own devices on how to handle a variety of factors, such as how diseases affect armies in wartime.
Chapter Two: War Makes Soldiers
The chapter entitled War Makes Soldiers is comprises of new character creation rules for the d20 system targeted at characters in Warfare-oriented campaigns.
The chapter leads off with a variety of "new uses for old skills" similar to those presented in the Wizards of the Coast books. The section provides guidelines for a variety of tasks related to military activities in the game. For example, the decipher script skill can be used to intercept signals used by an enemy in a military campaign, and intimidation can be used to help motivate frighten or nervous troops.
A variety of new feats are provided. As warfare oriented feats are rather common in the d20 system, the feats introduced are not at all usual for the system. Examples of new feats include:
- Adaptive fighting: Allows polearm wielders to use the pole of their weapon as an off-hand weapon.
- Evasive fighting allows you to negate an enemy's charge bonus if you can take a 5' step to sidestep their charge.
- Overpowering attack allows you to fight more effectively when your opponent is fighting defensively or using total defense.
- Power shot is the equivalent of cleave applied to a missile weapon; if you drop the primary target with a missile weapon, you can strike a second target.
There are a few feats here that would be of special interest to troops with an unusual fighting technique. Overall, the feats seem well designed, but some seem like they would be a bit limited in scope and will probably not see much PC use.
The last and bulkiest section of the chapter is the prestige classes. The prestige classes are not oriented to rank and file troops (and nor should they be.) Rather, they seem to represent a number of elite or special character types and leaders. Examples include:
- Beast Handler: The beast handler is an expert at training animals for use in combat. The beast master's central ability is the ability to train animals to use feats.
- Elf Treerunner: The elf treerunner is a master of the forests; the gain unprecedented mobility in a forest. At low levels, they may easily move around treetops. At higher levels, their abilities become more arcane, and they gain a tree stride like ability.
- Footman: Do not let the title deceive you; this is no simple infantryman. The footman is a Small sized character trained to work in tandem with a member of a larger race. This is an excellent choice for your campaign if it features smaller races as "member races" of larger kingdoms, such as halflings as part of human kingdoms or goblins in the service of hobgoblins or bugbears.
- Knight Chaplains: This order of knighthood are arcane spellcasters with a specialization on using healing type spells in the midst of combat. Like bards, they use healing spells as arcane spells. This may leave some GMs cold.
- Lancer: The lancer is a warrior very skilled in the use of a polearm. They learn to be able to use a reach weapon close-in, and use their weapon to their advantage in a variety of ways in combat.
- Mercenary Captain: The mercenary captain is a grizzled leader of combat veterans. The mercenary captain can inspire his troops similar to bards, and can grant allies bonuses due to their tactical and strategic thinking.
- Spellbreaker: The spellbreaker is a dwarf specialized in interfering with spellcasters on the battlefield.
- The warleader is somewhat similar to the mercenary captain in that it is designed as a leader of troops. The warleader is more of a charismatic leader and less of a tactical thinker than the mercenary captain.
- Warmage: The warmage is an arcane spellcaster specialized in battlefield warfare. In addition to continuing full spell progression, they receive bonuses to attack rolls with spells, to spell failure rolls, and to casting spells under combat conditions. This is in addition to an improved hit dice type (d6.) While conceptually sound, this class struck me as being way too giving. The class should probably not have full spellcasting progression, and a +1 per class level accuracy bonus to attack rolls with spells is entirely too much.
Most of these classes seem well put together and seem like they would make for interesting figures in a war oriented campaign. The formatting of the classes could use some work; there are many cases in which class abilities listed in the description are not listed on the class ability tables.
Chapter Three: The Siege
The third chapter covers sieges. The first part of the chapter is largely exposition, describing the nature of a siege on a fortification. It also discusses how magic can alter the nature of siege warfare in a faux-medieval setting.
The remainder of the chapter addresses siege equipment in game terms. Weapons such as catapults, battering rams, and ballistae are covered, including such factors for each as ammunition types, damage, ranges, aim and reload times, and crew requirements. Defensive measures such as boiling oil and burning pitch are also covered.
Chapter Four: War Magic
The fourth chapter handles a variety of topics regarding the use of magic in warfare. The chapter begins by discussing the role of spells of the eight schools of magic in the d20 system in a warfare environment.
Divine magic is discussed, and several new deities (including their ethos and domins) related to warfare are introduced for use in a campaign. This include the introduction of two new clerical domains, conquest and tyranny.
Finally, the chapter introduces a number of new spells and magic items of great utility during warfare. Examples of the new spells include detect allegiance, field of caltrops, and speed reinforcements. New magic items include magic banners, war drums, and the sniper's longbow and arrow. The last item is labeled the rod of thunder, but the text describes a rod of shattering, useful for penetrating the stonework of enemy fortifications.
Chapter Five: Death of Nations
The last chapter has yet more exposition on the nature of war, including types of war, and factors involved in maintaining and winning a war. It then discusses how to integrate a war with your campaign and factors you will likely have to consider. It also discusses how various races approach war (something that was already addressed in chapter 1), the role of different character classes in war, and how different alignments view war.
Unlike the first chapter, this chapter has a bit of mechanics. It includes large scale combat systems for use with the d20 system. To facilitate this combat system, it introduces two new skills: strategy and tactics. In the same stroke of the pen, they demonstrate the number one reason that I say that you should avoid introducing new skills: you have to retrofit them to the existing classes. Nowhere is there any mention of which of the existing classes have these skills. Further, none of the new prestige classes introduced earlier in the book feature either of these skills. I consider this a major dropping of the ball.
If you can find a meaningful way to implement or replace those skills (for example, replace them with knowledge skills and add the skills to the appropriate prestige classes), you might be able to make use of the included large scale combat systems. There are two systems. One system is for unit scale combat and one is for army scale combat.
The unit scale combat system is somewhat vague and works primarily off of opposed leader skill checks, modified by the size of the units. Damage inflicted is in terms of percentage of the original unit size. The system is very vague and really doesn't take anything into account such as magic or troop races or training. I really think I could come up with a better ad hoc system; I strongly recommend if you want a unit scale combat system you look into Mongoose Publishing's Open Mass Combat System (part of The Quintessential Fighter) instead.
The Abstract Battle Rules, on the other hand, show some promise. Again they are fairly vague (they would have to be; they work on an army scale) but they have an interesting system for involving the PCs in encounters related to the combat and that has some impact on the outcome of the battle. This reminded me of the old Bushido mass combat rules which we borrowed for use with our old games. If you added a few more details to it, this could be a very nice system.
As with the characters chapter, there where some layout problems with this chapter. The table that is used for the abstract battle system is in the middle of the text for the unit combat system. I found this confusing; it took me a while to figure out there where two systems and that the table was supposed to work with the second system. Further, the table is confusingly formatted; some of the table headers whose position is pertinent to reading the table are shifted up a row or two.
Conclusion
If you are planning on running a campaign amidst a large scale war, this could serve as a useful sourcebook to you. The exposition is well thought out, and the most of the character rules in the book are well done. I did not, however, find the expositional material as thoughtful or as useful as that in some earlier books like Dungeons and Evil
The book suffers from having too much talk and not enough "action" - meaning rules meat. I felt like I was getting diminishing returns from the non-mechanical information as I read on. Further, there where several places that I read a piece of exposition and thought that a means of implementing it in game terms was forthcoming and desirable for the type of campaign the book tries to support, but it never happens.
Further, the book suffers from a lack of coordination, which seems to be a problem with several AEG "topic" d20 system books. I felt like I was getting some of the same material in the last chapter than I got in the first, the last chapters skills weren't worked into the character generation chapter, and so on. More work needed to be done to hammer the freelancers' efforts into a consistent whole.
Finally, I though I did see some promise in the abstract battle system, the whole battle system effort seems very weak to me.
-Alan D. Kohler
