JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Warriors provides the GM with everything he needs to make the Warrior NPC core class stand out as a viable and useful profession whose skills and abilities can be quickly customized to form units of marines and light ground troops to masters of longbows and siege weapons.
The book starts off with a wide variety of easy to access Prestige Classes. When I say easy, I mean like 2nd level easy. The reasoning is that many of these are meant to fill specific niches in the warrior community, they're specialized to do certain things. This varies from being a Watchman or a Sheriff, to using the latest technology like the Mechanist Infantry or Combat Engineers. One of the most useful aspects of this section is the wide amount of background information that comes with each PrC. For example, under Executioner, we get a few examples like Severian from Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer. Other examples are the dueling schools of the gladiators or the different weapons used in various dueling traditions for this book's Dueling Master PrC.
The meat of the book though isn't the numerous PrCs, but rather, the Warrior Subtype. By spending a feat, the warrior can take on a different aspect that allows a much higher level of customization. One of the traditional army formations is lots of pikemen and that's one of the subtypes so the user spends the feat and gets an armor class bonus as if using a shield when fighting in formation. Not a great deal, but gives them a different feel than other warriors. How about the guard subtype who gets listen and spot as class skills? With GM approval and a good dose of common sense, these subtypes can be added to standard characters as well.
Are the rules prone to abuse? Well, they can be, but the authors have tried to cut that down. For instance, some of the subtypes allow you to swap out your innate feats like martial weapon proficiency. The good news is that you can't do such a swap unless you've got the whole range so a rogue can't swap out his few martial weapons for general feats.
The benefit of these subtypes folds back into the PrCs as you can have a subtype of a Woodsman who gets Forester as a class skill and can substituted Shield and Heavy Armor proficiency for weapon focus or skill focus, go into the forester PrC.
Because of all the subtypes and PrCs, there are whole new slews of skills that need some definition and the skill chapter provides a ton of new craft, knowledge, profession and specialized skills with lots of DC examples and a good definition of the skill. For example, while I know about customizing armor, I didn't know it was called Koftgari.
The feats are aimed squarely at augmenting the PrCs and subtypes here with goods for Aerial Beastmasters and using the specialized equipment, Mechanist Armor, to using Siege Weapons. A good but short section with a narrow focus on the fighting arts.
The equipment is similarly narrow with new arms and armor, new medical elixirs and siege engines, new technological advancements like balloons and blimps, as well as gunpowder and other goods. The section is small and we've seen some of these different types of weapons before, but it presents some new options like the Mechanist Armor, Dhenuka (hide or horn armor from rhinos), as well as rocket guns and war elephants.
Spells included here include a new type, Battle Rune. These spells required previously crafted paint and animal fat in addition to other elements and have a good duration, doing different little things like Hardbone, granting a +2 to Fortitude Saves or Surehand, granting a +2 to Dexterity. I'd probably let the half hour a level duration stay as most are less powerful than spells in 3.5 and require more up front work.
The numerous appendices provide different elements to augment the campaign. We've got a section on Magic Items, Monsters, Sample Characters, Chariot Warfare, Elephant Warfare, and Heraldry. Each one has some good stuff in it and I was surprised at the sheer amount of material the book was able to jam into it's contents.
The Magic Items really provide some different things that I'm sued to. How about the Skull Wagon, a battle wagon that looks like it came straight out of Warhammer with goblins being pulled by worgs or giant lizards? This chariot theme is repeated with Dwarven Firewagons and Elven Chariots, providing a game with the potential for a much bigger scale than common brawls.
More standard magic items are included like the fearsome Gauntlet of Blood that drinks the users blood but gains an enhancement bonus depending on the damage done or the Scythe of Beheading, a weapon specialized in killing through the coup de grace action.
The Heraldry isn't in depth or anything, but provides several samples as well as common devices for dwarves, elves, goblins, halflings and orcs, as well as ideas on what the different people in the family would use. For instance, a son or daughter would have a different symbol than the father, and brothers might have different placement of devices depending on their birth order.
The book needs a few things to rise above it's small press origins. The first is better art. While the art in here is better than the first book, Experts, it's quality varies too much from piece to piece. Keep up the effort, it's paying off. The second is that with the subtypes and perhaps the PrCs, too much information is repeated. What are the real difference between some of the subtypes outside of their weapons? Is there a massive difference between the archer with the longbow and the shortbow in game effects? Outside of the weapon, not really.
With the PrCs, since almost all of them had the same base attack progression and saving throws, perhaps a master table could've been placed up front? Lastly, on the 3.5 issue, perhaps the company should've just went 3.0 as many times the whole 3.5 efforts of third party publishers hasn't been where it needs to in terms of NPC's, skill points, feats and other items. At this early point in the game, being 3.0 probably wouldn't have hurt them and may have even helped.
With the amount of material they jam into these books, I'm hoping that we'll see the one on Adepts next.
Warriors does a lot for the GM in terms of making his NPCs more viable and interesting. It provides a lot of options that may surprise players and shake their assumptions about the campaign world up. It allows a GM who wants a little more of the machine into his campaign without going all the way. Warriors will provide the GM with ideas and the game mechanics to back 'em up.
The book starts off with a wide variety of easy to access Prestige Classes. When I say easy, I mean like 2nd level easy. The reasoning is that many of these are meant to fill specific niches in the warrior community, they're specialized to do certain things. This varies from being a Watchman or a Sheriff, to using the latest technology like the Mechanist Infantry or Combat Engineers. One of the most useful aspects of this section is the wide amount of background information that comes with each PrC. For example, under Executioner, we get a few examples like Severian from Gene Wolfe's Shadow of the Torturer. Other examples are the dueling schools of the gladiators or the different weapons used in various dueling traditions for this book's Dueling Master PrC.
The meat of the book though isn't the numerous PrCs, but rather, the Warrior Subtype. By spending a feat, the warrior can take on a different aspect that allows a much higher level of customization. One of the traditional army formations is lots of pikemen and that's one of the subtypes so the user spends the feat and gets an armor class bonus as if using a shield when fighting in formation. Not a great deal, but gives them a different feel than other warriors. How about the guard subtype who gets listen and spot as class skills? With GM approval and a good dose of common sense, these subtypes can be added to standard characters as well.
Are the rules prone to abuse? Well, they can be, but the authors have tried to cut that down. For instance, some of the subtypes allow you to swap out your innate feats like martial weapon proficiency. The good news is that you can't do such a swap unless you've got the whole range so a rogue can't swap out his few martial weapons for general feats.
The benefit of these subtypes folds back into the PrCs as you can have a subtype of a Woodsman who gets Forester as a class skill and can substituted Shield and Heavy Armor proficiency for weapon focus or skill focus, go into the forester PrC.
Because of all the subtypes and PrCs, there are whole new slews of skills that need some definition and the skill chapter provides a ton of new craft, knowledge, profession and specialized skills with lots of DC examples and a good definition of the skill. For example, while I know about customizing armor, I didn't know it was called Koftgari.
The feats are aimed squarely at augmenting the PrCs and subtypes here with goods for Aerial Beastmasters and using the specialized equipment, Mechanist Armor, to using Siege Weapons. A good but short section with a narrow focus on the fighting arts.
The equipment is similarly narrow with new arms and armor, new medical elixirs and siege engines, new technological advancements like balloons and blimps, as well as gunpowder and other goods. The section is small and we've seen some of these different types of weapons before, but it presents some new options like the Mechanist Armor, Dhenuka (hide or horn armor from rhinos), as well as rocket guns and war elephants.
Spells included here include a new type, Battle Rune. These spells required previously crafted paint and animal fat in addition to other elements and have a good duration, doing different little things like Hardbone, granting a +2 to Fortitude Saves or Surehand, granting a +2 to Dexterity. I'd probably let the half hour a level duration stay as most are less powerful than spells in 3.5 and require more up front work.
The numerous appendices provide different elements to augment the campaign. We've got a section on Magic Items, Monsters, Sample Characters, Chariot Warfare, Elephant Warfare, and Heraldry. Each one has some good stuff in it and I was surprised at the sheer amount of material the book was able to jam into it's contents.
The Magic Items really provide some different things that I'm sued to. How about the Skull Wagon, a battle wagon that looks like it came straight out of Warhammer with goblins being pulled by worgs or giant lizards? This chariot theme is repeated with Dwarven Firewagons and Elven Chariots, providing a game with the potential for a much bigger scale than common brawls.
More standard magic items are included like the fearsome Gauntlet of Blood that drinks the users blood but gains an enhancement bonus depending on the damage done or the Scythe of Beheading, a weapon specialized in killing through the coup de grace action.
The Heraldry isn't in depth or anything, but provides several samples as well as common devices for dwarves, elves, goblins, halflings and orcs, as well as ideas on what the different people in the family would use. For instance, a son or daughter would have a different symbol than the father, and brothers might have different placement of devices depending on their birth order.
The book needs a few things to rise above it's small press origins. The first is better art. While the art in here is better than the first book, Experts, it's quality varies too much from piece to piece. Keep up the effort, it's paying off. The second is that with the subtypes and perhaps the PrCs, too much information is repeated. What are the real difference between some of the subtypes outside of their weapons? Is there a massive difference between the archer with the longbow and the shortbow in game effects? Outside of the weapon, not really.
With the PrCs, since almost all of them had the same base attack progression and saving throws, perhaps a master table could've been placed up front? Lastly, on the 3.5 issue, perhaps the company should've just went 3.0 as many times the whole 3.5 efforts of third party publishers hasn't been where it needs to in terms of NPC's, skill points, feats and other items. At this early point in the game, being 3.0 probably wouldn't have hurt them and may have even helped.
With the amount of material they jam into these books, I'm hoping that we'll see the one on Adepts next.
Warriors does a lot for the GM in terms of making his NPCs more viable and interesting. It provides a lot of options that may surprise players and shake their assumptions about the campaign world up. It allows a GM who wants a little more of the machine into his campaign without going all the way. Warriors will provide the GM with ideas and the game mechanics to back 'em up.
