player's guide to fighters and barbarians.pdf

I NTRODUCTION

C REDITS

A UTHORS :

Will Timmins (Chapters 1–3) and Bruce Baugh (Chapters 4–6)

F RONT & B ACK C OVER D ESIGN :

Mike Chaney

A DDITIONAL M ATERIAL :

Joseph D. Carriker, Jr., Werner Hager, Jeff Tabrum

D EDICATION

To Haven House , for making my San Diego stay enjoyable.

Thanks for being such great hosts, guys.

“Graveyard” Greg McNutt , for providing a wonderful

weekend. Here’s to many more like it.

Scott “Scix” Maddix , for being the bold, kilt-wearing, divinely

inspired madman you are.

Aeire Ceara , for commiserating with me about deadlines.

See? I’m not crazy!

Lynn Dobbs , for lending us the means to get around town, and

being a cheerful face when we got home.

Steph Burrows , for geeking out with me. Long Live the Slayer.

Chris “Filmbuff” Ward , for commiserating with me

about the splendors of Mac-dom, and for being the biggest

movie geek I know. It’s always the quiet ones…

Le “Iceraver” Morgan , for being the lean, mean, comic

collecting machine he is.

John Hentges & Nathan “Serpens” Murray , for being

wonderful hosts, and for wiping the floor with me in various and

sundry games, both card and console.

D EVELOPER :

Joseph D. Carriker Jr.

E DITOR :

Anita Hager

M ANAGING E DITOR :

Andrew Bates

A RT D IRECTOR :

Rich Thomas

L AYOUT AND T YPESETTING :

Mike Chaney

C OVER A RTIST :

Michael Phillipi

S PECIAL T HANKS

To The Brothers Wieck , for letting us use the

weapon speed rules from EverQuest . Thanks, guys.

I NTERIOR A RTISTS :

David Day, Nate Pride, Mark Smylie,

Rich Thomas, & Tim Truman

Check out upcoming Sword and Sorcery Studio

products online at: http://www.swordsorcery.com

Distributed for Sword and Sorcery Studio by White Wolf Publishing, Inc.

This printing of Player’s Guide to Fighters and Barbarians is published in accordance with the Open Game License. See the Open

Game License Appendix of this book for more information.

Player’s Guide to Fighters and Barbarians, Scarred Lands, the Scarred Lands logo, Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Sorcery Studio,

the Sword and Sorcery logo, Creature Collection, Creature Collection 2: Dark Menagerie, Relics & Rituals, and Relics & Rituals 2:

The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned.

“d20 System” and the “d20 System” logo are Registered Trademarks owned by Wizards of the Coast and are used according to

the terms of the d20 System License version 1.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com.

Dungeons & Dragons® and Wizards of the Coast® are Registered Trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, and are used with Permission.

PRINTED IN CANADA.

PLAYER , S GUIDE TO FIGHTERS AND BARBARIANS

P REFACE

I NTRODUCTION

B OOK O NE : F IGHTERS

C HAPTER O NE : A H ISTORY OF W AR AND C OMBAT

C HAPTER T WO : T HE C OLLEGES OF W AR

C HAPTER T HREE : M ERCENARY C OMPANIES

B OOK T WO : B ARBARI ANS

C HAPTER F OUR : A S HAMAN ’ S T ALE

C HAPTER F IVE : T RIBES OF THE S CARRED L ANDS

C HAPTER S IX : A L AND OF S PIRITS

A PPENDICES

A PPENDIX O NE : T HE W AYS OF B ATTLE

A PPENDIX T WO : T HE M ASTERS OF B ATTLE

128

A PPENDIX T HREE : T HE T OOLS OF B ATTLE

140

L EGAL A PPENDIX

I NTRODUCTION

Welcome to the second in the Player’s Guide series.

Our intent with this series is simple: We want to

examine the ways in which players can become a stron-

ger part of the setting in which their characters exist. By

providing ways in which characters may derive a back-

ground from and have a role in the setting’s development,

they become closely tied to the setting. In turn, players

adopt a more vested interest in both their characters and

in the setting as a whole. The more richly a setting is

developed, the more characters can “come to life,” cre-

ating memorable role-playing and exciting adventures.

Thus, our goal is to help your characters become a

living, breathing part of the game world.

More than that, though, we want to see how these

classes might shape and inspire a campaign setting. The

player characters — and characters like them, past and

present — are the movers and shakers in the game world.

Not every character in the setting has levels in the so-

called “PC classes.” In fact, those who do are in the

minority. But from these relatively few individuals come

the events, both heroic and monstrous, that forever

shape their world.

Therefore, this series uses the setting of the Scarred

Lands to help show you how diverse classes weave their

influence into every aspect of the tapestry of a game

world. As with the rest of the book, you can refer to it for

your own Scarred Lands game, or use it as inspiration in

any other campaign.

The Player’s Guide to Fighters and Barbarians is

more than suggestions and rules on how to play a certain

type of character. This is a book about determining

where your characters, and those like them, have af-

fected the world. To this end, we discuss fighters and

their legacies, their wars, their traditions of combat and

the rivalries that inevitably spring up among those who

follow in their footsteps. We look at barbarian tribes as

represented in the Scarred Lands and their legacies of

rage, animism and culture.

Within these pages are the most fearsome of com-

batants and warmongers. It lies within their grasp to

bring peace to the world — or to plunge it into war.

So, welcome to a book filled with savagery and steel, a

book of wars, barbarian traditions, combat tactics and new

surprises for those who wield war in both hands.

Welcome to the Player’s Guide to Fighters

and Barbarians .

J OSEPH D . C ARRIKER , J R .

S CARRED L ANDS D EVELOPER

S WORD & S ORCERY S TUDIOS

PLAYER , S GUIDE TO FIGHTERS AND BARBARIANS

While the Player’s Guide to Fighters and Barbar-

ians is designed for use in any d20 campaign, you’ll find

that it is undeniably focused on the Scarred Lands.

Throughout this book, you will read many references to

that setting, its history and its inhabitants.

Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that this book’s

utility is limited to the Scarred Lands. As explained in

the Preface, the purpose of the Player’s Guide series is

show how the various character classes shape and inspire

a campaign setting. The Scarred Lands is used as a single

example of this process rather than the only one. Any

references to it are meant to inspire your own ideas

regardless of the campaign setting in which they occur.

Adapting material in this book to other settings may

require some work. This introduction should make that

easier, since it offers a comprehensive overview and

plenty of suggestions. Armed with its advice, players and

Game Masters should have little difficulty tailoring the

rest of the book’s content to campaigns set in other

worlds, or even to other conceptions of the Scarred

Lands setting than the standard one presented in Sword

& Sorcery products.

As always, the key is for GMs to remember the oft-

quoted — though oft-forgotten — truism: you are the

final arbiter of what is and is not the case for your

campaign, wherever it is set. This book offers a multitude

of options, variants and alternate takes on many aspects

of the core classes of fighters and barbarians (not to

mention an exhaustive discussion of their place in the

Scarred Lands setting). If anything here runs counter to

your conception of things or would do violence to the

established truths of your campaign, feel free to ignore

them! That’s as true for campaigns in the Scarred Lands

as in any other setting. Use only what appeals to you and

is genuinely useful, and discard the rest.

So long as you bear that in mind, this book is as

valuable to players and GMs alike, regardless of whether

the campaign is set in the Scarred Lands or in a game

world of their own creation.

It’s important to note that some campaign settings

are broadly enough drawn that they can allow for mul-

tiple types of games depending on the interests of the

GM and the players. The following sections provide

some insight into the benefits and drawbacks of each

type. They also make it easier for those not playing in the

Scarred Lands to categorize their own campaign by its

type, so as to take fuller advantage of the material

presented in later chapters.

Simply read through the following to see where your

campaign best fits, and you’ll also find assistance of how

to adjust the rest of this book’s contents accordingly.

H IGH F ANTASY

High fantasy is, in many ways, the default type of

fantasy roleplaying setting. Its name derives from the fact

that its fantastical elements — magic, monsters, heroism

— are at the high end of the scale. High fantasy games are

in no way “realistic.” They pay little heed to notions of

plausibility. Instead, they rely on over the top plotlines,

outlandish locales and larger than life characters to tell

epic stories set in a mythical locale. Most high fantasy

games also have a strong component of black and white

morality to them. The forces of good are virtuous and

praiseworthy, while the forces of evil are vicious and

blameworthy.

High fantasy need not be simplistic, however. In

fact, many high fantasy tales contain very sophisticated

examinations of the nature of evil and the very real

temptation to choose it over good as a means to achiev-

ing an otherwise just end.

The Scarred Lands setting is largely a high fantasy

setting, so the majority of information in this book is well

suited to use in other high fantasy campaigns. The

discussions of fighter and barbarian history probably

cannot be used specifically as written outside the Scarred

Lands, but they can certainly serve as inspiration for

other settings. For example, Chapter One details differ-

ent types of fighters from many different countries within

the Scarred Lands, along with suggestions on their weap-

ons, armor and fighting styles. If your campaign includes

an authoritarian monarchy with a devotion to law and

order above all, you could easily use the entry on Calastia

as a basis for fighters from that region. The same is true

of discussions of mercenary companies, war colleges,

barbarian tribes and so on. The reality of war is universal,

which makes it a relatively simple matter to adapt the

background material in this book.

The same is true with the rules material in the

appendices. With proper adjustment, prestige classes,

T YPES OF G AMES

Fantasy roleplaying games come in many flavors,

not all of which operate under the same “rules.” That is,

each type has its own distinct mood, feel and tone, all of

which influence how the game is played and the types of

stories that are told within it. These in turn affect how

the characters relate to the setting and the kind of impact

that they can have on it.

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