grant_howitt

The Martialist - Review

 

The Martialist is a complete class for D&D 4e from Fantasy Cartographic, a rather hefty .pdf file giving full rules for this enigmatic class of unarmed fighter along with various magical items and several handfuls of suitable feats to cover their progression.

 

Production values

 

The document is neatly-produced and conforms to the house style of powers laid down in the 4e rulebooks very well i.e. green for at-wills, red for encounters, etc. Unlike the 4e books, though, it contains full power cards to print out and use at games, and lists of exploits by both level and name.  These are welcomed and a useful quick-reference technique, especially if you've yet to print out the .pdf.  It's worth mentioning that these pages take up a sizeable chunk of that pagecount, however.

 

The art – of which there are around four pieces – has the saving grace of not being the worst art I have seen in a roleplaying product. Martial artists crossed with barbarian-types are the order of the day, and they universally possess  thighs big and hard enough to crack walnuts and warrant zoning permits.  Take a look at that guy on the front cover. Look at his left thigh, and tell me he’s entirely human.

 

Fluff

 

The gist of the martialist is covered in a backstory that takes up a page in the introduction and crops up throughout the supplement; a fantasy prison full of tieflings and dragonborn that developed the ability to efficiently murder each other using only their hands and feet who were released into the countryside and had the good manners to spread their particular method of efficient murder with the other inhabitants of the world.

 

I'm not overly convinced by the fluff - as thin on the ground as it is, with the opening page and several scattered paragraphs that get in the way of the power descriptions that detail the exploits of martialists and their "inferior" compatriots, often throwing their enemies off nearby cliffs to resolve conflicts.  It seems tacked-on, but that's not exactly breaking with tradition in terms of vanilla D&D at all levels of production - the setting is largely assumed, there's both a) dungeons and b) dragons, and some stuff in between, but it's not vital to learn precisely why Warlocks do what they do with in-character history text. The text is more intrusive than helpful overall.

 

The opening story contains a reference to the magical material known as "crumblestone," which crumbles when struck against human flesh or anything harder.  Everything in the prison is crafted out of the stuff, which curtails the initial use of the facility as a forced mining camp and must have made mealtimes pretty difficult. Crumblestone must be pretty expensive - it's useless enough to be rare as I can't imagine that there would be a great demand for the stuff, and someone has to mine it (somehow) and craft it (somehow) and deliver the items to the prison (without them breaking against each other), and then replace items when they're dropped or passed between hands or looked at funny. Seeing as the prisoners aren't making money - and are, in fact, costing quite a bit of money - surely execution would have been a better plan all round?

 

Also, crumblestone is a silly name.

 

System

 

Character rules

 

The Martialist (now I write it out properly, I'm beginning to think it's a very generic name - "Brawler," perhaps?) fights, as mentioned, without conventional weapons and instead uses the array of natural weapons that the class can train in - fist, "weak-fist", kick, headbutts, body, etc.  This is a welcome change from the standard, in that characters are offered a variety of weapon options within their weaponless class - and 4e is all about variety, as we are well aware.

 

As the Martialist class builds are competing within the already oversubscribed field of Martial Striker, they've covered their bases as well as they can - options range from "hit people really hard in the face" to "grab people and hurt them" and finally "not get hit by people and subsequently hit them." In a world where martial characters have to compete with clerics pulling magic beams of light down from the heavens and barbarians morphing into predator beasts, they’ve got their work cut out for them to stand out from the crowd.

 

Martialists achieve this by placing their role as striker in the forefront of their character development – much like the fighter, they hit people, and the details can be worked out afterwards – and in play they operate in a style somewhere between an American football blitzer and a pro wrestler, getting to their intended target not by misdirection, stealth or teleportation but slamming into anything that gets in their way and chucking it aside en route.

 

It’s a welcome change of pace for the striker, but it’s one fraught with danger as the Martialist lacks an abundance of evasive powers.  Too often they are bogged down by the grunts that they wish to evade and their general badassery isn’t backed up by enough hitpoints to make secondary tanking an option.

 

That said, there are various cocktails of attacks and exploits that can be lined up into special moves – at first level it is possible - as an encounter power - to punch a creature in the face for double damage and get a 5ft bonus to an immediate jump check.  This power alone opens up some exciting tactics, and the various disabling and debuffing attacks can really ruin someone’s day.

 

The various options are certainly interesting, but let down somewhat by their names which range from anachronistic (Faceplant) to needlessly alliterative (Feast of Foot and Fist) to oddly artistic (Martialist as Vice) to uninspiring (Deliberately Slow) to unthreatening (Calming Push) to just plain daft (To Dance, Perchance to Die).

 

Feats

 

A huge list of feats accompanies the character creation rules giving a wide variety of options for character development, as long as those options fall within the bounds of “hit people harder with specific parts of my body.” There’s nothing in the way of character building in terms of rules, although the option for tieflings to nut people with their horns is a pleasing concept. Given the unarmed nature of the Martialist, many of their feats improve their damage dice and offer a straight mechanical benefit, superseding the usefulness of other, more characterful, feats.

 

Equipment

 

Also included are full magic item rules for martialists, unable as they are to use most magic armour and weapons.  Limited as they are to cloth and leather, most of their items are wrapped around a particular extremity and brought into violent contact with an assailant.  The list is comprehensive and well-thought out, although the multiple parts of the body used by martialists as requirements of certain exploits limit the overall effectiveness of any one magic item.

 

In closing

 

If you can’t wait until the release of the monk in PHB3 - and have a burning desire to punch things to death - then this class is a viable option. It’s functional enough and contains comprehensive information on how to include this new class into an existing campaign setting, but it’s stuck with an inescapable thirdpartyness, a lack of polish in both prose style and rule cohesion, that prohibits it from being a great supplement.

 

Double Acting

Double Acting is my favourite means of communication.  Any of your who've been in the room at the same time as ai_wintermute and myself will become aware of it; communicating as though the whole process is merely for other people's enjoyment.  In double-acting there is often a straight man and a funny man, and I was more often straight than funny, but the roles are fluid and more often than not you'll swap multiple times throughout. We love it when other people laugh or join in; I, of course, get too keen and start joking too hard, too fast, and Chris was always good at either keeping the reins on me or using my comedic spaz to boost the overall performance.

It got to the point when we'd do it when no-one else was around.  It was an art form, a means of constructing and spinning jokes from nothing, and we'd do it for the satisfaction of a job well done.  If it broke, we'd analyse where it stopped being funny, or what would have made it funnier.  There are echoes of it still in my speech patterns but it's why I'm so faltering, so inept at social interaction; only half of the conversational strength that I'd like to use is present.

Librarians

No-brainer, this one; Librarians are hot.

I mean, you know, not actual librarians.  Can't say that I've seen many attractive librarians, to be honest - Librarians here is a work of fetish, a tag for "women with long hair tied back maybe, white button up shirts, some form of black skirt of exciting tightness, and let's not forget the glasses." It's not an uncommon fetish, I believe. The Mage cabal I set up back in Apocalypse days was based solely around attractive women dressed as librarians following me around while I mashed stuff up with a hammer.  (Only lasted three games, apparently women don't like having to be in close proximity to something shouting that loudly and often)

British

I'm not patriotic by a long shot, never really got the concept to be honest, but I am in fact British and for some reason I felt it necessary to write this down on my interests list.  Really?  I just am British.  It's not a hobby.  I didn't put "being tall" or "hating Jeremy Kyle" on there, you know?  They're all just instrinsic parts of who I am.

Still, some British things are fantastic and I will collate a short list here, most are food -

Cream scones and strawberry jam
Fish and chips
Sitting on soft warm grass as the sun goes down and the whole world smells of summer, maybe there's a girl there too, why not
Excessive politeness
Bowler hats
Actually I've just sort of run out

Tea

Sad to say, but my love of tea (forged in the depths of first year to give me an excuse to talk to people) has all but abated thanks to tremendously poor tea at work and having to get up in the morning, meaning that coffee is now the order of the day.  I drink around five cups a day, the recommended maximum, mainly as a tool to stay interested at work.  Fascinating what enough caffiene will do to you.

Plus black coffee is better with cigarettes and the combination of both is the emotional equivalent of bloody kevlar.

Italian Food

Strange to limit myself so much, really.  Italian food's okay; hard pressed to say why, precisely, which is dull.  It's generally good.  By the way, you should check out my new interests page.  Got some far more interesting interests on there which I wish I was writing about now.

Firepower

I like guns. Not actual guns, mind - horrible things, they hurt a whole bunch of people and rarely make life better for anyone involved - but fake guns, man, they're the mutt's nuts.  I'm currently hovering somewhere between two revolvers (or one big revolver) and the good old-fashioned pump action shotgun as to which is the best.

In my head, I am generally carrying some sort of gun at all times.  You know, like a protagonist might.  Not in a creepy murderer way, you understand.  You are welcome to take me on in a pretend gunfight at any point you wish, but I warn you, I'm very quick on the imaginary draw.

Also good are weight of fire, like a full platoon of Imperial guard opening up or the delicate eggshell balance that is trying to operate a powerful NERF gun without it jamming.


Bacon

A common reason for not being vegetarian, I'm similarly in love with bacon.  It has been in three of the last four meals I have eaten. It rarely makes a meal worse, and if by some freak accident it does, I would argue that it's the meal's fault and you shouldn't malign bacon like that, you bastard, what's it ever done to you.

Recently I made leeks, bacon and cubed potato all fried up with a cheese sauce and it was so tasty I want to immortalise it in a pasty.

So, on a day off because I was too tired to move, I have -

- Slept two bonus hours (yay)
- Participated on a D&D rap battle on /tg/ that is still proceeding - I'm not very good, but i'm having a go
- Wrote up a load of Zombie rules but even I am tiring of fiddling with wordings
- Drawn a lady (Miss Yoko Matsugane, after a recommendation from the dude who draws Penny Arcade) from a photograph, not what's in my head, and it's worked out pretty well - doesn't look much like her but could pass for human, at least
- Not eaten enough food
- Drunk too much coffee

So, in short, very little.  But I have achieved some stuff, and that's a good thing.  Plus every day I come up with more horrible things to put my Dark Heresy players through.  I think I might bet getting tired of being one of those "nice" GMs.

In reaction to the dawning realisation that I am losing my creative nature, I am hereby to provisionally live during my free time according to the following mission statement:

Form opinions - discover stuff - get your creative faculties back - argue - make people laugh - be passionate about things - have a good time

These will be achieved through the following outlets (outlets subject to change at any given time).  If anyone has any advice on how they can achieved, please contact me.

1) Drawing - life drawing - learn how to draw faces, hands and feet with relative accuracy.  Also learn to draw in clean, anime-esque style.  Become confident enough to draw on clean A3 paper with a fineline sharpie.  Broaden range of potential composition and subjects.

2) Singing - jazz, blues, acoustic, whatever - sing, do it in front of people, become good enough to make singing in front of people a reality, join a band, join a choir, whatever.

3) Writing - read detective/horror/comedy/whatever books that I haven't read before, watch films, absorb as many new ideas and culture as possible, explore different forms of art (theatre, music, poetry, etc).

4) Self-image - get a haircut.  Modify the Wheel of Fortune tarot card art to my liking and have it tattooed inbetween shoulderblades.  Save money to buy decent pair of glasses - bold, thick-framed ones.

5) Smoke - well, inhale - buy a vaporiser and open up the world of smoking again.

6) Employment - apply for at least 1 new job a week, preferably in marketing/creative but admin would do.

7) Write - anything; plots, gear, fluff, stories, background, character sketches, comedy scenes, nerdcore rap lyrics, meandering free prose - write, all the time, write so it isn't sacred any more and flows like it used to.

8) Become aware - buy a newspaper occasionally, read it, form opinions of what you have read and discuss them with others.  Read the news on the internet.  Get a greater grasp on technology than you currently possess.

Hello

Today I walked around the city centre with a bunch of lovely gay people. 

There were only six people who didn't like us doing it (aside from the people who were stuck in buses, but w/e) and all they did was hold up signs with confusing slogans on it - general message is that we were going to go to hell, I think, someone was - but a lot of big lesbians blew them kisses or booed them, and I think we won overall as there were like six hundred people on our side and six on theirs. 

Although they had God on their side, and he must be at least 594 people.  Well, anyway.

There was dancing and drums and whistles and chips and apparently we won theatre tickets because we entered a raffle and yay.  It was an awesome and really positive day and a great turnout.

And tonight I will have enchiladas for tea, and tomorrow we are buying a tent.

Gosh, though, it's been a bloody age since I posted.  If one was to read my previous posts you would think that I've done nothing but get steadily more depressed since January!

Which is, actually, sort of true.  But not interesting.  Two weeks ago I had one of those revelatory moments while I was writing - proper, frenzied, you-could-do-this-in-a-film writing - and due to some arcane moving in the chemical tumbler lock of my consciousness, I worked out how to be okay again.  It faded - as revelations do, alas - but the echoes of it are there like a song I can't quite hear, and everything's doing better.  Not that you cared.  Anyway!  News!

I am going to start running a Dark Heresy radicals game, thanks to the gneral lack of giveafuck all round.  This will have some Serious Roleplay in it with Genuine Moral Decisions like, and I really hope that it works out.  I am currently trying to come up with some sort of horrible initiation ceremony for the acolytes, coupled with the horrible first mission.  My horror gaming abilities may come in well here, I reckon.

I had shaved my beard - gasp! - but you knew this, because I did it a month ago now.  But you may not have seen me since then, in which case hello, I have no beard.  Well.  I have a beard that outlines the edges of my massive face like some sort of hirsuite Maginot line, keeping the boundaries of my face in and everything else out.  Not that there is much of anything else in this world.

I am still not smoking - go me - and the pillar of sanity that smoking provided has now sort of been replaced with the pillar that not smoking provides, which is awesome but makes it significantly harder to get up some mornings.  Although not coughing up lung-jellyfish is always a good thing, and I can walk uphill now.

I have Actually Decided on the Actual Tattoo I am Probably going to get, and I'm not going to say what it is or post an image of anything because I am a) a bit poor and b) a bit of a wuss and I may well drop out, especially as the image is going to be larger than A5 size.  But it sums up what I think is awesome and what I think is important in one neat image.

You know what?  Being at work for a year really knackers your brain.  I can't write or argue properly anymore, which is a shame, because those are the two things that I used to do more than anything.  A full year of corporate nonsense has eroded the facilities I would have used to vocally disagree with people and then write about it, something which I was a big fan of back in my University days.  I think I am also less of a jerk, although how of a good thing that is I'm not entirely certain.

That'll do.  Next time I promise I'll have something interesting, just you wait and see if I don't.

Earlier on, a few posts back, I said that drew in the margins of bad novels.  This was a lie.  I was being poetic and if I ever find you writing or drawing on a book that you have not purchased exclusively to use for a scholastic course I  will HURT YOU.  That is not what books are for.  They are already written leave them alone what are you doing.

Rawkus!  Rawkus, mother-bitches, done up to the nines in suits and dresses.  Mad fun.

Apparently I was tremendously drunk.  I am working this out as I thought very few things happened at the Waterfront but as I piece together recollections by talking to more sober people, it is like finding polaroid photographs of the evening stuffed into a bag along with all my things.  I am like a character in a point-and-click game who has lost their memory.  It is lovely.

- I remember walking in; well, fucking storming in, I was up and drunk and blazing, done up in the waistcoat shirt etc, and was suddenly flanked by two odd-looking girls.  One had check marks shaved into the side of her head, the other ratty dreadlocks..  It was great - they stayed there for about three minutes before they realised just how damn drunk I was, it wasn't confidence, it was eight drinks and a suit, and politely fucked off to different parts of the room.

- Ben pushed me over.  This explains the way my the back of my head hurts, but not why both my elbows ache.  Perhaps I hit them dramatically on the floor, too.  Good work, Ben.  Normally I am quite hard to knock over; you must have caught me during a spin.

-  I kept spilling my beer.  That was quite amusing, I seem to recall.  Better than drinking much more of it, to be honest.

- I was dancing - well, you know, retard on fire, etc - and I threw my head back and it connected squarely with a girl's behind me.  I turned around to apologise and she hit me hard in the face.  I like her.  My nose may have bled.  I am sad that I will probably never get to congratulate her.

- I didn't smoke!  It has been one month and four days.  I miss it.  Sometimes I wish I could write it letters and beg it to take me back, but then it's not actually a person and can't really receive letters.

- I kept slapping Harriet in the face but that was alright, I think.  She didn't seem to mind.  She was probabaly hitting me as well.  I wouldn't do that sort of thing unprovoked.  Also apparently Bob went so far as to break up a localised mosh between the two of us, which explains why I remember shoving him out of the way at some point during the evening.  It was all good fun.  I reckon.  Wasn't it?

- I appear to have replaced most of the skin on my legs with bruises.

- I have not had a hangover like the one I experienced on Saturday in bloody years.  There was a wonderment to it; like breaking your leg and being impressed that such a horrible thing had happened.  I didn't feel wretched, but actively wronged, and managed to propel myself through the day by swearing and banging off nearby objects.  At one point I did actually crawl around my room.

But yes!  That was bloody awesome.  I perhaps should have switched to soft drinks as I hit the Waterfront, but hey, we all make mistakes.

Yeah, yeah you over there.  I managed to track down some things that you might like.  You might not.  I care not.

Firstly there are still some people who are not aware of cracked.com, which is sad because it is an sharply written humour site with many interesting articles.  If you find the longdark of endless Sunday afternoon too much to bear, have a look.  I've been reading it for the last two hours.

Secondly here are the Cunninglynguists, who are a charming rap three-piece from the South.  Their music is solid but I'm really in it for the name.  Have a listen; the sampling is pretty good.

Finally here is Subnormality, a webcomic.  It is not especially well-written, or funny, but it is enthralling and I read the entire lot in one go.  It is the comic equivalent of seeing an attractive woman at a coffee shop - you don't know her, but she's pretty, she's wearing a dress and talking to someone on the phone and you sort of watch her while you pretend to do whatever it is you're doing.  It's an odd biscuit.

Right.

'Night.

Alright, Goldstone, perhaps my music collection is a bit poor.  I have culled - I have actually deleted music that I own - in an attempt to hammer out something I'm not ashamed of.  And it worked!  Below is another one of those poems that everyone's bloody doing.  Behind a cut for anyone that doesn't want it cluttering their flist.

Maybe when the room is empty


( More of this bollocks? )

Music player on random - first lines of 20 songs are the poem, first line of the 21st is the title.

I've been watching your world from afar

( Read more... )

that the rain on the walk home last night was incredible

once I pulled back the hood on my jacket to feel it

it was like being touched by a lover

I think I love walking home more than I give it credit for

I'm sure you were all caring really hard, but I'm rather better now following existentialist experiment #1 - "Baaaaww" on Sunday night (and Monday morning).  I'm changing?  Clearly I should.  Life has changed around me and I am changing to fit the container in which I am placed.  Big surprise.  I'm not unchanging - I've changed a lot over the last four years of my life, and this is just another stage.  Was scary to realise it, though.

In others news I have contacts and while I can't really see as I well as I did, I do look a lot better as contacts fit my moon-face and glasses don't.  Sadly.  It has only taken me 17 years to realise that. 

I do not know how I will draw myself without glasses on.  (I am bad at eyes)

Dark Heresy went very indeed, in a "just as planned" sort of way, and the players seem peachy keen to rob everyone in the underhive and get them to kill each other, which is pretty much what I was after.

When I walk home I tend to smell of woodsmoke once I get in.  Seeing as I pass no fires this must be a spontaneously generated effect on account of my sexy and exciting demeanour.

If I had all the money in the world I devote most of it into researching hover technology.  And someone use said technology's advanced form to give me unlimited Mage Hand.

Seriously; I have never seen snow better than this.  Chris - down for the weekend to pack up his life in Norwich - and I ran around outside, stepping on pristine pavements with snow two inches deep.  Made snowmen on the tops of bins and gave them glass eyes and pegs for mouths.

Walked to town with Harriet and it swirled around us, proper snow like that in a film.  Not the sort of thing you want to do alone; you want someone there to appreciate it with you, or it feels terribly lonely and silent instead of joyous.  Flakes stuck to my coat awkwardly.  The streets are so clean, the roof of every building beautiful.  Trying to write poetically about snow seems trite, so I am only half-trying - I am not stopping myself, but I am refusing to overthink it.

Took pictures of streets that I have walked down every day and not thought about.  Wished for a paper cup of coffee to highlight the cold, for a cigarette and a wall to lean on.  Did without.

tl;dr - yai snow, want to smoke

I have had a poem in my head for three years and I cannot write it.  It is centered around two lines I thought about when I saw a girl in the waterfront at 80's night, back in first year, and those lines are

"and I want to lick the sweat
from your nicotine neck"

and the rest just sort of spirals around, amorphous, waiting to coalesce.  Could be interesting.

In other news drunk.

I walked home tonight with my coat flaring

and I sought out all the bars

wanted to feel the city wrap and pulse itself around me

I listened to music too loud on buds pushed too deep into my aching ears

and slipped through crowds, across pavements, down empty yellow-lit streets

and missed cigarettes with friends out the back of pubs

and smoke passed around a circle with the taste of red wine

and my lover

Not too long ago - on my first archive page, actually - I posted about starting a Dark Heresy campaign and it all going very well.  Well it is over!

It is the second game that I have been a part of that has actually come to a successful halt - the other being James Moran's SLA game where we waltzed off into an explosive, war-world sunset and became TV stars.

But yes - the players took out a titan with gumption, cunning, drop-pod assault and large psychoactive explosives.  Lots of running and shooting, and everyone made it to the end just in time to die.  Harriet's character made it off alive - just - on account of bringing a grav-chute.  Chris could float on account of his "Holy" sword, so he swan-dived off the flak cannons into history and both Graeme and Todd bit it as the titan exploded around them.  There was lots of narrative involved, but it went well.

I've never started an epilogue with "... they build statues in your honour."  It was great, and my players were happy, and i was happy, and the godforsaken ash world of Ivory is safe from Chaos at least until the next insurrection.

I'm restarting it as a gang war campaign, as a few of my players expressed interest in that and it sounds like a refreshing change of speed.  I look forward to seeing how they operate without running into every situation telling everyone that they are from the bleeding Inquisition, don't yew knew, and can they have all of your things.

There will be new characters, although a scarred Arbitrator with flowing hair and no memory of her past will probably be making an appearance.

just have sex already, what the hell is wrong with you

also -

can we please have an anime that is not set in a) giant robots b) a weird dystopian future or c) a school

that is all

love Grant

i am so bored i may gnaw off my own hand for a change of pace

from picturesforsadchildren.com