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OGL Universal Sword
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$4.25
Publisher: Mob United Media
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by Sean H. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 10/30/2006 00:00:00

Universal Sword: Refined Swordfighting for All Characters by Mob United Media is a sourcebook on swords and historical sword fighting techniques for the D20 System. Universal Sword is a 18-page document (16 after cover and OGL). The layout is fairly clean but unexciting and the artwork (aside from the cover) is black and white clip art, mostly photographs of swords or Japanese prints. No printer friendly version is provided, but the artwork is not extensive so that should not cause any excessive ink to be spilt.

Universal Sword is designed as both a sourcebook about the sword and about how more actual swordfighting technique can be used to make D20 sword fights more exciting. After a brief introduction about what the book is for, it moves into the anatomy of the sword and how these parts can be used. This section is quite interesting but would have benefitted from a few more illustrations. Scattered throughout this section are new maneuvers that use parts of the weapon (such as hilt punch) and feats that build off the new maneuvers. This section also has rules for weapon customization and modifications and for very poor quality swords (or SLOs ?sword-like objects?). The work concludes with sword techniques, new maneuvers that any character using a sword can perform, such as lunge or parry, again with new feats to support these maneuvers.

This is a very interesting document and it has many good ideas, unfortunately they are poorly presented and the layout is not conducive to finding anything easily. This work needs:

? An illustration of a sword with its part clearly labeled, preferably for the swords of several cultures. ? A master list of the feats presented, their prerequisites and a summary of what they do. ? The feats need to be consolidated so the feats that give minor bonuses (too minor to make them worthwhile to take) are rolled into wider feats (such as ?Basic Swordplay?, ?Thrusting Swordmanship? or other such titles).

This work has a lot of potential, but it has not yet reached it. There is interesting information for those who wish to bring more depth to the swordplay in their campaign, but it is ill-organized. Hopefully Mob United Media will produce a second edition of this work that will be easier to use as they obviously enjoy the subject.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Creator Reply:
Thanks for your feedback. I'd just like to note that bonus stacking, as a key d20 design feature, isn't something to take lightly. That's why some of the bonuses are conservative, especially when it comes to feats that are a part of a tree. To see the line as it evolves, I suggest you take a look at Universal Fist and future Universal Combat supplements.
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OGL Universal Sword
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