Sons of Sparta by Necromancers of the Northwest
The Product is 28 pages long and starts with a cover and credits page, there is no Table of Contents but the pdf is heavily bookmarked.
Forward/A Short Story (2 pages) The short forward functions a the actual introduction, explaining the contents of the book, (and promising a prestige class that doesn't appear in the book!) and offers a brief glimpse into the spartan mindset, A Short Story uses a conversation Herodotus' history of the Persian wars as its source, which while the conversation used is shortened and edited for clarity it seems to have thees and thous thrown in just for show and plain English may have been better for getting there points across.
Introduction (5 Pages) Unless they meant to call this chapter An Introduction to Spartan Culture, it comes across as slightly misnamed as this is a brief overview of Spartan culture as opposed to a quick, concise mission statement about the book, which was actually the forward. As a quick intro to the Spartans it works, but offers no detail on how or where to find more, or what sources they used to get there info, which is a must for any work based on history, so readers know where to go to find more info. The last page and a half is dedicated to a very brief overview of 'fantasy' Sparta giving quick hints on how to adapt Spartans to a fantasy world.
The Hoplite (6 pages)Where most of the crunch of this document comes from, a base class that recreates the feel of the Spartan warriors and there deadly phalanx formations. The main problem with this class from the start is the fact it focuses strongly on having a group of people fighting adjacent to each other, which goes against the grain of how most Pathfinder combat goes down. It's a full BAB class, with the exact same saves as the fighter, and class abilities that alternate between gaining set Greek Flavored combat abilities one level and 'Spartan Disciplines' which amounts to either a new combat feat, or Greek inspired rogue talent like mini feats, half of which are arbitrarily named “Spartan”-whatevers, which in a class ability named “Spartan Discipline” is a little redundant and brings to mind some of the more brainless lines from The 300. Other then this there main abiity seems to be the ability to use spears as a one handed weapon. Despite these gripes it seems to be a fairly balanced class, though I believe it really should have been presented as either an Alternate Class of Fighter or a Fighter Archetype, with the Spartan Disciplines statted out as new Combat Feats, along with an additional feat allowing the use of the spear as a one handed weapon.
Alternate Class Features and Traits (10 Pages) Rather then following the Pathfinder concept of Archetypes this product resurrects the Alternate Class Feature concept espoused by 3.5 to make more Spartanish versions of the Base and Core classes, and almost every class gets its own updated feature, except for the Alchemist, Summoner, Witch and Wizard and aside from a grossly unbalanced Sorcerer bloodline all of the abilities seem to be well balanced and flavorful, though some of the abilities, such as the Armor Familiarity seem more powerful then the abilities they replace, which may tilt some things out of whack at higher levels. The chapter ends with a page and a half of Traits, which seem to be somewhat weak against those presented in the APG, many just giving +1 to one to two skills, without adding one of them to the Class Skill list, which seems to be the Pathfinder standard.
The product ends with an Ad, the OGL and a Back Cover (3 pages)
Promised Prestige class (0 Pages) Though promised in the foreward no prestige class appears in this pdf, maybe they forgot to put this in? Or perhaps they ran out of room? Either way they should have removed the reference to this from the Forward.
Closing Thoughts: The pdf attempts to reproduce the look of the 3.5 books with parchment covered backgrounds and arcane looking cover, but the art overall has a very sparse feel to it, and some of it is low quality. The book achieved it's goal in presenting a taste of Sparta into your fantasy game, but I firmly believe that many of the things presented could have been done better with either Archetypes or Feats. All in all I have to say that while not a Great product the book does a fair job of presenting itself to the public, and may work to inspire some folks to build a very interesting campaign, so all in all 3 stars.
