There are some really solid and well-thought feats & weapons in this inexpensive little PDF. The mechanics used to represent fencing are great and could easily be adapted to fighting styles such as Sword & Board with some ingenuity.
An affordable must have for swashbucklers and bards. I'd like to see further supplements in this vein.
Since adding the combat pad to my 7-player D&D 3.5 game, I have noticed a remarkable increase in organization when it comes to ensuring everyone gets their proper turn in combat. In addition, now that there's a way to track the delaying and readying of actions, the players are making greater use of such tactics.
The only changes I would like would be for the "Combat Pad" header and the "open mind games" footer to cut into the useable area less. With 7 characters in my party, that initiative column could really use the extra 2-inches that would liberate. Similarly, the Notes box could be made taller and wider by extending the work-surfaces closer to the margins.
A sturdier backing would be great so that the pad could be leaned up against a stack of books without flexing too much as You try to move the magnets.
Lastly (and this is a personal preference more than a shortcoming of the product) I would prefer to have permanent sliders running in tracks for the round and turn indicators. Of course, that would be more difficult to manufacture and increase the price so it's not that big of a deal.
Even though there is room for improvement, I still have to give this a 5-star simply because of the sheer positive impact on my game!
I just purchased this book yesterday at my FLGS and I'm very impressed by the quality of the map designs. There are a total of 5 sites: 2 large castles, 1 medium-sized castle, a tall, thick citadel and smaller keep.
The two large castles are vast sites. The first has a total of 7 levels (2 basement levels, 4 floors and the parapets). Each level of this keep is spread across 2 pages.
The second large castle has 4 levels (3 floors plus parapets) but each floor takes up 4 pages!
For those of You who will want to scan the maps, the taller castle has a generous gutter between the pages. The gutter is narrower on the 4-page levels of the shorter castle but it's still sufficient. The maps for the other 3 sites will be easier to scan as You won't need to stitch the images together.
I found that a 300 dpi scan followed by the Despeckle and then Reduce Noise filters in Photoshop produced a passable battle-map at 72dpi. (72dpi makes the grid print as 1" squares.)
In addition to the excellent maps (i.e. the "crunch"), the author also presented a good deal of "fluff" to go along with each site. Each castle is described in first-person narrative by a resident or visitor who even describes some of the people who live there or the history of the place as they know it. The inclusion of such a treatment of each site (complete with statted NPCs) was a pleasant surprise.
Something else I appreciate even more was that the maps and NPC/histories were not inextricably linked. In otherwords, unlike with trying to retool a WotC-published module, the light treatment of the sites means that the DM/GM won't need to spend ages crossing out the proper names of locations, deities and NPCs that might not exist in their world. In fact, this is partly what drew me in. There was enough flavor there to inspire me to contemplate possible settings and adaptations for my own campaign world without so much of someone else's heavily entrenched story that I felt stifled.
When they say wet erase ONLY they mean it. I just had to get rid of my mat that I had for the past 15 years after one of the kids I'm teaching to play D&D thought they could use dry-erase markers on it (like we do on the Flip Mats). :(
The greater size and soft, rollable nature of these mats are nice but I'm not going to replace my old one because there's just too great a risk of botching the markers again. Plus it's kind of nice being able to use my whiteboard and Sharpie markers on the flip mats. If only I could have it both ways...
