Even though they lived thousands of years ago, we’ve all heard of the legendary Spartans. Maybe you saw them in a movie, or on television, or read about them in a book, or just heard about them in history class, but chances are, you have a pretty good idea what and who the Spartans were.
There’s a reason why Spartans are so famous that they are remembered, even now, as paragons of war. Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta aims to allow you to bring a little piece of that infamous city-state and its warrior culture into your game. It might be as simple as an alternate class feature or two, or even just a Spartan trait, or it might mean rolling up a hoplite, a new base class introduced in this book which specializes in spear-and-shield combat and allows your character to make the most of shield wall tactics. The book even contains a short history section, giving background on Spartan culture and ideas for what Sparta might look like if the ancient world had had more of the elements of a standard fantasy game.
From the makers of Ancient Warriors: Way of the Ninja, and A Necromancer’s Grimoire: Marchen der Daemonwulf, Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta will leave you in no doubt: This is Sparta.
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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.
This pdf is 28 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page advertisement, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 23 pages of content for the Spartans.
After a short introduction as well as a short historical story, we are introduced to culture, religion and lifestyle of the Spartans and the peculiarities. This not being an historical exercise, the information is rather sketchy, elaborations are expanded to transform Sparta as a nation into a fantasy realm before introducing the spear-wielding Hoplite class. The class gets d10, a good fort-save, full BAB and no spellcasting. No information on how many skill-points per level the hoplite gets, though, essentially being a MAJOR glitch that makes the class, as written unusable.
Which is a pity, as the class uses the disciple/major disciple mechanic you'll know from e.g. SGG's different genius guide classes. We get 14 disciplines to choose from as well as 8 major disciplines. The class focuses, not surprisingly, on cooperative phalanx-formation, spears and tower shields. Unfortunately, though, neither the capstone ability, nor the rather bland disciplines really caught my interest.
Even worse, they are not balanced among themselves: Would you rather take a bonus feat or rerolls for ALL diseases and poison-saves? Thought so. The information on playing the hoplites and their lore-sections are ok pieces, but nothing to truly write home about.
The next section deals with alternate lass features. We get 2 Barbarian ones centering on being tough as nails, a level 20 bard performance that grants +4 morale bonus to atk, damage, AC and saves. I may be biased but I consider my Northlands-skald capstone much cooler - the Spartan bard's performance feels like a high-level buff and not like a true level 20-capstone.
The new Cavalier order, the order of Lycurgus, is unbalanced to the extreme, gaining an ability at 8th level that prevents the cavalier from being slain and instead drop to 1 HP, regardless of the damage. To add insult to injury, he can use this more often at higher levels.
The cleric's alternate battle blessings feel rather like bardic performances than cleric abilities to me, buffing fighting prowess via a burst of energy. Druids can get a rather bland bonus to survival for resist nature's lure. Fighters can specialize in a particular armor or give up one their bonus feats (one of their defining characteristics) for exploits that are generally a) more powerful (i.e. immunity to charm and compulsion) and b) should have been rather hoplite exclusives, as they detract from the unique feeling of being a Spartan warrior when made available to just about any fighter. Monks (and Rangers) can change evasion for durability, which does essentially the same for fort-based spells and effects and a lame 2 bonus against being nauseated and sickened.
Oracles gets the new mystery of Delphi - which actually is once again an example of the good design NNW is capable of: The oracle is very iconic and the abilities are all recognizable from Greek mythology -nice! Paladins can exchange smite for defensive abilities. The new rogue talents are nothing to write home about and enable the rogues to scavenge from the fighter exploits, further underlining characteristic abilities that enhance the iconicity of classes. Not my cup of tea. Sorcerors get a new bloodline ("Warrior's Blood") that makes you tougher. I'm not sure why a sorceror would take the bloodline, though: It had no truly outstanding power or spell.
Finally, the pdf provides 11 new traits, 3 general ones and 3 per upper and middle social class, while the lower class gets 2 traits. The 2 pages of traits are among the best content in this file.
Conclusion:
Editing is ok, I only noticed a minor glitch. Formatting, though has us without skills for the central base-class of the product, a devastating error that just should not happen. The pdf is bookmarked and comes with a printer-friendly version.
Oh boy. If you're even remotely familiar with Spartan culture and mentality, you won't have too much going for the first couple of pages. The Hoplite base-class unfortunately is unusable as written thanks to the lack of skill points per level in both pdfs and the disciplines feel unbalanced among themselves, offering very weak and very powerful choices. I won't start with the balancing with other classes. The alternate class-features left me cold due to being either unbalanced or bland with the sole exception of the extremely iconic Mystery of Delphi, which will remain the only piece I'll salvage from this pdf.
The traits are nice, but geared toward Sparta's class-system and thus only useful if you plan to implement the whole nation. As a historical perspective, the pdf falls short and does not offer any facts apart from the class-system you could not glean from "accurate" sources like 300. As a pure gaming supplement, I can't recommend it either, as both the spear-feats from KQ and 4WFG's strategists & tacticians offer better and more fulfilling takes on the spear-wielding warrior trope, which is a pity as personally I like them. I wanted this to be good, the hoplite be a winner. Unfortunately, I pronounce a final verdict of FAIL and award 1.5 stars, the 0.5 coming from the mystery, the low price and the traits. Nevertheless, I'll round down to one.
Me too, D_M. This was a sore disappointment and the worst file NNW has put out so far that I've read. (I steered clear of their take on the Ninja, so I can't comment on that one.)
Btw.: Have you seen my review on "The Spider God's Bride"? As a Necromancer Games-fan, you might enjoy the unofficial sequel to Ancient Kingdoms:Mesopotamia. :)
Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Here's my full review of the product (which was too long to fit into Paizo's review area):
Spartans have been in vogue around the game table ever since a certain movie gave us tailor-made gamer quotes like “Tonight we dine in Hell!” and “Spartans! Prepare for glory!” The archetypal real-world warrior culture, the warriors of Sparta are icons for those who want to play a martial class in their Pathfinder game. Canny players and GMs know, however, that there’s more to playing a Spartan warrior than the occasional tagline. That’s where Necromancers of the Northwest’s book, Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta, comes in.
Sons of Sparta comes in two PDFs, one being the main file and the other being the printer-friendly version thereof. The printer-friendly version is notable in that it removes the parchment-colored background that’s in the main file, and does away with a one-page advertisement for other Necromancers of the Northwest products. Otherwise, the two are identical.
The main file is twenty-eight pages long, though there’s one page each for the front and back covers, the OGL, and a page of ads. Full, nested bookmarks are present, so props are due there. However, for whatever reason the copy-and-paste function still returns a lot of gibberish in with the text, making it nigh-unusable. This is slightly better if you copy-and-paste from the printer-friendly version, but it’s still somewhat annoying if you want to copy a lot of what’s here (such as, say, for a character sheet). The few pieces of artwork in the book are public-domain images of Spartan warriors or other pieces that evoke a similar theme.
But enough with the technical overview, let’s review of the meat of the book itself. Onward, to glory!
After the introduction, the book opens with a transcription of a historical conversation between the Persian god-king Xerxes and a deposed Spartan king at the beginning of the Battle of Thermopylae. It’s an evocative story that sets the tone for most of the book.
Subsequent to this, we’re given an overview of historical Sparta itself, outlining things like the social classes of the people who lived there, their religious attitudes, how their economic and political systems worked, etc. Following this, some discussion is given to what Sparta would be like in a fantasy game world, with discussion given to questions of magic, demihumans, and monsters.
If these sound boring, or like wasted space, rest assured that they aren’t. What’s interesting about these is that the “fantasy Sparta” section flows smoothly after the “historical Sparta” one. In other words, both sections work together to present how Sparta would appear in your Pathfinder game, with the two overviews divided but clearly working together to paint a single picture. (And if the idea of putting Sparta in your Pathfinder game seems awkward, it shouldn’t; taking real-world cultures and putting an analogue of them – perhaps with a different name – into a campaign world has a very long tradition in tabletop RPGs.)
Following this, the book presents us with a base class for the archetypal Spartan warrior: the hoplite. It should be pointed out that the base class has all of the necessary information to make it playable (skill points, etc.) but also includes notations for things like their starting gold and usual starting age, which all too often are overlooked when new classes are introduced.
A full-BAB class, the hoplite’s main class feature is the Spartan Discipline ability that functions much like rogue talents in that, at every even level, the hoplite can choose from a list of abilities (with some advanced abilities being selectable at 10th level and above). Having looked closely at these abilities, none of them are particularly over- or underpowered. In fact, a great deal seem to be inspired by existing abilities in other classes, such as being able to re-roll a failed Will save, a +10 increase to base speed, immunity to fear, etc. Admittedly, there were one or two powers that seemed on the high end of the power scale, but only relatively so – yes, a +1 to all attack rolls is generous, but not game-breaking.
The other class features of the hoplite are similarly balanced and colorful. I found it exceptionally appropriate, for example, that hoplites can use the spear and longspear one-handed at 1st level, for instance, since that’s how those spears are handled in real life. Likewise, there are a number of shield-based abilities here as well, mostly gained by being adjacent to an ally – helpfully, these allies do not need to be hoplites themselves (something I was worried would be required). It was also nice to see abilities to make the tower shield more viable in combat (because, in all my years of play, I’ve seen the tower shield used exactly once, by a guy who was all defense and no offense).
I personally would have preferred to see some APG-style follow-up to this class, such as alternate favored class abilities, or some archetypes for this class, but those are extras whose lack of inclusion doesn’t detract from the class. Likewise, the book does provide some extras in terms of looking at what it means to play a hoplite in the game, including how they tend to relate to other classes and races, how NPCs view them, notable (fantasy) hoplites, and even a table of what you know about them on a Knowledge check.
Alternate class featured are provided in the following section, covering twelve classes (all but two of which, the cavalier and the oracle, are Core Rulebook classes). Interestingly, these aren’t presented as archetypes, but rather are collections of alternate class features, something I was slightly disappointed over – I’m of the opinion that alternate class features work better in packages than they do by letting players cherry-pick the best materials. But again, that’s a small complaint.
It’s in the favored class abilities that we see things swing a little wider on the balance scale. Again, I have to stress that none of these are broken nor unplayable – just that there are a relatively scant handful of options that are notably better or worse than existing options. For example, the bard can swap out their 20th-level power, deadly performance, for an ability to grant all allies +4 to their AC, attack and damage rolls, and saves. That’s great for everybody else in the party, but I doubt that the bard would want to give up a save-or-die effect for buffing everybody else, particularly when they already have (less powerful but still not-inconsiderable) buffing abilities. On the other side of the scale, the new sorcerer bloodline has, for its bloodline arcane, the sorcerer using a d8 Hit Die and a ¾ BAB, without having to give anything up. I haven’t playtested that, but it seems too good compared to other bloodlines (in 3.5, when Unearthed Arcana introduced that option, it lowered the sorcerer’s spells per day and spells known by 1 each, for example; though to be fair, 3.5 had a lower power level than Pathfinder does).
Having said that, most of what’s here is great material. The cavalier, for example, has a new order introduced, which among other powers lets them – just a few times per day – survive an otherwise-fatal blow, which instead reduces them to 1 hit point (and can’t be used for 1 minute after it’s been used). Balanced and effective. The cleric can lose channeling healing or harming energy to channel buffs or penalties instead (to their allies or enemies, respectively). The monk can swap out evasion for a power that’s identical but applies to Fort saves instead, etc.
To summarize all of the above, these alternate class abilities allow for a character to be much more martial than they’d otherwise be; in accordance with a character from Sparta.
The book’s last section covers new traits, which was fun to see as traits are one of the new parts of the game that I enjoy the most. Three general traits are presented, along with traits for each of the three social castes in Spartan society.
Again, there are good and bad points to these. Most traits (like feats) that I’ve seen usually provide a small bonus – having them provide too large of a bonus is too generous, while having them provide a bonus and a penalty is flavorful, but not beneficial enough. Again, those are the upper and lower ends of the zeitgeist of trait design, so breaking it may not result in a weaker character, but it makes some of these traits seem, on their face, sub-optimal.
And again, that doesn’t apply to most of these traits, either. Of the eleven traits here, having one that grants proficiency in leather armor, the buckler, and the longspear, for example, is perfectly in line with what traits should do, as is one that gives you a +1 Fort bonus to resist fatigue and a Strength 5 points higher for encumbrance purposes. It’s when a trait has you losing skill points to gain increasing weapon and armor proficiencies that these become sticky.
The traits, it should be noted, are the last section of the book, which is odd because the introduction says there’s also a new prestige class. Perhaps it’s dining in Hell?
Overall, Ancient Warriors: Sons of Sparta presents a good sourcebook for ideas on having Sparta – or some version thereof – in your game. More than just a new class, its holistic presentation encourages having an entire region like the historical warrior city-state in your campaign world, and does a good job presenting how it’d function in a high-fantasy setting. The new base class is a solid presentation that stands alongside the fighter, paladin, barbarian, and other martial classes in terms of how viable it functions. The alternate class features and traits may require some oversight, but for the most part are great new additions that helps to present how everyone would be in a military nation. If you want a martial character that will fight in the shade, make him one of the Sons of Sparta.
