When you have been Dungeon Mastering as long as I have, you can get quite bored with the way most gamers play the game. Roll dice, try to metagame the enemies weaknesses and exploit them with your supped up special attack or magical combo. But I continue Dungeon Mastering because I love finding and playing with the player who thinks outside the box and uses strategy and tactics to play the game.

I do not know what cool group Flynn Dielle first sprouted his creative brain, but it’s the kind of awesome character I love to design adventures for and the voice behind 4 Winds Fantasy Gaming’s Strategists & Tacticians The Definitive Guide to the Clever Warriors.

Strategists & Tacticians is surprisingly mechanic driven in its presentation. The 82 page PDF goes a different route than similar books, avoiding strategies and tactics for current class abilities and feats and instead presenting all new variations of them that support “creative” uses more so than the current batch. In what would first seem like an odd deviation comes across as a great idea. Instead of providing classes, feats and spells that rub the power ceiling, it goes the right of creating flavorful new toys that add diversity on the battle field.

For the Player There is a little something for every type of gamer in this book. For the most part, by using mechanics instead of flavor, it allows even the hack and slasher to find something he can use to add a bit more variety to his arsenal. Fighters will love the brutal feats that allow you to severe limbs effecting other enemies in several different ways. For those who really want a change, there are 2 new classes and 14 prestige classes that are quite unique. Jinx, a luck manipulating prestige class, is one of my favorites.

For the Dungeon Master Tactical Maneuvers have been done before, but they have a crisp and easy new presentation that bonds well with Pathfinders Combat Maneuver Bonus system. There is a great table on limb severing that should be used with caution. If your players react extremely negatively to losing items, imagine what they would do if they loose a leg. Thoughtfully, the author has included an appendix that provides some prosthetics.

The Iron word Strategists & Tacticians is an adventurous endeavor that slides into the strike zone by inches to provide a fun alternative to the power creeping game style.

This product is 82 pages. Cover, Title, credits, ToC, and introduction take up 6 pages.

Chapter 1 – Strategic Characters (16 pages) This chapter talks about how races view combat and variant class features.

Barbarian – replacing rage with a perfect calm. Bard – Bardic Weapon, replaces Bardic Knowledge and Lore Master. Allows the bard to learn some combat feats.

Bard – Violent Performance, replaces Bardic Performance and versatile performance. Allows the bard to do some performances while in combat.

Cleric – Divine Energy, replaces domains. Can learn one energy type spell(fire, acid, cold etc) each spell level from the Wizard spell list of the same level.

Druid – Trapped Route, replaces trackless step. Tracking a druid is harder with natural pitfalls along the way.

Fighter – Bonded Pet, replaces Armor training or weapon training. There own pet list, pet works like druid animal companion.

Monk – Wall Climbing, replaces Slow Fall. Bonus to climb checks and climbs faster.

Paladin – Divine Calling, replaces Divine Bond. Is spell like abilities of summon monster/Nature alley.

Ranger – Osirons, replaces favored terrain. Get's 0 level spells as if the ranger was a druid of equal level.

Rogue – Spell Resistance, replaces Evasion chain. Bonus to save vs spells of rogue level + chr mod.

Sorcerer – Learn Sorcery, replaces boodline. Gets 1 addition spell per spell level that works just like a wizard. Must study and memorize the spell, any spell in their spell book can be memorized.

Wizard – Intuitive wizard, replaces Arcane School. Can learn spells of 2 levels lower as spell like abilities. (1st level 2 cantrips, 3rd level 1 cantrip, 5th level 1 1st level or cantrip etc) These abilities may be used a number of times a day equal to chr mod. (I am assuming it should be 1 + chr mod or those with less than a chr 12 couldn't even use it)

New Classes Apprentice - This is a 1st level multiclass character template. With choices of what abilities they want to start with. Way to hard to try and explain here, but it is a interesting concept to starting as a dual class character.

Schooled Bard – d8, 6 skill points, smile weapons, light armor and shields. Medium Bab, 2 good saves. Not sure how to describe it beyond to say a variation of the existing bard class. I think I might like this idea more than the traditional bard.

Chapter 2 – Prestige classes (27 pages) They are all 10 level PrC's unless otherwise noted.

Armor Bonded – d10, 2 skills, all weapons and armor, fast BaB. They get better with armor and eventually can learn some special supernatural like abilities with their armor. Not sure what to say about this class, other than it is very different.

Blood Caster – d6, 2 skills, simple weapons, low BaB. + 7 caster levels. This class can turn blood aka HP into blood points to cast more spells. They can also steal blood from others and get limited healing abilities. At higher level they can steal spells form others and heals them. I love the idea of this class.

Butcher – d8, 4 skills, all weapons, light armor, medium BaB. This is a class with a lot of abilities to sever limbs from others. I think this class might be ok if you use the optional severing limbs rules later in the book, I think it would be over powered though if the rules are not used and might be anyways. Players will hate facing this class. I am not to sure about the class.

Crowd Displeaser – d8, 6 skills, simple weapons, light armor, medium BaB. +1 caster level each level. In short this is a bard type PrC that instead of buffing their friends, debuffs the enemy. I like this class as a option for Bards.

Daredevil – D8, 4 skills, simple weapons, medium BaB. Gets some special attacks and abilities. Most of which are unarmed in nature. Another class I am not sure how to explain. Kinda a unorthadoxed monk. My first thought was Jackie Chan.

Expert Fighter – D10, 2 skills, all weapons and armor, Full BaB. Gains a bonus feat each level. A short 3 level PrC for those wanting some extra fighter combat feats.

Holy Striker – D8, 2 skills, simple weapons, all armor, medium BaB. 10 level PrC that adds 8 to existing spell casting levels. The class abilities are combat focused, good for a cleric wanting to dip into the paladin arena with out taking paladin levels and losing the cleric caster levels.

Ioun Angel – D6, 4 skills, simple weapons, medium BaB. +1 caster level each level. Has special abilities with Ioun stones, being able to have them orbit other parts of the body for different bonuses. This is a class that relies on having ioun stones use all their powers.

Jinx – D8, 4 skills, simple weapons/light armor, medium BaB. + 7 caster levels. Has curse like abilities in a radius around them, or to exempt some people or have it last after leaving the area awhile. This makes a interesting NPC, but not a PC. Reason is many of the abilities effects friends and foes. I just don't see most players being ok with having their characters effected by someone playing a Jinx in the same group. So I say neat idea but poorly implemented from a PC point of view.

Land Shark – D10, 4 skills, some weapons(own list)/Light and medium armor, full BaB. Gets shark like abilities and can get a flying shark animal companion that can breath air. Yes I really said a flying shark animal companion. This is one of the weirdest idea's for a class/PrC I have ever seen.

Monster Within – D6, 2 skills, simple weapons, low BaB. +9 caster levels. When casting spells must make a will save. If failed that spell becomes a trigger spell. When a trigger spell is cast the caster gets temporarily transformed, as they level there is more abilities added when they transform. If I am reading it right eventually most spells will become a trigger spell.

Pikeman – D10, 2 skills, all weapons, light armor, full BaB. Learns a bunch of special attacks to use with spears and polearms.

Righteous Rager – D10, 4 skills, all weapons, light/medium armor and full BaB. +1 caster level per level. Kinda a barbarian cleric, they get some rage powers and related abilities.

Roughhouse – D10, 4 skills, improvised weapons, full BaB. A improvised weapon fighter, more of a tavern brawler based class. With a list of improvised weapons and dmg they do.

Chapter 3 – Options (14 pages) There is 56 new feats in this section. They range from good to meh. There is 21 new spells. For the most part the spell seem good, a couple of them deal with the lose of limbs or the exploding of limbs. I did like the teleporting strike spell.

Chapter 4 – Tactical Maneuvers (6 pages) There is 12 new combat maneuvers one can attempt, about half of them are things to do with ones open off-hand. It also has sections on what it means when one loses a body part, listing the drawbacks and penalties from it.

Chapter 5 – Flynn Dielle (2 pages) The NPC that narrates the book. It has a full stat block and advice how to use him in your games.

Appendix 1 – Prosthetics (7 pages) Replacement limbs for those that have lost them. This is the same ones from Luven's 4 winds equipment book though slightly updated for use with the limb lose rules in this book.

It closes with OGL, 1 page of ads, 1 blank page and back cover (4 pages)

Closing thoughts, All and all this is a good book. There is a few PrC's that are just really out of left field. I am sure some will love them and some will hate them because they are so … odd. This is I think so far the best artwork in a 4 winds product to date. I don't think it was as good as Luven's but then that would be hard to top. I do think it is a good book, but the title I think is a little misleading. The reason I say that is that about a third of the book is actually PrC's. Now I don't have a problem with PrC's but thats not really what I think of when I read the title. I think the book could have used more tactical maneuvers and some group tactical maneuvers like pack attack (as a example). With that said I am giving the book 4 stars, most of what there is, is good.