Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 793
EAN num: 9780786918294
ISBN number: 0786918292
Label: Wizards of the Coast
Manufacturer: Wizards of the Coast
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 96
Printing Date: January 13, 2001
Publishing house: Wizards of the Coast
Sale Popularity Level: 179937
Studio: Wizards of the Coast
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Combat isn't everything -- it's the only thing.
The masters of armed and unarmed combat, fighters and monks, come into their own in this book. It's packed with ways to customize fighter and monk characters, including:
New feats, prestige classes, weapons, and equipment
Information about special organizations such as the Red Avengers and the Knight Protectors
Maps of locations that fighters and monks frequent: guard towers, monasteries, and a gladiatorial arena
Indispensable to both players and Dungeons Masters, this book adds excitement to any campaign.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
-
While I don't think you have to run out and get this supplement, I also feel like it adds a lot to the game. Not only are there some new feats, equipment, and prestige classes, but of even greater value are some of the sections which discuss new spins on existing rules. There's a few pages, for example, which go into the ways in which large fighters(or monks... scary), such as giants, can use the class feats and abilities to make the most of their size. For me, just the fact that I took another look at the existing rules would've made it worth the money I spent.
Rated by buyers 
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Sword & Fist is a neat book, and for 10 bucks, i would have considered it an excellent buy. But unfortunatly, for 20 bucks, it is highly over priced.
There are some new feats in here that are pretty neat, but most of the feats are geared towards Monks. Some feats also have no value whatsoever, such as "Dirty Fighting" which lets you make a single attack as a full-round action, adding +1d4 to the damage.
The prestige classes are either excellent or horribly worthless. My personal favorites though, is the Weapon Master and Duelist. All the others are generally meant for certain organizations, or as antagonists, such as the Ravagers, the Red Avanger, and the Ninja of the Crescent Moon.
The tactics section is utter garbage. It just gives you the "proper usage" of feats like Cleave and Spring Attack. It also gives out pointers as the hit-ratio percentage of using the monk's 'Flurry of Blows.' Theres also some strategies about using Monstrous Fighters and Monks and mounted opponents and such.
One fine section of the book, which is the new weapons and equipment, was pretty intriguing. They seem more powerful then the weapons in the Player's handbook, but all the ones represented in SaF are exotic weapons, and thus require the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat. The mercurial swords, Whip Daggers, and the Orc Shotput are some definite winners.
Overall, a useful book, but dont pay 20 dollars for it.
Rated by buyers 
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I found that this book contained everything I've been looking for: great new weapons, very useful feats, and lots of new prestige classes (I always wanted to make a Samurai!) "Sword and Fist" also contains various buildings which can be useful for DMs to base, for instance, a guard tower or an elf house on. If there is anything I was dissapointed about was how little information there was on chariots, but then, the book would also be better a thousand pages long. FIVE STARS!
Rated by buyers -
Sword and Fist is the very first book in one of the worst series of supplements to ever be released for D&D.
Sword and Fist has the following significant problems:
1) There are six pages of errata for a 95 page book.
2) An excessive amount of space is wasted in repetitive charts.
3) The feat section is a handful of feats that seem to have been chosen at random for their "cool" factor.
4) Many of the feats are either incredibly useful, or not useful at all. For example, Power Lunge could allow a third level character to inflict 14 extra points of damage with a single attack while on the other hand Dirty Fighting requires that a character forego all his extra attack to get 1d4 extra damage. These benefits are not equal in any way, shape or form.
5) Some of the prestige classes, like the Fist of Hextor and the Ravager, absolutely can not be used by a player character, so why are they present in a player oriented book?
6) Other prestige classes, like the Duelist, Devoted Defender, Ghostwalker, and Gladiator are obviously copies of movie characters without giving any credit to the source of inspiration.
7) Some of the prestige classes, like the Fist of Hextor, Knight Protector of the Great Kingdom, Ninja of the Crescent Moon, Order of the Bow Initiate, Red Avenger and Warmaster are tied to specific organizations and/or locations. It simply makes no sense to put them in what should be a relatively generic source book. For example, the Warmaster and the Knight Protector should be in a supplement for the Kingdom of Furyondy or the Great Kingdom respectively.
8) The organization section takes some of the organizations from the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer and rewrites them, and then adds new organizations that have nothing to do with the World of Greyhawk. Focusing either on Greyhawk material or on generic material would have greatly improved the book.
9) The "Game within the Game" chapter is just a basic tutorial on tactics. Not very interesting and it's recommendations are mediocre at best.
10) The tools of the Trade section is probably the single worst section of the book. The stats for most of the weapons are wrong, and many of the weapons are either bizarre, inappropriate or both. The "cool" mercurial weapons are a joke, because mercury reacts with steel to create a brittle alloy. Thus the weapons are not only impractically difficult to manifacture, they'd be worthless in combat.
11) This is a player oriented book, thus there is no reason for any magic items to be in the book at all.
On the upside:
1) The Cavalier, Duelist, and Weapon Master are among the best prestige classes in this entire series. They are generic enough to be adapted to any campaign world, and useful enough to be worth the costs to a variety of character types.
Overall, I received the impression that the author did not try to write "a good book", but merely one that was "good enough". He failed. I heartily recommend to anyone who is thinking of buying this book:
Save your money and buy something good.
Rated by buyers -
Honestly the only reason to buy this book (or any of the Class Guidebooks)is for the new Feats and Prestige Classes. Instead of creating different books for the different Player Classes they should have just created a Feats and Prestige Classes book.... I'll never understand why a flimsy little paperback, black-and white book like this cost as much as the core rulebooks which are hardcover and have colour art. So ends my gripe session.
Now the good things about this book are indeed the new feats and prestige classes. They really let you customize your character to get just the Fighter or Monk character that you want. Want to play a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon style of Monk? No Problem. There is a Prestige Class for it. How about a true blue Cavalier... again, no problem. By adding Prestige Classes that a Monk can freely multiclass with give a little more depth to a terribly limited character class (by the Core Player's Handbook all Monks have pretty much the same abilities).
I'd have rated this product higher if only Wizards of the Coast didn't try to gouge us gamers with the insanely high price.
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