Ghostwind
First Post
I’m a fan of armament. Just look at my review of E.N.Arsenal - Spiked Chain. However, I was not a fan of Bastion Press’ Arms & Armor book released back in the old days of 3.0 in 2001. The 2001 release had some serious balance issues, introducing, for example, metal-based armors with arcane spell failure of 10% (so mithril versions would have no ASF), and martial weapons that were essentially identical to existing martial weapons, but weighed a little more and dealt +1 or +2 damage.
This is not the case in the revised edition.
First of all, this is a complete book of arms and armor. It really takes advantage of the Open Game License and includes all the weapons & armors from the core rules, as well as compiling magic item abilities from a wide variety of OGL sources. The table for weapon stats is four pages long, and broken up by type (Simple, Martial, Exotic) as well as size (Light, One-Handed, Two-Handed). Every weapon has a short paragraph of descriptive text, even those with no special abilities, making those that are not illustrated easy to imagine. However, these descriptions stretch for 20-some odd pages, and to find the stats for a weapon you find interesting, you often have to guess where it will turn up on the four page table (One-Handed Exotic, or Two Handed Martial, take your best guess, and then flip through the table to actually find it).
The real strength for weapons is not the weapons themselves, but the massive collection of magic weapon qualities. 23 pages of weapon qualities follow, in proper 3.5 formatting regarding creation rules and how they radiate magic for a detect magic. There are still a few weapon qualities in here that I would balk at including in a game, like Stunning: When scoring a critical hit against an opponent, a stunning weapon stuns him for one round, causing him to drop any held items. Creatures immune to critical hits or stunning take no effect from this enhancement. I find this a little potent in play when combined with a keen scimitar, especially for a +1 weapon enhancement. However, a vast majority of these are well-balanced, well thought-out, and well-described in 3.5 rules terms. The abilities don’t feel like they had to be ‘kludged’ into the system, but were written by people who know how the system interacts with itself. These are followed by 20 pages of specific magic weapons including a few artefacts. These are good examples of weapons crafted with the abilities from the prior section, as well as some weapons that have abilities that would be harder to calculate using the basic rules for determining price and requirements of creation.
The armor section is a nice improvement over the 3.0 edition. Armors fit in nicely to the statistics of the armors presented in the core rules (and in fact, the tables and listings all include these armors), without any outstanding anomalies. However, there are some issues remaining with items such as spaulders (an ‘extra’ that can be worn over light and medium armor) - in this case, spaulders add their armor bonus to the armor bonus of the armor in question, and adds to the armor check penalty, arcane spell failure and reduces the max dex bonus. But there is no listed armor bonus, so wearing them provides a host of penalties and no benefit. In its own way, I see spaulders as an issue anyways, since rules are not included for modifying these armor ‘extras’ by making them of mithril or other special materials.
This chapter then provides rules for using armor as DR, effectively dividing the armor bonus in half, but also providing DR equal to the other half of the old armor bonus.
We then get 18 pages of magic armor qualities, similarly done to the ones in the weapons chapter, followed by a selection of specific armors.
The next chapter is dedicated to special materials, although it does not include mithral, adamantine and darkwood, much to my surprise after the liberal and useful inclusion of core weapons and armor as well as the magical qualities thereof.
Scion classes and legendary weapons are provided next, which are obviously an offshoot of the scions from Unearthed Arcana, and in turn from Swords of our Fathers and Staves of the Ages by TGM. I was never a huge fan of these class mechanics, but I know a lot of people who are, and I understand the appeal, especially from a storytelling perspective. Ending this chapter are rules for forging outsider weapons (weapons made from imprisoned outsiders) - I believe these rules are drawn and modified from the rules in Arcana: Societies of Magic, but I sold my copy of said book on eBay a few years ago and don’t have it to compare anymore. These are good rules, and I’m glad to have them back.
The book finally ends with 12 pages of magic constructs including the potent golem armor as seen in Oathbound and the original Arms & Armor (the original illustration of golem armor is obviously a precursor to the Black Flock of the Forge). Finally, a two-page index is attached, although it doesn’t include the individual weapons and armors such as ‘chain shirt’ and ‘longsword’.
Also worth mentioning is that the Section 15 of the Open Game License takes half a page in very small print. A lot of third-party books were used in the process of collecting and writing the material in this volume.
In all, this book is very satisfying, and easier to use than From Stone to Steel, which replaced the original Arms and Armor at my gaming table. There is one design choice used in both editions (and stone to steel) which has bothered me that I feel a need to get off my chest, however. Because there are so many pages of weapon and armor descriptions, it would have been a lot more friendly to have included the weapon’s or armor’s statistics after the description as well as in the table at the beginning of the chapter. This would have made reading the book a lot more satisfying overall. This is my primary complaint about this book and Stone to Steel - more companies should include the statistics block after the description, such as in E.N.Publishing’s E.N.Arsenal Spiked Chain.
This book rates a very high 4-point-something, so I’m giving it a 5. It has definitely replaced both Arms & Armor 3.0 and From Stone to Steel at my gaming table. Plus it is a nice 176-page hardcover, and I love hardcovers and PDFs, both are nearly invincible, unlike perfect-bound books. Makes for a good tool when you need to keep your players in line.
This is not the case in the revised edition.
First of all, this is a complete book of arms and armor. It really takes advantage of the Open Game License and includes all the weapons & armors from the core rules, as well as compiling magic item abilities from a wide variety of OGL sources. The table for weapon stats is four pages long, and broken up by type (Simple, Martial, Exotic) as well as size (Light, One-Handed, Two-Handed). Every weapon has a short paragraph of descriptive text, even those with no special abilities, making those that are not illustrated easy to imagine. However, these descriptions stretch for 20-some odd pages, and to find the stats for a weapon you find interesting, you often have to guess where it will turn up on the four page table (One-Handed Exotic, or Two Handed Martial, take your best guess, and then flip through the table to actually find it).
The real strength for weapons is not the weapons themselves, but the massive collection of magic weapon qualities. 23 pages of weapon qualities follow, in proper 3.5 formatting regarding creation rules and how they radiate magic for a detect magic. There are still a few weapon qualities in here that I would balk at including in a game, like Stunning: When scoring a critical hit against an opponent, a stunning weapon stuns him for one round, causing him to drop any held items. Creatures immune to critical hits or stunning take no effect from this enhancement. I find this a little potent in play when combined with a keen scimitar, especially for a +1 weapon enhancement. However, a vast majority of these are well-balanced, well thought-out, and well-described in 3.5 rules terms. The abilities don’t feel like they had to be ‘kludged’ into the system, but were written by people who know how the system interacts with itself. These are followed by 20 pages of specific magic weapons including a few artefacts. These are good examples of weapons crafted with the abilities from the prior section, as well as some weapons that have abilities that would be harder to calculate using the basic rules for determining price and requirements of creation.
The armor section is a nice improvement over the 3.0 edition. Armors fit in nicely to the statistics of the armors presented in the core rules (and in fact, the tables and listings all include these armors), without any outstanding anomalies. However, there are some issues remaining with items such as spaulders (an ‘extra’ that can be worn over light and medium armor) - in this case, spaulders add their armor bonus to the armor bonus of the armor in question, and adds to the armor check penalty, arcane spell failure and reduces the max dex bonus. But there is no listed armor bonus, so wearing them provides a host of penalties and no benefit. In its own way, I see spaulders as an issue anyways, since rules are not included for modifying these armor ‘extras’ by making them of mithril or other special materials.
This chapter then provides rules for using armor as DR, effectively dividing the armor bonus in half, but also providing DR equal to the other half of the old armor bonus.
We then get 18 pages of magic armor qualities, similarly done to the ones in the weapons chapter, followed by a selection of specific armors.
The next chapter is dedicated to special materials, although it does not include mithral, adamantine and darkwood, much to my surprise after the liberal and useful inclusion of core weapons and armor as well as the magical qualities thereof.
Scion classes and legendary weapons are provided next, which are obviously an offshoot of the scions from Unearthed Arcana, and in turn from Swords of our Fathers and Staves of the Ages by TGM. I was never a huge fan of these class mechanics, but I know a lot of people who are, and I understand the appeal, especially from a storytelling perspective. Ending this chapter are rules for forging outsider weapons (weapons made from imprisoned outsiders) - I believe these rules are drawn and modified from the rules in Arcana: Societies of Magic, but I sold my copy of said book on eBay a few years ago and don’t have it to compare anymore. These are good rules, and I’m glad to have them back.
The book finally ends with 12 pages of magic constructs including the potent golem armor as seen in Oathbound and the original Arms & Armor (the original illustration of golem armor is obviously a precursor to the Black Flock of the Forge). Finally, a two-page index is attached, although it doesn’t include the individual weapons and armors such as ‘chain shirt’ and ‘longsword’.
Also worth mentioning is that the Section 15 of the Open Game License takes half a page in very small print. A lot of third-party books were used in the process of collecting and writing the material in this volume.
In all, this book is very satisfying, and easier to use than From Stone to Steel, which replaced the original Arms and Armor at my gaming table. There is one design choice used in both editions (and stone to steel) which has bothered me that I feel a need to get off my chest, however. Because there are so many pages of weapon and armor descriptions, it would have been a lot more friendly to have included the weapon’s or armor’s statistics after the description as well as in the table at the beginning of the chapter. This would have made reading the book a lot more satisfying overall. This is my primary complaint about this book and Stone to Steel - more companies should include the statistics block after the description, such as in E.N.Publishing’s E.N.Arsenal Spiked Chain.
This book rates a very high 4-point-something, so I’m giving it a 5. It has definitely replaced both Arms & Armor 3.0 and From Stone to Steel at my gaming table. Plus it is a nice 176-page hardcover, and I love hardcovers and PDFs, both are nearly invincible, unlike perfect-bound books. Makes for a good tool when you need to keep your players in line.
