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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nightchilde-2" data-source="post: 2011862" data-attributes="member: 4109">Arms & Armor 3.5Let me start off this review by saying that I don't allow many 3rd party books in my game. Tome of Horrors II and the Creature Collections are about it. And now, Arms & Armor 3.5. I had read some good stuff about the book, checked out other reviews online and looked at Bastion Press's free sample of the book. Everything I read lead me to want to buy it, and I wasn't disappointed. Essentially, this book is, as one might expect, chock full of weapons, armor and magic items. It's hardcover, and the interior art is black and white. While I'm not a big fan of the artwork, I bought this book to be a sourcebook for weapons and armor, not purty pictures. That said, I do wish more of the weapons were illustrated, but it's not enough to make me not recommend the book. Also, while there's very little whitespace, it's sometimes difficult to tell just exactly where one chapter ends, as the titles for the different chapters are relatively small and, if you're not paying attention, you may find yourself in a new chapter. Again, not really a biggie as far as the utility of the book goes. Chapter 1: Weapons Yep, you can easily guess what chapter is about. Sharp pointy things to make soft squishy things bleed. Okay, to be fair, they're not all sharp or pointy (some are blunt). Whatever, there's a metric assload of weapons here. The chart itself is in itty bitty print and takes up pages 6 thru 9. Pages 10 through half of page 34 give the descriptions of the weapons. As a nice touch, the weapons from the PHB (sorry, sorry..I meah the SRD..yeah..that's the ticket) are also listed. While this is a little repetitive, I like it because it means all of my weapons choices are in one book (well, except for the odd weapons in books like Frostburn and such, but you know what I mean). There's a good selection of weapons here. My favorite items, though, are the different types of arrows. There are alchemical arrows, axehead arrows, barbed arrows, grappling arrows, hollow arrows, ironshod arrows, lung puncture arrows, penetrating arrows, piercing arrows and sonic arrows. Man. That's some kinda goodness for archers, which I generally find to be rather boring. There's info on Masterwork Weapons and double weapons that can be separated (and used as single weapons) rounding out this chapter. Chapter 2: Weapon Qualities This chapter includes a bunch of new qualities to give magic weapons. Charts let you roll up the new AND old qualities. This gives the chapter an incredible amount of utility. One thing that some people might find annoying are these blocks of text scattered throughout. They're basically fairly large sidebars that give a quote, sometimes useful but at least always amusing. I actually enjoyed these blocks and not including them really would have saved only two or three pages, not enough to count. And, in a surprising move (to me at least), there are epic enchantments here! Go epic support! Just how many qualities are there? Uhm. a lot. Pages 34 to 60 with very little whitespace, a few of those sidebars and decently small text. Chapter 3: Weapons of Valor This chapter details specific weapons, such as the assassin's dagger or the adamantine battleaxe. A handy-dandy chart gives a listing of class-oriented weapons (as well as the classes they belong to). A sidebar details a variant rule for alternate siege weapon payloads. I have a problem with the design of these sidebars, as they have shadowed text that can make it a little difficult on the eyes. Next up, we get some artifact weapons. And there's a full-page of art on 85, and an ad on the lower half of page 84. Yeah, an ad in the middle of the book. Annoying? To some. Does it steal away from the usefulness of the book? Not at all. Therefore, it's negligible. Again, the weapon qualities from the DMG..er...SRD are included, which really REALLY makes this another useful section. And this chapter covers pages 61 to 85, so there's a lot of info here, too. Chapter 4: Armor I never really feel that most fantasy RPGs have enough armor. No more, not with this book. We get a lot of armor here, from some types "left out" of the SRD (like ring mail) to odd types such as armor of the beetle. Of course, shields are given a treatment too, and the stuff from the SRD is here as well. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...this increases the usefuless of the chapter immensely. The chapter rounds out with some info on masterwork armor, armor costs by size, info on donning armor, a few new extras (such as bone armor spikes or a coward's shield and exoskeletons for steampunk games) and a system for armor as damage reduction. Another chunk of rules are included for shield parries. While the armor-as-DR and shield parry rules seem to be solid, I will probably not use them. This is just a matter of personal taste, however. Chapter 5: Armor Qualities Chapter Five starts on page 100. It's pretty similar to the weapon qualities chapter, but, y'know, for armor. Very nice chapter, but quite a bit shorter, only going to page 117. Chapter 6: Armor of Gallantry Here are your specific armors. One of the neatest new specific armors here (to me at least) is the Armor of the Undead, which can only be worn by undead. Several "non armor" items are included in this section, and their inclusion strikes me as a little odd. Boots of Striding and Springing are wondrous items, not armor, for instance. Same with helms. Like I said, their inclusion is a little odd, but, what the hell. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" /> This chapter also describes several magical masks. This is a pretty neat concept, IMHO. The chapter rounds out with some artifacts. Again, I really like the inclusion of epic items in this chapter. Very nice to see some epic support. The chapter ends on page 134. Chapter 7: New Materials Need some new materials to spice up your items? This chapter's for you then! This chapter goes through to page 139, and ends with a discussion on durability (and durable items). Oddly, they didn't include the special materials from the SRD. Considering their attention to doing so with weapons, armor, and magical qualities, this is something of a shock. There are also two new feats in this section, which deal specifically with the special material tensile mercury. This is a fun chapter and sure to help throw those PCs for a loop..uh..or to help them combat the forces of darkness of course. Yeah. That's the ticket. Chapter 8: Artifacts and Legends This is a chapter full of new rules for powerful magic items. You get a treatment on divine ranks, primal artifacts, artifacts and relics, divine items, legendary weapons and scions. Of these, legendary weapons and scions deserve a closer look. Legendary weapons I like. A lot. These are weapons that increase thier power as the character goes up in levels. This will go a long way towars making the item a part of the character's concept rather than just a sword to throw away when you pick up a new one with a bigger plus. Scions are prestige classes (there are four of them) that bond with special weapons. There's the battle scion, spell scion, faith scion and swfit scion. Use them if your character REALLY wants to be able to tie his legend with is weapons. Unfortunately, there's only one scion weapon described for each of the four PrCs, so the DM will have to make up his own to tailor to his campaign (which, IMHO, is not a bad thing). More stuff in this chapter involves magical ability chains (to increase weapons' capabilities rather than trading in the weapons for a new shiny-pretty) and a discussion on intelligent weapons, including extraordinairy specual purpose powers. I suggest the DM thinks these over before using them, and they are pretty powerful. Outsider weapons are covered next. This is a pretty neat idea. Basically, they're magic weapons that have the essence of an outsider bound into them. They're similar to intelligent items. The chapter ends on page 158. Chapter 9: Cursed Items Mm. curses. I haven't read over this in as much detail as I should have, but it basically seems to be a reprint of the cursed items info from the SRD. Again, though, this serves to keep all your weapon stuff pretty much in one book, so I'm all for it! Chapter 10: Martial Constructs This is the chapter that "did it" the least for me. Basically, this gives a few new creatures. Now, normally, I LOVES me some new creatures..can't get enough. These though..I don't know. They don't get me really all that excited. I can't put my finger on it. It's the weakest chapter of the book, IMHO. It ends on page 172. Last stuff Page 173 and about half of page 174 are the index. No, they don't list items one by one, but most of the major stuff (like divine ranks or tensile mercury) can be found here. The last half of page 174 is an ad. No biggie. Pages 175 and 176 are the OGL. Of special note is Section 15. This has to be the longest. Section 15. EVAR. It's teeny-tiny print and takes up most of the page. As a side note, the entirety of Arms & Armor is OGC except for the artwork, cover and other graphics. Final Word This is a beautiful book. If you like weapons and armor, you'll most likely love this book. Extremely useful. I recommend it. As a side note, it's only slightly more expensive than the 3.0 version of Arms & Armor (which, for some reason, I didn't like). And it's bigger. And it's hardcover.</blockquote>

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