This is going to be a long review, so get ready. Grab a comfy chair your favorite caffienated beverage - or better yet don't, because you'll probably have to get up in the middle to go to the bathroom.
OK, I admit it. I'm a sucker for new toys. That's why I found myself buying Bastion Press' Arms & Armor, even though I was grumbling over the price tag. $24.95 for 96 pages - that's $.25 a page. And softcover. I've bought hardcovers with two and a half times as many pages for the same price.
The reason the price was so high was undoubtedly the full color print job and glossy paper. Unlike Bastion's previous offering, Minions, I can't say that it was really worth it in this case. I mean, they're weapons and armor. They don't need full color art. (And in many cases, I'm sad to say that the art isn't even that good.)
Unfortunately, the price isn't the only problem with the book.
Mundane (?) Weapons
I got off to a bad start with this book when I found several errors on the weapons table in the front within a few minutes of paging through. This ranged from the minor (the table backgrounds have bands of alternating color for readability. This doesn't help nearly as much when they don't line up with the lines of the table) to the actually game-affecting (there are entries for the Double-Bladed Sword, Double Flying Sword, Double-Headed Sword, and the Double-headed. Double-headed what? I have no idea. I assume that the double flying sword is the double flying claw, and one of the 'double-headed's is supposed to be for the double-headed axe and one for the double-headed spear, but which is which? Really - this should have been caught.)
Disappointingly, not all of the weapons are pictured, either. If I'm paying this much for pretty artwork, it'd be nice if it showed me everything - I'd rather see the ribbon sword than a machete - I know what a machete looks like.
On the plus side, this book has a wide variety of unusual weapons - many from the Orient, which makes it useful to people using Oriental Adventures and Rokugan. The weapons are listed by a translated name (Double Flying Claw) but have the original name as well (Shuang Fei Zhua). Fans of wuxia action will find plenty of bizarre weapons here twith which to bludgeon, pierce, and slash their foes.
The weapon tables also list in the table their reach, bonuses to disarm and trip, and whether or not the weapon is a Double weapon. Bravo on the first, the second is completely redundant because of the way damages are written for double weapons.
Some of the mechanics, though, are a little unusual. While no weapons are mechanically identical to the ones in the PHB, several are darn close - the dirk, for example, has the stats of a dagger, except it can be "used in the same hand as a targe shield". Why it is necessary to invent a new weapon with this ability is unclear. (We'll talk about the targe later.) Several others are the same weapon with the type of damage changed (the fencing saber is a slashing rapier, for instance, and the 'small longsword' - designed for halflings and gnomes - is a slashing shortsword).
There's also the dadao, which is a 1d6, 19-20/x3 weapon. Now, an 18-20/x2 is equivalent to a 20/x4, and a 19-20/x2 is equivalent to a 20/x3, but a 19-20/x3 is more effective than either of them. To be fair, the weapon costs more than a longsword and still does worse average damage.
The claymore lets a character with Cleave do one additional Cleave attack with a DC 15 Strength check. I can't help but think that giving away a free weapon quality (mighty cleaving) for essentially 10 gp (the difference between a claymore and a two-handed sword) is a bad idea. Are Scottish weapons the katanas of the new century?
One other thing that bugged me - in several weapon entries for Tiny weapons, it's explicity stated that you can use Weapon Finesse on them. Redundant, redundant, redundant.
Some of the weapons are just silly. The 'jump spear' is a normal spear with a crossbar that you can put your feet on. The idea is to be up in a tree or something and then jump off, using your weight to drive the spear into your target. Sounds like a good recipe for a fall and a broken spear to me. The razor disk launcher isn't much better. The war cleaver is a fine idea - similar to a bastard sword - but its damage of 2d4 and crit range of 19-20/x2 mean that there's really no reason to want one over a longsword (especially since it needs an EWP to use one-handed!) I get the impression this was supposed to be like a bastard sword version of a falchion, but it falls kind of flat.
So what's good? Well, besides the incredible variety of weapons - and the ones I have the problems with are just a tiny fraction of the number in the book - the dueling cloak is nice - great for swashbucklers and city-dwellers. The dual-crossbow brings back memories of Rutger Haur in Ladyhawke. There's a bunch of double weapons if you're a fan of those. But this section will be the most valuable to you if you want the bizarre martial arts weapons I mentioned before. We're not talking katanas here - I mean Three Point Double-Blade Swords, Dragon Whisker Forks, and the winner of the longest weapon name, the "Heaven and Earth, Sun and Moon Sword". Jeez, you'd think it was an artifact with a moniker like that! (Sadly, it's got the exact same stats as the Cicada Wing Sword, and one should have been noted under the entry for the other.)
Magic Weapons
OK, so we've covered the first section. On to magic weapons! There is a metric boatload of new weapon qualities in the book, and fortunately for the score on this review, most of them seem pretty good. Some are minor variations on DMG qualities - acidic and acid burst are just what you'd expect, crushing and skewering are essentially versions of vorpal for bludgeoning and piercing weapons, and neutrality gets magic weapons in the form of balance and neutrality (doing +1d6 to lawful/chaotic and good/evil respectively).
Some, though, are pretty creative. Pestilence weapons inflict disease on their targets with no incubation period. Mire weapons can root targets to the floor for 1d4 rounds on a critical hit. Pivoting ranged weapons can make a 90 degree turn in flight, allowing attacks around corners. The dark solace blades are especially for blackguards, giving bonuses for sneak attacks and saves and bringing the blackguard back as an undead (or a demon or devil in the case of a greater dark solace weapon) should he die while using it.
Not all of the qualities are combat-oriented either. The inspiration quality lets a bard boost his Perform skill for a time. Folding weapons can be turned into cloth and folded like a pocket-handkerchief. Undead creator weapons make your foes rise up again - on your side. There's even weapons with a permanent invisibility effect (on the weapon, not the wielder).
There are some specific magic items too - a couple for each class. Some are good (axe of the berserker) while others are just plain silly (they were really reaching for the bard weapons - come on, a harp bow and a flute sword?) Many of them have strange pricings (why does the picker picker - a +2 dagger (8,302 gp) that gives you a +10 bonus to Open Locks - cost 22,302 gp? A +10 to skill item is 2000 gp if it takes up a slot, 4000gp if it doesn't. Could be a typo.) There is also a small section for specific magic swords (separated out because of their popularity), and a couple of artifacts like the season-based Talon of the Vogel, which changes shape and abilities based on the time of year.
Following that we have some optional rules for weapons - a different version of 'leveled weapons' than the one presented in a recent Dragon (focused towards intelligent weapons), separating double weapons, and more Extraordinary Purposes.
All in all, I was much happier with this section than I was with the first.
Armor
The next section deals with the other half of the equation: how not to get killed when someone comes at you with the new weapons from Part 1. There's a wide variety of unusual and specialty armors presented here, from the Armored Robe (the protection of leather, with a higher ACP, no spell failure, and much quicker to don) to Double Plate (+10 AC, but a max dex bonus of -3 that can fortunately be offset by your Strength bonus up to 0).
There are a number of curious things about the descriptions, though - many of them seem to have been written with asumptions other than the core D&D ones in mind. For example, under Reinforced Cleric's Robe: "Their lightweight and nonmetal composition makes them an ideal choice for clerics in the field." I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, since it seems to imply that clerics don't, can't or shouldn't wear metal armor, and I have no idea where that came from. Later on is the Taskmaster Armor, "constructed of light copper and etched with silver streaks...Typically only clerics of war gods or goddesses endeavor to don such mail, although all clerical sects permit it." Again, it seems like a slightly different assumption than core D&D. (I'd just go for the cheaper and more protective Half Plate myself, and have it masterworked, but it takes all kinds).
There's also a number of items - mostly clerical - that seem almost like enchanted armor. The Holy Robes, for instance, are made of "durable wool and blessed with holy water by the temple priests for a fortnight", but they still give as much protection as studded leather. Durable wool? Steel wool, more like! Sure, they're expensive (250gp) but DMs should note that this seems more than half like an enchantment.
Wizards, sorcerers, and bards will be happy to see that there are several armors that have lower arcane spell failures than the ones in the PHB. In fact, there's even Silken Web Clothing, spun from the silk of the Ebon Spider (and over 1000gp) that is essentially clothing fine & strong enough to be enchanted. There are also a wide variety of what seem like druidic-style armors here, made from various bits of some of the beasts presented in Bastion's previous release, Minions.
Fans of partial armor will note that Arms and Armor takes a page from Oriental Adventures and presents several pieces of armor that can be stacked with other armor - the bishop's mantle (a short mail cloak covering the shoulders and back), spaulders (plate for the shoulders and upper arms), and the tonlet (a chain skirt). They carry with them fairly hefty penalties to weight, armor check and arcane casting, naturally - in general, it's almost always better just to buy the next set of armor up, although like the pieces in OA they don't increase the armor's weight category, which could be important for some classes. Also here is something that WOTC forgot - a definitive rule on how enchanted variations of these items work. (In short, the enhancement bomnuses don't stack, but qualities do.) Good show.
(Of course, this means that you can now - for a sufficient amount of money - get a total of +63 worth of armor qualities by enchanting the 2 items from OA, your armor, shield, and the three items from this book. Ye gods! Preparations for the Epic Level Rules, I suppose.)
A short section on Extras presents us with the puzzling weapon tether, which actually makes it harder to use and retrieve your weapon (-1 to attack rolls, and it takes a standard action to retrieve the weapon after being disarmed - normally picking something up is move-equivalent!) I can only assume that they meant it to remove the AoO, but it's not noted as doing so.
Magic Armor
Like the Magic Weapon section, this is where the book again proves its worth. The armor qualities seem generally well balanced for the prices charged, although some are a bargain (like the various stat-boosting armors, at least until you add other enchantments to them).
Among the more creative armor qualities are dopple, which changes form along with a shapechanger (and continues to provide its bonuses); grotesque, which allows the used to generate a fear effect; elemental armors like ignan and aquan, with various related powers; tentacled, which is just what it sounds like; and viscid, just in case you wanted to fight like a kuo-toa.
As you might expect, there are also class armors. These are in general much better than the class weapons in terms of concept - none of them have the innate silliness of the harp bow. The ranger's wolf cloak in particular is rather nice, providing a natural armor bonus, access to the Scent feat, and the ability to polymorph self into a wolf 3 times per day.
There's still a few minor editing snafus - one item changes names halfway through its description, and the aforementioned wolf cloak notes that the subject is not subject to disorientation while in wolf form - a rule that has been changed in errata. Also, the subdermal armor item is either very unclear, very broken, or both. (It gives the rogue natural armor that has been enchanted with an enhancement bonus. I think it gives the rogue +1 natural armor, although it's listed as (for example) subdermal armor +5 - natural armor bonus: +6, because otherwise it's far superior to the amulet of natural armor. There's also no discussion of whether the enhancement bonus stacks with enhancement bonuses on regular armor. This could have been much better.)
Next are unusual armors, like the banderskin (hide armor that gives you the burrowing ability of the bandersnatch from Minions), falcon spaulders (which let you sprout wings), and sycophant armor (actually a living symbiotic creature).
There's also a new type of magical mask. I'm not certain why these items are treated like armor rather than wondrous items, because they definitely blur the line. (Then again, so does a helm of teleportation, I suppose.) The ones presented here are all racial masks, although that name only indicates the typical maker and not a restriction on use. Like the other sections, this presents items from the standard PHB races as well as some of the new ones from Minions.
Hang in there, we're almost done!
Two artifacts are detailed in the Armor section: the Bandoleer of Swords and the four-armed Mail of the Knük. Optional rules are next - there's one for Armor as Damage Reduction and one for Shield Parries.
Last is a section on constructs, detailing the amulet servitors (although the lightest at 2 lbs is still one heck of an amulet!), the silver steeds of Inarial, and the fantasy equivalent of the battlesuit: golem armor, an animated construct that you can wear.
The book finishes with 3 new materials: aeroglass (a glass containing adamantine), osanwetaure (a calming wood), and steelwood (which is like it sounds).
Overall Summary
Coming after Minions, this book was a bit of a disappointment from Bastion Press. The price was rather high, presumably because of the (to my mind) unnecessary color glossy pictures, and the book was riddled with editing errors - most of which were minor, it's true, but it's the principle of the thing. If I can catch half-a-dozen on a single read-through, I would expect a professional editor to be able to do the same.
Even with all of that, the new magical qualities and items were of sufficient number and variety to make me think the book is still going to be quite useful to me in my campaign - and some of the new weapons will no doubt see use as well. Had it been under $20 (even in B&W) I would bump the rating up to 3.5, but as it is I have to give it a 3.
(Edited for formatting)
