Arsenal

[Messageboard Golem]

Technomagic:Arsenal intensifies your d20 campaign with the following equipment:

Over 200 magical firearms, from the arcane blaster pistol to the divine vindicator autocannon, modifiable by 11 special abilities and 10 accessories.

8 different types of advanced magical armor, from mithrium-weave protective clothing to adamantium-plated battle armor.

36 special abilities for armor.

Over 100 different types of grenades, explosives, launchers, missiles and rockets.

Combat rules options, additions, and suggestions for maximizing your lethality with the new equipment.

2 firearm-centric prestige classes: the sniper and the gunman.

Over 10 new feats.

Over 20 new spells.

 

[GameWyrd]

Arsenal is a strange book. Despite the previews from Perpetrated Press I wasn’t sure what to expect from the book but I had a hunch it would be something different. We’ve had books filled with monsters, books filled with spells and even prestige classes but books dedicated to weapons and armour are somewhat more rare. Arsenal is more different still, the weapons and armour inside aren’t the bread and butter of sword and sorcery, they’re technomagic weapons and armour; a peculiar mix of mithral and Kevlar or machine-guns and fireballs for example.

The softback book is 128-pages long and comes in at just under $20. The text size is larger than customary for d20 products, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does mean fewer words per dollar. The book is full of tables, at times you can just let the pages flick by and see nothing but rows of white and grey. This doesn’t go over the top though; it’s pretty much what you would expect when you have a shopping list of holy grenades to pick from. Careful layout and design stops all these tables turning the book into a square mess. There’s just a simple border image in Arsenal, a curving line that extends over the top of the page as well and this softens up the square blocks of stats. I enjoyed the artwork too. At times the illustrations slide into a comic strip style and there’s even lettering on some of the strips. Actually, the illustrations really do help make the book. There are many gamers out there who like the pose factor of blasting away with twin pistols, lining up a shot with a sexy sniper rife or just sauntering around with a holster on and the artwork captures and capitalises on this. Consistently the illustration style would remind me of something other than the traditional fantasy games inspired by D&D. I was reminded sometimes of Palladium’s Rifts line, sometimes anime (especially the front and back covers) and the full page drawing on page 28 had me thinking Cthulhu for some reason. All this together means that there’s already a distinctive Prepetrated Press illustration style – or there will be if the company produces further books and they adopt the same approach.

Arsenal isn’t a book dedicated to technomagic weapons. There’s a lot more in it. There are prestige classes, skills and pages of feats and spells. There are even some game intelligent discussions too; important observations such as the modifications required to adjust Challenge Ratings when guns are involved.

"Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology" – that’s the quote from the back of the book, a rather cheeky take on the famous comment from Arthur C Clarke’s "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". It makes the point though. Why try and keep them apart in fantasy or even science-fantasy games? The book’s introduction starts this debate going, asking questions like "Why devise robots or droids, when you already have golems?" It moves swiftly into looking at different campaign settings in which you might want to use technomagic weapons. Better than that, the text doesn’t try and sell you the idea like some sleazy used car salesman it actually debates the pros and cons intelligently, offering advice and inspiration equally.

Arsenal lets you know when and why they’ve tinkered with things. The prices for these weapons are much lower than they would be if you followed the item creation guide lines in the core rules and their reasons for changing that are, by their own admission, somewhat fuzzy – but at least they’re there for you to agree with or remove as required. Rules for changing the Challenge Ratings are also given; after all, a minotaur isn’t as much of a challenge for a 1st level Bard with a bazooka as it is for a 1st level Bard with a slingshot. Then again, what if the minotaur was packing a machine-gun? The rules also include how much weaponry you can safely assign to creatures (like orcs, say) without screwing up their basic Challenge Rating in the first place. Honestly, it makes me wish Wizards had trusted the average gamer to have as much intelligence and to have published the Monster Manual with unblemished Challenge Ratings and then a formula on how to adjust them appropriately if your party of characters are packing +X magic weapons, rather than the combined and hard to retro-engineer mess that’s there instead. Some core classes are better suited to technomagic weapons than others. Who cares if your barbarian can go into a rage - it doesn’t help him against my bazooka, your mage can cast fireballs – that’s nice, I have grenades. The discussion also expands into possible problems in miss-matching character classes with campaign settings better suited to hi-tech and mage-tech weapons. What’s a Druid doing on board a spaceship?

You won’t even notice when you turn the page into the chapter on skills. Really. You won’t notice. Arsenal might have large font but it doesn’t waste space with trivial details like new pages especially to announce the presence of a new chapter. If the content doesn’t give it away then the title in the border bar at the top of the page keeps you safe. Of course, skill chapters are just skill chapters and they struggle to impress. This one qualifies as well written, invokes the gods of common sense and provide some useful summary charts. It’s not a waste of space.

The feats are essential for the book. It’s not often that happens. This time round, though, without feats like "Craft Technomagic Firearms" it’ll be a heck lot more tricky to integrate the new weaponry and armour in Arsenal into your game. On the other hand a lot of the new feats begin with dreadful "Improved" word.

The new spells, of which there are about 25, are all technomagic in nature. This is great. If there were more of these spells then it would be worth buying the book for spells alone – it’s a certainly a niche that’s underplayed in the d20 industry. You could swap most of these spells straight into Cthulhu for example. The prestige classes are in a similar vein but not quite as good; they’re there to fill that technological gap but there are hardly any of them.

Before the looong list of weapons, explosives and armour begins there’s a small section on combat. Prepetrated Press scores points again here by crediting you with a bit of intelligence, by explaining what’s going on and letting you pick what suits your tastes. AC is a good example, if you’re one the people who feels the abstraction of armour into a to-hit role isn’t suitable for hi-tech weapons then they offer up a way to change things around (with minimal fuss) so that AC reduces damage instead. Huzzah. Well done.

And then all the weapons begin. We’re at about page 40 at this point. That’s nearly 100 pages left for all the technomagic stuff. The weapons and armour here are interesting. Technomagic means you can do interesting things like throw tentacle grenades at people – and watch as the tentacles burst forth from nowhere and entangle your target. You also have holy weapons that blast globes of sunlight at people. It’s quirky though. There’s no way I can sit down and read through the lists of weapons, although the hefty dose of illustrations for the quirky weapons do help. I’m not a gear-head, big guns just aren’t the reason why I’ll play a sci-fi game but there’s something different about Arsenal that makes the read more appealing.

Arsenal does strike me a strange book. I stand by that but it’s strange in a warm and friendly way (er, discounting those tentacle grenades which don’t look friendly at all). Arsenal succeeds in being more than just a book full of strange weapons, it’s more intelligent than that premise suggests and the related rules found in the book will be helpful in a wide range of games. Arsenal succeeds in being just another d20 offering, it’s pretty good.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Psion]

Arsenal

Arsenal is a "compendium of magical firearms, explosives, and armor" for d20 system games, and the first offering by Perpetrated Press in the d20 arena. Arsenal introduces statistics for military equipment made using magic as well as rules for using them in a typical d20 system fantasy (or other) campaign and feats and prestige classes specialized in their use.

A First Look

Arsenal is a 128-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $19.95. This is a fairly good price for the size, but the price advantages are somewhat allayed by the use of a rather large font and leader space and bloated tables.

The cover art is by Eric Kohler (obviously a man of fine lineage) and depicts a man in heavy futuristic armor with a futuristic looking pistol in one hand and a glowing sword in the other, with a glowing, spellcasting elf in the background.

The interior is black-and-white, and features artists Ruben de Vela, Juha Harju, Drew Johnson, and Austin Stewart. The weapon and armor illustrations are overall very good, but the book also features many illustrations by Juha Harju that appear like sketchy first draft roughs of a very cartoonishly illustrated comic; this may be meant as stylish, but it is really unappealing to me.

A Deeper Look

The concept behind Arsenal is that magic could evolve in a manner similar to technology and produce weapons and defenses similar in flavor to modern firearms and body armor. The result is a sourcebook of weapons that look like something out of a science fiction game, but operate by the magic rules (at least in part.)

As you might imagine, integrating this sort of material into a campaign may not be easy. Before the book dives into rules, it provides suggestions for how to work such weapons into a variety of games and ideas for how to modify the existing core d20 system classes to work with firearms.

This section provides guidelines for handling the price and the CR/EL of creatures with such weapons. In a manner similar to Dragonstar, creatures with access to magical firearms receive a modifier to their CR according to whether or not the PCs likewise have technomagic items.

The book does have standard pricing using the d20 system magic item creation formulae, but it assumes that in the time period in which these weapons are available, that there is a method to "mass produce" them much cheaper than under the item creation rules, and provides alternate costs for GMs using this assumption. This is a nice feature, allowing a GM to stick by the standard guidelines, or to go by a price model more reminiscent of modern firearms.

Arsenal provides a variety of new character options for characters utilizing or creating such weapons. The repair skill allows the servicing of technomagic equipment. New craft feats such as craft psionic firearm, craft technomagic firearm and craft technomagic explosive allow character to produce these weapons on their own. Other feats afford the character greater proficiency with firearms, such as improved burst fire (which provides a better chance to hit with more than one shot in a burst.), and an array of new spells allow charcters to repair technomagic devices or disrupt their use.

There are two new prestige classes provided that specialize in technomagic firearms, the sniper and the gunman. The sniper is the specialist in long range stealthy fire. The sniper is probably too powerful in that it has a class ability similar to the assassin's death attack, but with less stringent limitations and that can eventually be used up to 10 range increments away, with range increments extended by the sniper's abilities. The gunman is a little more reasonable, with abilities that let them use firearms in a close combat situation, avoiding problems like attacks of opportunity and better utilizing cover.

A number of variant rules are provided for handling firearms. In a similar fashion to such games as Star Wars, Arsenal provides a system that models armor as damage reduction. The system herein provides one point of damage reduction per point of AC modifier the armor would provide, which is a bit generous. However, when using this option, armor provides no bonus to AC, but the classes have an AC modifier from class and level. One part of this adaptation that I found rather dubious was that damage reduction from armor applies as full strength against energy weapons, and does not stack with energy resistance. This makes armor-enhancing spells very potent compared to spells like resist and endure elements spells.

Other featured rules include rules on burst-fire weapons, the use of cover, handling damage to weapons, and weapon clips. The burst fire rules provides and additional hit for every five points that the character exceeds the AC of the target, or for every three points with the appropriate feat. This is very similar to those in Dragonstar and Deadlands, so much so I was surprised not to see one of those books mentioned in the copyright section.

The heart of the books is the guns and explosives themselves. Each weapon is divided into attack type and weapon size/function. For example, a weapon that attack with fire is called a "blazer", and you can get blazers in hold-out pistol, pistol, heavy pistol, rifle, heavy rifle, assault rifle, SMGs, HMGs, and auto cannons. Other weapon attack types include the other standard D&D energy types, ability damage, forced damage, and damage corresponding to the four cardinal D&D alignments.

All technomagic weapons use a magical energy clip. The clip is interchangeable between most weapon types, but clips are specific to weapon sizes. Through a seeming oversight, however, the book never tells what size weapon uses what clip. You can make some assumptions by the names of the clip sizes (like "pistol" and "rifle"), but it's not always clear and you may need to make assumptions. What size clips do SMGs use? Where do "max" size clips start?

Larger weapons have a larger die type for damage, but also use up more energy per shot. It is possible to expend a multiple of the basic amount of charges to inflict multiple dice of damage. The maximum amount of charges that can be expended in a shot is determined by the size and type of the weapon.

Technomagic firearms can also have enchantments like normal weapons, and the book introduces a number of additional weapon qualities for technomagic firearms, such as DR penetration and spell penetration (which is something unnecessary for normal weapons, but useful for technomagic weapons since their effects are magical in nature.)

There are psionic weapons as well. The psionic weapons are distinct from technomagic weapons in a few ways. The most obvious might be that there are weapons that emulate psionic powers that do not have magic parallels. For example, disruptors are weapons based on psychoportive powers that teleport bits of the target away, and inflictors inflict damage through mental anguish.

Psionic firearms are also alive. Instead of relying on spells included herein to repair them, for example, psionic firearms must be healed like living creatures.

Technomagic explosives exist in the forms like mines, bombs, rockets, and grenades. Much like the technomagic firearms, technomagic explosives have a variety of effects based off of spell effects. Herein, you can find explosives with effects that vary from the poison of a cloudkill, or the tentacles of an Evard's black tentacles spell.

The armor section introduces new technomagic armor that is significantly better than standard d20 fantasy armor, providing much better protection for a less bulky armor. There is even a category of armor called "protective clothing" that doesn't incur any penalties. Such armor is obviously best reserved for campaigns that have technomagic firearms as a counterbalance.

As with the technomagic firearms, there are special qualities for technomagic armor. Perhaps most interesting, several specific armors are included, each featuring a number of enchantments to optimize it to a given task, such as exploring or guard duty.

The last part of the books is a section of tables with the costs of the weapons as calculated by the cost system in the DMG. It is good that they included this section, but it falls short is one aspect. The explanatory notes explain that weapons with identical damage but different elements have different costs due to the fact that spells that some weapons were based on are a different level than that which others were based on (e.g., flame arrow vs. ray of frost.) This is a bit of a misunderstanding of the rules for magic item costs; they are explicitly only starting points, an such slavish fealty to the formulae is not the expected method and you are expected to use common sense. Weapons of different elements that do the same damage should be priced the same.

Conclusions

If you are not the sort of person who finds value in "arms catalog" type supplements, there is little here that will change your mind.

Otherwise, this book has a lot of potential in the right sort of campaign. The most immediate use for this book is obviously a Dragonstar campaign or a D20 Modern game run in a "modern fantasy" type setting (like Urban Arcana.) However, enterprising GMs will use it in other ways. For example, imagine psionic firearms used by troops of mind flayers, and a "Final Fantasy" inspired fantasy campaign with technomagic trappings.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[jeffh]

You might want to edit the first part of this. Three straight paragraphs start with "As you might imagine, integrating this sort of material into a campaign may not par" - and NONE of the three have the rest of this sentence! Two of those three are themselvesd duplicates, too.

 

[Psion]

The file apparently got corrupted. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[MadTinkerer]

Hmmmm... How compatible is Arsenal with other similar technologies presented in other d20 books? I'm specifically thinking about Mecha Crusade, the d20 Modern Polyhedron supplement. I don't have Str Wars, but how compatible is Arsenal with that?

 

[MadTinkerer]

Ah. Nevermind. My question is basically answered in the non-corrupted version of the review.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Arsenal is a compendium of magical firearms, explosives and armour from Perpetrated Press.

Arsenal is a 128-page mono softcover book costing $19.95. Though the font used is somewhat larger than normal, margins are standard and there is little wasted space. The sketchy art style has a cartoon/anime feel to it but is pretty good overall, in much the same way as the stylistic front cover showing a kind of heavily armoured samurai type with sword and pistol. Writing style and editing are good.

The introduction begins with the basic premise behind Arsenal - that if a standard mediaeval fantasy world progresses technologically, one of the consequences of this advancement would be technomagic - a mix of technology and magic, the most impactful of which would be technomagic weapons. It applies this theory to different campaign setting types - apocalyptic, cyberpunk, modern conspiracy/horror, space opera, time travel, and even mediaeval fantasy, and gives advice on the introduction of technomagic weapons in each scenario. Further advice is given on balance issues raised by the introduction of technomagic weapons, such as gun supremacy, prices, challenge ratings, monster tech, social etiquette (and laws), and skills.
There follows a discussion related to each core class in relation to the introduction of technomagic into a campaign. A discussion of changes to skills is offered (with a much expanded variant of Intimidate), and new skills (repair, weapon concealment) and over 20 new feats related to technomagic equipment are given. Over 20 new spells are also described in relation to technomagic (including spells that repair or interfere with technomagic items).

Two prestige classes are given:
* Sniper - 10-level PrC focusing on deadly ranged combat from cover.
* Gunman - 10-level PrC focusing on close-range pistol combat in areas with limited fields of fire such as urban locales.

An optional rule for allowing armor to detract from damage rather than the chance to hit is given, to compensate for the high damage levels from technomagic weapons. As well, characters gain a bonus to AC equal to their character level. There is further advice on combat actions in relation to the effects of technomagic weapons, malfunctions, and a short morale system.

The next 30 pages are taken up with stat tables and descriptions of various technomagical firearms. Each section runs the gamut from hold-out pistol through rifles to auto cannons for various different magical effects such as disintegration, confusion, incineration, shocking, etc. Each weapon has stats for energy type, save DC, damage, power settings, charges, critical effects, range increment, rate of fire, caster level (usually 10), size, weight, price, and any special information related to the use of the firearm. Some accessories are also decribed such as targeter, tripod, etc.

Psionic firearms are an advanced type of dorje that allow users to 'fire' psionic powers at their targets. These are again statted out and described in relation to their different powers and with various types of firearms.

The next 20 pages do the same for a varirty of explosives, covering bombs, grenades, rockets, mines, etc. with various magical effects upon detonation - this system really lets you create a holy handgrenade!

Of course, with all these technomagical weapons around, a society is going to develop equally powerful protection. The next section covers armour, from non-magical armour such as riot gear and blast armour to magical armour that protects from technomagical assaults or gives additional magical protection such as sanctuary armour, armour of speed, or armour of invisibility to name a few. Some specific armours (sort of minor artifact level) are also given.

The book ends with stats for item creation for all these technomagical toys for the boys, and includes information on caster level, mass market price (for a world that has factories), requirements, and home-made price. At the back of the book is an index, list of tables, and a variant character sheet including sections for ammunition for technomagical weapons.

Conclusion:
A very thought-provoking book, which has obviously had some good play-testing as many of the balance issues that occurred to me before I opened the book were addressed inside the pages. This is not particularly recommended for a standard fantasy campaign but would work nicely in conjunction with something like the Dragonstar campaign setting. Its an interesting enough concept to stimulate some to want to create their own settings to actualise the use of technomagical weapons presented in the book and you should be guided by your interest in the concept as a whole as to whether to get it or not.

 

[JoeGKushner]

I really wanted to like Arsenal. I love stuff like Construct Mechanus, the Sheen from Dragon magazine, Dark Space, and Draognstar but just couldn’t find much enthusiasm for Arsenal.

It waste too much time trying to help the GM focus on what changes the inclusion of magical firearms will bring to the campaign without being a setting sourcebook. It uses art that has a unique style, but not one that I like. It’s spacing and formatting are below industry standards. In short, it’s a good first effort but needs a lot of work on direction and focus.

Its nice to provide alternatives like armor absorbing damage and classes getting bonuses to armor class based on level and class type, but is this book really the place to put such material? If you’re already playing Star Wars or Spycraft, you’ve got the material. If you’re playing anything else, are you going to retroactively fit everything to accommodate these new rules?

Let’s look at the class modifications. Barbarians, druids, monks, wizards, and sorcerers are all going to need modifications due to the waste amount of firearms present in the book. Now perhaps this is true, but the modifications should be listed out with a brief word about why they were made, not going on and on. “One of the classes that may be less attractive in a technomagic campaign is the druid.” Latter on, “Generally, unless the campaign will include some level of wilderness activity, the druid class is not terrible attractive in a futuristic situation.” So what you’re saying is that the druid isn’t an attractive class?

The assumptions here just seem off. For example, the author puts down a baseline that if you’re using the material, it’s going to be all out. If that’s not the assumption, why talk about how wizards and sorcerers have now become highly undesirable to play? It ducks around questions of third party support, even when mentioning that some other offerings might help by not naming them.

In terms of game mechanics, I don’t follow a lot of the thinking here either. It makes the base assumption that two-weapon fighting applies just as well to ranged weapons as melee weapons and that rangers can use their virtual feats in this manner. When introducing the Sniper Prestige Class (another variant of a tried and true concept), it talks about how sneaky and patient they are and provides them with a d10 hit die. What’s the logic behind that?

The lack of focus shows up in a couple of places. There are numerous new ray spells that drain abilities like the Ray of Enfeeblement. Ray of Stupefaction, Stupidity, Wasting, Nervousness, Flabbergasting… each going on the full length of the spell instead of just saying, “As Ray of Flabbergasting but effects X stat instead of Y stat.” I don’t need to read about “A coruscating ray springs from your hand. You must succeed at a ranged touch attack to strike a target…” etc… for each spell. What’s more strange, is why are these spells in this book in the first place? Is this a wizard sourcebook or a book about guns?

Some of the feats are also not detailed enough. Take Armor Familiarization, a general feat that reduces spell failure by 10% with a minimum of 0% failure. Now can you take this feat multiple times? Not listed. How about Educated? You get an additional skill point per level unless you take it at first level, in which case you gain +4 skill points instead. Now why would anyone take this at first level? To penalize themselves? Can it be taken multiple times?

I didn’t care for the tone of the writing ether. Look at Improved Rapid Shot. “You are Mr. Chain Blue Lightning himself.” Okay so now we’ve got more wasted space and the author’s attempts at humor have failed to amuse me.

Where the book does come through though is in the guns themselves. While the formatting of the columns is huge and wasteful, there are lots of materials here for the gun fans. The weapons are broken up into different categories, blazers, bruisers, calefactors, castigators, chillers, combos, devastators, disintegrators, dispellers, enervators, feeblers, imprecators, and others are listed in table format page after page. You get the weapon name, type, save DC, Damage/Setting, Max Setting, Charges/Setting, Crit, Range, Rate of Fire, CL, Size, Weight, Price, and Special.

Each section is then detailed with illustrations after the tables so you can see what a Bruiser hold-out pistol is and looks like. Fortunately, the art for the weapons is generally superior to the art in the rest of the book.

When looking at creating your own special firearms, you get new special abilities like dispel resistance, to augment the weapon’s ability to resist being dispelled by dispel magic. I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any artifact guns though. It would be nice to see some unique weapons that held out over the years gaining more power and prestige with the passage of time.

Now I’ve always been a fan of psionics so the fact that they’ve included psionic firearms is a nice bonus. You get weapons like the disruptor, a gun that teleports portions of the targets body away. Nice eh? How about the inflictors, weapons that attack the victim’s mind. Good stuff.

Another place that works outwell is the armor. Here, the art is better than most of the book and we can see things ranging from Safety Armor, a skin tight armor, to Riot Armor and Blast Armor, heavy protection for a dangerous world. Their listed with AC, Optional DR, Max Dex Bonus, Armor Check Penalty, Arcane Spell Failure, Speed, Weight, and Price.

The repeating problem occurs here too though. For example, there are Anti-X Screens where you get a bonus to armor class and saving throws versus a specific alignment. Instead of just writing Anti-X, they do the whole law, evil, good, chaos bit. Did we really need that? Nope.

Now if this book was 112 or 96 pages with a tighter focus, it’d be great. Hopefully we’ll see more variety in the art, more focus on the material, a tighter layout with better white space use, and less focus on the world and more focus on the goods. There are a ton of examples and web materials for the book so you should definitely take a look at what’s on the web before making any final decision.

As it is now, it provides a lot of ideas that’ll need some deep though before integrating and a lot of material that’ll have to be playtested even for setting where such items may be commonly found ala Dragonstar depending on which options you take from this book.

 

[knight_isa]

Arsenal
Perpetrated Press
ISBN 0-9721358-0-4
128 pages (8 pages title/copyright/TOC/OGL/index/character sheet)
$19.95

This is not a playtest review.

I was really excited about Arsenal. There were a lot of "sneak peeks" that grabbed my attention long before it came out and I've wanted to run a Dragonstar campaign for a while, so Arsenal looked like a sure bet. After all, as it says on the cover, it's "a compendium of magical firearms, explosives, and armor."

A couple of things that I noticed about Arsenal almost immediately were the font size and the art. The font size is huge. While that doesn't bother me too much for the text, it made the tables much, much larger than they really needed to be. Oddly enough, the tables in the section about item creation did use a smaller font, and those tables looked much better. All of the tables should have been in that size font.

The art varies from fantastic to terrible. The weapons look fantastic, and the armor is really good. Where the variation lies is in the "mood art," as I call it. Most of it looks like it was done by Juha Harju who has a sketchy, somewhat cartoonish style that strikes me as great in some pictures but looks really bad in others.

Introduction. (1 page) Typical intro, briefly discusses technology versus magic and a hybrid of the two called "technomagic." [4]

Campaigns. (2 pages) Discusses various types of campaigns in which the equipment from Arsenal might be found. All of this seemed pretty obvious to me. [3]

Balance Issues. (3 pages) Discusses prices, CR adjustments, and such caused by the introduction of technomagic equipment. My biggest concern in play would be the CR adjustments, but they seem to be well thought out and will probably work well in play. [4]

Classes. (4 pages) Talks about adjustments that a DM might want to make to the core classes to account for technomagic weaponry. I really don't know why this section was included, as the Dragonstar setting is the only setting that might see wide-spread use of technomagic stuff that uses the core classes (that I know of), and the Starfarer's Handbook did a much more thorough job updating the classes than Arsenal did. This whole section probably could have been left out without hurting anyone, especially since it is an equipment book, not a setting book. [2]

Skills. (5 pages) Brief exposition on bluff and diplomacy, a lengthy expansion/clarification of intimidate, a new skill called repair, and notes about using spot/search to discover concealed weapons. [3]

Feats. (4 pages) A number of feats that go hand-in-hand with technomagic weaponry. Most look good, but there were a couple that probably need to be reworked. Educated probably needs clarification, and Spontaneous Battery Recharge should be a special feat instead of a metamagic one, for example. Suppression Fire is a feat that lets you do something that's already available to anyone in Dragonstar. There are a surprisingly high number of spellcaster-related feats, too. [3]

Spells. (8 pages) New spells, most of which are directly related to the new equipment listed in subsequent sections. There are a few spells that are listed as belonging to abjuration that should probably belong to conjuration or evocation instead (like overload battery and recharge battery). [3]

Prestige Classes. (4 pages) Includes two prestige classes, the sniper and the gunman. I generally don't look too closely at prestige classes, so I really can't judge these. [no grade]

Combat. (6 pages) Provides an alternate AC/DR option for classes and armor. Basically, the AC rating of armor becomes DR and every class gets a class-based adjustment to AC that is similar to save progressions. This section also talks about various attack options, and with the exception with the section about technomagic malfunctions, is really only useful if you don't already have a setting book that has already done this (like the Starfarer's Handbook). [3]

Firearms & Psionic Firearms. (40 pages) There are several different kinds of weapons, all with fairly clever names (like imprecators, which inflict divine force (evil), or flabbergasters, which inflict Charisma damage). Each type of weapon is listed in each size, ranging from hold-out pistol to auto-cannon. The pictures & descriptions are great. The psionic weapons are really different, as they are actually alive! The firearms section also includes new weapon qualities (a sidebar names core weapon qualities that can't be placed on a technomagic weapons) and accessories (like tripods & scopes). My only real complaint about this chapter has to do with the tables. As I mentioned before, the font size is way too big, and it seems like some of the weapons could have been grouped as they have identical effects. For example, calefactors, castigators, devastators, and imprecators have identical entries, with differences explained in the text. Vindicators would have been the same as the aforementioned, too, but it seems they were forgotten for the table. [4]

Explosives. (22 pages) This section gives bombs, mines, rockets, etc. the same treatment as the weapons. Lots of different effects in lots of different packages. [4]

Armor. (13 pages) High-tech armors and new special qualities. The armors are listed with both the standard AC and the option DR described in the combat section. Pretty straight-forward stuff. [3]

Item Creation. (8 pages) Includes item creation costs for mass-produced and home-made guns. The mass-produced cost assumes advanced in technology to greatly lower the cost. There are some oddities in the home-made prices, however. For example, biters (acid), blazers (fire) and chillers (cold) all do the same amount of damage and have the same mass-produced prices. The home-made prices vary wildly, though, presumably because of the base spell used (acid arrow, flame arrow, and ray of frost, respectively). It probably would have been better to create a ray of fire and a ray of acid to parallel the ray of frost, just as was done for ray of enfeeblement (the spells section includes a version of this for each attribute). [3]

Conclusion. There was a lot of potential in this book, and where it stuck to the focus I have few complaints. In all honesty, since I have the Starfarer's Handbook, I could have done without the sections on campaigns, classes, skills, most of feats, some of spells, and most of combat. (There was so much (sometimes nearly identical) overlap between Arsenal and the Starfarer's Handbook in fact, that I'm surprised that the Starfarer's Handbook wasn't credited in the OGL.) If those sections had been cut/trimmed, the font size reduced a little bit, and the tables reorganized, this could have been thinner (and thus cheaper) or there could have been room for technomagic gizmos that don't fall under the categories of weapons/explosives/armors.

Overall, I'd say Arsenal is better than a 3, but not quite good enough for the price to be a 4. There were an awful lot of cool ideas, but the presentation really could have been better.