Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="JoeGKushner" data-source="post: 2009985" data-attributes="member: 1129">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.</blockquote>

Verification