From Stone to Steel is a massive book that does covers an impressive amount of ground. Weighing in at 352 pages, it's probably one of the largest d20 hardcovers on the market right now.
So what is this book anyway? Let me quote it. “It will attempt to chronicle the development of arms and armor over the span of human existence, from the time of Prehistoric Man to the Renaissance Period.” It does this and more.
The historical sections are broken up into the following sections:Sticks and Stones, Chariots of Bronze, Iron and Empire, Rome, the Far East, A Dark Age, A Golden Age, Pageantry, Platemail and Pistols, and Myth and Magic. Each section talks starts off with a short, one page story focusing on some element of that time frame. For the Sticks and Stones, it's the viewpoint of an elephant under attack by primitive man. For the section on A Dark Age, A Golden Age, where an Islamic leader ponders the problem of the war he wages with King Richard.
Each story is followed by details, not enough to fill up a 32 or 64 page book on their own, but enough to give the reader a taste of the culture and life style that lead to the development of weapons of that type. For instance, if the people had no metals, then their choices of weapons are going to be limited. If they don't know how to make steel, then iron is going to be their strongest metal. The weapons themselves are broken up into the section they fall under at that point in the history.
For example, Pageantry, Platemail and Pistols, has A Time of Strife, Wars and Consolidation, Developments in Armor and Weapons, The Progress of War, The Beginning of the Renaissance and the Rise of Personal Weaponry. The Sulitsa comes at the start of the section and the Backsword, latter on. This allows the GM to see the progression of the weapons not only in broad strokes, but in more specific areas.
Now over at RPG.net, it was asked, why would a weapon book need prestige classes, feats and spells. A book whose sole focus on weapons would not. This book however, focuses on the eras themselves and presents a new class, the Yeoman, and twelve PrCs, suitable for the time frames in which they're listed: Charioteer, Duelist, Eagle Knights, Elite Mongol Horsemen, German Combined Cavalryman, Gladiator, Guang Hu Adventurer, Jaguar Knights, Janissaries, Ninja, Roman Legionnaire, and Samurai. The Yeoman is a full 20 level core NPC class while the PrCs are all full ten levels. My favorite of the bunch is the Guang Hu Adventurer. These wanderers look to master their skills by fighting one another and this idea, while not the standard for most Oriental Adventure campaigns, might make for an excellent change of pace. Image the snooty Lion Samurai's reaction when a Guang Hu Adventurer beats him into the ground. A nice image.
The chapter on Myth and Magic isn't in the same style as the previous ones, instead providing magic item abilities for weapons and armor as well as specific mythological weapons. In some ways, this is probably the weakest chapter as most aren't going to agree with most of the game stats provided to these magnificent weapons of legend.
One of my favorite anime series is Berserk. One thing that's happened quite a few times, sometimes in the middle of combat, is that weapons break due to their use either in cutting through the enemy or in using them in ways that they weren't meant to be used. How do you determine how this happens in a standard d20 game? The rules are provided here, but they're not going to make combat any quicker or easier.
First, you have to create a strike table. This is time consuming because either you'll have specific ones for you're special NPCs and characters, or you'll have a generic table that loses some of its utility. Next, you determine what happens when an opponent is missed. You check the damage the weapon does and apply it against the weapon itself as well as the weapon, or armor, that it hits. When weapons take a certain amount of damage, 25%, they deteriorate, which has effects of its own. Almost any material you can think of, from bronze to mitrhil, is covered so if you're playing with multiple cultural eras in your campaign, you're ready to go. This may work better for some who don't like primitive style weapons doing less damage or having penalties to hit and in some instances, it'll work well for a grim and gritty campaign.
The Appendix has all sorts of goodies in it. Need some rules for increasing the weapon damage as the weapon size changes? Check. Need some rules for armor providing damage resistance instead of making it harder to hit the wearer? Check. Need a new way to calculate the pull or ranged distance of muscle powered weapons? Check. Want to add a Fatigue system to the game? How about rules for crafting items with variant levels of quality or a glossary? All covered. I know, what about most gamers pet peeve, the index? How about a fourteen page sucker that is very detailed. For example, if you're looking for a feat, you can look under feat, or the specific name of the feat.
The art is fair to good with weapon illustrations having a charcoal like appearance by Jim Branch and the illustrations of the various figures by Fred Rawles, an artists known for his work for Palladium Books. Layout is standard two columns of text, save for the pages and pages of weapons which are spread out like those found in the Player's Handbook with all information laid out for ease of reference.
From Stone to Steel does an excellent job in its coverage. The book is not perfect and I'll be one of the first to download the errata sheet. The misspellings and typos, like the dreaded reference to look on page?? (from page 273), alone are annoying but the wrong text in the wrong space, like talking about class features for the Gladiator but saying it's the Charioteer, is doubly annoying. Still, for a book of this size and depth, I'm willing to cut it some slack. The only real problem I've had with the book is that the page numbers aren't reference on the weapon tables. This is fine for the most part but when it comes to a special rule, because the weapons aren't just listed in alphabetical order but by time period, it tends to lead to page hopping.
For weapons and armor, it's superior to WoTC Equipment Guide, Mongoose's Ultimate Equipment Guide, Fast Forward Games Encyclopedia of Weaponry and Bastion Press' Arms & Armor. If you've been on the fence in your desire to buy a compendium of weapons, this one is the best for a board, historical reference work with pages of charts and little bonus rule sets that can be added to almost any campaign.
