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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Paul_Klein" data-source="post: 2009946" data-attributes="member: 3303">Star Wars Arms and Equipment Guide96 pages, soft cover, B&W. Written by Jeff Grubb and Owen K.C. Stephens.The Star Wars Roleplaying Game Arms and Equipment Guide has been a much clamored for product for a long time now. The weapons and equipment chapter in the Revised Rulebook is quite sufficient, but it won’t take long before your players are going to want more. This book, from what I have gathered, is also quite possibly going to be the last soft cover book released for the SW RPG. DISCLAIMER: Star Wars, unlike D&D, is not about the weapons and gear your character has. This is not a knock on D&D. Star Wars has never, and hopefully will never, place prime importance on *loot*. This book is merely an *option* book, for players and Gamemasters who want to look for something more than a ‘Blaster Pistol’.Introduction: Unlike the introductions of most roleplaying books, this introduction is actually useful and necessary to understanding the rest of the book. There are definitions on item availability and lawfulness (a hold-over from WEG that is a wonderful thing), and a listing on the main eras of play, as well as primer information on the black market (for actual rules on finding, using and dealing with the black market, see Starships of the Galaxy).Chapter 1 - WEAPONS: Weighing in at 33 pages in length, this chapter gives information and stat blocks on 130 different weapons from every imaginable category (with the exception of lightsabers - sorry Jedi!). 55 of the 130 weapons are illustrated. A note on the illustrations: they are all computer-drafted line drawings that I absolutely love. This means basically that each entry in the book follows the same set of rules, and are not left up to a pool of artist’s interpretations. The drawings are clear, concise, full of detail, and best of all, they are not, at all, artistic (as they should not be, in my opinion).At the beginning of this chapter are rules on modifying your weapon. The ruleset for this is very simple and elegant (fairly abstract), yet somehow, very complete. It leaves very little, if at all, to be desired. However, some of the choices you can make when modifying your weapon might be a bit unbalancing. For example: you can choose to increase the threat range of your weapon by one. The is exactly what the feat Improved Critical does, except that feat is hindered by the very high requirements (BAB 8+). Also, while some of the modifications have a drawback (increase your damage, decrease your attack), some have no drawback, except that the modifications cost money. To some, this may be unbalancing. I do not have enough experience with this to quit determine if that is so.   Chapter 2 - PROTECTIVE GEAR: A short chapter (6 pages), chapter 2 deals with armor and other protective gear. There is only 14 different suits of armor (however, each and everyone as an accompanying illustration). I think the designers are trying to emphasize that armor in Star Wars, while not rare, is not that much better than going without. Hero’s in Star Wars don’t wear armor except when they need to (flying starfighters, in the vacuum of space, etc). However, with this chapter, and the armor found the Revised Rulebook, there should be enough armor for whatever purpose you want. One note: some people have complained that the infamous Mandalorian armor was not in this book. That’s because its already established in the Revised Rulebook that Mandalorian armor is either modified padded battle armor or modified medium battle armor - see page 316. Like with weapons, there is a simple and elegant ruleset for modifying your armor. One thing people have noticed is that, using these rules, you cannot increase the DR of your armor. This is done on purpose for balance purposes, purposes I completely agree with. Chapter 3 - DROIDS: At 19 pages, this chapter gives complete history and background information, as well as stat blocks, on 45 different droids. Best part is, every single one is illustrated! Also included (Thank the Maker!) is a full-page sidebar on information concerning each of the 45 droids as PCs!. There is, sadly, no information on customizing and modifying droids at all however.Chapter 4 - VEHICLES: 47 total vehicles are written up in 15 pages. 20 of the 47 are illustrated. Also in this chapter, for the first time, is complete information pertaining to jet and rocket packs! There is, like with the weapons and armor chapters, the same set of rules on how to upgrade your vehicles. Again, in my opinion, these rules work very well and are quite simple.Chapter 5 - EQUIPMENT: In 11 pages, 68 pieces of general equipment are included. Nothing completely lavish or incredible in here, but every bith of the technology in this chapters adds more depth and flavor to your Star Wars campaign. Sadly, only 13 of them are accompanied by an illustration.All in all:301 entries in the book (not including specialized ammo, see below) accompanied by a total of 147 illustrations (49%). Plus sidebars on: Blast Radius, Droid Heroes (almost full page), Vehicles Aces, Medical Kits, Escape Pods and Tool Kits. Rules for customizing and personalizing weapons, armor, droids, vehicles, equipment, and a note on the black market are included.CONCLUSION:Before the book was released, I was afraid 96 pages would not do the book's topics justice (I spoke with author Owen Stephens about this same topic). Well with the exception of armor, I was wrong. Well over 300 total entries with about half illustrated? I'm very impressed.This book has 45 droid entries, whereas WEG's Fantastic Technology: Droids book had 47 (but droids is only 1 of 5 topics in this book). This book has 224 weapons, armor suits and pieces of equipment, whereas WEG's Gundark's Fantastic Technology Personal Gear had a total of 196 (and that book was 16 pages longer). Of course WEG also had Galladinium's Fantastic Technology as well (about 200 entries in all 5 categories weapons, armor, droids, vehicles, equipment), but that is in a second book. And, of course, WEG never compiled a pretty comprehensive list of vehicles in one source, so having 47 here is pretty substantial. I have but one gripe with the book: the editing stinks! There are no gaffs in editing that will affect gameplay that I could find (you won’t be seeing an Arms and Equipment Errata anytime soon), but there are numerous errors in layout, typesetting and spelling. Some words runtogether. Other times, in a list of things where each entry is in bold, one of the entries won’t have bold. The entry for one of the vehicles is called the zZip Motor Concepts Astral-8, yet its illustration refers to it as the zZPI Motor. (zZip is the correct spelling, by the way). There are literally dozens of these errors littered throughout the book. The question is, is that enough to downgrade the books score, considering none of them affect the actual stats? I’m going to say no. The editing, the fact that is the soft cover, and the fact that not EVERYTHING is illustrated are the only three things that bother me about the book (and I understand the feasibility of have illustrations for 301 entries and making a 96 pages book hardcover. Then again, that’s why you make the book 128 pages, illustrate everything, and give it a hardcover <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=":)" /> ). But I really don’t believe that they are enough to bring the score down any (at least on a 5 point scale). Therefore, I give it a perfect 5. I really think the book is borderline essential for any sort of ‘in-depth’ Star Wars campaign.   -Paul Klein</blockquote>

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