Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal

[Bob]

Are your characters still stuck bringing swords to gunfights?

This book expands upon the black powder weapons and rules found in the core setting book, SpirosBlaak. Among other things, this book includes:

* Over 20 new feats involving black powder-level technology
* Rules for using black powder weapons
* Over 50 black powder firearms and lots of cannons, medieval mortars, rockets, organ guns and more
* Black powder-related magical items and new magical item weapon qualities
* The technologist core class, and the artillery adept, grenadier, marksman and pistoleer PrCs
* ... and plenty more

Although the book's flavor is geared towards the SpirosBlaak setting, its information fits into any d20 setting with no effort.

If you want black powder weapons in your d20 fantasy games, this is THE product to own.
Pages: 101

 

[danzig138]

Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal
Misfit Studios
Author: Steven Trustrum
Page count: 102
Price $9.50 at RPGNow

Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal is a supplement for the SpirosBlaak setting that delivers rules for black powder weapons, both the personal and artillery types, and includes an extensive selection of such weapons. However, the book is not limited to these weapons and includes non-powder weapons, new and altered skills, new feats, and new magic.

Chapter 1: Introduction
This is the introduction and author notes. It is a typical introduction, wherein the author talks about the trials and tribulations of getting the product ready and out, and gives thanks to the various people involved in said production.

Chapter 2: New Skills and Feats
This chapter includes additions to the Craft skill, allowing the creation of black powder weapons, artillery, and technological items. Craft (technology) has an interesting secondary use, allowing it to emulate other Craft skills. In addition, the Craft skill entries have extensive lists for crafting DCs, something missing in many products.

In addition, there are several new feats, most dealing with black powder weapons and artillery. While the feats are good and solid, there are no standouts.

Chapter 3: Melee and Ranged Weapons
This chapter details some new, non-powder-based weapons, ranging from the Battle Cleaver, which would be right at home in Athas, to the anime-styled Blade Lash, to the Dwarven Flame Breather, a primitive, bellows-operated, alchemist fire-thrower. These unique weapons can add a distinct flavor to characters.

Chapter 4: Black Powder Rules and Weapons
This is the heart of Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal – the rules and statistics for the black powder weapons.

The chapter begins with notes for racial and political weapon preferences in a SpirosBlaak campaign. It is good to know how your opponents will typically be armed.

The black powder weapons have a few new rules to give them a distinct feel in play. One is penetration; this provides a bonus or penalty to hit armored targets. This is a good rule, but it would benefit from notes on changes for common alternate systems, such as Armor as DR. Weapons also have a misfire range, with acts much like a critical fumble rule. Each weapon also lists a charge – the amount of powder required to fire a shot.

These additions to the rules help maintain distinctiveness for firearms, but are easily ignored for those who prefer less bookkeeping or detail. The chapter contains a wide variety of black powder firearms, from the .22 pocket pistol (a holdout pistol if you will) to the .90 Slayer Gun (a modified small cannon). Included in this range are common black powder weapons, the inevitable melee weapon/firearm combination weapons, and some more unusual weapons.

Particular weapons of interest include the Arkanoclian Gun Pack (essentially, a chest-mounted, hand-cranked, slow-firing Gatling gun); fowling weapons (shotguns, affecting targets in an area); the Goblin Barrel Module Gun (like a primitive, but more useful Steyr-AUG), and the Mage Pistol (which is shaped like a wand to be familiar to such spellcasters).

Mechanically, the weapons are well balanced against other standard weapons (swords and bows), which should prevent characters from dropping their old stand-bys in favor of the new technology. The firearms presented make for fine backup weapons (for adventurers) or mass-combat weapons (for infantry).

After the black powder weapons, there are rules for artillery and mortars. Again, there are notes on racial and political preferences. These rules cover everything from small, 3-pounder cannons to 150-pounder cannons and 6-pounder to 200-pounder, indirect fire mortars. These weapons include a variety of munitions, including alchemical shot, chain shot, and solid shot, and are quite powerful (a 150-pounder cannon firing solid shot deals 36d10 damage). However, this power is offset by the reload time (30 full rounds for the 150-pounder), cost (not too many people are going to spend 64,000 gp on a cannon), and weight (15 tons). There are rules for organ guns (multi-barreled cannons), and even a few unusual artillery pieces.

There is a small section on accessories that includes the mundane, like weapons slings, and cannon carts, and the unusual, like repeating mechanisms and revolving barrels. The chapter also includes rules for grenades and primitive rockets. Grenades are good. Who doesn't like tossing grenades? They're like fireball, but louder. The rules behind the weapons are comprehensive, simple, and easy to integrate into existing d20 rules sets, and include things like double loading, tap-loading, spooking animals, and skipping cannon shot over land and water. Again, you can ignore many of these rules without affecting game play.

Chapter 5: Classes
This chapter introduces the Technologist core class. The primary function of this class is the building of gadgets – a gadget is a technological device, usable three times per day, which duplicates a spell effect. The class has a gadget list that covers 0-5th level spell effects, and gains a limited number of gadgets per level of experience. Because of this, the player of a Technologist, much like the player of a sorcerer, must plan ahead before he reaches each level to achieve maximum utility.

The Technologist has other abilities, most relating to constructing and handling black powder devices. It is an interesting class, but I think it will see use primarily as an NPC class. As a player, I wouldn't be interested in taking levels in the class, but I would try to find a Technologist pal who could build things for me.

In addition to the Technologist core class, this chapter includes four new prestige classes – the Artillery Adept, the Grenadier, the Marksman, and the Pistoleer.

The Artillery Adept is a specialist in leading artillery crews, and has abilities related to improving attack rolls, reducing reload times, and even an ability to use artillery for terror. This prestige class seems best suited to NPCs.

The Grenadier specializes in tossing grenades. This prestige class strikes me as probably the most fun to play, at least, until the rest of your party gangs up on you and leaves you buried for the ants. Among other things, the Grenadier gains the ability to throw multiple grenades simultaneously, and to improve on the destructive power of his grenades.

The Marksman is essentially a sniper, and a quite effective one at that. His abilities relate to killing things, and I can see this prestige class being a popular one. This class has a rules oddity. One of the Marksman's abilities increases his damage by +1d6, but on a critical hit, this additional damage is multiplied. This caught my attention because typically, bonus damage dice are not multiplied on critical hits.

The Pistoleer is a gunfighter/duelist type of class, with abilities relating to trick shots, and some useful abilities for using small arms in close quarters combat. None of the features of this prestige class are particularly interesting, but I can think of some character builds that would work well with the class.

Chapter 6: Magic
As expected, this chapter includes a few new weapon properties, a few wondrous items, and even a cursed item. The magic items and properties are fine, but none are eye-catching. This small chapter could benefit from more items, properties, and ideas on incorporating magic with technological weapons.

Chapter 7: Blood of the Clan
This is a short story – about 20 pages. It is an engaging story, and I would certainly be interested in reading more about he characters involved.

However, it is 20 pages of material (out of 102 pages) that has no place in this book. This is space that should have been used for more game material (expanding the aforementioned magic chapter), and the story has little to do with the theme of Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal, which is black powder weapons.

I believe Blood of the Clan is now available as a download on the company website.

Layout and Style
The layout is standard two-column, with a small, easy-to-read font. The heading font is a difficult to read in some instances at normal magnification. Overall, the layout is clean and functional, but there are two things that are particularly distracting:

1. Sidebars: the sidebars are in text boxes that use a mottled grey and white background. This makes it more difficult to read the contained text, especially at a glance.

2. Italics: There is an overabundance of italics use in this book. Almost every table entry is in italics. When used sparingly, italics is like bold text, it draws the eye and allows you to quickly spot important or special text. When used for entire tables and large blocks of text, it makes the text harder to decipher.

Art
The art in Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal ranges from "Not So Good" to "Alright I Guess." However, I do like the goblin illustrations. The goblins look intelligently sinister. The art in Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal is limited in use, and takes little space.

Open Gaming Content
Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal has seven chapters. According to the open gaming declaration, the entire text from chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are open gaming content. This is a good thing, since it means that pretty much everything except the introduction and the short story, Blood of the Clan, is open content and can be used to your heart's content.

PDF Features
Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal lacks bookmarks, a linked table of contents, and an index. For me, these are not deal-breakers, but I think pdf documents should take advantage of the format. Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal is full of information, and it would be nice to be able to jump quickly to sections as necessary.

More importantly, Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal is a locked document. You cannot manually insert bookmarks, extract pages, or copy text. This, more than anything, reduces the functionality of the document.

I don't keep a computer nearby when I run a game, but during my prep work, I like to make documents for the players that include rules updates/changes and rules and information specific to each character. This frequently involves copying and pasting from pdfs. Locking the document decreases the utility of the file while increasing my workload.

Conclusion
I like this book. For a very long time, I have wanted to introduce archaic firearms into my Greyhawk campaign, but I have never had the inclination to do the actual research and work involved. Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal does this for you. It does a good job of detailing basic black powder weapons, while not ignoring the more fantastic and "out there" elements common in many games. While it is designed for the SpirosBlaak setting, the setting connections in the document are few, allowing the book to be used pretty much "as is" in most campaigns. Treasure Trove #1: SpirosBlaak Arsenal delivers what it promises, and it fills a need in fantasy gaming. The only disappointment is the underutilization of the pdf format.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Guns! Guns! Guns!

Treasure Trove Series
Spirosblack Arsenal
Written by Steven Trustrum
Published by Misfit Studios
www.misfit-studios.com
102 b & w pages

The cover of the Spirosblack Arsenal is a simple one, a black background with some firearm symbols up front with a treasure check in the receding background. One of the first things I couldn’t believe about the book is that there are no bookmarks. Another odd thing is that there is no printer friendly version. While the latter is by no means mandatory, the black borders on this book almost demand either included a printer friendly version, or made the one file printer friendly in the first place.

The book uses standard two-column layout. While there is no index, there is a detailed one-page table of contents. Interior art is done by Phil Longemeier, Shawn Richter, Gary Dupuis and Liscar Scott. A lot of functional pieces and some fair art. Some areas should’ve been worked on for more consistency. For example, on page eleven, almost all the weapons are line drawings, save for the Iron Shot and Stone Shot, which are grayscale illustrations.

One thing I didn’t like was the fiction, “Blood of the Clan.” When I want fiction, I read a book. I don’t mind a short fiction bit as introduction for a game mechanic or as background, but not a chapter of fiction in and of itself. For some, it’s perfect for getting into the game so if game fiction is you’re thing, you’ve got a nice helping of it here.

Instead of an introduction followed by the chapters, the first chapter is an introduction to Spirosblack and a thanks from the author. It notes that while the material here is supplemental, you don’t have to own Spirosblack to use it. As I don’t have Spirosblack at this time, that’s a good thing.

Chapter two introduces new skills and feats. It starts off with uses for craft, such as artillery making, or adding some new uses for alchemy, for example, making black powder. A huge lists of DC checks are included for the new skills so even new game master’s shouldn’t have any problem figuring out what any custom made guns or artillery would fall under in terms of difficulty.

New feats include some variants for use in any campaign. For example, a fighter mage would love the feat Arcane Warrior. It reduces spell failure by 10% (to a minimum of 5%) on any armor that the wearer is proficient with. Others, such as Armor Prowess, may be a touch too good as it allows you to retain your base speed. Others will be at home in campaigns. For example, I can see allowing Outlandish Weapon Finesse, a weapon in which you have weapon focus allows you to use this feat to use it as a weapon qualifying for Weapon Finesse.

As expected, there are many feats revolving around the use of gunpowder weapons. Because some firearms explode, it might be a good idea to have Cautious Loader, giving you a bonus on the mishap roll. Firearms are one exotic weapon proficiency, while Rapid Gunner lets you reload faster.

After feats, the book moves into melee and ranged weapons. We have one simple weapon, fists wraps, and several exotic ones. This includes devastating weapons like the battle cleaver, which consists of a huge blade at the end of a club. In many ways, similar to a halberd but sounding cooler. Others go the route of two-weapon style like the hammer axe. Some of the weapons way out there in terms of standard d20 play, include the dwarven flameball gun. Picture shooting your enemy with alchemist’s fire and watching them burn for a few rounds. Now you’ve got it!

When chapter four rolls around, it gets a little into the details of the setting. Things like how the various cultures use the fire arms. Not having the core book, I don’t know what it means for iguannalon’s to have problems with firearms as they live in a swamp and don’t develop the weapons themselves. Nor does it matter to me that mentors avoid combat so generally don’t use firearms either.

And for general races, they’re take on things is different than mine, which may be explained due to the setting. For example, elves having a preference for any type of firearm, especially when the longbow remains a very viable weapon with which they automatically have proficiency with, seems odd.

When looking at firearms, they have a few other statistics that normal weapons don’t have. For example, penetration (PEN) that reduces physical protection. For example, if the weapon has a PEN of 4, that’s four points off any armor that a character may be wearing. This is a solid advantage and quite different from some other games where rate of fire or base damage may be used to instill the fear of firearms into a campaign.

Black powder weapons also have a misfire range. If an unmodified die roll hits one of the misfire range numbers, it’s time to roll on the misfire results table.

In the weapons listing, the guns include the standard game mechanics like name, cost, damage for size small, medium, and large, critical range, range increments, reload time, charge, and weight.

Weapons range in damage from the 1d6 from the pocket pistol, to the 1d12 of a military musket with a .69 rating. They range in cost from 80 gold pieces for a naval pistol, to 1,000 gold for an elven long pistol. There are some higher rated guns in terms of damage, like the Slayer gun, which inflicts 4d6 but most of the weapons fall between 1d6 to 1d12 in terms of everyday use. Those that do more on average, require something from the user. For example, the shield guns require a separate exotic weapon proficiency.

Just as the book covered favored black powder weapons racially, it does the same with artillery, and again, I’m left scratching my head. It sounds like it makes sense from the perspective that I can understand, such as the swamp living iguanalons not using artillery as the swamp won’t support those weapons.

That leads into the various cannons though and there are some big guns here. Not probably appropriate for a typical party wandering through a dungeon, but nice to have in those campaigns that support their use where such weapons have not been detailed yet. In addition to canons, we have mortars, organ guns, rockets, grenade like weapons, and a section on unusual artillery. Included in this section are rules for spooking animals with firearms, as well as bouncing cannonball shots.

Chapter five moves away from the weapons listings with classes, starting with the technologist. It’s a d6 hit dice class with medium skill pool (4 points per level), whose main ability is mastering technology. That allows the to use gadgets following the rules outlined in this book. In many ways, these are spells. For example, a 0 level gadget might be flare. They can also manufacture alchemical items without having to be a spellcaster.

For prestige classes, we have the following; artillery adept, grenadier, marksman, and pistoleer. Their abilities pretty much tie into their abilities. For example, the grenadier specializes in, yes, throwing grenades. The marksman specializes in precise shots while the pistoleer fights like a devil when using his pistols.

Chapter six covers magic items. This includes new properties for black powder weapons, including better penetration power as well as handling some of the mundane issues of gun powder weapons like eliminating smoke or noise. In addition to general properties, we also have specific weapons. I always like seeing specific weapons because while new lists of powers are good, seeing those abilities put into play is better.

In this case, we have weapons like Relgia’s Dueling Pistol, a +2 quick, spell-fueled precision pistol whose real ability is that targets hit by it are subject to a dispel magic spell as if cast by an 8th level caster.

Besides weapons, we also have a range of other magic items. These range from the bulging bag of bullets, where bullets never run out, to cursed gun powder that backfires.

My lack of knowledge of the setting only came up a few times. The more serious problems of no printer friendly version, no bookmarks, and almost twenty pages of fiction, lower what would be a four star rating to three. Of almost equal interest to me, will be Green Ronin’s own use of these firearm rules in the future as Freeport has some optional material of it’s own. Will that be expanded and covered with this arsenal material?

If fiction doesn’t bother you, and not having printer friendly PDF’s, or book marks aren’t an issue, this is a great resource for adding technology based fire arms that aren’t afraid to use magic to your game.