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Arms & Armor V3.5

Arms & Armor V3.5

List Price: $29.95
Your Price: $19.77
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: At My Signal, Unleash Hell!
Review: Found here are the same weapons that were contained in the original edition, and all have been updated so as to be compatible with the new 3.5 rules. Furthermore, all of the weapons from the SRD have been included, so that everything is found in one place, to minimize your need to flip back and forth between books. In addition, a number of new weapons have been added to the roster. The weapons represented here represent a wide variety of cultures, from that of the Oathbound campaign setting, to conventional fantasy, to martial arts weapons from ancient China.

There are numerous new qualities that can be added to weapons. So many, in fact, that the single table had to be split into four separate tables! A new quality, base enchantments, provides a minor magical enhancement that adds to the cost of the weapon, but doesn't add an effective bonus. An iconic weapon, for example, costs 2,000 gp above market price, and permits the user to change the weapon into a small cloak-pin, brooch, badge, or coin. The moment such a weapon leaves the owner's person, it immediately resumes its normal size and dimensions.

There are a few new specific weapons as well, including class-oriented weapons that are designed to be most beneficial to members of a particular class. While not restricted to certain classes, these weapons are best put to use by those classes, enhancing class features or skills most often possessed by the class in question. Take, for instance, the harp bow. This magical bow has multiple strings and can be played like a harp, granting anyone proficient with such an instrument a bonus to their Performance skill.

As with the weapons, all of the unique armors found in the original Arms & Armor have made it into this version, along with several new ones, all rendered for 3.5 compatibility. Likewise, all of the armors from the SRD have been incorporated into the tables for ease of reference. The rules for armor for creatures of varying size and the table for donning armor have also been ported over. Even more cool, the rules from Unearthed Arcana regarding armor as DR have been brought over, and updated for the new armor types presented here. There are also rules for using a shield or parrying weapon specifically to parry attacks.

Arms & Armor also introduces a few optional rules for handling artifacts, making them true extensions of divine power. Along the same lines, the concept of legendary weapons starts with a simple weapon of a mere +1 enchantment and builds it up as its wielder grows in power to a weapon of artifact status. If this sounds familiar to you, you've probably either read Unearthed Arcana or the original rules for legendary weapons and scions from the Artifacts of the Ages series from the Game Mechanics. Those rules have been reprinted here for your convenience if you don't happen to have either of those two volumes. A similar feature introduced here are magical ability chains, improving a weapon or armor's magical abilities by building on existing ones of a similar nature. Intelligent weapons and outsider weapons are also examined, the latter deriving their power from an extraplanar creature bound into the weapon (a staple of high fantasy!).

The biggest disappointment for me was the artwork. A fair portion (though not all) of it is lifted directly from the original Arms & Armor. What's more, the wonderful color illustrations of that volume have been reduced here to a bland black & white, which sometimes has the effect of reducing the beauty of Todd Morasch's artwork significantly. Since the original book was a softcover, but still rendered in full color, I held out hopes that this volume, a hardcover, would be as well. Sadly, that isn't the case.

If you have the original, I'd say that there's enough here to justify picking this one up as well. This is more than simply an update, it includes some new material and the material from the SRD has been integrated into it, making it even more useful. Whether you're a player or a DM, there is something in this book that will doubtlessly appeal to you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Great Book
Review: This is a 3.5 update of their previous work Arms & Armor v3.0. They also added to this supplement by including open source content found in dozens of other products, doubling its size from the previous version. By combining all of the popular abilities in creating weapons or armor into one book makes this tremendously useful for those of us that design our own.

I highly recommend this product to everyone, GMs and players alike. Even though the art is of questionable quality, it plays such a small part in this products usefulness. With this book, there is no more paging through dozens of other supplements trying to find that particular ability you were looking for.



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