Review of A Collection of Fantastic Weapons

A Collection of Fantastic Weapons Written by Don Bessinger Published by 3am Games www.3amgames.com ISBN: 1-59516-002-7 176 b & w pages $24.95

One of the problems with standard d20 fantasy games is that magic weapons don’t scale with their wielder. A +1 sword at low levels is fantastic, but quickly replaced. There have been various efforts to “fix” this issue. This includes unique weapons that gain in power as the user does either through a prestige class such as The Game Mechanics use, or through ritual and gold expenditure such as Weapons of Legacy. Other variants have cropped up in Dragon magazine, as well as in products by 3am Games and Fiery Dragon. In some of those cases, it was simply a matter of the user having the right level to use the item and in others, it required expenditure of experience points or gold sacrifice or some combination of the two.

A Collection of Fantastic Weapons doesn’t take that approach. Instead, it starts with weapon rules. This includes a breakdown of power levels from low (+2 to +3 modified bonus), to medium (around +5), to high powered (+9 to +10). It also includes how the statistic block, the part including things like caster level (CL), detects as (DA), Saving throw bonuses, armor class, hardness, hit points, and weight work.

One huge snafu that hit the book was the author didn’t use the errata on hardness and hit points for magic weapons. When referring to Chapter 7, Magic Item Descriptions, Weapons, it notes that the item gains a +1 hardness and hit point per plus but the errata is +2 hardness and 10 hit points for every plus. Every weapon here is wrong in terms of its hardness and hit point totals. Keep this in mind when looking over the hardness and hit points or such weapons will be easy to Sunder or destroy.

It also includes numerous special abilities for magical weapons. This list allows the GM to come up with more variants of standard magic weapons for his campaign preventing everything from being either frost or flame as we now have things like fearsome, giving it’s user a bonus to Intimidate checks, or Sickening, where the target has to make a Fortitude save or become diseased.

The book then moves into the weapons, which are broken up by type. Each section starts with some background and some different types of the weapon. For example, it starts with daggers, noting that it’s one of the oldest tools that man has used and has many variants like the balisong of the Philippine islands or the main gauche or parrying dagger.

After the background on the weapon, the listings of new weapons start. Each weapon is fully illustrated. The size of the illustration is large enough to show off the detail on the weapon and the illustrations are nicely done. Also included is background information, and three sets of game statistics for the weapon, one for low, mid, and high level. Because it doesn’t use a staggered advancement as Weapons of Legacy or Artifacts of the Ages, the jumps in power can be quite vast and because it doesn’t use a system to handle the jump, can be quite out of place in some campaigns.

In addition, there is a lot of white space. This wouldn’t be too bad if the material was fully fleshed out, but since we’ve seen these types of weapons before, there is so much that could be done to flesh it out. For example, how about knowledge checks of different levels so that characters have an idea of what the weapon is and how it’s powers work?

How about NPC’s who may be hunting down the weapon or already have it? How about mapped encounter locations where the weapon was lost and must be found again? How about alternative origins or methods of using it? For example, say you don’t have a campaign with a Sultan? How should you adapt the material into your game?

Even though the book’s coverage and utility isn’t where I’d like it to be, the author has done a good job of bringing in some unusual magic items in terms of type. For example, I rarely see magical pole arms. Here we have all sorts of polearms including the dreaded halberd and even the rarely seen guisarme.

Those monks who never get to find magical weapons can look forward to items such as the hakan I sha, a magical kama that lets the user make multiple attacks of opportunity against a single target in one round, but he’s still got to have an ability to make the multiple attacks of opportunity in the first place. It’s mid level is a higher bonus and allows the user to invoke a slow spell, while it’s high level increases the bonus again, and has the slow, and has the ability of time stop once per day.

Because of it’s page length, the white space issue isn’t too bad. It’s rare to see a 160 page hardcover book go for less than $30 these days, much less a 176 page one. The snafu with the hardness and hit points however, and the lack of real details in looking at the use and placement of the weapons, weakens the overall utility of the book.

If you’re looking for some magic items that don’t require you to learn a new susbsystem and can be added to your campaign right away, A Collection of Fantastic Weapons is for you.