Encyclopedia of Exotic Weapons
May. 15th, 2011 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Encyclopedia of Exotic Weapons is another encyclopedic book of items from Fast Forward Entertainment. (I've gotten several of them over the years out of half-priced bins at cons.)
Someone certainly did their homework here. Each entry has a description of the weapon, a bit of real-life history about it, a bunch of fantasy history / setting suggestions for it, and then a set of game stats. It includes a huge number of exotic melee and missile weapons from real-world cultures, plus d20 rules for historical hand firearms and siege weapons.
It’s really a book for DMs, not players, so you can increase the flavor of your campaign world by having different races/cultures use different exotic weapons. And given that the game stats don’t actually vary much from the existing PHB weapons, I suspect translating the stats to 4E or a different fantasy system while keeping the fluff would work just fine. The game balance is fine: There are several weapons that are easily disguised, or can be used as both reach and close-range weapons, or give a bonus to trip, disarm or sunder. but that’s offset perfectly by the fact that they’re exotic weapons, so you need to spend a feat to effectively use them. (The only rule you’d need to make up, which they don’t note here, is giving various NPC races an automatic proficiency in the exotic weapons native to their culture. But that’s not particularly important.)
There is the issue of, “Why would you ever use a gunpowder-based weapon in this system?” It takes several rounds of full-round actions to load one, then it doesn’t do significantly more damage (or have better range or accuracy) than a longbow or heavy crossbow would. Never mind the issues of moisture in the air preventing it from firing or a misfire causing it to explode. I’d think there should be some sort of tradeoff for all that—the 2nd Edition [optional] arquebus had most of those problems (including the explosion risk and needing magical gunpowder), but the tradeoff was it dealt 1d10 damage, reroll 10s. In theory, an amazingly-lucky roll could down a Terrasque. The higher-quality (later, more expensive) firearms have a lower misfire chance, do more damage and have a better crit multiplier, but still not to the point of being abusive and possibly still more expensive that a Wand of Scorching Ray. That said, if I was doing a low/no-magic campaign and wanted firearms rules, I’d use this set.
One of the authors or editors of this book has seen The Gamers. The descriptions of siege weapons and cannons specifically state that you cannot use them to make sneak attacks.
Overall, it’s a fun read with a lot of “flavor options” for a DM. I look forward to putting in some flavor text about the orcish hachiwara blades, which give them an advantage in ripping off helmets and smashing heads.
Someone certainly did their homework here. Each entry has a description of the weapon, a bit of real-life history about it, a bunch of fantasy history / setting suggestions for it, and then a set of game stats. It includes a huge number of exotic melee and missile weapons from real-world cultures, plus d20 rules for historical hand firearms and siege weapons.
It’s really a book for DMs, not players, so you can increase the flavor of your campaign world by having different races/cultures use different exotic weapons. And given that the game stats don’t actually vary much from the existing PHB weapons, I suspect translating the stats to 4E or a different fantasy system while keeping the fluff would work just fine. The game balance is fine: There are several weapons that are easily disguised, or can be used as both reach and close-range weapons, or give a bonus to trip, disarm or sunder. but that’s offset perfectly by the fact that they’re exotic weapons, so you need to spend a feat to effectively use them. (The only rule you’d need to make up, which they don’t note here, is giving various NPC races an automatic proficiency in the exotic weapons native to their culture. But that’s not particularly important.)
There is the issue of, “Why would you ever use a gunpowder-based weapon in this system?” It takes several rounds of full-round actions to load one, then it doesn’t do significantly more damage (or have better range or accuracy) than a longbow or heavy crossbow would. Never mind the issues of moisture in the air preventing it from firing or a misfire causing it to explode. I’d think there should be some sort of tradeoff for all that—the 2nd Edition [optional] arquebus had most of those problems (including the explosion risk and needing magical gunpowder), but the tradeoff was it dealt 1d10 damage, reroll 10s. In theory, an amazingly-lucky roll could down a Terrasque. The higher-quality (later, more expensive) firearms have a lower misfire chance, do more damage and have a better crit multiplier, but still not to the point of being abusive and possibly still more expensive that a Wand of Scorching Ray. That said, if I was doing a low/no-magic campaign and wanted firearms rules, I’d use this set.
One of the authors or editors of this book has seen The Gamers. The descriptions of siege weapons and cannons specifically state that you cannot use them to make sneak attacks.
Overall, it’s a fun read with a lot of “flavor options” for a DM. I look forward to putting in some flavor text about the orcish hachiwara blades, which give them an advantage in ripping off helmets and smashing heads.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-05-16 09:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-05-16 10:40 pm (UTC)